January 21, 2021

Integrating

(Disintegrating)

“The grand project of Integral Level Sustainable Design is the synthesis of cultural and natural orders, interpenetrating, as reflective of a singular underlying structure revealed paradoxically through many views”

Mark DeKay

“We cannot go back we can only relentlessly go forward. Ecstatic Eros. Higher Evolutionary We space is going somewhere. It’s heaven. It’s liberation itself.” Andrew Cohen

What is Integral Theory and why might it be useful to designers? Integral analysis is a powerful lens for conscious design and architecture. Integral studies, although initially seemingly complex, is actually an elegant and very practical tool for any designer wishing to arrive at distillations on the other side of complex Wicked Problems. Actually considered a meta-theory due to its breadth, its applicability to interdisciplinary studies, and its integration of the truth claims of the arts, sciences, and humanities within a context grounded in perennial philosophy, Integral Theory (and other meta- theoretical frameworks such as Critical Realism and Complex Thought) are gaining popularity globally in high stakes pragmatic contexts such as climate, energy and common futures because they provide powerful synthetic frames for comparison and correlation of languages, theories and methodologies. Metatheory addresses the disproportionate emphasis on rational cognition in modern society by honoring self and other as complex assemblies with interior and exterior, individual and collective, material and immaterial, passive and agentic polarities.

Ken Wilber, an American transpersonal psychologist, first began writing in the early 1970’s synthesizing developmental models in his area of specialization, developmental psychology, with the spectrum of consciousness described in perennial philosophy. Wilberian Integral Theory integrates world epistemologies and cosmologies into a synthetic meta map. Wilber has published over 25 books. His influential ideas have found application across a range of disciplines, spawning the young but expanding global interdisciplinary movement in scholarly and practical applications of his ideas now referred to as integral studies, inclusive of but not limited to the research and writings of Wilber himself. Ken Wilber’s work had initial impact on transpersonal psychology and related developmental theories.

Integral theory allows us to bring more of our whole selves into every aspect of our lives and to relate authentically without compromise. Wilber’s Integral AQAL (an acronym for all-quadrant, all-level) framework is a profound tool for understanding any concept, circumstance, relationship or event. The AQAL framework discloses four irreducible orientations or perspectives (quadrants) that simultaneously tetra-arise in every moment.

These irreducible domains of experience — mine, yours, theirs and its — or the subjective, objective, individual and collective dimensions of experience, correlate to the arts, sciences and humanities or if you prefer beauty, truth and goodness. By revealing the deep structural patterns at play, AQAL tetra dynamic quadrant analysis lends itself to quick scanning of a design problem context. In a typical design brief for example a designed integration of big data-driven analytics, from an integral perspective raw data is always already thick. Quantitative factors necessarily tetra-arise in relation to subjective and intersubjective conditions and behavioral and systemic worlds that gave rise to the data in the first place. So although we may speak of the role of design as being one of enriching quantitative factors and relations, design is actually in the role of disclosing qualitative factors that are already present in the fabric of reality, but concealed due to the way we tend to categorize quantitative and qualitative phenomena.

In addition to the quadrant organizing principle, integral theory has further distinctions for what are referred to as levels, lines, states, stages. new distinctions are always being added as we learn more and the theory is built. Briefly, stages refer to adult developmental stages (these may refer to ego, moral, faith, cognition, etc.) that have been identified cross disciplinarily and found to be sequential and stable, although not necessarily linear or orderly. Each individual develops in their own context and unique way. States refer to more fleeting or sporadic access to non-ordinary states that might be associated with expanded consciousness, a sense of oneness, dissolution of self, ecstasy. States may be attributable to practices or the use of psychotropic substances or they may occur at random. Lines of development integral theory refer to particular capacities and faculties that one may or may not cultivate. These may include learning mode such as visual, auditory or kinesthetic. They may include relational capacity such as the capacity to listen. They also include logical reasoning, decision-making, and moral reasoning. Lines of development are a more fine-grained way of understanding stages of development because given the uniqueness of every individual certain lines may be more developed and others less so. Taken together, the elements of integral AQAL analysis is an aid to sophisticated contextual analysis. By mapping any system or entity in terms of levels client states and stages we arrive at a “Kosmic address” a niche analysis from which we can make more informed decisions. You can learn more about adult developmental stage theory from the perspective of integral theory here at Daily Evolver.

In the integral view, all perspectives are valid, yet partial. Thus, experiences can be fully understood only through comprehensive all-quadrant, all level analyses that honor the partial truths of each perspective. Another way of describing the value of the integral AQAL analysis is to say that it validates the unique perspectives of the Arts, the Sciences, and the Humanities without conflating them. Thus integral analysis of any topic or project, be it climate change or local food networks, benefits from this leading edge integration of The Good (the humanities), The True (the sciences), and The Beautiful (the arts). What about the all-level part? Integral Theory understands all phenomena as holons (Koestler) — wholes that are simultaneously wholes of greater wholes, compromising holarchies — nested orders of increasing depth and complexity. Holons participate in all systems material, biological, social, political, ethical, cosmological, etc. Integral theory is an epistemological schema that points to the incredible mystery of existence, acknowledging that maps are not territories. One of the gifts of integral theory is the grasping of the dialectical inclusion with transcendence movement that describes how living things couple with and learn from their environments before moving on, having been fundamentally changed by the encounter. In including and transcending our past we complete cycles and incorporate more coherence into our being, lightening and releasing what we no longer need and also encountering new dissonance and incommensurability.

Why might this theory be useful for designers? Design and Integral Theory are synergistically complementary. Integral Theory, in its fluid embrace of everything without reduction or conflation, has enabled me to appreciate the collaborative role of designing agency in addressing any worthwhile concern.  During our times for example design practices are still hobbled by the downsides of specialization and analysis—fragmentation and compartmentalization. Our breaking and broken systems demand meta-cognitive views that embrace rational analysis but also transcend it in conscious heartful presence. Through an integral lens we may see that design bridges the arts, sciences and humanities.Integral theory’s integration of the abductive, non-linear approaches of the arts, with the deductive method of science, and the inductive approaches common to the social sciences makes explicit the pattern recognition and remediation role of design within complex adaptive systems with wide applicability in cutting edge precautionary and reparative innovation.

Designing agency fundamentally is a negotiation with co-arising phenomena. For this reason I would assert that designing is by nature integrative although not necessarily Integral Theory informed. Designing is always, already and never not systemic. Designing is always, already and never not political. Designing is always, already and never not ethical. Conscious designing honors this full octave of experience without reduction, and without neglect of the difficult, raw, controversial, politically incorrect, or uncomfortable.

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