But is it integral? Who cares!

I haven't been reading much in the way of integral writings for the last several years.  Today, I dipped back into a few of them.

I keep finding people in the integral community asking the question "Is it integral?" about all kinds of things - leadership, psychology, medicine, law, coaching, etc. as if being integral was the goal.

Whatever happened to pragmatism - does it work?

I'm sure someone will say "But being integral means it works better and in more cases."  This is probably true - we'd need to look case by case - but what I find is that in promoting the question "Is it integral?" we are taking our eye off the ball. Many people who are new to the integral community (and many who are "old" too) are developing a really funky critical theory where being integral is "it" and not being integral is passé. How very non-integral!

Is it integral? Who cares. Picking up the banner of pragmatism, I suggest that a better question is "Does it work?" This question opens are more useful space of possibilities by putting us in more direct contact with the nature of whatever we're questioning and how well it responds to present circumstances.

Take care,

-Steve