Roy Bhaskar Interviewed at the Integral Theory Conference
At the July 2013 Integral Theory Conference in San Francisco, Giorgio Piacenza met with Roy Bhaskar, well known ontological philosopher of Critical Realism and Keynote Speaker at the Conference. Bhaskar was a founding member of the Centre for Critical Realism and the International Association of Critical Realism. He is currently employed at the Institute of Education in London where he is working on the application of CR to Peace Studies. Piacenza has published in Integral Leadership Review and has maintained a wide-ranging interest that impinges on various aspects of reality, aspects such as the mind-body problem, philosophy, cosmology and physics.
Ken Wilber has responded to criticisms of integral theory from the lens of critical realism.
The AQAL Cube for Dummies
Lexi Neale
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Lexi Neale
Author’s Note: The above title is not intended to be demeaning, dear Reader, but more of an inside joke between Russ and I. Russ has twice approached me about an AQAL Cube article, and has twice shied away from what I sent him. His complaint? Too complex! So I have finally relented and taken his observation to heart. I sincerely hope that the following extension of Ken Wilber’s AQAL Square model is at least comprehensible, if not acceptable!
Since Ken introduced my AQAL Cube extension of his Integral model, the AQAL Square, on kenwilber.com, archived June 12th 2009, it has been “the best of times, and the worst of times” (A Tale of Two Cities) as in a tale of two models. In an introduction he wrote for Part 2, archived November 4th 2009, where I pitched the AQAL Cube as Wilber-6, he said “In my mind, of course, it is definitely not Wilber-6, just a thoughtful extension of Wilber-5.” And in my mind, of course, I am still challenging that!
It is true that the AQAL Cube vastly complicates the Integral model by introducing AQAL Non-locality into the mix, and also the liberal notion of Eight Fundamental Perspectives PER PERSON, but the complication has more to do with the effort of having to transcend/include establishment Integral concepts rather than complexity per se. I let you be the judge of that. Going back to Ken’s comment “a thoughtful extension of Wilber-5”, I decided that should be my guide in writing this article, by keeping to the aspects of the AQAL Cube that truly are extensions of the AQAL Square.
* * * * *
The AQAL Cube per Person
Now we go deeper into our Self-system. Ken’s AQAL Square affords the Self-system two First Person Quadrants (Upper and Lower Left). Ken himself has said that the AQAL Square is really a Third Person model describing First, Second and Third Person phenomena. We now reconsider that blatant admission of flat-land. This is where established Integral Theory gets taken for a really wild ride in a very powerful car!
Remembering how Ken’s Third Person “Inside”’, “Outside”, “Individual”, “Collective”, “Interior” and “Exterior” perspectives recombine to produce the Eight Fundamental Perspectives (Fig. 1), the same logic can be applied to our First Person: As well as our Consciousness Self and our Cognitive Self we also have a Singular Self, a Plural Self, a Subjective Self, and an Objective Self, which recombine in the same way to produce the Eight Fundamental First Person Perspectives. Suddenly our two-cylinder car becomes a V-8!
Since the beginning of language the First, Second and Third Person pronouns have defined our self and each other: Me Tarzan, You Jane. And it is in language that we express our intuitive knowledge of our own Self complexity. Fig.2. shows the First Person Cube and its eight First Person pronouns expanding through the Levels.
Figure 2. The First Person Cube
The Quadrants above, 1,3,5,7 are the Non-Possessive Personal Pronouns, and the Quadrants below, 2,4,6,8 are the Possessive Personal Pronouns. The first thing that is apparent is how the Non-Possessive Quadrants 1,3,5 and 7 are intangible First Person identities, and how the Possessive Quadrants 2,4,6 and 8 are tangible First Person experiential attributes of those identities. The differentiation is exactly the same as between Non-Local Consciousness and Local Body-Mind. In other words, our entire cultural history has endorsed the notion of a Four Quadrant “Experiencer-as-Consciousness”, and a correlated Four Quadrant “Experience-as-Mind”.
The second thing we notice about the First Person Cube is that there is no differentiation in English between the two “I’s” and ”We’s” as First Person pronouns in the Subjective Octants 1,2,3 and 4. Language is a two-way street: One the one hand it identifies pre-existing perspectives as a common experience, which then become cultural givens; but on the other hand, in naming them, it can culturally bias some perspectives at the expense of others. Cultures that are objective diminish the subjective; cultures that are collective diminish the individual; cultures that are materialistic diminish the non-material – by not differentiating them. In Russian there is a differentiation between an “inner We” and an “outer collective We” as in “We the people”. In Yiddish there is a differentiation between “I” as a spiritual identity and the “I” of everyday life.
In evaluating his “8 Zones”, Wilber encountered this anomaly himself in differentiating an Inside “I” from an Outside “I”; and an Inside “We” from an Outside “We”. I quote[7]:
‘ – for example, the experience of an “I” in the UL Quadrant. That “I” can be looked at from the inside or the outside. I can experience my own “I” from the inside [Octant 1], in this moment, as the felt experience of being a subject of my present experience, a 1st person having a 1st person experience. If I do so, the results include such things as introspection, meditation, phenomenology, contemplation, and so on (all simply summarized as phenomenology… But I can also approach this “I” from the outside [Octant 2], in the stance of an objective or “scientific” observer. I can so in my own awareness (when I try to be “objective” about myself, or try to “see myself as others see me”) …Likewise, I can approach the study of a “we” from its inside or its outside. From the inside [Octant 3], this includes the attempts that you and I make to understand each other right now. How is it that you and I can reach a mutual understanding about anything, including when we simply talk to each other? How do your “I” and my “I” come together in something you and I both call “we” (as in, “Do you and I – do we – understand each other?”). The art and science of we-interpretation is typically called hermeneutics.‘But I can also attempt to study this “we” from the outside [Octant 4], perhaps as a cultural anthropologist, or an ethnomethodologist, or a Foucauldian archaeologist…And so on around the quadrants. Thus, 8 basic perspectives and 8 basic methodologies.’ (The Octant designations in brackets are mine.)In other words, Wilber completely endorses the Left Octants (1,2,3 and 4) of the First Person AQAL Cube, but he does not extend this argument to the First Person Right Hand Quadrants (5, 6, 7 and 8). He does, however, mention the objective-self issue:
‘If you get a sense of yourself right now – simply notice what it is that you call “you” – you might notice at least two parts to this self: one, there is some sort of observing self (an inner subject or watcher); and two, there is some sort of observed self (some objective things that you can see or know about yourself… The first is experienced as an “I”, the second as a “me”… I call the first the proximate self (since it is closer to “you”), and the second the distal self (since it is objective and “farther away”).’The Proximate and Distal Selves are an Octant 1 and Octant 5 differentiation on the First Person AQAL Cube. Octant 5 is the Distal Self, or the way I formulate my Proximate Self as a Persona in its true etymological sense, as my mask, as how “I” want others to identify with “Me”. This is the All Level “Me” Inside. (Note: This differentiation of the Distal Self or Persona is not the persona of fulcrum 4.) And the correlated behavior of this Persona is “My” personality Outside, where Octant 6 pertains to “My” personality through “My” behavior. The Enneagram as elucidated by Riso[7] makes this differentiation very clearly.
Equally, the Social Persona or our identification with “Us” Inside, and the Social Personality-behavior in “Our” tribe Outside, follow the same First Person differentiations. These eight important First Person Self-differentiations have not yet been made in Integral Psychology, even though they are experientially self-evident to the point where Wilber himself identified six of them, with “Us”.
Integral Theory does in fact obliquely identify the Self-system as a First Person Octo-Dynamic. I noticed how the various Lines of the Self System in the AQAL Square Upper Left have an eerie correspondence with the First Person Eight Fundamental Perspectives. Naturally, this needs to be played out in Integral Research, but I propose that the correspondence self-evidently corroborates the First Person AQAL Cube:
Octant 1: Proximate Self as the Consciousness-as-experiencer “I”. Core self-identity witnessing through Levels of assumed identity states. Lines: Proximate Self-identity, spiritual identity. Representative Levels of Self-identity-as-witness are: Red – Id identity fused with the Lower Mind; Orange – Ego identity fused with the Lower Mind; Blue – Soul Consciousness differentiated from Mind. Violet – Non-Dual Supreme Witness.In the interests of developing a fully Integral model, I suggest that Integral researchers of the Self-system identify their field of research as an Octant in each Person.
Octant 2: Cognitive Self as the “I” Mind. Experiential identity through Fulcrum Levels of intelligence structures. Lines: All Intelligences, such as cognitive, affective, psychosexual, aesthetic, spiritual. Representative Levels of experiential intelligence are: Red – sensing, feeling, emoting; Orange – thinking; Blue – visioning; Violet – wisdom/Akashic experience.
Octant 3: Inter-Proximate Self as “We” Consciousness. Shared self through Levels of assumed identity states. Line: inter-proximate self. Representative Levels are: Red – Inter-Id as fused “I-We”; Orange – Inter-Ego “We”; Blue – Inter-Soul “We”; Violet – Non-Dual “We”.
Octant 4: Cultural Self as the “We” Mind. Interpretive shared or common experience as cultural intelligence. Lines: moral self, worldview self. Representative Levels are: Red – Tribal member (fused “I-We”); Orange – cultural independent; Blue – cultural visionary; Violet – spiritual iconoclast.
Octant 5: Distal Self (Persona) as “Me” Consciousness. Objectively differentiated from the Proximate Self of Octant 1, the Persona is self-referential as a Self-image. This is the intentional persona of the Enneagram, the objective evaluator of the Self-system and home of the Self-judging Super-Ego. After death existence or Bardo is a projection of this self-evaluation as our Non-Local All-Level Persona. Line: intentional persona. Representative Levels as State-stages are: Red – Id-centered, 4th Bardo; Orange – Ego-centered, 3rd Bardo; Blue – Soul-centered, 2nd Bardo; Violet – Pneumo-centered, 1st Bardo.
Octant 6: Behavioral Persona as “My” Mind. Objectively differentiated from the Cognitive Self of Octant 2, the Behavioral Persona is the objective expression of Mind as our Personality and its Enneatypes. Lines: behavioral personalities as applied to cognitive, affective, psychosexual, aesthetic, spiritual. Representative Levels as Structure-stages are: Red – magic; Orange – rational; Blue – integral; Violet – spiritually wise.
Octant 7: Inter-Distal Persona as “Us” Consciousness. The Social Self-image is a fused “Me-Us” until socio-centric, after which the Social Identity differentiates. Identification with family, organizations and affiliations. After-death identification with others is through the correlated Non-Local All-Level Social Persona. Line: interpersonal. Representative Levels as State-stages are: Red – symbiont; Orange – server-dominator; Blue – integrator; Violet – compassionate.
Octant 8: Social Persona as “Our” Mind. The Social Persona evolving as organized and cooperative behavior and experience of social situations. Lines: sociocultural, relational, ethical. Representative Levels as Structure-stages: Red – tribal member; Orange – nationalist; Blue – globalist; Violet – utopian.
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Beyond Complexity
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Eric Storm and Beth Meredith
It is common wisdom that leaders today must grapple with increasing amounts of complexity. This seems inevitable given our access to ever more information and our expanding awareness of and the connections between psychological, social, organizational, and technological factors. This is particularly true for integral leaders who are actively developing their mental models and related practices. As our cognitive complexity develops so too does our ability to perceive greater complexity. In other words our complexity is becoming ever more complex.
To address this phenomenon, integral theorists have stretched for increasingly sophisticated meta-frameworks in order to capture additional layers of reality. This approach has led to many insights and contributed to our expanding awareness. However this type of extensive analysis requires significant time and effort to produce, and often requires equally demanding resources to apply. This level of investigation also runs the risk of increasing the complexity such that it is no longer clarifying but is at times overwhelming, inhibiting our ability to perceive, analyze, and act.
What is an integral leader to do when faced with a complicated decision but limited time and resources for thorough study? How does an integral consultant help a client avoid the overwhelm of complex analysis? One common strategy for dealing with complexity is to simplify. We squint our eyes and select what we perceive as the critical factors from the heaps of data. By choosing to emphasize some parts we can then set aside others, prioritizing for manageability. The disadvantages of this type of reduction are obvious: there is a risk of loosing important information and understandings, and reducing the quality of the outcome in the process.
While simplifying is often a practical necessity, ideally we want a way to consider all of the significant information and benefit from the richness of complexity while overcoming the time and resource burdens of detailed analysis. Fortunately it appears there is a third way of grappling with masses of information, a way that goesbeyond complexity. This third way comes about through a transcend and include process by which we can incorporate the complexity through both rational and intuitive means and arrive at a new level of understanding without the mental effort of consciously juggling a million data points simultaneously. In this paper we will describe what we see as the precursors and transpersonal foundation for this process, and our own experience working this way.
Many theorists have described transpersonal levels of awareness in their models of consciousness development. Jean Gebser, Jane Loevinger, William Torbert, Robert Kegan, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Clare Graves, Don Beck, Chris Cowan, and Ken Wilber varyingly describe these transpersonal stages as Magician, Alchemist, Synergist, second tier, yellow, teal, and integral. These theorists and others have also identified transrational ways of knowing that are accessible at transpersonal stages of development. These involve a very conscious use of intuitive modalities interwoven with rational thinking and frameworks.
In his thesis on sustainability leaders who hold post-conventional consciousness Barrett Brown identifies fifteen competencies “to help cultivate leaders who can handle complex global issues” (209). One such competency is “ways of knowing other than rational analysis to harvest profound insights and make rapid decisions” (Brown 212). Similarly, in their book on leadership skills for dealing with change, Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs describe the benefits of developing “synergistic intuitions” to “resolve apparently irreconcilable conflicts” (243).
We can find the precursors to these transrational ways of knowing in things we all do every day. These alternative ways of knowing are familiar to many of us and help us handle complexity more effectively. For example most of us have had the experience of suddenly noticing that we have driven for miles with no memory of having navigated the intricacies of the road. What had once required a lot of conscious effort checking mirrors, speed, and traffic over time has become a largely unconscious process. This ability to relinquish our awareness of some things, like the mechanics of driving, to our unconscious allows us to manage even greater complexity, like listening to the radio or talking with someone – up to a point!
At other times we may choose for our awareness of the complexity to remain conscious and to inform our decision making. Such is the case when we are in a flow stateand are fully present and positively engaged on a deep level with the task at hand. Yet we manage to do this without much effort and our actions feel automatic and appropriate. We are able to enter the zone and feel the ease of being at one with events as they unfold.
Another common experience of functioning outside of rational analysis is the aha experience when we suddenly have an insight or realize the solution to a problem while doing something unrelated such as taking a shower or waking from sleep. These flashes of understanding arise after we have spent time with the complexity of the issue but are currently not making an effort or focused on it. The aha experience arises from and reflects our understanding of the intricacies of an issue, but in a way that offers a newly crystallized comprehension.
Finally, there is what is known as soft focus or soft eyes, when we are able to better perceive the whole by being generally aware and not too keenly focused on any one thing. This enables us to perceive a situation on many levels simultaneously including noticing things that might initially appear as anomalies or insignificant. With a soft focus we are able to perceive the whole in all its complexity, and as necessary shift focus to elements we deem significant.
The examples above are alternative ways of knowing that are commonly, if not frequently, experienced. At transpersonal stages of development we can build upon these capacities along with our rational understandings to arrive at transrational capacities to go beyond complexity. Through this transcend and include process we become able to engage with complexity with the efficiency described in the driving example, the power and consciousness of a flow state, the quick synthesis of the aha experience, and the awareness of the whole of soft focus.
In their respective dissertations, both Barrett Brown and Jonathan Reams posit that it is possible to cultivate these transrational capacities in leaders to go beyond complexity. In fact, one purpose of Reams’ study was “to develop a curriculum to facilitate the development of these qualities and characteristics” (8).
To build the foundation for these transrational capabilities it is important to first become fluent in a number of relevant processes and frameworks. As in the driving example, we first need to know how to change lanes, pass another vehicle, and judge merging speeds. This type of knowledge and skill building expands our ability to perceive and process information. We need this level of fluency in order to comprehend what we perceive through transrational processes and to rationally evaluate and discuss these new understandings with others.
Our foundation is further strengthened as we make the subject-object shift from identifying with our personality to observing it. As we are able to see our selves and to see all of our assumptions, values, shadows, blind spots, etc., we take a significant step into the transpersonal realm. In our position as observer we begin to have more control over our reactions and behavior. When we no longer identify with our mental models, we can shift from our own perspective to comprehending the world from a variety of other lenses. We become capable of stepping outside ourselves and inhabiting a kind of openness that is essential for transrational ways of knowing.
In his book Power vs Force, David Hawkins observes, “A mind which is being watched becomes more humble and begins to relinquish its claims to omniscience … and increasingly [we are] less the victim of the mind and more its master. From thinking that we ‘are’ our minds, we begin to see that we have minds … Eventually we may arrive at the insight that all our thoughts are merely borrowed from the great database of consciousness and were never really our own”(205).
Once we have this foundation of diverse competences and a transpersonal perspective we can open up to reality and engage in transrational ways of knowing that take us beyond complexity.
Lately we, the authors, have been exploring the edges beyond complexity in our work helping our clients address their problems. Increasingly we use transrational methods to search for the underlying sources of the issue, to determine if there is permission and support for change, and to identify the most effective levers for moving forward.
When we consider why our work has evolved in a transrational direction there seem to be several factors. We have worked together for over ten years and now share a wide range of mental models and tools as well as experience applying them. It happens that one of us is more analytical and the other more empathetic by nature. Our differing styles together give us a stereoscopic view of our clients and their issues. We have come to value each other’s perceptions and to trust each other in the moment, not unlike improvisation where we build upon what the other puts forward. In the moment we often feel in touch with something that is beyond either one of us.
The more analytical of us has reached a point of being able to accumulate way more information, perspectives, and processes than he can reasonably apply at any given moment. Out of necessity, and now preference, he has found himself increasingly relying on transrational ways of knowing. A combination of exposure to somatic and intuitive practices and a growing body of personal experiences in which he had to respond to clients in a matter of minutes has led to his growing comfort with his transrational process. While he does at times revisit the issue through the lens of various models to glean additional insights, he now finds using transrational ways of perceiving and knowing easier and more effective in many situations.
The more empathetic of us developed her intuition early in life as a way to navigate complexity and to focus on what is most critical and relevant. She has learned to analyze her perceptions retroactively in order to communicate in information-based contexts and as a way to hone the accuracy of her perceptions. The more she has access to a transpersonal perspective, the clearer her perceptions have become, less clouded by personal agenda or blind spots.
In practice we begin by quieting our minds, becoming present and open to what is happening. Our intent is to be in service to what wants to emerge, and we try to hold no agenda beyond that – even to the point of not needing to fix things or find an answer. We begin by asking the client a general question such as “What’s going on?” or “What’s working and what’s not?”
As the client begins speaking we shift into soft focus. We let the data wash over and we seek to attune with the client and the moment, seeing through their eyes as well as sensing shifts in their body language and emotions.
Almost immediately we are also informed by our mental models including our personal judgments, preferences, etc. We seek to hold all of these as so many lenses of perception. We may temporarily adopt a hypotheses or framework and check to see if it opens up some additional information or thoughts. We shift somewhat effortlessly between our theories, our personal thoughts and reactions, and our observations of what is happening. It is very important that at the center of all this we hold a place of not-knowing. From here we can return to a state of soft focus, blurring the boundaries between subject and object, and staying open to what is, our intuition, and emerging understandings.
Joiner and Josephs describe a similar process of “surrendering to a direct experience of the impasse, the ‘not-knowing,’ where feelings oppose each other and nothing seems possible. Attending to this experience in a conscious, patient, and caring way liberates energy and opens the way for new, synergistic possibilities” (Joiner, Josephs 185).
We have realized that the more we trust our process the better it works. Eventually something begins to take shape out of our conversation with the client. It may emerge as a whole, or it may take shape more slowly revealing itself in bits and pieces. In some cases what emerges is very familiar to us, and in others it is a notion outside our usual understanding. It may arise as a general concept, or as a series of quite specific and detailed thoughts. In any case, we recognize it because it resonates with a solidity and firmness we associate with truth and as something that is relevant, a priority, or a useful entry or leverage point. We test out our perceptions and refine our sense of this truth with one another and the client through a series of questions and statements.
Through out this process the client is a co-creator in the experience, though with varying degrees of awareness about the mechanics of what is happening. For the most part it appears to them as if we are having a conversation, a conversation in which they are initially doing a lot of the talking. Eventually as we get clearer on what is emerging, the conversation begins to turn. Sometimes this occurs as a shift and other times as a leap. What is still surprising to us is how easily this occurs with no overt discussion or agreement by any of us. We may voice an insight or simply allow it to inform what we say. The more we are able to align our comments and actions with what is emerging and where the client is in the moment, the more they are able to share the new insights and understanding. Often it feels like our collective understanding is opening a flow of energy like a tiny acupuncture needle in just the right place.
This is the place we call beyond complexity.
Later if the situation allows, we may engage with our client or ourselves in a more rational and thorough analysis. However we do so from the perspective of knowing what lies beyond the complexity which makes the task much easier as we come from a place of knowing. This after-the-fact checking also helps us to hone our process and reflect on our role in it. What we are finding is that the process works best the more self aware we are of our own assumptions, preferences, and expectations and the more open we are to what emerges.
Learning to work this way has greatly helped us with our clients who are frequently organizational, business, and community leaders facing the typical issues of overwhelm and analysis paralysis. Even though intuitive processes are frequently dismissed in conventional settings as woo-woo, we find the outwardly unremarkable nature of this practice along with its relative speed and effectiveness help to side step most objections. Also while a transpersonal foundation seems to be necessary to consciously use transrational processes, our experience is that the fruits of this process appear to be meaningful and useful when shared with people at varying levels of awareness.
We believe these transrational ways of knowing will become increasingly common as a natural outgrowth of transpersonal consciousness. We can imagine these transrational processes beginning to take their place along side financial statements, organizational charts, and other tools of leadership, decision making, and organizational development. There is much to be explored and documented in terms of how to develop these abilities, how to apply them, and what their limitations are. We are excited by the possibilities and the potential as integral leaders and practioners share their insights and understandings of going beyond complexity.
References
Brown, Barrett (2011), Conscious Leadership For Sustainability: How Leaders with a Late-Stage Action-Logic Design and Engage in Sustainability Initiatives, Doctoral Dissertation, Fielding Graduate University, Retrieved January 12, 2013, http://integralthinkers.com/wp-content/uploads/Brown_2011_Conscious-leadership-for-sustainability_Full-dissertation_v491.pdf.
Hawkins, David (1995), Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, Sedona: Veritas. Retrieved January 12, 2013,http://images.1radine.multiply.multiplycontent.com/attachment/0/R@xIYAoKCC4AADe4IL41/David%20R%20Hawkins%20-%20Power%20vs%20Force.pdf?nmid=88358873.
Joiner, Bill & Josephs, Stephen (2007), Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Reams, Jonathan (2002), The Consciousness of Transpersonal Leadership, Doctoral Dissertation, Gonzaga University, Retrieved January 12, 2013,http://jonathanreams.squarespace.com/downloads/articles/The%20Consciousness%20of%20Transpersonal%20Leadership.pdf.
About the Authors
Eric Storm and Beth Meredith run Create The Good Life which promotes personal and organizational change through building awareness, designing for well being, and creating sustainable practices. Eric has a background in fine art, education, sustainability, and green building. He has worked in Japan and in the U.S. leading cross-cultural education programs. Beth’s background is in social psychology, art, architecture and design. She also has an M.A. is Policy Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and has designed and led educational programs internationally and in the U.S. In addition they have trained in Permaculture Design, home energy modeling, mediation, the Enneagram, and Systemic Constellation. Beth and Eric now live slowly in Petaluma, California, where they create the good life for themselves and others. Email: info@Create-The-Good-Life.com.
A Theory of Everything – Ervin Laszlo and Antonio MarturanoRead the whole interview.
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Ervin Laszlo
Antonio Marturano
I am pleased to have interviewed Prof. Ervin Laszlo who is a systems philosopher, integral theorist, and classical pianist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has authored more than 70 books that have been translated into nineteen languages, and has published in excess of four hundred articles and research papers, including six volumes of piano recordings. Dr. Laszlo is generally recognized as the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory and serves as the founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group and as past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He underscores the importance of developing a holistic perspective on the world and humankind, an outlook he refers to as “quantum consciousness”. He is also the recipient of the highest degree in philosophy and human sciences from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, as well as of the coveted Artist Diploma of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. Additional prizes and awards include four honorary doctorates. For many years he has served as president of the Club of Budapest, which he founded. He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy.
I started my interview with Prof. Laszlo by asking him about his links with Italy. He explained that in his earlier years he was a pianist and so he gave concerts all over the World. His very first concert outside Hungary was in Italy. Since then, he developed a passion with Italy that led him to buy a house in Tuscany. So, Italy is still his favorite place.
I have also asked his opinion about whether Italy can provide good examples for leadership studies with its unique history and complexity. Laszlo replied that it is difficult for a particular form of leadership to emerge in Italy. Italy has a very long history and its social dynamics are quite complex. The result is that Italians are too individualistic and Italy has a very diverse culture. In Italy there coexists so many regional cultures that make this country a highly culturally complex society (reflected in its gastronomy, too), which cannot give raise to a homogeneous leadership style.
Antonio: Can you tell us something about your Theory of Everything?
Ervin: All things are co-evolving. This is how they evolved in time and in space, of course. In that sense I think you can have a theory of everything that is correct in relation to the main variety of observations that you have in science.
Antonio: So a Theory of Everything can be useful to study leadership, especially in those settings like in Italy where complexity, particularly culture complexity, is very important?
Ervin: Such a theory can provide general guidelines and can offer general concepts. Then the question is how you apply the information that you get from the theory, the insight that you get from the theory. How you apply it depends on the interpretation you give to that theory. But you can give general guidelines, because you can look at the relationship between subsystems and the overall system. You can see that a certain level of coherence between the subsystems is a requirement for the existence of the overall system – where you have detailed proper balance between integration and diversification, for example. All of these are guidelines that you can apply when you analyze the evolution of a complex system such as the culture in Italy.
Antonio: It would be interesting to understand your consideration of transdisciplinarity.
Ervin: Disciplines in science are artifacts; they are artificial. They are often necessary, but not always a satisfactory limitation on the number of observations and the number of facts that one takes into account. There are no boundaries in nature that correspond one to one with the boundaries of disciplines. For example life is not necessarily limited to biology, it’s also obviously evident in sociology and psychology. It also appears in the cosmos.
The way we can think about evolution is not limited to one kind of system. It appears from the big bang onwards all the way up to the evolution of consciousness, the evolution of the whole cosmos at the same time. So disciplines are a necessary self-restriction in science, but they should be considered as permeable, as transferrable and expandable boundaries that one keeps to as long as they are useful. When we can get over these boundaries, then it’s an improvement when you manage to overcome them.
Antonio: Is there any difference between transdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity and the like?
Ervin: I think there is yes, but of course this is a question of definitions. Multidisciplinarity means several disciplines. Disciplines can be brought into conjunction with one another, but they are not brought together. They do not become a coherent whole. A theory that is transdisciplinary does not simply enumerate or place side-by-side different disciplines, but transcends them. That’s what the word says: transcend the different disciplines and show that they actually are so many different facets or local manifestations of the same phenomenon.
Coda: Transitions
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How can we not think about transitions at this time of year? We have just gone through the transitions of the Mayan calendar to a new era. And we have transitioned into the beginning of a new year according to the Gregorian calendar. In a week from writing this we have a full moon in the United States, foreshadowing the entry into a new lunar cycle. According to the Hijri or Muslim calendar, the new year began in 2012 on November 15, 2012. Then the next will be November 4, 2013. So I missed that transition. Nevertheless, I like this graphic representing the lunar cycle for the 2013 Muslim New Year. Well, the point is… transitions.
Muslim New Year PosterI remember when I attended a Bill Bridges workshop on “the journey.” He was transitioning out of his role as English professor at Mills College in the years before publishing his best selling book, Transitions. The highlight of the workshop was at the end. We rubbed each others feet with salt. This is apparently a tradition in the Middle East when a traveler arrives in your home.
Some transitions are full of hope and others feel like someone is rubbing salt into our wounds. When we get a new job that we wanted or start on a new educational program or a new relationship, we experience transitions that are usually full of hope for the future while we celebrate the joy of the present. Other transitions can induce fear as we feel we are about to step into a dark room with little assurance that there is a floor there. Too many people have these experiences when others seem to be in control of their destinies. Still other transitions can be filled with pain: a separation, an illness, a death.
Stanley Kellerman, the somatic therapist in Berkeley, California, wrote about little deaths in his wonderfully insightful book, Living Your Dying. It has been years since I have read it, but it has served to remind me that every transition involves a little death. We give up something in order to take on something new. We get lots of practice for dealing with “big” deaths.
My life has been full of little deaths. As I have gotten older I have felt the loss of grandparents, parents, friends, classmates, favorite entertainers, authors, even politicians, who have entered the big deaths. They are missed. Still, as I reflect on my life, the little deaths overwhelm the big ones in numbers and often in impact on how I realize my self and my life.
2012 and 2013 involve an important transition for Integral Leadership Review and for me. As we enter the 14th year of publishing, Mark McCaslin is moving into the role of Editor. While I will continue to play an active role for the foreseeable future as Executive Editor, I am having to let go, to experience some little deaths in relation to this publication that started as an opportunity to share my early thinking about integral leadership.
I welcome many of these little deaths, because they free me to focus my attention on other projects that are important to me. These other projects include aspects of publishing Integral Leadership Review. For example, in service of continuing to have ILR be free to all readers, I need to find some additional sponsors. I have issued pleas for gifts to ILR by the readers and their inclusion in “Friends of ILR”. Some have responded very generously and some have given modest amounts that I value as highly. Every gift is a message that what we are doing is important and worthwhile. If you are part of an organization that would be willing to help us finance this publication, we would welcome sponsorship and/or ads on our welcome page and in ILRPartices. If you are willing to give a gift to ILR you can do so on the Welcome page: “Support ILR”.
But this is not intended to be a fund raising plea. It is about transitions. While there are little deaths associated with passing a lot of responsibility over to Mark McCaslin, this is a transition that is also filled with joy for me. I am so grateful to Mark for bringing his knowledge, skill and wisdom to the task of perpetuating and growing the value of ILR and with being willing to put up with me in the little dying processes of the transition. Mark is an individual for whom I have huge respect. If you have been reading any of his material in the pages of ILR, you no doubt share this respect.
This transition is also filled with excitement. Mark has a solid understanding of integral and transdisciplinary. He is an academic, a researcher, an original thinker. He has a deep appreciation for the hard work and energy it takes to implement and address challenges in communities, organizations and in life. You will learn much more about him in the issues coming down the road.
For now, I am not quite ready for my feet to be rubbed with salt. But the time is coming. And I do hope you all find great value in ILR as it unfolds in the months and years to come.
Russ Volckmann
October 2012 Table of Contents
Leading Comments
- Russ Volckmann - Check out ilrParticles
Leadership Coaching Tips
- Getting to the Next Level of Greatness… - Judith E. Glaser
- How to Idiot-Proof Excellence - Amiel Handelsman
Fresh Perspective
- Russ Volckmann - Integral Consulting with Michael McElhenie
- Russ Volckmann - Jeff Klein and Conscious Capitalism, Conscious Business. Conscious Leadership
Feature Articles
- Nick Ross - Epoch of Transformation: Towards a Practice of Interpersonal Leadership: Part 2
- Oliver Ngodo - Expanding the Boundaries of Our Capacities through Working toward Experiencing Transformative Learning in Service
- Martina Danilova - Integral Coaching as a Tool for Transformational Change
- Marilyn Hamilton - Leadership to the Power of 8: Leading Self, Others, Organization, System and Supra-System
- Nancy Southern Sylvia Gafney and Bernice Moore - Leaning into Complexity: Supporting Leaders Through Transformative Learning
- John Renesch - The Conscious Organization: Workplaces for the Self-Transcended
- Marc Gafni - Three Steps to the Democratization of Enlightenment
- Kenton Hyatt and Cheryl De Ciantis - Values Driven Leadership
- Michel Saloff-Coste - Why “DESIGN ME A PLANET”
- Tom Christensen - “Game is Over. You are Enlightened.”
Book Reviews
- Michael McElhenie - SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual intelligence by Cindy Wigglesworth
- Keith Bellamy - The God Problem by Howard Bloom
Column
- Lisa Norton - Integral Design Leadership: “Envisioning Pure Land @Taiwan”
- Mark McCaslin - Integral North: Dispelling the Leader Myth
- Alfonso Montuori - Transdsciplinary Reflections: Transdisciplinarity as Play and Transformation
Notes from the Field
- Jeff Klein - A Brief Review of the 2012 Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit
- Rafael Nasser - Don Beck and the New Face of Philanthropy
- Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera - Emerging Integral Thinking South of the Border
- Marilyn Hamilton - Integral City EXPO & eLaboratory
- Jon Freeman - SDi Confab: Are you an app?
- Sergej van Middendorp Kazuma Matoba and Barton Buechner - SIETAR Forum 2012+38 in Berlin
- Russ Volckmann - Spiral Dynamics in Action: the Momentous Leap: The Confab 13, 9/6-9
- Michael Stern and Michael Pergola - Working with the Deeper Field of Evolutionary Potential – A Week of Events with Stephen Busby
Learner Papers
- Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera - Inca Wisdom and Integral Theory
- Diane Meyer - Interpreting Along the Deckled Edge: The Artist’s Place in Leadership
Leadership Emerging
- Barbara Maria Stafford, Ed. Bridging the Humanities-Neuroscience Divide: A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field.
- Bob Vanourek and Gregg Vanourek. Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations.
- Ryan Caradonna and Jake Caines. Debunking the Leadership Myth: The Story of Conscious Leadership.
- Stephen Brookes and Keith Grint, Eds. - The New Public Leadership Challenge.
- Thomas E. Cronin and Michael A. Genovese - Leadership Matters: Unleashing the Power of Paradox.
- Howard J. Leonhardt - Top 10 Takeaways from Conscious Capitalism Summit
Coda
- Russ Volckmann - Health, Poverty and More
