The Emerging Integral Worldview

[click image to see the full-size version of the Integral Map]

In Spiral Dynamics theory, whether one follows Don Beck's version or Chris Cowan's model, the world in which the integral worldview will emerge will be chaotic, complex, interconnected, and highly fluid. Such a world will require a new kind of thinking to solve problems ranging from poverty, disease, and lack of clean drinking water; global climate change; emerging nations, and their desire to consume limited resources; the creation of more compassionate economic models; and so much more.

We have these life conditions now, but we lack the institutionalized thinking to deal with these problems in a coherent way.

What follows is the shorthand for this stage, a combination of Beck's and Cowan's phrasing:

Level 7 (Flex/Flow, also know as the Yellow values meme):
Independence/self-worth; fitting a living system; knowing; good questions.

Life Conditions (G) A chaotic organism where change is the norm and uncertainty an acceptable state of being.
Brain/Mind Coping Capacities (H) Systemic: functional; integrative; interdependent; existential; flexible; questioning; accepting.
Cultural Manifestations/Personal Displays: Natural systems; self-principle; multiple realities; knowledge.

According to Beck, this stage is only now emerging in any significant number of people (despite Ken Wilber's statements to the contrary) and has yet to coalesce into a coherent framework. But we are beginning to see the structures take form in the world, with P2P being one of the best current examples.

Surprisingly (only because this isn't what they normally focus on), Shambhala Sun, in the current issue, offers a glimpse into four figures quietly building other components of an integral response to a chaotic world. Here is the brief excerpt from their site:

An Excerpt From: Why We Need New Ways of Thinking

By Barry Boyce

The same old thing doesn’t work, Adam Kahane says, because when it comes to complex, tough problems—global warming, food crises, civil war, terror, drugs, urban decay, persistent poverty—we have to go beyond the approaches that got us there in the first place. Kahane, who was a key participant in the Mont Fleur process that helped bring about the peaceful transition from apartheid to democratic rule in South Africa, is one of a loose but growing collection of thinkers, activists, academics, and social entrepreneurs who are searching for the “unthinkable”—the new ways that we can’t see because of our old ways of looking.

These thinkers and advocates have not formed any formal association or movement (the very looseness of their association is seen as a virtue, in fact), but they all firmly believe that the good old world we’ve come to know and love is coming apart at the seams. Systems of all kinds are breaking down and will continue to do so. In response, they champion ways of seeing and acting that acknowledge that the world is a chaotic, deeply interdependent place, a place that won’t yield to attempts to overpower it. We must come to understand, they argue, the nature of complexity, chaos, and interconnectedness—and to train ourselves in ways of acting that embrace this unmistakable reality.

Excerpted from: Why We Need New Ways of Thinking, Barry Boyce, Shambhala Sun, September 2008.

I added the bold text at the end of the passage to emphasize the response that the Flex/Flow stage requires.

Of the four people profiled in the article (Adam Kahane, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Paul Hawken, and Margaret Wheatley), Kahane, who was working in South Africa (at Mont Fleur) at the same time Don Beck was helping to bring a [mostly] peaceful resolution to apartheid, seems the most integral in his thinking and the least well-known. He is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (with Peter M Senge).

Here is a passage from the article:

Adam Kahane says our approach to the future must meet three criteria. It must simultaneously be systematic (not piecemeal and divided into silos), participative (involving many people's ideas, energy, talent, and expertise), and emergent (able to move and adapt nimbly in a minefield of uncertainty). The hope is that we will act with courage and creativity; the fear is that if we don't, the world will face debilitating collapse on many fronts.

Since being involved in the South Africa experience (and leaving Shell Oil's Scenario Planning team), Kahane has worked on post-war rebuilding in Guatemala, contested elections in the Philippines, judicial reform in Argentina, child starvation in India, and civic rejuvenation in the US, among other projects.

Here is his view on dealing with climate change:

"There's a way to deal with simple problems on a small scale," Kahane says. This for the most part involves directing and controlling: if you want to fix a broken table, you roll up your sleeves, take charge, and repair it, brush-slapping your hands together in accomplishment at the end. But it's different when a problem is complex. "If you try to do the same thing," Kahane says, "you will get disastrous results. You end up either getting stuck or resorting to some form of violence." It becomes "the war on . . . " fill in the blank.

A problem like climate change, Kahane says, is complex in three different ways. It's dynamically complex: the causes and effects are far apart in space and time (carbon generated fifty years ago is affecting the climate today). It's socially complex: different groups have widely divergent aims and interests (the developed world implores the developing world to join in sustainability initiatives at the expense of their economic growth). And finally, it exhibits generative complexity: it's new to us (there are no analogous situations and off-the-shelf solutions for massive climate change; we have never been here before).

Sounds pretty accurate to me. I plan to order his book and give it a good read -- he seems like someone worth knowing more about.

One more thing, Kahane has been inspired in his work by a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: ". . . power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic."

The kind of power we need, says Kahane, is "power-with." This kind of power, which King said is nothing more than "the ability to achieve purpose," applies force and influence but with a vigilant awareness of its effect on others and how their power will manifest. We need to "act with connection," Kahane says. "We don't have a choice between power and love. We have to do both."

I agree with this completely -- this idea of how to use power should be the foundation of a compassionate politics.

I wanted to focus this post on Kahane because he is the only one of the four people profiled who doesn't have his own Wikipedia page. I highly encourage anyone interested to check out the other three people as well -- and even more so, to buy the magazine and read the article (this issue also features Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chodron, so it's worth the $6.95).

It's heartening to know that there are people thinking in ways that are complex enough to deal with the enormous problems facing human beings on this planet. Despite what George Will thinks, these are global problems and we are all citizens of the Earth (what the integral folks have called a worldcentric viewpoint), not simply citizens of whatever community and nation we live in.

Boyce sums up this article by relating the complexity perspectives related here to what Buddhists have known for 2,500 years:

What I find striking is how close their view is to the core Buddhist principle of interdependence, the teaching that there are no self-sustaining, permanent, inherently existing entities; that everything emerges as part of a great web of interlocking relationships. Suzuki Roshi referred to it as the interplay of "dependency and independency."

Well said.

Tags: Buddhism, Integral, society, culture, economics, Environment, Shambhala Sun, Barry Boyce, Spiral Dynamics, Why We Need New Ways of Thinking, Beck, Cowan, Wilber, Adam Kahane, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Paul Hawken, Margaret Wheatley, climate change, citizens of the Earth, Worldcentric, complexity, Flex/Flow