OVERVIEW PART I PART II PART III Notes 1-9

Overview: An Integral Paradigm Is a Set of Practices, not Theories

     In Excerpt A from volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, "An Integral Age at the Leading Edge," we noted the fact that, in today's world, less than 2% of the population is at any stage or wave of consciousness that could be called "integral" in any meaningful sense. If the general waves of development are pictured as traditional, modern, postmodern, and integral (with yet higher waves possible), research suggests that somewhere around 25% of the population is traditional, 40% is modern, 20% postmodern, and only 2% or so is at integral or higher.

     However, recent research has also indicated that there is a growing movement at the leading edge--in the cultural elite, in thought leaders, in the media, arts, and academia in general--where substantial portions of the postmodern population are starting to move into integral waves of awareness. In the social sciences and humanities, for example, Jeffrey Alexander, arguably America's most gifted sociologist, has identified three major post-WWII phases: functionalism (modernist), microsociology (postmodern pluralist), and a new and third phrase: "an age of synthesis,"an integral age at the leading edge, just now beginning.

     We also saw that historically it has been the case that, in order for any sort of genuine transformation to occur--or any sort of real "revolution"--not only does the revolution have to be led by an elite, that elite must possess a new paradigm, which means that it must possess, not a new theory or worldview, but a new type of social practice, mode of production, concrete behavioral injunctions, or experimental exemplars. These social practices, injunctions, or exemplars--these new paradigms and methodologies--generate, enact, bring forth, and illumine new types of experiences, occasions, data, phenomena. Around these new experiences, data, or illuminations, there do indeed then grow new theories, new worldviews, new superstructures. "Paradigm" refers to the methodologies of enacting new phenomena, not merely to the theories that attempt to explain them, although both new paradigms and new theories swing into play as new and higher waves of consciousness continue to unfold.

     Because we will be exploring what new paradigms and new theories mean, here are a few quick examples to illustrate what is involved, and then we will focus on what an "integral methodology" might look like in the coming age of synthesis--and at the integral salons that are now springing up around the world, crucibles of a consciousness struggling to be born.

     (For those unfamiliar with the work of some of the leading theorists of consciousness evolution--such as Jean Gebser, James Mark Baldwin, Clare Graves, Jane Loevinger, and Robert Kegan--here is a brief summary. Research indicates that, like all natural living systems, consciousness can undergo evolution, development, or unfoldment. These theorists believe that the general waves of evolution or unfoldment have included archaic, magic-tribal, mythic-traditional, modern-rational, postmodern-pluralistic--all of which together are often called "first-tier" waves--and integral-aperspectival--which is often called "second tier." First-tier waves each believe that their worldviews and values are the best or correct values; second-tier or integral waves attempt to include and integrate the partial truths of all first-tier waves. Because consciousness evolution is still ongoing, some researchers loosely refer to "third-tier" waves, which are even more encompassing but, as yet, are still in their early, formative phases. [When we use the terms of Spiral Dynamics, developed by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan based on the pioneering work of Clare Graves, these are approximately the vMemes or "value memes" of beige (archaic), purple and red (magic), blue (traditional), orange (modern), green (postmodern), yellow and turquoise (second tier).] As suggested earlier, empirical research from several different sources suggests that, in this country, approximately 25% of the adult population embrace traditional values, 40% modern values, 20% postmodern values, and less than 2% are stably at second- or third-tier waves. When we speak of "an integral age at the leading edge," we are focusing on that 2%, particularly as its numbers begin to significantly increase--which is exactly what appears to be happening with the dawning age of synthesis.)

     To return to our topic: the mutual interaction between theories and paradigms--the modern quantum revolution in physics, for example. Several novel types of experiments (such as those in black body radiation) eventually lead to Max Planck's bold quantum hypothesis. A new mode of data production was bringing forth a phenomenological world that could not be adequately reflected or conceptualized in the old theories, and thus new theories were required. That is, a new exemplar, experiment, injunction, paradigm, or social practice was disclosing, bringing forth, or enacting new types of experiences, apprehensions, or data which could not be adequately explained or conceptualized within the older theories (which were adequately fitted to the phenomena of the older exemplars and paradigms).

     The old theories and practices had gained legitimacy in the eyes of the knowledge community engaged in these social practices ("normal science"), precisely because, in their phenomenological domains, those theories and practices worked, and worked very well. But the new practices and the new theories growing up around them could not be legitimated within the older realms of discourse, and thus a clash between older scientific exemplar-worldviews and newer scientific exemplar-worldviews was in set in play. A paradigm is a mode of phenomena production or generation, a social practice that enacts or brings forth a phenomenological world, and theories are after-the-fact frameworks that attempt to explain or elucidate the newly-disclosed worlds.¹

     Put simply, a theory is a map of a territory, while a paradigm is a practice that brings forth a territory in the first place. The paradigm or social practice itself is called an "exemplar" or "injunction," and the theory is called, well, the theory. The point is that knowledge revolutions are generally combinations of new paradigm-practices that bring forth a new phenomenological territory plus new theories and maps that attempt to offer some sort of abstract or contoured guidance to the new territories thus disclosed and brought forth. But a new theory without a new practice is simply a new map with no real territory, or what is generally called "ideology."

     A scientific revolution is the result of new paradigms and new theories coming into accord with each other, both of which are anchored, not in abstractions but in social practices. These revolutions are embraced, at the start, by a handful of individuals at the leading edge, but, if validated, these new exemplar-worldviews (paradigms-and-theories) are accepted by the larger culture or knowledge community, becoming a new "normal" or "legitimated" science, which stabilizes and carries forward until the next set of pesky data arises that refuses to be humbled in the existing scheme of things, and new and heretofore undisclosed territories start to shimmer on the horizon of the possible.

     A similar process is now at play, I believe, in the nascent integral salons spontaneously forming around the world. Before we discuss that possibility in more detail, here is another example of a knowledge revolution, this time in politics.

     The rise of the modern, liberal, representative democracies in the West involved, among innumerable other things, a significant shift in values from traditional to modern, which particularly began in Europe around 1600 and accelerated to something of a crisis pitch by the mid-1770s. Traditional values (e.g., blue, mythic-membership, conventional) tended to be conformist, ethnocentric, hierarchical, mythic-religious, and based on individuals conforming strongly to the present order. Modern values, on the other hand, tend to be egalitarian (not hierarchical), individualistic (not conformist), scientific (not mythic-fundamentalist), and place a premium on equality (not slavery).

     This shift from blue to orange, or from traditional values to modern values, was presaged in the salons or "small gatherings of moderns" (the word salon is French, but these gatherings were also occurring in England, Scotland, and Germany, among others), where the social practice of dialoging according to orange values was carefully exercised. That is, the practice of dialogue geared toward mutual understanding, reciprocal exchange, postconventional equality and freedom was practiced by small groups of leading-edge elites. This was a collective, communal, intersubjective, dialogical discourse at the orange wave of consciousness--a social practice, paradigm, or injunction of dialogical discourse within an elite subculture whose center of gravity was orange or higher.

     This new exemplar or social practice gave rise to a set of novel experiences, insights, data, illuminations, and interpersonal understandings, which new political theories then sought to capture. Most of these new theories of liberal democracy shared the idea that the only way to integrate individual and social is to have the individual feel that he or she is participating in the laws that govern his or her behavior. In the States this was popularly summarized by the phrase, "No taxation without representation," and it essentially meant that a people have the right to be self-governing. This new practice of dialogical discourse and self-governance (generally called a "social contract") was conceptualized in different ways by leading-edge individuals ranging from John Locke to Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel Kant to James Madison.

     This self-governance is not a felt requirement of blue (which will follow the law if it is part of tradition), and it is not felt requirement of red (which will follow the law if it issues from the power leader). Only at orange does interiority start to demand a hand in the laws that regulate its own behavior.

     (Of course, there were several other social injunctions that were part of the orange tetra-worldspace, including an industrial base that was one of single largest factors in reducing the need for slavery, and which lessened the demand for physical strength in order to succeed in the public sphere, thus paving the way for, and actually allowing, the various liberation movements, including feminism and abolition. But we are here focusing on the subset of social practices or paradigms within the rising cultural elite that was forging a new and revolutionary form of governance that would tetra-mesh with new techno-economic base.)

     In short, out of this new exemplar or social practice of orange dialogical discourse (which was enacting and bringing forth a new set of experiences, data, and illuminations) soon issued a new theory of political governance called the social contract, whose general form is: any legitimate governing system is a contract between the governors and those governed, such that the two are mutually governing. This usually involves the election of governors by those governed, such that sovereignty rests, in the final analysis, with the people being governed. All representative, liberal, industrial democracies are today some form of a social contract, which was first pioneered, in a micro-quadratic form, by a small cultural elite at the leading edge who were forging new types of social practice or paradigms embodying a higher, wider, deeper wave of consciousness unfolding.

The Great Possibility

     And so it is today, with an integral age at the leading edge. The possibility--and it is only a gossamer possibility at this time--is that a new and wider wave of consciousness--an integral wave, an age of synthesis--is beginning to emerge and push against all of the now-older waves (traditional, modern, and postmodern), throwing each of them (but especially the postmodern) into a legitimation crisis about its own validity--a crisis of legitimacy that can only be resolved by an increase in authenticity, or an actual transformation to the new and wider integral wave of unfolding.

     This new unfolding will involve, in terms of its paradigmatic base, an actual set of social practices, not merely a new theory or set of theories. As we saw in detail in Excerpt A and briefly summarized above, a paradigm is a social practice or behavioral injunction, not simply a theory or intellectual edifice (although, of course, they tetra-evolve together). Accordingly, any new paradigm will include a set of exemplars and practices--practices that, if they contain more depth (or Eros) than their predecessors, will throw the old approaches into a legitimation crisis that can only be resolved by a vertical ("revolutionary") transformation--as we said, the crisis in legitimacy can only be resolved by an increase in authenticity. Thus, a new integral paradigm will therefore be a new set of injunctions and practices, not simply theories, not worldviews, not Web-of-Life notions, not holistic concepts--but actual practices.

     What kind of practices might be the harbinger of the integral revolution at the leading edge? What might these social practices look like?