Christian Salvesen - A Matter of Perspective: The Philosophy of Jean Gebser and Integral Leadership

So much to read, so little time. This article is from the most recent issue of The Integral Leadership Review. Here is the link from the table of contents:

Article: Christian Salvesen, A Matter of Perspective: The Philosophy of Jean Gebser and Integral Leadership

Salveson applies ideas from Jean Gebser's integral model to help leaders deal with the mind-boggling complexity of trying to manage more elements than the rational human mind can generally keep in perspective. He suggests that we need "the shift from a dualistic and rational perspective (worldview) to a new integral understanding of man and the world," as Gebser described the move into integral awareness.

A Matter of Perspective:
The Philosophy of Jean Gebser and Integral Leadership
Christian Salvesen

Nowadays, leading managers in all kinds of companies and institutions are being challenged more than ever before. Due to an enormous growth in networking and a flood of new information, every situation has become so complex that no one is able to really see or grasp all aspects of those situations. Sometimes, decisions have to be made intuitively and from a perspective beyond traditional rational thinking. In this context, some ideas of the philosopher Jean Gebser (1905-1973) might be helpful.

Gebser introduced the concept of the Integral, which is now being applied more and more in leadership and intercultural trainings. Although Gebser did not consider these kinds of seminars or the dimension that globalisation has taken today, his philosophy puts its finger precisely and effectively on the jump (he uses the term “mutation”) that is crucial: the shift from a dualistic and rational perspective (worldview) to a new integral understanding of man and the world.

The Mental Structure

Gebser’s main subject was the history of human culture. He analyzed the tools, statues, scripts and paintings from the Stone Age up through modern times, and drew new conclusions about how people see and understand both themselves and the world around them. This view changes, obviously, and that shows that our ideas of time and space change as well. According to Gebser, the mental consciousness appears in the Greek Antique—after the archaic, the magic and the mythical consciousness. In this phase, man for the first time sees himself as an “I” —as a single individual, one who is opposed to an outside world that he tries to overcome more and more with his rational mind.

One of the characteristics of mental consciousness is goal-oriented thinking and planning, attempting to free and abstract itself from the soul’s mythical world of images. When Thales of Milet (600 B.C.) ordered the famous saying “Know Thyself” inscribed in the Apollo Temple at Athens, he had the letters run from left to right. This was different from before, and shows (according to Gebser) a specific intention of moving from the subconscious or dreaming consciousness (left) to waking consciousness (right). This radical change of directions—from left to right, from female to male, from imagination to rational thinking—would prove to be very powerful and fruitful over the following centuries. New insights in geometry, astronomy, biology and psychology became possible.

Today it has reached an extreme with catastrophic consequences. While in Plato’s time man had started to measure the world and to become aware of space in which he could move and act, today in Western culture the principle of measuring has become a one-sided fixation, an obsession. The right measure has inflated into immoderateness (and self indulgence).

Without judging, Gebser describes this mental structure:

It is a world of man…in which he himself thinks and directs his thinking, and it is a world that he measures, that he is after, a material world, a world of objects, which is opposite to him.
~ Jean Gebser: Ursprung und Gegenwart, Erster Teil, Novalis 2007, S. 132 (quote translated from the German edition by C.S.)

However, just as with all the other or former structures of consciousness that still reside in us and are more or less alive and effective, there is an “efficient” phase in the beginning and a “deficient” phase in the end. We are now in the deficient phase of Mental Consciousness.

Read the whole article (opens as PDF).

Tags: Integral, leadership, cultural evolution, development, Integral Leadership Review, Christian Salvesen, A Matter of Perspective, The Philosophy of Jean Gebser, Integral Leadership, business, complexity, perspectives, nondual, globalization, worldviews, dualistic, rational, consciousness