Where are we now?
Part 4 — Wilber
Our very search, our own desire, forestalls the discovery. In short, we are always trying to move away from present experience, whereas in fact it is this present experience which always holds the key to our search.
Ken Wilber tells the story of unbearable pain and suffering with beauty and love in No Boundary. The above quote is plucked from page 143. It’s a timely reminder that the telescopes we are looking through in this series are multidimensional — the images we observe through any one model are ebbing and flowing — not flatlands, not static, not progressive or linear. What I am doing in this series is taking just one unique aspect of what is a man’s lifework and complimenting it with another. Wilber’s work is unique in that he continues to compile works from so many philosophers and thinkers in extraordinary ways to make sense of everything in our heads, hearts and spirits. One of my favourite models developed by Wilber is AQAL (all quarters, all levels) — in 4 quadrants. He takes this model into macrohistorical perspectives that I won’t attempt here. The Wilber telescope that I’m applying is the most simplistic 4 quadrant perspective that, the first time I saw it, totally changed the way I see the world — in particular the way I understand my faith in God. So, if you are a fan of Wilber’s work, please forgive me for demonstrating what appears to be a flatland perspective. Bare in mind that everything in life is ebbing and flowing, coming forward and going back — and everything in life may look different through the eye of each beholder.
As we observe the horizontal line through the middle of the figure above we see that everything above the line concerns Me, singular, my personal Self and Lifeforce, whereas all below the line concerns the We space — who we are as a culture and the systems we construct to give structure to our society.
Everything to the left of the vertical line applies to that which is not seen — the Essential Me and the Essential We, whereas everything to the right applies to what is seen — My work and my behaviour, Our systems and ways of living and working together.
Upper quadrants — Essential Me and My Work/Behaviour
When I first saw this model I finally understood how St Paul could write to the church in Rome — “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate” (Romans 5:17). We can all relate to that. And a loud chorus of modern day Religious would shout “Just don’t do it!” It’s not that simple. On the other hand, how often have you reached out to do something with good intent only for it to be misunderstood and come back to bite you in the bum? I don’t think you need to ask your local Member of Parliament if that has ever happened to him or her.
Our heartfelt words are misunderstood when we fail to follow through with helpful actions and our well meaning good deeds are misunderstood when we fail to clearly articulate our intent. Me and My Work/Behaviour need to get together once in a while and work out a better strategy.
Lower quadrants — We Space and Our Social Systems
In many of our Western societies we enjoy freedom to form or to join cultural groups of our choosing and, within legal parameters, to construct our own systems of governance. Then we try to bring those systems of governance into our democratic societies. Of course there is a clash of ideologies and belief systems. Unfortunately we often deem our belief system to be the right one and all other systems to be erroneous. Whatever happened to the idea of Common Good that underwrote most of our democratic societies post the two World Wars?
Left quadrants — the Unseen Me and Our Unseen Culture
I need to be understood, need to belong, need others to show me Myself in a mirror. So I seek out others — usually like minded people to form, or to conform to a culture group. We live in a Room of Elephants that are never identified or discussed because that would destroy the illusion that what we have is really great. Everything ‘they’ say about this or that is false— We are not like that at all! It’s all Fake News.
Right quadrants — the Seen Me and Our Social System
If my impulses arise from a healthy Essential Self, my work and my behaviour will likely bring joy to those around me. However, if St Paul struggled with his behaviour it’s likely that we will too. Our safeguard is to associate with many good cultural groups that will broaden our grip on reality and, once in a while, hold a mirror up to us so that we can see what we look like to others.
When it comes to our social system, we hold endless meetings to construct our behavioral boundaries. These boundaries are designed to protect our culture and to do good for others. So we have a lot of time and energy invested in our Social Systems. What happens when our collective good intent clashes with another group’s good intent?
(You can read more about Wilber’s AQAL — 4 quadrants in my paper, Exploring Faith in an Integral Framework, also published in Futurists are Octopods).
What would Scharmer say?
It’s presumptuous of me to answer that question. Nevertheless we have his telescope on hand so we adjust our focus to Wilber’s structure of the seen and unseen, the Essential Culture and the Social Systems. His answer is simple: engage all stakeholders, ask questions, listen to others with an open mind, open heart and open will. Receive wisdom and direction from your Source in the We Space. Respect. Honour. Act. The alternative course is the social pathology of fundamentalism. From that perspective we only see a dystopic future.
What would Gebser say?
I think Gebser would see our first world problems as such a sad detour from life in all of its fullness and I would heartily agree. Our planet Earth is so beautiful and yet so broken. We are so beautiful and yet so broken. Gebser longed for that Integral plunge back through all the developing consciousness of man — that plunge back into our pristine origins.
There is a way forward. In Part 5 we will look through the telescope of Graves where all of the colours of the rainbow — and a few more — will form patterns and shapes with kaleidoscopic wonder.
