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John Derbyshire, from NRO:

I have always thought of conservatives as the cold-eyed people, unafraid to face awkward facts, respectful of rigorous intellectual disciplines, and decently curious, but never dogmatic, on points of metaphysics.

I have been defining "conservative" (in my discussion of the cognitive/affective ethos of an integral worldview) in more distinctive, nuanced, and particular ways than Derbyshire does here (he, obviously, is not talking about anything integral, and I've selected only one sentence from a much longer account, for a reason). But what he says is not on an altogether different planet than my ongoing investigation. It is, at least, a decent starting point. Let me discuss what I've done, overall, in this experiment to understand and make explicit the operative nature (that is to say, the day to day reality) of an integral worldview.

"Everyone is conservative about what they know best" is an axiom I've used to ground my investigation. It means a couple things. 1) That everyone has a natural resistance to the questioning of what they hold dear. And 2) that everyone will generally rely upon what they hold dear (in terms of tuning) as they look at, assess, analyze, interact, or consider the world. I would guess that there is some clinical definition or evidence that shows people have a natural, healthy sense of inertia. I don't know any offhand, but it seems far to demonstrable and common sense for there not to be.

I have stated I don't not think (nor, frankly, do I want) the word "conservative" to be the actual word used in everyday practice about an integral worldview. I have used it as a starting point, because it (like "liberal") is a dead term these days. Thus I have make distinction from the beginning between any "political" connotation and a "sociological" connotation, the latter of which I favor in this investigation. Thanks to Tuff Ghost's inspiration, I think it proper to consider this a "radical" investigation, namely "at the root" of an integral worldview, as opposed to at its periphery, from a distance, or merely objectively.

I have also stated upfront that this has been an attempt to "trascend and include" or "negate and preserve" what has previously been thought of as "conservative". That means much has been thrown out (any ties to the political world, reactionariness, mythical literalism, close-mindedness, or what Wilber and Spiral Dynamics orthodoxy would call "first-tier"). On the other hand, I have sought to preserve of "conservative" that which merits doing so, from small nuggets of truth, particular kinds of approach or attitude, outward characteristics, or implicit values. Some has been trashed, and some has been saved of "conservative". Thus because of this approach, I have been bushwacking into some new territory, or at least territory only minimally explored in this manner.

I have clarified that this is not to say that such a temperament is not, at times and depending on situations, also "assertive", "skillful", "flexible", "inquisitive", or even "risky" about what they know best. Although being risky about such areas is really not risk at all, for the amount of risk involved greatly diminishes when someone is operating in their best area. A trained composer, for example, is not really "risky" when he or she really pushes the bounds of their composition; or at least this is a different kind of risk, one that requires being informed, trained, and experienced. The gradual consideration of more and more perspectives upon a thing, context, or problem (thus "multiperspectivity") may be a 5-minute process for one person, a five-hour process for another, and a five-week or five-year process for another. It fundamentally depends upon the situation. Cutting down a rotting tree is distinct from teaching artists, is distinct from a health crisis, is distinct from a deep and wide study of the history of art. Context is everything.

I have further attempted to clarify my attempt to talk about the integral worldview by the analogy of a piano and the kind of harmonic temperament used as the basis to determine how the piano is tuned properly. A lot of people, admittedly, are not versed in the workings of temperament in a piano (or any fretted instrument) especially in the Western music tradition. Temperament describes the profound, discreet, and extremely subtle fundamental ordering of music. Temperament operates at the boundary between the theoretical and the manifest in music.

In the West, only in the 20th century was "equal temperament" decided upon as the form of temperament used to, amongst other things, determine how to tune a piano, a guitar, a saxophone, and other "pitch-determinate" instruments. The voice, on the other hand, has no frets, no valves, and the singer is always making "micro-adjustments" to their pitches, something impossible on the piano and only possible on the guitar if you bend the strings. Temperament, perhaps in the simplest terms, is what decides where the frets are placed on the fretboard, in terms of actual, measurable distance apart. Think about that for a moment—think about how utterly fundamental the location of the frets on a guitar are to the music that flows from the guitar, and also the limits of that importance. This is because what music sounds like is a very distinct question than what force/system puts the frets where they are on the fretboard. But the latter is still an utterly fundamental matter at the heart of music, if buried as almost "too" deep a matter to think about.

A musical temperament is thus intrinsic to the deeply discreet channels through which tones flow, but says virtually nothing about the actual music heard, as the play of tones. In the equal temperament of the West (which has determined that splitting up an octave into 12, equal divisions is the best manner (provisionally) to make music), we have mellow music, aggressive music, high art, low art. We have, to take four examples, Miles Davis, Bach, Bill Monroe, Scott Joplin—instrumentalists of completely different personality, but whose music all operates via the mode of temperament. Singers such as Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra all switch between equal temperament and non-equal temperament, usually with such talent that the untrained ear will never notice any difference at all, but rather simply hear the beautiful music.

All of which ought serve to show that immense variety is in no way contricted by the assertion that the cognitive/affective temperament of an integral worldview follows whatever descriptions I have suggested it might. A worldview is a semiotic dynamic within which life plays—aesthetically, sexually, politically, combatively, inconsistently.

I have cited that multiperspectivity is a fundamental basis for an integral worldview, and my descriptions of the associated temperament are in fact descriptions of the cognitive/affective "think/feel" of multiperspectivity. This is a term that is self-defining. It means, of course, "many perspective". Some of the common ones would be self, culture, nature, body, mind, essence (breath-force, spirit), as well as the innumerable possible perspectives from outside one's native culture.

In music, for example, the Zimbabwe Shona tribe (via voice, mbira, and percussion), the Bulgarian State Women's choirs, the classical musics of North and South India, the medieval European sacred plainchants (such as Hildegard von Bingen's compositions), the gamelan orchestras of Indonesia, the mono-tone chants of Tibetan peoples, American Jazz, Rock'n'Roll, and on and on all have different perspectives upon music's fundamental tonal properties, and upon music in general (what it means, how it functions in culture and society, how to create it, how it is presented and performed). 10,000 people all informed by these perspectives would still compose 10,000 different compositions, and 10,000 different bodies of work. What would bind these together in any sense would be extremely fundamental and intrinsic—namely, the multiperspectivity at the core of their semiotic worldview.

And here is another important point—people can operate with multiperspectivity, but each person is still confined to their own, particular "point of view". And that point of view is, of course, a tremendously influential factor in the innumerable flavors and possible moments and characters of life possible within a general, overall worldview, as well as the general temperament of that worldview. In simple terms, a temperament is analogous to the banks of the rivers, all all the possible personalities and characteristics are akin to the river, flowing through those banks.

What follows is a kind of laundry list of what an integral worldview is like, not like, and what to do, practically, in order to experience and understand such a worldview. This is not exhaustive, by any means, of the possibilities. And, as should be obvious, all of this is from my point of view.

What the temperament of an integral worldview is like
(some attributes)

multi-perspectival
cognizant of multiple truths of a moment/context
judicious
informed
passionate
curious
context-based
reflective
patient
mildly skeptical
open-minded
planet-centric
mature
based on reason and evidence
intuitive
respectful
restrained
based in stewardship
humble
courageous
creative

What a temperament of an integral worldview isn't like
(some non-attributes)

fearful
reactionary
priviledging societal or personal causes of suffering any more or less
close-minded
merely rational
connected to a particular political party
superficial
quick to judge
dismissive
linear
pretentious
beholden to tunnel vision
beholden to anything for the mere sake of it
cliched
simplistic
unscrupulous
beholden to analysis paralysis
indecisive
judgemental
beholden to mere self-interest

What to do to understand/experience the temperament of an integral worldview
(possible suggestions):

engage those who disagree with you in robust conversation
own a house
start a family
raise a child
manage something
attempt to teach someone at the edge of their comfort/fear
learn, justify conventions before burning them in your field/discipline/life
study the history of ideas
(art, geography, religion, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, languages, etc.)
reckon those truths with your contemporary age and experience
study premodern and contemporary artistic practice,
then make experimental art riding your intuition
question all assumptions, up to the point/line of diminishing returns
live your life, seeking as full an experience as possible