Last
updated: 25 Oct 07
What is the 'Integral' approach?
•
Integral attracts thought-leaders 
• Cultural shifts towards
'Integral'?
• The 5 Key elements:
•
So what?
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Integral attracts thought-leaders
An
‘integral approach’ – at least in the model
of the pre-eminent US philosopher-psychologist and integral
pioneer Ken Wilber – is one that explicitly aims to
take into account all relevant factors.
In
other words, to be comprehensive and holistic. This means
it will look both inside a person at mindsets, values, and
cultures and outside at their skills and behaviours, as well
as to the wider organisational and social systems etc.
A
growing cross-section of thought-leaders are now taking an
interest in the ‘Integral’ approach: from people
viewed as conservative, like the Bishop of London, Richard
Chartres, to progressives like Al Gore, Bill Clinton (who
even invoked Wilber’s work at his speech to the World
Economic Forum in 2004) and former Tony Blair Policy Unit
guru Geoff Mulgan – who urged one meeting of the UK
Government’s key strategic thinkers to read Ken Wilber’s
introduction to the integral approach, A
Theory of Everything - An Integral Vision for Business, Politics,
Science and Spirituality, and try to translate its
'integral' model into concrete Government policies.
The
respected philosopher Professor Charles Taylor has praised
Wilber for his ability to “keep his horizons open, where
most of our culture keeps closing them down”. And for
leadership guru Professor Warren Bennis, Wilber has “created
a unifying system for this chaotic age we’re living
in”.
Not
only does Wilber's ‘theory of everything’ talk
of integrating science and religion, and Left and Right, it
even talks tantalisingly of uncovering ‘the roadmap
to God’.
Ken
Wilber writes in an introductory note to the book A
Theory of Everything:“ ‘An integral vision’
– or a genuine Theory of Everything – attempts
to include matter, body, mind, soul and spirit as they appear
in self, culture and nature. A vision that attempts to be
comprehensive, balanced, inclusive. A vision that therefore
embraces science, art, and morals; that equally includes disciplines
from physics to spirituality, biology to aesthetics, sociology
to contemplative prayer; that shows up in integral politics,
integral medicine, integral business, integral spirituality…”.
The
integral approach has even made surprising inroads into popular
culture. Film director, Larry Wachowksi, for instance, once
told the press “Ken Wilber is our Neo” –
Neo, being the hero of the Matrix trilogy of films,
who helps humanity to wake up from its unconscious enslavement.
Wachowski also asked Wilber to record the Directors’
commentary for The Ultimate Matrix Collection
DVD set (Buy
in UK ;
Buy
in US ),
alongside trendy academic Prof. Cornel West.
Jennifer
Aniston looks set to play Wilber’s wife, Treya, in a
film of Wilber’s gruelling book Grace
and Grit - Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death
of Treya Killam Wilber about their losing fight against
her cancer.
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Cultural shifts towards ‘Integral’?
Drawing on the findings in adult development research, Wilber
suggests US society is divided into segments operating out
of different level worldviews. Around 25 per cent of the population
is 'traditional', 40 per cent is 'modern', and close to 25
per cent is 'postmodern' (a category which overlaps with those
sociologist Paul Ray calls ‘Cultural Creatives’
in his book The Cultural Creatives - How 50 Million People
Are Changing the World).
These
worldviews all tend to misunderstand one another, talk across
eachother, deny the others’ realities, often trying
to force their way of thinking on others – as we see
in the regular eruptions of ‘culture wars’. To
those who develop the ability to step back and look with a
more complex, ‘integral’ lens, these battles can
look like a bit like an almost never-ending ‘food fight’.
Worse
still, these partial outlooks usually block the balanced,
holistic, or integral solutions to the important problems
of our age: terrorism, poverty, global warming and so on.
Wilber calls this mainstream the 'First Tier' of development,
and – controversially – concludes that any such
‘First Tier’ system of thinking will prevent world
peace.
However,
up to two per cent of the population of people in Western
nations are currently operating out of a newly emerging ‘integral’
wave of awareness – beyond First Tier into the Second
Tier (usually intuitively, as most will not have heard of
any explicitly 'Integral' model). And yet, as he points out,
it is only with the emergence of this integral wave that people
begin to really see the big picture of people's interior stages
of growth, to understand how every stage or worldview has
a necessary role to play in the health of any nation. No worldview
can be, or ought to be, ignored or repressed – as they
are all part of the pattern of healthy human emergence (though
there can be unhealthy and harsh expressions at any stage/wave:
sleazy and exploitative capitalism, PC inquisitors, repressive
authoritarianism etc).
Wilber’s
friend Dr Don Beck, the co-author of Spiral
Dynamics: mastering values, leadership and changes
and The
Crucible - Forging South Africa’s Future in Search of
Template for the World, worked with Mandela and others
on such developmental dynamics – going deeper than black
vs. white –to help knit South African society together
after apartheid. Beck talks of the innate drive that emerges
in people with growth to the Second Tier to seek “the
health of the whole spiral of development”. (Pioneering
developmentalist Jean Piaget left the enduring impression
that cognitive development reached its conclusion in adolescence.
Research in recent decades on adult lifespan development has
found that deep and important changes can in fact continue
throughout our lives.)
But
what if – as is entirely possible – this current
tiny two per cent of integral-orientated people rises to encompass
10 per cent, or 15 per cent, at the Second Tier integral stages
in future decades? This would be “a major cultural revolution,
comparable at least to that of the sixties”, Wilber
concludes.
The
percentage shift sounds small, yet the revolution in attitudes
in the sixties involved only perhaps 20 per cent of the population
shifting to more post-modern and expressive Cultural Creative-type
values, argues Wilber.
Many
of the 50 million US ‘Cultural Creatives’ (and
proportionately more in Europe) – Wilber suggests –
now stand on the brink of the Second Tier, of integral values.
He also notes that the baby boomer generation that entered
the pluralist, postmodern, Cultural Creative wave en masse
several decades ago has reached the second half of life, and
psychological transformation can again occur more rapidly
in that phase.
In
fact, looking at the interest coming from the thought-leaders
already mentioned, Wilber may not be wrong to envisage “a
genuine revolutionary transformation in the cultural elite
as a harbinger of a wider societal shift”.
Top
The
Five Key Elements of Wilber’s Integral approach
Ken Wilber suggests 5 elements we might want to try to take
into account for a truly encompassing integral approach. (Though
other integral-aware writers about adult development –
eg Susanne Cook-Greuter, Robert Kegan, Don Beck, Bill Torbert
etc – have their own illuminating emphases).
Wilber’s
five elements are known as : Quadrants, Levels, Lines, Types,
and States.
"As
you will see, all of these elements are, right now, available
in your own awareness," says Ken Wilber. "These
five elements are not merely theoretical concepts; they are
aspects of your own experience, contours of your own consciousness,
as you can easily verify for yourself as we proceed."
(NB
Attempts to squeeze raw reality into even the most complex
and multi-faceted of models are transcended in the openness
and flexibility that emerges with the highest stages of adult
growth. Indeed ‘THE Integral approach’
can turn into something of a limiting attachment for some
of those at these highest/latest/most complex stages of post-conventional
growth. With that in mind, read on...)
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Lines
Lines, or streams, of development – also known as 'intelligences'
– include such things as cognitive intelligence, emotional
intelligence (ie the EQ made famous in Daniel Goleman‘s
book Emotional
Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition: why it can matter
more than IQ) and others such as moral, aesthetic,
logical-mathematical, spiritual, musical, linguistic, bodily-kinaesthetic
and so on. Prof. Howard Gardner popularised some of these
as ‘multiple intelligences’ (see his Intelligence
Reframed: multiple intelligences for the 21st century).
We are all more strongly developed in some lines, with others
in need of some care and attention.
Of
course, there isn’t unanimous agreement – even
amongst their proponents – about how these intelligences
work, or even how many there are: Gardner says seven, with
an option to add three more (including naturalist intelligence),
Wilber races ahead, at times suggesting at least 24 lines.
(See Tests page for information on
tests and assessments in various lines.)
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Levels
or stages
Wilber argues that people have the potential to develop through
similar broad stages, or levels in almost all these various
lines – reaching higher levels of competence and capacity
in each of them.
The
moral line, for example, can develop from a pre-conventional
egocentric focus (‘me’) to a conventional and
ethnocentric focus (‘us’) to a post-conventional
worldcentric focus (‘all of us’). Influential
feminist educator Carol Gilligan, author of In
a Different Voice – Psychological Theory and Women’s
Development, called this a shift from ‘selfish’
to ‘care’ to ‘universal care’. With
each such stage comes an increase in compassion and in the
ability to take the perspective of others, along with a lessening
of absolutism and narcissism.
“People’s
stage of development influences what they notice or can become
aware of, and therefore what they can describe, articulate,
influence, and change,” adds developmental psychologist
Susanne Cook-Greuter. (See Tests
page for information on tests and assessments for various
levels or stages.)
Research
by Bill Torbert and David Rooke, authors
of Action
Inquiry: the secret of timely and transforming leadership,
found that only leaders at the highest, most complex, stages
of ego development appear consistenly able to successfully
transform their organisations, or turn them into much-vaunted
‘Learning Organisations’. (You might be able to
guess that such leaders are very rare).
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Quadrants
Wilber’s book Integral
Psychology - Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
synthesises around 100 such models of development of
different lines – everything from cognitive growth to
moral growth, to Buddhism and Kabbalah, gender identity and
chakras, Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development
and Rawls’ moral positions, Habermas’ historical
epochs and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Fowler’s
stages of faith and even Lenski’s stages of the techno-economic
base. Ambitious to say the least!
During
the laborious writing of his 850-page magnum opus Sex,
Ecology Spirituality - The Spirit of Evolution, Wilber
agonised over how to fit together all the various developmental
hierarchies he had found, some of them individual, some social,
others drawn from the natural world.
At
this time he lived a ‘hermit life’: “I saw
exactly four people in three years. Roger Walsh, who is an
MD, stopped by once a year to make sure I was alive”,
he wrote.
“At one point I had over 200 hierarchies written out
on legal pads lying all over the floor, trying to fit them
together”.
The
breakthrough came when he realised that all 200 would fit
into four simple categories, or quadrants (see 'All Quadrants'
graphic on Tests page).
One quadrant for the individual’s interior world: values,
meanings, feelings, states of mind (the subjective or intentional).
A second for our shared interiors of cultural worldviews and
customs (the intersubjective or cultural). A third one for
the measurable and visible aspects of the individual body
and behaviour (the objective or behavioural), and a final
quadrant for the external systems of society and nature (the
interobjective or social). In other words, four fundamental
perspectives that always exist, even if our favoured approach
or perspective ignores them. Wilber also describes these as
the ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘It’ and
‘Its’ perspectives on reality.
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(Personality)
Types
Another element included in an integral understanding is personality
type. For example Myers-Briggs or Enneagram type, or the ‘Big
5’ personality assessment (with its traits of Openness
to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness
and Neuroticism).
These
are important aspects of the self that do not however evolve
over our lifespan through different stages, in the way moral
development, cognitive development etc can do. (See Tests
page for information on tests and assessments for personality
type, including Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.)
Top
States
This covers a wide range of experiences – eg waking,
dreaming, deep sleep, meditative states, altered states, peak
experiences and Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi’s optimal ‘Flow’
experience.
Top
So what?
I started writing something here, but in the end
decided to leave it blank – as it’s really up
to you to decide ‘so what?’
Hopefully
as I add further examples of integral strategies and approaches
in the coming months it will make your answer more clear.
(And mine too, I’m just as curious as you are!).
Though
I will nevertheless include this lovely little – humbling
– warning from Dr Don Beck, concerning our urge to communicate
our own ideas to others: "If what you are about to say
or do looks and sounds good to you, don’t do it! (Unless,
of course, your listeners or readers have the same value systems
as you)" – from The
Crucible – Forging South Africa’s Future in Search
of a Template for the World.
LINKS:
• Integral Institute
FAQ
• 'What
is integral?' by Ken Wilber – 40-page pdf –
(aka Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice: IOS
Basic and the AQAL Map): "Here I introduce the fundamental
elements of the Integral Operating System, or Integral model:
quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types. In addition,
a sixth element of bodies is also discussed and contextualized
within the overall framework of the Integral model. Examples
are given that demonstrate the applications of the Integral
model in everyday life to help any endeavor or activity become
as comprehensive and effective as possible."
• Matrix Integral: What
is Integral?
• Ken
Wilber wikipedia entry
Copyright
© 2007 Matthew Kalman
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