Excerpt D.

The Look of a Feeling: The Importance of Post/Structuralism

Part I. Overview and Summary to Date

This Excerpt is the fourth in a series of excerpts from the first draft of volume 2 of the Kosmos trilogy, Kosmic Karma and Creativity (whose first volume was Sex, Ecology, Spirituality). Those responding to the call to have the word sex appear in the title have voted for Sex, Karma, and Creativity (whaddya think?). Because much of this material represents a radical departure from any known form of philosophy, psychology, or spirituality (ancient or modern), I will continue to offer summaries and overviews along with the excerpts themselves. Part I of this except is such a summary, which is divide into post-metaphysics and event horizons. If you are familiar with the material, please feel free to skim or skip it; Part II begins the excerpt proper.

Integral Post-Metaphysics In Excerpt A, An Integral Age at the Leading Edge, we saw evidence for the fact that, at this time, less than 2% of the adult population is at any stage, wave, or state of consciousness that could be called integral. However, the same evidence suggests that percentage is significantly increasing and may in fact reach 10% or more within a decade. Since much of that increase is concentrated in academia, the percentage of cultural thought leaders who are poised for integral consciousness may reach 20% or more. If so, this would constitute a profound shift in the capacity for integral thinking, feeling, and perception, which could be expected to have

2 extensive social and cultural reverberations. We called this An Integral Age at the Leading Edge. Accordingly, we might expect a significant increase in the demand for Integral models of virtually everything (integral psychology, integral art and literary theory, integral business, integral medicine, integral ecology, etc.). One such Integral model is AQAL (short for all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types), which is founded on a social practice of integral methodological pluralism (IMP), both of which are the focus of these Excerpts. In Excerpt B, The Many Ways We Touch, we saw that any integral metatheory might best be guided by three heuristic principles: nonexclusion, enactment, enfoldment. Nonexclusion means that Everybody is rightor more technically, that the experiences brought forth by one paradigm cannot legitimately be used to criticize, negate, or exclude the experiences brought forth by other paradigms. The reason that everybody is right is called enactment, which means that no experience is innocent and pregiven, but rather is brought forth or enacted in part by the activity of the subject doing the experiencing. Thus, one activity (or paradigm) will bring forth a particular set of experiencesexperiences that are not themselves innocent reflections of the one, true, real, and pregiven world, but rather are cocreated and co-enacted by the paradigm or activity itself, and, accordingly, one paradigm does not give the correct view of the world and therefore it cannot be used (as if it did) in order to negate, criticize, or exclude other experiences brought forth by other paradigms. However, if one practice or paradigm includes the essentials of another and then adds further practicessuch that it enfolds or includes the otherthen that paradigm can legitimately be claimed to be more integral, which is the enfoldment principle. Together, these guiding principles give us an Integral Methodological Pluralism that is the warrant for AQAL metatheory. In Excerpt C, we focused the urgent necessity to create an Integral Post-Metaphysics, which possesses the explanatory power of the great metaphysical systems but without their

3 ontological baggage (which cannot be sustained in modern and postmodern awarenessnot philosophically, not critically, not phenomenologically, not scientifically). Instead of attacking the paucity of the modern and postmodern worldviewswhich is the standard move by spiritual and new-paradigm advocatesit is perhaps more adept to reformulate and reconstruct the premodern interpretations of Spirit in light of modern and postmodern developments, such that the enduring fundamentals of the premodern, modern, and postmodern forms of Spirits own display can all be honored by trimming their absolutisms and acknowledging their true but partial natures (which is surely what Spirit does as it moves through its own manifestations in the premodern, modern, and postmodern world: just who did you think was authoring all that?). Although the premodern experiences of Spiritby the great shamans, saints, and sages were as authentic as authentic can get, the interpretations they gave those experiences were of necessity clothed in the fabric of their own time. And that fabric, in light of Spirits own subsequent displays, is now a bit worn and threadbare. The premodern interpretative frameworks all tended to be to be mythic, metaphysical, substance-oriented, and postulated a pantheon of preexisting ontological structures (whether in the form of a Great Chain of Being or the form of a Great Web of Life)which, ironically, is an interpretive framework that amounted to a type of higher, spiritual, transpersonal myth of the givenexactly the epistemology so effectively deconstructed by postmodernismso that the typical new-paradigm approaches exalting such frameworks are actually advancing an epistemological prejudice no longer capable of generating respect. But my whole point is that you dont need those metaphysical interpretations anyway (whether of a Great Chain or a pre-existing Great Web). By creating an Integral PostMetaphysics, we can let the modern and postmodern world judge the merits of a spiritually integrative approach without their recoiling in ridicule at the packagethe metaphysical packagein which the gift arrives. Same gift (the Great Perfection), but a different package (which is Spirits own skin today).

4 One of the first and most important suggested changes in the development of postmetaphysics is that the idea of perception be replaced by perspective. The great wisdom traditions and philosopher-sages (from Plotinus to Shankara to Gautama Buddha to Hegel to Aurobindo to Whitehead) built much of their interpretive frameworks with the concept of perception (as awareness/consciousness): the nature of this moment perceives, grasps, or prehends various phenomena; these perceptions or moments of bare attention are the building blocks of a sentient, panpsychic world; the resultant network of perceptions is an Indras Net of mutually perceiving and interdependent relationships. The power, beauty, and goodness of those great metaphysical systems are, I believe, undeniable. But there are no perceptions anywhere in the real world; there are only perspectives. A subject perceiving an object is always already in a relationship of first-person, second-person, and third-person when it comes to the perceived occasions. If the manifest world is indeed panpsychicor built of sentient beings (all the way up, all the way down)then the manifest world is built of perspectives, not perceptions. Moving from perceptions to perspectives is the first radical step in the move from metaphysics to post-metaphysics. Subjects dont prehend objects anywhere in the universe; rather, first persons prehend second persons or third persons: perceptions are always within actual perspectives. Subject perceiving object (or bare attention to dharmas) is not a raw given but a low-order abstraction that already tears the fabric of the Kosmos in ways that cannot easily be repaired. (First person perspective means the perspective of the person speakingI, singular, or we, plural. Second person means the person spoken toyou or thou. Third person means the person or thing spoken ofhe, she, they, them, it, its. More generally, first person is any holon with agency or intentionality; second person is any holon to whom agency is directed; third person is any holon referred to. We will see examples of these perspectives as we proceed.) Even if we say, with the materialist, that the world is composed of nothing but physical atoms, nonetheless atom is already a third-person symbol being perceived by a first-person

5 sentient being. And if we try to picture an actual atom, that too is a third-person entity prehended by a first person. In other words, even atom is not an entity, or even a perception, but a perspective, within which a perception occurs (i.e., all perceptions and feelings are always already within the space of an actual perspective). But surely, the critic would say, we can still imagine a time that there were only atoms, not humans, and therefore atoms existed without arising in a human perspective. (That again is still a third-person image held by a first-person awareness; but lets imagine that we can imagine a time without human perspectives.) It is true there was a time before humans emerged. But if the world is actually panpsychic, then each atom had a rudimentary awareness or proto-experience of other atoms, and hence a first atom aware of a second atom is already and actually a first person in touch with a second person. In other words, these perspectives are indigenous to all sentient beings; if sentient beings go all the way down, so do perspectives. Thus, sentient beings and perspectives, not consciousness and phenomena, are the stuff of the Kosmos. A perception, as we were saying, is not really an experience but an abstraction, and this is one of the reasons that the old metaphysical systems fall apart when scrutinized. Perception secretly privileges abstract objects; perspective privileges sentient beings. In short, a world containing sentient beings is a world composed of perspectivesnot feelings, not consciousness, not awareness, not processes, not eventsfor all of those are perspectives before they are anything else. The panpsychic approaches are headed in the right direction but stop short of the embodied mark. As just noted, if an atom actually has protoexperience, prehension, or rudimentary feeling, and it registers another atom, then the first atom is not a first atom but a first person, and the second atom is not a second atom but a second person; and they do not stand in the relation of subject prehending object but of first person feeling second person (person, of course, does not mean self-reflective awareness, but simple sentience or proto-sentience.) Feeling by itself is an abstraction away from what is actually happening, which is that two sentient occasions always stand in relationships such as first-person,

6 second-person, and third-person to each other, and thus every first persons feeling is actually a feeling of a second or third person, who in turn are first person to that sentient occasion, and so on. (Think of somethinga tree, for example. You are a sentient holon, the tree is a sentient holon, although you are not communing with it at the moment, and thus you are a first person holding the image of a third person. If you believe there is a level of organic vitality that you and the tree have in common, then you are a first person holding the image of a second person. Likewise, if the tree has any sentience at all, then if you actually approach it, it is a first person registering your second person existence. And so on. If all holons are sentient beings, then all perceptions are actually embedded in perspectives of, from, and between sentient beings, simplified as first-person, second-person, and third-person perspectives. Whenever the agency or intentionality of any holoncell to ant to apeis directed anywhereand it is always directed somewhereit is directed toward or within a world of other sentient holons, and this is why, if one atom bumps into another atom, then, from the point of view of that atom, a first person just encountered a second person, who in turn responded as first person to the second person of the first; if they influence each other in any way, that is a type of communication, and that communication is not merely a dynamic web but a third person, and so on. If the Kosmos contains sentient beings all the way down, then the Kosmos is composed not of feelings nor perceptions but perspectives, all the way down.)1 On the other hand, if we do try to say that the world is composed of feelings, or awareness, or prehension, or dynamic webs of mutual interaction, or consciousness, dharmas, things, events, processes, and so onas if those existed apart from the relations of sentient beingsthen that is already a series of low-order abstractions that violate the richness of indigenous perspectives and, having abstracted away from their embodied being, flatten the Kosmos into the cosmos, a pervasive series of low-order abstractions which are then subconsciously mistaken for pregiven realities.

7 (Even the postmodernists are caught in this prior low-order abstraction that hands them a violated cosmos that they then attempt to repair with an emphasis on pluralism and interpretation, which only further hides, and exacerbates, the prior problem. Postmodernism emphasizes that perceptions are always interpreted, but both perceptions and interpretations are actually perspectives before any of that happens. Postmodernism has caught only a glimmer of a much deeper secret. That is, even postmodernism is caught in low-order metaphysics, a metaphysics that it has otherwise labored nobly to move beyond, as we saw in Excerpt C. The crime of metaphysics is not that it postulates non-material levels of reality, which may or may not exist, but that it postulates levels that are not always already perspectives, and thus are abstract in all the wrong ways.) But whether metaphysics appears in its premodern, modern, or postmodern forms, its old ontological baggagewhich was actually created by the secretly abstract, unreal, and metaphysical nature of feeling or perception acting as its building blocksis almost certainly destined to go the way of phlogiston (or the substance that, to the medieval mind, carried fire). Fire is real, Spirit is real, but those interpretive frameworks are simply not necessary. And so we begin again: the first quark is not a first particle but a first person, the second quark is a second person, their communication is a third person, and so on. We build a Kosmos out of sentient beings and their perspectives, not out of subjects and objects, not out of feeler and feelings, not bare attention and dharmas, not consciousness and phenomena, not events and processes, none of which exist in themselves, which is to say, none of them actually exist. Sentient holons and their perspectives: so fundamental are some of these indigenous perspectives that by the time human sentient holons evolved, they were embedded in major natural languages as variants on first-, second-, and third-person perspectives, languages which themselves evolved over the years and inherently embodied and expressed these native dispositions. Some of these native perspectives are schematically represented in figure 1.

Figure 1. 8 Major Native Perspectives

In human languages, these perspectives are often embedded as pronouns, such as I, you, we, her, me, they, it, he, them, their, our, us, she, him: all the rich variety of perspectives that sentient beings possess by virtue of existing only in a world of other sentient beings. Figure 1 represents four of the most basic perspectives of being-in-the-world (I, we, it, and its), which we call the four quadrants, along with an inside and outside in each of the quadrants (which we will explain in a moment), giving us 8 major native perspectives of being-in-the-world. These are by no means the only major perspectives, just some worth highlighting. When humans take up various modes of inquiry, they disclose, highlight, bring forth, illumine, and express the various types of phenomena enacted by-and-from various perspectives. In these excepts, we are focusing on 8 of the major indigenous perspectives and the methodologies they support. Of course, by the time we get to humans, these 8 indigenous stances

9 of being-in-the-world begin to complexify enormously. But the litmus test of any integral postmetaphysics is whether these indigenous perspectives can and do generate the well-known modes of inquiry that have already been adopted by human beings. The answer, I believe, is yes. These methodologies are suggested in figure 2, showing these 8 indigenous perspectives and 8 of the major methodologies or paradigms they have engendered. (A Kuhnian paradigm, of course, is not a theory but a praxis, exemplar, injunction, or methodology, and here is used in that correct sense.)

Figure 2. 8 Major Paradigms or Methodologies

10 The point is simple: in order to deny the legitimacy any of those methodologies, you have to violate their native perspectives and the sentient beings holding them. Integral Methodological Pluralism refuses such violence. Ratherfollowing the integrative guidelines of nonexclusion, enactment, and enfoldmentIntegral Methodological Pluralism attempts to construct a framework, after the fact, of that which sentient beings are already doing anyway, with the hope that such a framework, in making room for what the Kosmos already allows, will help us find our way more generously in such a roomy world.

Some Major Event Horizons or Zones There are (at least) 4 major perspectives of being-in-the-world, which we are calling the four quadrantsI, we, it, itseach of which can be looked at from its own inside or outside, giving us 8 primordial or indigenous perspectives available to sentient beings (see fig. 1). Each of those perspectives has an inherent methodology or mode of inquiry, or ways that sentient beings touch other sentient beings (see fig. 2). These 8 native or primordial perspectives are the inside and outside of interiors and exteriors in singular and plurala bit of a mouthful that nonetheless simply means that we can look at the inside and the outside of an I, a we, an it, and an its. In Excerpt C, we looked at the inside of an I and the inside of a we; in this except we will be looking at the outside of an I and the outside of a we (and in the next excerpts, the insides and outsides of an it and an its).

11

Figure 3. 4 Major Zones

Each of those 8 views is in effect an event horizon, or a phenomenological world enacted and brought forth within that perspective. We called these event horizons, or hori-zones, or simply zones. All 8 perspectives engender phenomenological zones or event horizons, but we will be looking at four of the most important, which are numbered in figure 3. These four zones are not the same as the four quadrants, but simply represent another useful way to group the 8 indigenous perspectives (namely, the inside and outside of interiors and exteriors). These zones are as follows (which are stated in abstract form and thus can be mind-numbingly boring; succeeding examples will be more friendly, I trust, but the following gives the technical details for reference):

12 Zone #1: interior holons (an I or we) looked at from inside their own boundaries. This means a first-person approach to first-person realities (1p x 1p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the inside of an I (classic paradigms or injunctions that bring forth, enact, and disclose these first-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world include phenomenology, introspection, meditation). The plural form is the inside of a we (which can be brought forth, enacted, and disclosed with methodologies such as hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, participatory epistemology). Zone #2: interior holons (an I or we) looked at from outside their own boundaries. This means a third-person approach to first-person realities (3p x 1p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the outside of an I (which can be approached with methodologies such as developmental structuralism). The plural form is the outside of a we (which can be approached with methodologies such as cultural anthropology, neostructuralism, archaeology, genealogy). Zone #3: exterior holons (an it or its) looked at from inside their own boundaries. This means a first-person approach to third-person realities (1p x 3p), in both singular and plural forms.2 The singular form is the inside of an it (which can be approached with methodologies such as biological phenomenology and autopoiesis). The plural form is the inside of an its (which can be approached with methodologies such as social autopoiesis). Zone #4: exterior holons (an it or its) looked at from outside their own boundaries. This means a third-person approach to third-person realities (3p x 3p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the outside of an it (which can be approached with methodologies such as behaviorism, positivism, empiricism). The plural form is the outside of a its (which can be approached with methodologies such as systems theory, component systems theory, chaos and complexity theory).

13 Excerpt C dealt with zone #1; this Excerpt focuses on zone #2. The next two excerpts focus on zones #3 and #4. What, then, is zone #2, and what is the outside of an interior reality? And why do we call that the look of a feeling?

Part II. Entering ZONE #2: The Outsides of the Interior

Introduction Start by recalling that zone #1, or the interior seen from within, is a first-person experience of a first-person reality, whether singular (I) or plural (we)the inside of an I or we. In figure 1, this means anything seen from inside or within the boundaries of a holon in the Upper-Left and Lower-Left quadrants. In figure 2, the major methodologies enacting these zones are given as interior phenomenology and hermeneutics, respectively. Zone #2 is simply those same holons seen from the outside (or seen from without) hence, the outsides of the interior. Of course, all of these Left-Hand holons are interior realities, so you cannot see their insides or outsides in the exterior, sensorimotor world. You cannot see an I or we out there, running around in the empirical world. And yet we do indeed know by acquaintance what an I is, what a we is, and we know well enough where their boundaries arewhich is why there are so many significant paradigms that enact and access them (from phenomenology to meditation to hermeneutics). Interior classically means first-person, and outside classically means third-person. Thus, zone #2, or an outside-view of the interior, means a third-person approach to firstperson realities. Because third-person approaches are often a type of looking or distancing knowledge (e.g., he sees the tree), and because first-person approaches are often a type of feeling or

14 touching knowledge (e.g., I touch the tree), then zone #2 involves what might also be called the look of a feeling. This outside look at interior realities happens all the time; for example, whenever I try to take a more objective look at myself; or when I attempt to see myself as others see me; or perhaps evaluate our own friendship. We will see many examples of this outside look at interior realities in a moment. But notice the crucial point: the outside (or third-person) component and the interior (or first-person) component are both very important: these approaches are indeed outside or objectifying or third-person approaches, but they are approaches to an interior, and that clearly implies that, somewhere down the line, those interiors can be known by acquaintancei.e., they can themselves be seen or accessed (with, for example, any of the methodologies in zone #1). In other words, I cannot really do a third-person study of first-person realities unless I myself have some sort of access to those first-person realities. I can look at a feeling in an objective fashion, but only if I can actually locate that feeling to begin with. That is the distinctive hallmark of all zone #2 paradigms: they are third-person approaches to realities that I have some sort of access to in first-person modes. As we will see, this is quite different from third-person approaches to holons only as third personswhich is typical of most forms of systems theory, for example, and which involves a type of third-person approach to third-person realities (3p x 3p). Zone #2, on the other hand, is 3p x 1p: a third-person of first-personan objective or descriptive approach to realities that I know (or can know) by acquaintance. Zone #2 is a wonderfully important event horizon because, in an AQAL matrix of indigenous perspectives, this zone highlights, enacts, and brings forth those occasions that help me to reconstruct the interiors of another sentient being so that yet further forms of mutual understanding and compassionate embrace can stand forth in a Kosmos of radiant regard.

15 The Look of a Feeling What is an example of a third-person approach to a first-person reality? What exactly is the look of a feeling? The simplest is: I can take a third-person stance to my own interiorsI can look at my own feelings. I can try to be more objective about myself, try to see myself as others see me, try to get a little distance from myself and see myself more clearly. As I begin to move away from my own immediate sensations, I can start to interpret, describe, or conceptualize that experience. I stay close to my own felt prehensions, but I begin to describe and conceptualize them in a type of interior objectivity. In other words, I can take up a type of third-person or objective stance to my own interiors, apprehending them according to various concepts, theories, maps, or other schemaor even trying to see them as others might see themthus taking an outside stance but still within my own interior horizon.3 These interiorly perceived images, sensations, and phenomena are often called inner objects, or more correctly interior objects, though we will use both phrases. When I directly feel or perceive these inner objects, that is a type of phenomenology or first-person perspective; when I attempt to see them as others might see them, that is more on the third-person side of the street. That is one version of the outsides of the interiors, a type of third-person (or objective) approach to first-person (or subjective) realities. It is seeing an interior holon from without, or from the outside of its boundaries, which is what happens when I approach it as an object of my subject. (Notice, however, that they are not merely subjects and objects, but first persons and third persons.)4 If thats an example of the outsides of my own interiors, what about the outsides of your interiors? And how do I access those? It happens all the time in communication. As you and I talk, we are exchanging words, symbols, signs, and tokens of our interiors in an attempt to understand each other. Those words are, in part, outside tokens of our interior states. That is, two subjects come together and, in

16 addition to any harmonic empathy (and other forms of prior intersubjectivity or tele-prehension), they attempt to exchange tokens of their interiors in order to more accurately understand each other. (These tokens, symbols, or signs are not merely or even especially linguistic, and certainly not at pre- and trans-linguistic waves in sentient beings. But linguistic exchange is perhaps the best understood form of this mode, and thus the one I will focus on in the following.) As we saw in Excerpt C, communicative action of this sort involves the conversion of a third-person him or her or it (i.e., the one who is being spoken about) into a second-person you or thou (i.e., the one to whom I am speaking), and if I am now speaking with you, the implication is that we are speaking to each other and therefore we similarly-enough understand each other. That is, any actual you (or second person) implies a background of we (or firstperson plural). Notice, then, the difference between a second person and a third person. A second person is implicitly somebody who shares at least some sort of culture with me. If you and I have no comprehension of each other, if we are totally alien to each other, then we are actually third persons to each otherthere is no way we are talking, communicating, or resonating with each other: you are not a you but a he or even an it. On the other hand, if you and I are adequately communicating or resonating at all, then your I and my I intersect in the nexus of a we. You and I are inside a we, which means our exchanges are internal to the nexus-agency of that we, and thus you and I are members of an interior compound network or culture. In short, any actual you exists only inside a circle of some sort of we (and any actual exchanges with an actual you are internal to the nexus-agency of that we). (This, again, is why I often refer to second person not simply as you, but as you/we or thou/we. A you that is not part of a we is actually a him or an it. Therefore I often summarize first, second, and third persons as I, we, and it, since that more accurately captures the types of solidarity present in each relationship. This is not in any way to ignore second person, only set it in a context.)

17 If you and I are talking, one of things that we are doing is exchanging tokens, symbols, or signs (all of which are third-person its and artifacts) in order to help us understand each other. At first I might not understand what you are saying, but as we continue to dialogue, your meaning becomes clearer and clearer. You are presenting outside or objective tokens of your interior state in order that I can reconstruct your interior state in a similar-enough fashion that I will say, I understand what you mean. In this specific instance, I am not using tele-prehension or harmonic resonance in order to know you; I am rather reconstructing what your interior seems to be like based on communicative exchange. The result, if successful, is that with regard to the particular item you are trying to convey, you and I have phenomenologically created or enacted a we-space of mutual understanding around that itemor a shared event horizon within which that item enactively arises. (This we or first-person plural space is, put simply, the miracle of all miracles.) Now, what if I wanted to study or investigate that we-space (or that cultural nexus)? How can I get at the realities of any we? Among other things, I can look at them from within their own immediate boundaries, or from withoutI can approach them from the inside or from the outside of the we-boundary itself. The view from the inside of the we is, of course, hermeneutics. And, although there are many different approaches to looking at a we from the outside, one of the most classic and influential is simply structuralism. (In fig. 2, structuralism is listed for the outside of the individual interior, and cultural anthropology for the outside of collective interiors. Structuralism can be, and is, used in both, but the complexities of collective holons render structuralism simply one of the many useful tools in cultural anthropology, whereas for the outsides of individual interiors over time, it has no viable competitors and thus is listed as the exemplar of zone #2 in first-person singular. We will be exploring both.) Structuralism is the study of the behavior of an interior holon. (The interior holon can be singular or plural, individual or cultural, I or we). It is indeed the study of interior realities, but a

18 study that watches their behavior as seen from some sort of an outside stance. We have already seen that, for example, I can take up a third-person stance to my own interiors, and that is the start of structuralism. It is an objective or third-person view of a first-person holon, but it then goes an extra step and attempts to offer a reconstructive account of the pattern or agency of that holons interior.5 That is, it attempts to discover, describe, or elucidate what we have called the internality codes of a holon, or the rules and patterns that the subholons internal to that holon are following; in this case, the internality codes of an interior (I or we) holon. We used the example of a game of chess to show what some of these rules or patterns are likeyou and I are in a chess game when our interactions are internal to the rules of the game (i.e., when our moves follow the games rules, internality code, or structure). That interior pattern (manifested in outside-exterior behavior and reconstructed from the regularities of that behavior) is called the interior holons structure, which means the regularities governing the elements that are internal to that interior structure (either internal to the individual agency of an I or internal to the nexus-agency of a we). Those regularities or structures represent the Kosmic habits that are the fundamental modes of that holons enduring existence in AQAL spacetime. The game of chess was a simple example of the rules governing a we or a nexus-agency; structuralism is simply the attempt to discover those rules. Lets see exactly what that means.

Representative Methodology of Zone #2: Adequate Structuralism We can continue to use the game of chess to highlight some of the central issues. Let us start by noticing that a phenomenologist, a structuralist, a hermeneuticist, and a systems theorist will all approach this chess game in very different ways, each of them accessing some important dimensions of that social occasion. A phenomenologist will attempt to bracket all assumptions and simply describe the phenomena as carefully as possible. The players, the chess board, the 16 tokens, all will be

19 phenomenologically highlighted and described in their immediateness. To the things themselves! is how it is often put, and there is much merit in that injunction. But there is a curious thing about chess: the rules that the 16 chess pieces or phenomena are following cannot be found anywhere on the things themselves, they cannot be found phenomenologically. The rules of chess are not written on any of the chess pieces, nor are they written on the chess board; nor can they be found by looking carefully and extensively at the faces of the players. In fact, the essence of chess is invisible to typical phenomenology. As Foucault so elaborately documented, this is why structuralism caused such an enormous sensation when it was first introduced, and why it quickly supplanted phenomenology (especially in its Husserlian forms) and hermeneutics (especially in its Heideggerian forms). Why? Because structuralism is designed precisely to get at the rules of chess, which cannot be easily discerned with any of those other methodologies. Structuralism, as a social practice or paradigm, highlights those dimensions and perspectives of holons that involve the patterns, rules, or regularitiesthe Kosmic habitsthat they display. Done correctly, structuralism does not impose these rules but discloses them. People are already playing chess; structuralism looks for the rules and regularities of what people are already doing. These patterns and regularities cannot be spotted by phenomenology, hermeneutics, or systems theory, which becomes particularly obvious when we look at complex social interactions, such as those embodied in language, because part of their existence involves indigenous perspectives not activated by those other inquiries. This is why Foucault said, with reference to phenomenology, So the problem of language appeared and it was clear that phenomenology was no match for structural analysis in accounting for the effects of meaning that could be produced by a structure of the linguistic type. And quite naturally, with the phenomenological spouse finding herself disqualified by her inability to address language, structuralism became the new bride. (And Foucault himself was one of the brilliant pioneers at that wedding.)

20 How does structuralism do this? How does it disclose these otherwise hidden regularities? Basically, structuralism is phenomenology plus history. That is, it starts with phenomenology (and hermeneutics)or any first-person interior realitiesbut then follows the phenomena over long periods of time and attempts to spot any regularities or patterns that the phenomena follow. Those patterns are, of course, the structures within which the phenomena move. In this case, all 16 chess phenomena follow specific rules that are written nowhere on the chess pieces themselves, but can be clearly discerned if you watch the chess moves over time. If the phenomenologist attempts to describe the present phenomena or tokens as clearly as possible (in an immediate prehension and descriptive laying bare), the hermeneuticist attempts to know the players themselves, up close and personal, through mutual dialogue and shared meaning horizons. The structuralist goes one step further and attempts to discern the hidden, invisible, regulatory patterns that the players and the tokens might be following over time. In this case, the rules of chess. When the inquiry known as structuralism is being adequately engaged according to the guidelines of its own paradigmsdeciding which, we temporarily bracket critics who are not so engaged, for they violate the nonexclusion principlethen the structuralist will summarize the behavioral responses representing the exteriors of intentionality with a set of structures, which represent the internality codes of the interior holons being engaged. Every holon or stable entity (whether an I, we, it, or its) has some sort of identity or agencyevery whole has some sort of wholeness, some sort of coherence, and structuralists attempt to identify the nature of that wholeness in the interior domains. Here are a few of the types of holistic structures that have been suggested (and for which there is significant evidence): Carol Gilligans three stages of selfish, care, and universal care in female moral development; Robert Kegans five orders of consciousness; Spiral Dynamics elucidation of the blue meme, orange meme, green meme, turquoise meme, etc.; Jean Gebsers famous archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and integral structures; Jane Loevingers symbiotic,

21 conformist, conscientious, individualistic, and integral self-identities (etc.); formal operational cognition, the relativistic-pluralistic value structure, the construct-aware self, fourth-order consciousness, moral-stage 2, the participatory stage, preconventional stage, the conscientious self, sensorimotor cognition, self-actualization needs, and so on. All of those are postulated structures that attempt to account for known Kosmic habits of interior domains. Those structures are themselves coherent wholes that help to enact and bring forth a world that is a co-creation of those structures doing the perceiving, knowing, and feeling. That structures co-create, present, and enact worlds, and do not merely perceive or represent them, is the revolution at the heart of the post-Kantian, postmodern understanding (and a feature therefore of any Integral Post-Metaphysics). Notice that, even if a particular structuresuch as the red meme, moral-stage 1, or the pluralistic value structuredoes not consciously have a holistic outlook, the structure itself is holistic. But this is true for all holons, all structures, all whole/partsthe wholeness aspect is holistic at its own level or it would cease to exist (or it exists in a pathological or fragmented form). Thus, if we look at the structure of, say, the red meme, that structure, like all structures, is marked by wholeness, transformation, and closure (see below); but that does not mean that a person at the red level is conscious of the world as a whole, or has a fully integral awareness, or a holistic philosophy of life, or anything like that. The structure itself is a holistic (or autopoietic) unity in order to function, but that does not mean that the wholeness of that particular structure includes an awareness of the wholeness of all other structures or the Kosmos at large. In fact, only at the higher levels of wholeness does wholeness itself become a conscious content. This is why researchers like Gebser and Loevinger give their highest levels the actual term integral or integrated. All previous levels, in their healthy forms, are integrated and holistic (at that level); but only the higher levels start to consciously perceive this wholeness and begin to become transparent to themselves. So all healthy structures are holisticwhether in an atom, an ant, or an apebut only at the highest structures (postconventional) does this wholeness

22 start to become aware of itself: wholeness aware of wholeness begins to mark the actual contents of yellow waves and higher (which is also why adequate structuralism as a self-conscious paradigm emerges only at yellow and higher). But the point, in any case, is that healthy structures themselves are always holistic, representing the wholeness aspect of all whole/parts. (We will see how structuralism differs from systems theory in moment; the essential point is that the structuralist is following the wholeness of interior structures of consciousness and intentionality, not exterior structures of matter, processes, dynamic webs and systems. The interiors need phenomenology and hermeneutics to be finally accessedthis is the first-person component of structuralisms third-person of first-person; whereas systems theory never met an interior it cared aboutit is third-person of third-personand hence treats interiors only insofar as they can be objectified and known by description, not acquaintance. Thus, the systems theorist treats both the players and the tokens in third-person terms as exteriors in a dynamic holistic system connected via information: systems theory is a third-person of third-person realities [3p x 3p], unlike structuralism, which is a third-person of first-person [3p x 1p], and hermeneutics, which is a first-person of first-person [1p x 1p]. Needless to say, all of those methodologies are valuable ingredients in any integral methodological pluralism. 6 But what we are doing in this section is looking more closely at the types of methodologies that best access zone #2the 3p x 1por the outsides of the interiors, in both singular and plural forms, foremost among which is adequate structuralism.) As we were saying, structuralists attempt to elucidate the wholeness aspect of an interior whole/part or holon. This wholeness is called the structure. Some of the truly brilliant structuralists have included Jean Gebser, James Mark Baldwin, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, Clare Graves, Robert Kegan, and Jane Loevinger, among many others (all of whose work we will return to shortly). Early, pioneering structuralists included Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, early Foucault, and Lacan, among others. Unfortunately, as often happens, their pioneering but less-than-

23 adequate paradigms and theories came to define structuralism as a whole, so that when the post-structuralists came along, they interpreted poststructuralism as going beyond structuralism altogether, whereas it was simply trying to go beyond inadequate structuralism (and ended up beneath adequate structuralism). In the following, structuralism always means adequate structuralism, or competent structuralism as judged by the ongoing knowledge-community of those engaging the paradigm. Because structures have caused so much confusionespecially in light of postmodernisms self-definition of being post structuralistlets look more closely at the types of structures that even postmodernism has not coherently denied or deconstructed.

The Meaning of a Structure The notion of a structure is by no means confined to structuralism. In fact, the general idea of structure is used by virtually all schools of biology, psychology, and sociology, among others. The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology defines structure as A term loosely applied to any recurring pattern. The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology gives: An organized, patterned, relatively stable configuration. No serious theoretician doubts that those types of structures exist. Structuralists simply specialize in studying those recurring patterns, those Kosmic habits or configurations. As we saw in Excerpt A, adequate structuralists generally define a structure as a holistic, dynamic pattern of self-organizing processes that maintain themselves as stable configurations through their ongoing reproduction. As we also saw in Excerpt A, for AQAL metatheory, that the simplest way to look at these patterns is as a probability space. The structure of an individual agency and/or a cultural nexus-agency is simply the probability of finding, in a particular locale of the interior dimensions of the AQAL matrix of indigenous perspectives, the behavior that is described or defined as within the structure. Whatever else a structure might be, the least objectionable way to define it is simply as a probability space.

24 Technically, then, for integral metatheory, structuralism means an exterior description in thirdperson it-terms of the probability of finding a particular I or thou/we behavior in a particular spacetime milieu of the AQAL matrix.7 (Of course, there are only so many words to go around, and structure is commonly used in a very broad sense to mean any form, pattern, or agency in any of the quadrantsinterior or exterior, individual or communal. Sheldrake, for example, uses structure in defining morphic resonance; Maturana and Varela use it in describing structural coupling; psychologists use it in describing stages of development; sociologists use it in defining aggregate behavior; neurologists use it for tissue formation, and so on. When I refer to a structure as being a probability wave, I am using structure in the broad sense, referring to the enduring pattern or regime of any holon in any quadrantsuch as the structure of a molecule, the structure of a town, the structure of the green meme, and so on. Structure in the narrower sense means an interior structure, particularly those elucidated by the paradigmatic practice of adequate structuralism. Hopefully context will make it clear which use is intendedbecause if not, then my and your communicative intersections will not be internal to a we and thus you will have no bloody idea what I am talking about. Like probably just happened with that sentence.)

Structuralism Compared with Systems Theory Notice again the terms that adequate structuralists use when referring to a structure: a holistic, dynamic pattern of self-organizing processes that maintain themselves as stable configurations. Already you can see that those are third-person it terms. In fact, all of the structures proposed by structuralists (such as the rules of chess, the turquoise meme, formal operational cognition, the relativistic-pluralistic value structure, the construct-aware self, fourthorder consciousness, the green meme, the preconventional stage, etc.) are not described in firstperson terms but in third-person terms; but those third-person terms (or signifiers) take as their referent first- and second-person interiors. That is a crucial point. The structuralist primarily

25 studies behavior but is not a behaviorist; and the structuralist primarily describes systems but is not a systems theorist. The reason is that structuralism is the study of an interior as seen from outside its own phenomenological boundaries (in a third-person stance)but of necessity, within the boundaries of a larger we (or a first-person plural stance)hence, the objective, third-person, outside, scientific study of first-person interior realities (individual or cultural).8 Systems theory does not attempt to get at a we (nor are the types of wes that it is inextricably involved with highlighted by its own methodology)in no case does typical systems theory access the interiors of first- and second-person event horizons. That is why we say that structuralism is the study of the behavior of interior wholes (3p x 1p); systems theory, the behavior of exterior wholes (3p x 3p).9 When researchers engage in the social practice of systems theory, they are particularly interested in describing the behavior of observable systems; they are describing the exterior behavior of compound individuals such that their relationships or exterior interactions are internal to a social system or nexus-agency. They might take an inside view of this exterior system (such as Luhmanns social autopoiesis) or a more traditional outside view (such as standard systems theory), but at no point do they attempt to get at the first-person (singular or plural) dimensions of the holon. They look at the inside or outside of the exteriors, not at the inside or outside of the interiors. In short, the typical systems theorist does not attempt to get at the I or the we of a holon, but only at the it and the its of a holon. The autopoietic as well as traditional systems theorists are not trying to describe the feelings, prehensions, desires, impulses, insights, luminosities, raptures, satoris, or samadhis of any holon anywhereand, frankly, as systems theorists, could not possibly care less. And if they are interested in such interiors, they immediately translate them into third-person terms and refer to subjective interiors as consisting of data processing modules, information transfer through neural nets and synaptic pathways,

26 linguistic processing units, cognitive computations, digital data bits, and so on. I am not saying those things dont exist, simply that those things are the insides of exteriors, not the insides of interiors. The structuralist, like the systems theorist, is working (at least in part) with a knowledge by description, or a third-person description of a holons behavior. But, unlike the systems theorist, the structuralist is working with the behavior of an interior holonthe behavior of an I or a we, not an it or a system of its.10 Structuralism studies the interior I or we holons from the outside by following their behavior over timewhere behavior means the aspects of these interior holons that manifest in exterior behavior (verbal behavior, cognitive behavior, moral behavior, the moves that chess pieces make, etc.).11 This means that at some point the structuralist must have some sort of access to those interior holons, or else the structuralist will actually have no idea what he or she is measuring, studying, or describing. A systems theorist, on the other hand, can study the traffic patterns of automobiles in a city, the behavior of an ecosystem, the formation of an ant colony, or the behavior of system of gases, with a little or no requirement to get inside the prehensions of those compound individuals. Simply following the relationships of their exterior interactions is basically all that is required (hence, a third-person of third-person). A structuralist is also studying and describing configurations of behavior (either in an individual or a cultural holon). Those behaviorssuch as verbal behavior, or the behavior of human organisms when they congregate in church, or the actions they take when they exchange money at the market, or play a game of chesswill indeed have exterior correlates (because all holons have four quadrants; and, of course, those physical exchanges are links or nodes in various ecosystems, social systems, geopolitical systems, and so on). But those exteriors also have interiors that cannot be reduced to or captured by those exterior exchanges, and therefore those interiors cannot be adequately known by description, only by acquaintance. Hence those interiors themselves cannot be accessed by systems theory, ecology, autopoiesis, behaviorism, or

27 complexity theory, but only by introspection, meditation, phenomenology, hermeneutics, teleprehension, collaborative inquiry, and so on (i.e., the inside-interiors accessed only by methodologies of zone #1). Once that acquaintance is made, by whatever means, those interiors can continue to be explored from the inside by, for example, phenomenology or hermeneutics (1p x 1p) or from the outside by various forms of structuralism or anthropology (3p x 1p). That is what we mean when we say that the structuralist proceeds by developing a knowledge by description of realities known only by acquaintance; and this is where structuralism runs into, and needs, phenomenology and hermeneutics, for they alone actually supply the 1p of the 3p x 1p.

To Kill Culture and Consciousness For example, if I am going to try to study the structure, grammar, or syntax of the Greek language, I simply must learn Greek. Having done so, I can enact and bring forth a generalized linguistic worldspace where I can exchange meaningful tokens and communicate with others in that linguistic worldI have established some sort of background solidarity within which mutual understanding can transpire: I am ushered into the interior domains of that enacted world (via hermeneutic shared horizons). I now have access to various wes in that cultural space, and therefore I can study those wes from the inside or the outside. As a structuralist, I will choose to study them from the outside (but within the overall interior spaces of the we). Once on the interior of that linguistic/cultural space, I am not interested, as a structuralist, in trying to get to know individuals personally, or trying to interpret their particular meanings and values; rather, I am trying to stand back a little bit from the language itself and trying to spot any rules or regularities that it is followingjust like the rules of chess. But I would not be able to follow these linguistic patterns merely from the exterior, because I would not know when a person is making a meaningful utterance or a meaningless noise (and therefore I would not know what to include in the grammar structure and what to

28 exclude: I would not know what is internal meaning versus what is merely inside noise). This is why systems theory has never been able to account for linguistics. What I will find, as a structuralist, is that linguistic signs themselves do indeed follow patternspatterns that are stable over long periods of time, patterns that represent the Kosmic habits of the intersections that people speaking the Greek language have developed over the centuries (and millennia), patterns that embody some of the many ways that sentient beings can touch each other within the felt spaces of shared horizonsand patterns that are sedimented, in this case, in the structure of the Greek language (which is to say, patterns that represent the probability of finding a particular type of linguistic behavior in a particular spacetime locale of the AQAL matrix, to put it in 3p terms; or patterns that represent the ways that two or more souls can feel their togetherness within the horizons of mutual care and understanding, to put it more 1p terms). It is through a third-person look at these first-person realities that syntax and grammar can be elucidated in descriptive terms, which is nothing more than an elucidation of what Greek speakers are already doing anyway. This does not mean that the Greek language (langue) can be studied apart from, or in isolation from, everyday spoken Greek (parole), or that somehow its overall structure (synchronic) is isolable from its history and development (diachronic)both mistakes the pioneering structuralists tended to make. As we will see in Excerpt E (subheading Integral Semiotics), the structure of a language (its syntax) cannot be isolated from its actual utterance and meaning-generating contexts (its semantic), both of which are linked in a pragmatics with the interior intentionality and exterior behavior of its speakers. (As we will also see, this allows us to draw on the work of Jrgen Habermas and his formal pragmatics, which is the only sophisticated linguistic theory that attempts to be integral, and which largely succeeds up to turquoise.) When structuralism attempts to study, say, the developmental line of values in a human being (e.g., red values, blue values, orange values, green values), it must have some sort of

29 understandinghermeneutic understandingof just what those values are and what they mean, or else it simply will not be able to tell when a particular behavior is internal or external to a game. Structuralism is indeed going to study those values from the outside, and from the exterior, but only after, on the interior, it has figured out their general meaning and how to spot it. If, like systems theory, structuralism addressed merely the exterior behaviors, it would collapse all interior intentionalities into single place markers, and then treat the behavior of a human and the behavior of a truck as the same thing: one unit in the anonymous system. This is why we say that approaches such as systems theory, ecology, and social systems inadvertently kill culture and consciousness. As approaches that wonderfully exemplify zone #4 (or 3p x 3p), they are ill-equipped to handle the 1p or interior realities of sentient beings, and thus the actual sentient dimensions of sentient beings are missed by ecology and systems theory. Lets look at that point more carefully.

Ecology Contrasted with Structuralism What I would like to do in this section is present several different examples of why you and I can share the same ecosystemor exterior landscapeand not share the same interior landscape. 12 Systems theorists are fond of saying that systems theory deals with the whole of reality and thus it covers all the holistic bases. For example, they point out that dynamic systems theory can even be used to successfully describe the traffic patterns in large cities. And that is truethe flow patterns of the automobiles follow specific patterns that systems theory captures well. But systems theory cannot tell you if the driver (i.e., the intentionality) of a particular automobile is red, blue, orange, green, and so onand yet those interior domains contain the key not only to much of human existence and motivation, but to all of the feelings of sentient beings throughout the Kosmos. If all we do is describe the traffic patterns of sentient beingsusing ecology, systems theory, chaos and complexity theorythen we have indeed reduced all first-person

30 consciousness to third-person objects, its, and artifacts: we have killed all culture and consciousness. I am not saying that the automobiles dont follow those systems patterns; I am saying those systems patterns are only part of the story. As for the interior storywhether in a cell, a deer, an ape, or a blue memewe have to look elsewhere, not to replace those approaches but to complement them. The specific problem here is that, although all holons have (at least) four quadrants, so that all interiors have exterior correlates, nonetheless a very similar set of exterior physical realities can support significantly different interiors. For example, lets say somebody is in a theta brain-wave state (an exterior-objective state in the brain or UR), which has been demonstrated to support states of artistic creativity, certain types of meditation, and increased learning speeds (in the UL). But, as biofeedback pioneer Elmer Green put it, If somebody is in a theta state, we cant tell if they are meditating or figuring out creative ways to rob a bank. In other words, similar exterior landscapes can support quite different interior landscapes, because there is no simple one-to-one mapping of interiors onto exteriors. They inhabit phenomenological spaces that are not photographic negatives of each other, but follow their own often-quite-different, if not separable, topographies. All of the methodologies listed on the interior or Left-Hand quadrants in figure 2 (such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and structuralism) are attempting to elucidate these interior, non-physically-local phenomena, in both human and non-human sentient beings. Of course these interiors are inseparably connected with exterior realities, including exterior social systems and ecosystems, but the threads of connection are not topological; the thinnest communicative thread will let a person in Moscow and a person in Iceland develop a very strong friendship (a strong LL or cultural we), even though they are otherwise physically separated by thousands of miles and dozens of local ecosystems. Conversely, I can live next door to you, in the identical ecosystem, and still not be friends.

31 In a nutshell, solidarity and geography are not the same thing; sharing values and sharing physical space are not equivalent. Just as with theta brain states (which are the objective exteriors of an individual) and the often different interior states of consciousness they can support, you and I can be in the same theta ecological systemthe same objective exterior networkand yet you are meditating and I am figuring out how to rob a bank. The same ecological system can support a Gandhi and a Charles Manson. To say that the ecosystem is the primary and fundamental realityand that both Gandhi and Manson should simply live in harmony with the ecosystemis actually to say that ecosystem and living in harmony with it are NOT the same thingwhich is exactly my point. In other words, the crucial item, often unnoticed, in ecological approaches is that we can indeed live in harmony with nature or not live in harmony with nature, which means that nature is not the determining factor, which means that ecological consciousness cannot be explained by ecology. This is not a trivial item about a few interiors; it applies to sentient beings across the board. Interior landscapes and exterior landscapes are indeed different aspects or dimensions of the same occasionbut the different is as real as the same. To take a pertinent example: in human beings, truly ecological values do not begin to emerge until the green wave of consciousness development, and they do not flourish until yellow. Prior to those waves of interior development, worldcentric ecological consciousness is not presentit is over the heads of beige, purple, red, and blue. Worldcentric or global ecology is over the heads of purple-meme or tribal consciousness, which, as Clare Graves pointed out, has a different name for every bend in the river but no name for the river. Likewise global ecological awareness is beyond red-egocentric, and beyond blue mythic-membership. Only at green does such an awareness emerge, and only at yellow does it flourishnone of which can be accounted for or explained by ecology itself. In other words, the

32 very realities that allow ecological consciousness to emerge are not accounted for by ecology. (Which is why reducing reality to ecology is actually to devastate ecological realities.) Since these stages of interior development leading to the capacity for ecological consciousness are elucidated only by structuralism, it follows that exterior ecology depends on interior structuralism in order to be effective at all. Me and my blue interiors belong to the local Lions Club; you and your yellow interiors belong to the local Integral Institute. We have already seen that this means that you and I share interior culture up to the level of blue; and thus we can converse within a meaningful we up to the blue level of discourse, because the signs and tokens that we exchange will have similarenough referents up to the blue worldspace (and thus we will share a cultural solidarity up to that point). But green and yellow symbols, words, and signs will be all Greek to me; their referents are literally over my head, and therefore although I can hear their signifiers they have no real meaning for me. I am inside no we such that my intersections are internal to the patterns of those phenomenological spaces. I literally cannot see what you are talking about. Your yellow values include a worldcentric or global ecological consciousness; my blue values do not. We live in the same ecosystem, but only one of us has ecological awareness. Any truly integral ecology would surely want to take all of those facts into consideration. In order to have sustainable economies living in harmony with ecosystems, human beings must have interior levels of development that can hold ecological consciousness: there is no sustainable exterior development without correlative interior development, no exterior landscape that can survive without an interior landscape capable of holding it. It does no good to emphasize the worldcentric Web of Life if people are still at egocentric and ethnocentric levels of interior developmentwhich an alarming 70% of the world population is. Notice that deep ecology, for example, which is a wonderful statement of the necessity of a transformation of consciousness in order to realize ecological interrelatedness, makes the following types of statements, to paraphrase Arne Naess: A human beings sense of self-identity

33 can expand from an identity with the individual organism, to an identity with the family or tribe, to an identity with an entire nation, to an identity with all of humanity. But it can also go one more step and find an identity with all of life, and that is where deep ecology starts. Agreed. But deep ecology has absolutely nothing more to say about those actual stages of interior transformationegocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to Kosmocentricstages that have in fact been studied in extraordinary detail by developmental structuralists. Deep ecology simply asserts the goal without evidencing an understanding of the path to that goal. And the reason for that lacuna or crippling omission, we were saying, is that ecology is essentially a zone #4 methodology, but the interior stages on the way to an ecological goal are elucidated only by zone #2 paradigms. Obviously an effective ecology would include both, because otherwise ecology promotes a goal with no path, a noble ideal with no means, a wonderful ambition supported only by vaporware and exhortations and recriminations, not effective practices. A truly integral or AQAL ecology would take all of these factors into account. Integral Ecology is being forged by several of my colleagues at Integral Institute (e.g., Michael Zimmerman, Sean Hargens, Chris Desser), an approach that includes not only the intricate webs of ecosystems but the interior stages/structures of consciousness that allow the emergence of ecological awareness which itself wants to protect ecology. In our opinion, anything short of an AQAL or integral approach to ecology is likely to fail, not because it is wrong but partial. On the other hand, using an AQAL framework and its Integral Methodological Pluralism allows an integration of most of the major schools of ecology, each of which has an important piece of the overall integral puzzle. (We will return to integral ecology in Excerpt E.)

Hermeneutics Contrasted with Structuralism Call this section Acquaintance versus Description: You Had to Be There.

34 Hermeneutics, because it is the inside story of interiors (1p x 1p), involves a knowledge by acquaintance, whereas the other three zones, because they involve outsides and/or exteriors, involve a knowledge by description (i.e., the other three zones all have at least one 3p in them.) This is perhaps the single most importance difference between hermeneutics/phenomenology and the other three zones, and it is this crucial dimension, needless to say, that is devastated by any exclusive reliance on the other zones (from structuralism to ecology to systems theory). This is why a reliance on structuralism, important as it is, cannot carry the day (as no zonenor quadrant, nor level, nor line, nor state, nor typecan alone). This is vital to recognize, because structuralists, like any other advocates of a particular paradigm, can themselves become involved in various sorts of absolutisms (including quadrant absolutism, zone absolutism, and stream absolutism). Me and my blue interior can read the book Spiral Dynamics, and I can memorize the descriptions and definitions of all the major structures and vMemes. I can memorize the words and signifiers that define beige, purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and turquoise. If you ask me to describe turquoise, I might be able to do so perfectly. Does that mean that I am at the turquoise level or structure of development? Not at all. Structures, as we were saying, are third-person descriptions (in it language) of first-person realities, and therefore I can memorize the descriptions without actually being acquainted with those realities. I have access to these its by description, but I only have access to the corresponding I realities if I myself transform to those levels, stages, or structures and thus know those realities by acquaintance. In short, knowledge by acquaintance involves transformation; knowledge by description involves translation. (This is another way of stating the problem with ecology, an inadequacy that also hobbles most of the new paradigm approaches, because many people are simply repeating the descriptions of highly integrated waves of consciousness, an enactive web of life, nondual

35 awareness, and integral solidarities without having actually transformed to a knowledge by acquaintance of those integral realities.) Robert Kegan (whose booksincluding The Evolving Self, In Over Our Heads, and Languages of Transformationare superb exemplars of adequate structuralism), points out that it takes an average of five years for most people to move through any major stage of development. Thus, for example, if I am at blue (and lack worldcentric ecological awareness), and you are two stages of development ahead of me, at green (and possess a well-developed ecological awareness), and you are attempting to convince me that I should adopt an ecological perspective such as yours, then all you will have to do is wait 10 years for me to develop to that level, and then I will agree with you. In other words, the idea that we can dialogue ourselves into ecological awareness; or that if we merely learn a new paradigm; or if we replace the mechanistic Newtonian-Cartesian worldview with a holistic worldviewall of those approaches are considerably off the mark. Precisely because those approaches lack the methodologies of zone #2, they are not cognizant of the stages of consciousness development that are necessary in order to be able to hold a truly worldcentric, holistic, integral worldview in the first place. As we were saying earlier, these approaches are, in effect, presenting a wonderful goal with no way to reach it; a noble vision with no path to attain it; an ecology that does little for ecology. Path-less paradigms, alas. (Which is to say, paradigm-less paradigms, since paradigms are paths, not maps, and these approaches present nothing but maps of a territory nobody knows how to reach.) But that is exactly the strength of adequate structuralism and the wonderful contribution of zone #2 methodologies. We will return to the exact nature of structural research below, in conjunction with Carol Gilligans study of the stages of female moral development, and outline the gifts that structuralism brings to integral methodological pluralism, including an understanding of how to actually walk the path to worldcentric awareness (in ecology, politics, education, medicine).

36 In the meantime, there is indeed a profound difference between knowledge by description, which we can know by translation, and knowledge by acquaintance, which we can know only by transformation. Individuals can learn the 3p descriptions, maps, names, and definitions of higher waves of development (including ecological systems awareness) without actually transforming to those higher levels, and this may ironically prevent them from taking the steps necessary to actually awaken these higher levels in themselves (and thus be of actual service to Gaia). This is a constant problem with new-paradigm approaches that offer merely descriptions without development. And, for the same reason, it can be a problem with structuralism itself. Because it presents a wonderful series of 3p maps of 1p awareness, structuralism can inadvertently contribute to people merely memorizing the map and thus never discovering the territory. As usual, only when structuralism takes its place at the integral table can it be of service to a greater good. Structuralism can indeed describe the outsides of interior waves of consciousness, but those waves can be known from the inside only by acquaintance, only by transformation, only by direct touch in the living heart, a song that can be sung only from within.

Heidegger and Foucault: Classic Zone #1 and Zone #2 Approaches An excellent (and extremely influential) example of the basic differences between hermeneutics (zone #1) and structuralism (zone #2) can be seen in the work of Heidegger and Foucault. Although they drew heavily on both zones, they also gave disproportionate weight to one of them, Heidegger focusing most profoundly on the meaning-generating nature of zone #1 and the necessity to get at it from the inside (1p x 1p), and Foucault standing back, in a monological overview, and surveying those events from the outside (3p x 1p) as structures that create worlds. Both were emphasizing the postmodern enactive nature of knowledgewe dont perceive worlds, we co-create thembut those enactive occasions were approached from within

37 and from without, respectively. Heidegger particularly looked at the we from the inside, and Foucault, from the outsideits almost that simple. Dreyfus and Rabinow do an excellent job of summarizing Foucaults approach and differentiating it from Heideggers: Foucaults devotion to the description of concrete structures understood as conditions of existence [i.e., structures that create or enact a world] bears a striking similarity to what Heidegger, in Being and Time, calls an existential analytic. But there is an importance difference. For although both Heidegger and Foucault attempt to... relate the factical principles which structure the space governing the emergence of objects and subjects [i.e., enact a world], Heideggers method is hermeneutic or internal, whereas Foucaults is archaeological or external. Foucault is explicitly rejecting both Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian hermeneutics when he opposes to the exegetical account the exteriority of the archaeological attitude.13 For those unfamiliar with the world-creating power of intersubjectivity, that paragraph might seem a bit meaningless. If so, there is an example laterabout fun things in Kansasthat might help clarify the issues (see Vertical Outlaws, Part IV). In the meantime, what both Heidegger and Foucault are saying is that what naive awareness takes to be a pregiven world (given to everybody and just lying around out there) is actually co-created and enacted by various collective (or intersubjective) networks. I am simply suggesting that those world-creating networks (or conditions of existence) can be approached from the inside (a la Heidegger) or the outside (a la Foucault), a fact that Dreyfus and Rabinow recognize in that they themselves point it out. Needless to say, in my opinion we would not reject (Husserlian) phenomenology or (Heideggerian) hermeneutics in favor of archaeology/genealogy, as Foucault attempted to do, but rather include all of them (in their adequate forms) in any integral methodological pluralism, inasmuch as they are all highlighting important dimensions of the native or indigenous perspectives of being-in-the-world. We will see why Foucault attempted to reject the interior

38 approaches of both Husserl and Heidegger; and see also that what he was really doing was emphasizing the zone #2 aspects not adequately incorporated by either of them, with the final remedy being an inclusion of all of them, not a food fight between them. Foucaults work had many features, but it always focused on varieties of intersubjective networks and their power over individuals. Whether systems of discourse (epistemes) or systems of nondiscursive practices (dispositifs), these vast anonymous networks are responsible for a good deal of the co-creation of the world that naive consciousness takes to be given. Never has the social construction of reality found a more persuasive advocate than Foucault (even if, in its extremes, it turns on itself and needs to be shorn of its absolutisms); still, whatever one happens to think of Foucault and his work, after Foucault it is simply impossible for intellectuals with integrity to ignore the power of zone #2 and its indelible mesh in human consciousness. Nothing can more thoroughly shake your notions of truth, goodness, and beauty than a sustained look at what previous cultures have said about them. This was Foucaults strength, an unrelenting and meticulous look at what previous (archaeological) cultures authoritatively stated concerning notions of health, sickness, truth, goodness, right, and wrong, the vast majority of which change almost as often as hem lengths in fashion. As one psychiatric specialist put it after reading an early Foucault treatise on mental illness: Well, if what he writes is correct, our discipline has no truth at all. As I tried to suggest in Integral Historiography, there are two basic responses to the dizzying cavalcade of truth through the ages: one can dissolve everything into a pluralistic relativism (which, as soon as you assert that itthat pluralistic relativismis the correct response, becomes a performative self-contradiction), or you can get sober and start looking at the developmental patterns that this unfolding evolution displays (in which case you are involved in genealogy)those are the two main roads through postmodernism. Foucault had a hand in each, but he never ceased looking for an integrative framework that would include the important if partial truths of both.

39 Thus, after analyzing the shifting, culturally relative aspects of knowledge, Foucault invariably examined the constant or universal components of knowledge that would allow such relativism. For example, if we say that all knowledge is socially constructed and contextdependent (and hence all knowledge will change from culture to culture), that claim itself is a universal claim. It is claiming something that is true for all knowledge everywhere. That claim itself is not relativistic, not pluralistic, not interpretive, but rather claims to be universally true for all peoples, in all cultures, at all times. Cultural pluralism, in other words, is a universalist theory of knowledge. Thus, if you are going to assert that various cultures have different values, truths, and knowledge, then you must outline a theory of knowledge about why and how that can happen. Most postmodernists gleefully pointed out the first or relativistic part, but then catastrophically missed the second part. Foucault acknowledged and addressed both, another of his many strengths. (This is why, in the wake of adequate genealogy, every comprehensive metatheory about anything must have a component that explains why and how the notions of truth, goodness, and beauty themselves evolve and change, while also showing various types of continuity, and this must apply to the metatheory itself. AQAL metatheory explicitly does so, by formulating items such as Kosmic habits, evolutionary emergence, transcend-and-include, post-metaphysical structures of being and knowing, tetra-enaction, and so on.) Foucault accordingly had one major project in all of his work: he meticulously researched and documented historically shifting notions of truth, goodness, and beauty, and then asked, what is it about knowledge that everywhere allows this to happen? What are features found in all knowing that allow so much of it to shift? During his illustrious career, he came up with three major answers, all of which involved important and enduring contributions: archaeology, genealogy, and interpretive analytics. We will be briefly discussing each of those as we go along, noting their important role in any integral methodological pluralism. The central question is always: how is it that various

40 epochs allowed certain items to be true, and disallowed, marginalized, or suppressed other truths? In his archaeology period, Foucault focused on verbal discursive patterns (or epistemes) that governed what could be legitimately discussed; in his genealogy period, on various nonverbal or nondiscursive practices that governed truth; and in his interpretive analytics, a way to integrate these various strands. In his early work, Foucault highlighted the unfolding of various epistemes (or cognitive worldviews) that implicitly and unconsciously molded consciousness. An episteme determines both what can be seen in the world and what can be known about it. An episteme, according to Foucault, is the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems [of knowledge]. Note, as always, the holism of the structures. These epistemes are not usually conscious to those whom they govern, but rather can be unearthed by neostructuralism/archaeology precisely because of its distancing (3p) component. Foucault later emphasized that discursive (or verbal) networks are embedded in nondiscursive (or nonverbal) social practices (such as body language, the physical shape of a prison, sexual practices, the hidden power-structures of knowledge, the unspoken rules of syntax). As we have often seen, a paradigm is not a theory but a social practice underlying theories; thus, we could say that Foucault went on to analyze various paradigms (dispositifs) underlying various theories (epistemes), especially as evidenced in different periods of human history. For example, in Madness and Civilization, Foucault outlined four major phases of the discourse on madness in the West from the Middle Ages to the modern era: from the sixteenth century (wise fool), to the classical period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (madness versus reason), to the nineteenth century (madness as medical illness), to today (a doubling, with madness and genius ironically intertwined). In each of those periods, a dominant episteme (discursive mode or worldview) governed the types of things (and knowledge of things) that could arise in the first place; those epistemes themselves were coherent

41 wholes or collective structures that related various parts to each other in such a seamless way that the world thus co-created seemed to be there from the start. (In the terms of AQAL metatheory, the allowable discourse in any period were those types of statements that were internal to the regnant nexus or collective network-agency regulating communicative interactions, networks without which communication cannot occur at all, but networks that therefore screen out or marginalize all discourse taken to be peripheral by the network. In the example about Kansas that we will discuss in more detail later, what happened was that a town in Kansas recently banned the teaching of evolution; this means that serious discussions or discourse about the scientific theory of evolution are not allowed, they do not fit the prevailing episteme, they do not follow the lawand hence, they are outlawedso that the regnant nexus of the political we of the town now marginalizes, excludes, or oppresses any discourse on evolution. This is classic Foucault, an examination of the process of translative legitimacy as it applies to verbal-discursive behavior: what is allowed, and what is outlawed, when it comes to what you can talk about without getting disciplined and punished by the we. Foucault, of course, was interested in helping to free us from the power of these marginalizing discourses, discourses that can only be spotted by zone #2 methodologies. We will return to this emancipatory power of structuralism in a moment.) Foucault was approaching these collective interior events from the outside, in a stance of third-person looking, as contrasted to both Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian hermeneutics, which, for all their own significant differences, were attempting to maintain, with regard to interiorities, an inside stance of first-person touching (singular or plural, intentional or cultural, subjective or intersubjective, I or we, phenomenology or hermeneutics, respectively.). This is why, in the above quote, Dreyfus and Rabinow point out that Foucault is explicitly rejecting both Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian hermeneutics. Foucault himself stated that the cultural archaeologist isolates statements in order to analyze them in an exteriority.... Perhaps we should speak of neutrality rather than exteriority; but even

42 this word implies rather too easily a suspension of belief, whereas it is a question of rediscovering that outside in which, in their deployed space, enunciative events are distributed.14 What Foucault was conveying is that, using the third-person dimensions of being-in-theworld that are highlighted with neostructuralism (the 3p of the 3p x 1p), one could indeed get at aspects of the enactive, world-making nature of knowing that one cannot see or feel using other perspectives. These enactive structures (epistemes and dispositifs) are, according to AQAL metatheory, how intersubjective or cultural (first-person plural) occasions look when viewed from the outside in a 3p stance from the yellow wave or higher. Thus: Foucault and the hermeneuticists agree that practices free objects and subjects [i.e., social practices co-create or enact subjects-that-know as well as objects-that-are-known, and they do so] by setting up what Heidegger calls a clearing [worldspace], in which only certain objects, subjects, or possibilities for actions can be identified and individuated. They also agree that neither the primary relations of physical and social causality, nor the secondary relations of intentional mental causality can account for the way practices free entities. But they differ fundamentally in their account of how this freeing works. According to the hermeneuticists, who describe the phenomenon from the inside [hori-zone #1], nondiscursive practices govern human action by setting up a horizon of intelligibility in which only certain discursive practices and their objects and subjects make sense. Foucault, the archaeologist looking from the outside [hori-zone #2], rejects this appeal to meaning. He contends that, viewed with external neutrality, the discursive practices themselves provide a meaningless space of rule-governed transformations in which statements, subjects, objects, concepts and so forth are taken by those involved to be meaningful.... The archaeologist studies mute statements and thus avoids becoming involved in the serious search for truth and meaning he describes.15 Notice several items immediately. (1) Foucault and Heidegger agree that the world is not given but co-created or enacted by the types of inquiry (practices, paradigms) used by individuals who engage that world. They also

43 agree that, although these practices include verbal and discursive aspects, they also involve nondiscursive practices, or the almost infinite number of ways that human beings interact that are not merely verbal (from everyday interactions, to body language, to the physical shape of a school building, to the unspoken rules of etiquette, etc.). (2) Most significantly, note that they also agree that neither the primary relations of physical and social causality, nor the secondary relations of intentional mental causality can account for the way practices free entities. In other words, they both agree that this enaction (or world-creating) cannot be fully explained by physical causality (which is the Upper Right), by social causality (which is the Lower Right), or by mental intentionality (which is the Upper Left), but rather must also be explained by varieties of cultural background and intersubjectivity (which is the Lower Left and represents the postmodern breakthrough insight, which we summarize by saying that all holons have a Lower-Left quadrant, or that all occasions are tetraenacted). (3) From that agreement point, their paradigms diverge, depending upon which specific indigenous perspective or hori-zone they inhabit when they launch their social practice of inquiry. Heidegger and the hermeneuticists attempt to stay as close as possible to the insides of the interiors, elucidating the semantics and the meaning-horizons of intersubjectivity (or the ways that our intersections generate meaning for each other). Foucault, following the pioneering structuralists (which he updates into neostructuralism), wants to get outside of those meaningevents and see if he cant spot something that you cannot see if you are too close to the phenomena; he therefore chooses a 3p of 1p (zone #2) instead of a 1p of 1p ( zone #1). (4) Because both of them are still focusing on the communal holon, note the striking similarity in both of them in the search for the nexus-agency (or the regnant nexus) governing the intersections of individuals in a cultural worldspace. For the hermeneuticist, as Dreyfus and Rabinow point out, nondiscursive practices govern human action by setting up a horizon of intelligibility in which only certain discursive practices and their objects and subjects make

44 sense. The hermeneuticist, operating within zone #1, is looking for the shared horizons of meaning that govern (i.e., regnant nexus) the types of interactions that will make sense to individuals in the first place. Foucault, on the other hand, dispenses with the insides of those event horizons and looks at them from the outside instead, so he is not concerned with their semantic but their syntax, not their feel but their look, not their meaning but their observedstructureyet he is still looking for the regnant nexus, but this time described from without, not within. Hence, as Dreyfus and Rabinow explain, Foucault, the archaeologist looking from the outside [zone #2], rejects this appeal to meaning. He contends that, viewed with external neutrality, the discursive practices themselves provide a meaningless space of rule-governed transformations in which statements, subjects, objects, concepts and so forth are taken by those involved to be meaningful.... Thus, Foucault is particularly involved in the search for the regnant nexus of those interactionshe is looking for the rule-governed transformations in which statements, subjects, objects, concepts and so forth are taken by those involved to be meaningful.... Those rule-governed transformationsmuch like the rules of chess or the grammar of native languagesare the regnant nexus of the cultural intersections involving those phenomena, a nexus that therefore governs the intersections internal to the nexus, and an interior nexus that the hermeneuticists are looking at from the inside and the neostructuralists from the outside. Needless to say, for any truly Integral Methodological Pluralism, both of those modes of inquiryhermeneutics and structuralismgrounded as they are in various displays of a calculus of indigenous perspectives, are indispensable. The main problem with any of these approaches occurs only when they suppose that they alone have the total story. Shorn of their absolutisms, however, they bring their extraordinary gifts to the integral banquet, a feast that would be so much less without them.

45 The Unfinished Project of Postmodernity Foucaults approach has been called a double phenomenology, in that he bracketed not only the truth of a statement but its meaning as well. In Excerpt C, we saw that phenomenology appropriately dispenses with questions of whether a mental image corresponds to some sort of concrete sensorimotor event, like a rock, and instead focuses on the texture of the mental event itself and its own felt-meaning, whether or not it has an exterior referent. Foucault went one step further and dispensed with even that; hence, The archaeologist studies mute statements and thus avoids becoming involved in the serious search for truth and meaning he describes. As useful as that approach is, the question sooner or later becomes, just how far can you stand back from anything? That is, at what point does Foucaults approach move from true but partial into an absolutisma zone absolutism, in this casethat starts rendering itself not only selfcontradictory but monstrous? The history of Foucault is a history of postmodernism in a nutshell. Now that the dust has settled, now that the absolutisms of postmodernism have been exposed, and now that postmodernism itself is beginning to adopt a smaller, more accurate self-imageand, as always, with 20/20 hindsightit is becoming much clearer what partial truths were embraced, what absolutisms were exalted, and what remedial measures are helpful in rescuing the enduring if partial contributions of postmodernism. It is also clear that the one genius of recent postmodernism was Foucault. Even when someone like Habermas, in The Discourse of Modernity, engages Derrida, it is obvious that Habermas is unimpressed (ditto the likes of Lyotard, Deleuze, Lacan); but when Habermas addresses Foucault, he jerks alert; he approaches Foucault as one might approach a cobra: Foucault was simply brilliantand dangerouswhen it came to elucidating the extraordinary power that social practices have in molding what we call truth, meaning, and knowledge. After Foucaults contributions, no one can ever take intersubjectivity for granted. One must come up with a coherent explanation of the various types

46 of cultural nexuses with which individuality is enmeshed (or the ways that subjectivity is entrained with intersubjectivity), or reveal oneself as hopelessly pre-postmodern. (This is especially important in any post-metaphysical approach, in that postmodernisms contribution to post-metaphysics is an elucidation of the ways that intersubjective networks cocreate or enact worlds, worlds that metaphysics mistook to be pregiven.) Foucaults trajectory is the trajectory of postmodernism: from structuralism (which really started it all), to neostructuralism, to post-structuralism, to a wobbling between poststructuralism and hermeneutics, to an attempted (but never quite completed) synthesis of hermeneutics and neo/poststructuralism. It was structuralismin its early, pioneering, and now largely outmoded formthat nevertheless first made it starkly obvious that individuals (subjectivity and intentionality) are following cultural patterns that are not apparent to the individuals so governed. Even if the form of pioneering structuralism is no longer adequate, that conclusion is accepted by all schools of postmodernism. The simplest example is language and the rules of grammar, rules that every native language speaker follows without realizing it. Structuralismprecisely because it looked at systems, webs, and entire networks of interiorities (structuralism is holistic culturalism) immediately noticed that individual subjects were actually something of puppets whose strings were being pulled by what Foucault famously called a vast anonymous system without a subject. What the neo/structuralists meant by that statement has often caused confusion, so let me give a simple example. Lets assume that Spiral Dynamics is a fairly accurate depiction of the values line. If somebody is coming from the blue value meme (or blue vMeme), much of what they are saying is actually governed by that blue structure itself, and in many ways what they are saying is therefore predictable, at least in outline. What is coming out of their mouths is in part the blue structure, not their own thoughtswhich is why neostructuralists would say, for example, It is language that speaks, not individuals who speak. The blue structure is

47 anonymous and without a subject, because it is similar in all subjects. So it is the blue structure speaking, not the person, and the blue structure is a vast anonymous system without a subject. Thus postmodernism would begin to speak of the end of the subject, the end of man, the end of intentionality (and even a phenomenology to end phenomenology), all of which were set in motion by early structuralism, which had discovered that individual subjectivity (or the Upper-Left quadrant) is set in cultural fields and networks (of the Lower Left) whose regnant nexuses are calling many of the shots. The instabilities and inadequacies of early structuralism immediately gave way to two successors: neostructuralism and poststructuralism. Foucault had a hand in both. He pioneered neostructuralism, which took the fledgling insights of structuralism and reworked them in a much more adequate fashion (e.g., The Archaeology of Knowledge). Poststructuralism, on the other hand, had begun its own meteoric rise, which Foucault had also helped pioneer with his explorations of the ways that interiorities do not appear to be anchored in any exteriorities at all, but appear to be following nothing but the various tropes of language as it plays with itself. Where neostructuralism had retained at least a semblance of grounding in the sensorimotor or exterior worldsuch that signifiers had some sort of contact with objective referentspoststructuralism severed that connection altogether and found only chains of sliding signifiers that had no referent apart from their own desires.16 Poststructuralism, a bit carried away with itself, attempted so aggressively to deny interiority that its famous sliding chain of signifiers soon became indistinguishable from a bad form of systems theorypoststructuralism had slid from zone #2 into zone #4: merely a 3p of 3p, surfaces of surfaces, shadows of shadows, with no interiority, no depth, no culture and no consciousness. The result of the postmodern slide was famously stated by Bret Easton Ellis as, Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found..., which one reviewer summarized as, Everything reduced to the flattest surface.... There is no within. The nihilism and narcissism of extreme

48 postmodernism, pluralism, and poststructuralism, especially in their deconstructive forms, increasingly came to the fore, eventually dominating academic discourse and ironically marginalizing alternative modes of discourse (ironic in that the postmodernist pluralists ended up exemplifying the marginalizing activity that they attacked). The postmodern poststructuralists all started sounding the same, as out of their mouths came the green meme, a vast anonymous system without a subject. Foucault himself, as the bona fide genius in the postmodern parade, could be counted on to pick up the pieces and reweave them into something of enduring value, which he began to do in the last or third major phase of his work, where he circled back on various too-hastily-rejected truths and attempted to assembly them a sturdier frameworkfrom archaeology/structuralism to genealogy/neostructuralism to ethnics/integrative.
17

In Foucaults earlier work, especially the archaeology, he bracketed both truth and meaning (double phenomenology), and he consequently was himself disdainful of anything resembling depth or interiority language. His double bracketing (a phenomenology to end phenomenology) therefore was excluded from depth and interpretation from the start: just the exteriors. Nonetheless, the sciences that he saw as beginning to escape the Age of Man and humanism were precisely those sciences that began to reintroduce the notion of depth and interioritypsychoanalysis, ethnology, linguistics. (Humanism, by the way, was criticized by all postmodernists because it pictured an individual as the bearer of intentionality, will, and responsibility, whereas structuralism was beginning to show that much of those allegedly individual items were in fact molded by cultural nexuses of which the individualand humanismwere largely unaware. Humanism, for example, would see a pluralist as operating from his own free will and choice, whereas neostructuralism would see the pluralist as voicing a vast anonymous system without a subject, principally the green meme. Thus, humanism had no way to get at the implicit, background, intersubjective, power-structures and expose them to a deeper emancipation: humanism could

49 only produce green-meme individuals who naively assumed responsibility for their own actions, and thus humanism could never free individuals from the green meme itself.) As Foucault moved from archaeology and genealogy to ethics, he began an attempt to integrate both hermeneutics and neostructuralism into a more judicious use of understanding from the inside, or a reconstructed hermeneutics: his approach at that point has been called interpretive analytics, which is a wonderful phrase that captures his attempted integration of zone #1 (interpretive: from the inside) and zone #2 (analytics: from the outside). But even when Foucault was rejecting interiority as a methodological ploy, he nonetheless had his own versions of it (or else he couldnt have formed any sort of judgments in the first place). He himself describes his approach thus: Whereas the interpreter [i.e., the disdained hermeneutics] is obliged to go to the depths of things, like an excavator, the moment of interpretation [his genealogy] is like an overview, from higher and higher up, which allows the depth to be laid out in front of him in more and more profound visibility; depth is resituated as an absolutely superficial secret. Foucaults exterior approach, his bracketing of truth and meaning, his confinement to mute statements (monological), his happy positivismthese are all maneuvers of a zone #2 methodology starting hazardously to slide into zone #4: just the surfaces in cascading systems of 3p place markers. Even into his genealogy phase, Genealogy avoids the search for depth. Instead, it seeks the surfaces of events.... Postmodernism had slid into its nihilistic endgame: endless surfaces that could not account for their own existence, nor even allow them. As Foucault came to realize, cultural archaeology/genealogy is a legitimate endeavor, but it cannot stand alone. That approach by itself is deeply contradictory and self-annihilating: since it brackets meaning and truth altogether (truth is merely something so-labeled in a discursive system, or so employed in service of power), then this approach itself cannot claim that it is true. It hovers above the ground with no reason to be taken seriously. Foucault accordingly came to see that it has to be supplemented with a more balanced view that includes not only nondiscursive

50 social practices but also hermeneutic interiors (or, at the least, a better interpretation of interpretation). Dreyfus and Rabinow: What Foucault offers in The History of Sexuality is an incisive example of what a better interpretation looks like. As Gilles Deleuze would remark, Foucault came to thinking of the past as it is condensed on the insideand not merely the outside, as the extreme exteriority of his previous work thought. Dreyfus and Rabinow conclude that Foucaults approach at this pointinterpretive analyticswas an uncompleted project: Foucault owes us an interpretive description of his own right way to do interpretation. He has not provided us one yet. Alas, his death removed that possibility. Still, it is easy to see the direction in which he was headed. The whole point of a zone #2 approach is that, indeed, human action cannot be adequately accounted for by any combination of mental intentionality (UL), physical causality (UR), or social causality (LR), but must be supplemented with an understanding of the fields and networks of intersubjectivity (LL). That necessity bids us stay close to the intersubjective interiors that are being elucidated; therefore, as much as we might rely on the 3p component of any 3p x 1p, we simply cannot forget the 1p itself, nor the methodologies that address those first-person realities. The only thing that keeps zone #2 structuralism of any sort (early, post, neo, integral) from sliding into zone #4 systems theory is its anchoring in interior phenomena, and thus any adequate structuralism has to acknowledge, honor, and anchor itself in zone #1. Foucault came to see that both zone #1 and zone #2 are important, hence interpretive analytics. This new method, comment Dreyfus and Rabinow, combines a type of archaeological analysis which preserves the distancing effect of structuralism [the exterior, objectifying, 3p component], and an interpretive dimension which develops the hermeneutic insight that the investigator is always situated and must understand the meaning of his cultural practices from within them [the interior, intersubjective, 1p component supplied by zone #1].18 And so it came about, in this wonderfully fractured fairy tale, that Foucault himself, after having led the wild goose chase of postmodern poststructuralism, circled back again to the

51 enduring contributions of an adequate structuralism, which means, a third-person approach to first-person realities that actually honors both the third person and the first person, both of whom are, in the last analysis, sentient beings to be trusted.

Part III. Examples of the Social Practice of Adequate Structuralism

Basic Steps in the Paradigm of Adequate Structuralism If we can switch now from an appreciation of the importance of including the 1p in any 3p x 1p approaches, lets look now at the importance of the 3p component. The methodologies of zone #2 have one foot in both worlds, so to speakthe world of first-person realities and the world of third-person realities. (Typically, they are therefore condemned by both of those worlds, but thats another story.) It is by using the paradigm or social practice of adequate structuralism that we can determine, for example, the steps necessary to develop ecological consciousness, given that ecosystems themselves do not produce ecological consciousness nor explain it. How, then, does adequate structuralism work? In individuals and groups? (Let me repeat that in fig. 2, structuralism is listed only as the outside of first-person singular, not plural, which is labeled cultural anthropology; the reason is that structuralism examines the patterns or internality codes of a holon, and a collective or communal holon is a much more difficult and complex event than an individual holon. Structuralism can be, and is, used in both, but finds its simplest application in individuals.) As an example of adequate structuralism, lets a take a famous study and set it an AQAL framework. A poor man is married to a woman who is terminally ill. There is a medicine at the local pharmacy that will save her life. The man cannot afford the medicine. Does he have the right to steal it?

52 The background: Even when structuralists are focusing on individuals, they usually begin by studying large groups or aggregates of individuals, and they do so for several reasons. First, there is the complex issue of transformation. We saw that, as a very rough generalization, it takes an average of about 5 years for a person to transform from one given stage to the next, because vertical transformation from one structure to another is generally a laborious and prolonged growth process. It follows that if you study only one individual, you will have to study that individual for decades in order to actually see any transformations or development. On the other hand, if you study large groups of individuals, you will catch many of them undergoing transformation, and hence you can study the development of structures more easily. With groups, you can study transformation. Second, structuralism is a third-person approach to first-person realities (a description of the outward behavior of interiors known by acquaintance). But that means that a fair amount of the descriptive (or third-person) aspects of structuralism can be engaged in without personal transformation on the part of the researcher. The individual reading Spiral Dynamics, for example, can learn or memorize the definitions of the various levels without necessarily transforming to all of them. In terms of the first-person realities, this is a handicap; but in terms of the third-person aspects, it is a bit of an advantage. Just as a scientist can describe the behavior of a mountain lion without himself becoming a mountain lion (or directly communing with the first-person realities of a mountain lion), so a researcher can, to some degree, observe and describe the behavior of interior holons without fully entering into their insides. Of course, at some point hermeneutic entry is absolutely essential to structuralism (its the first-person component of structuralism), but a good deal of the third-person component of structuralism is just that: an outside view of the behavior. What that meansand this is one of its great strengthsis that structuralism as a mode of inquiry allows a researcher to initially observe a large number of transformations without himself having to personally transform. That is the advantage of the distancing contained in its

53 third-person components. If it takes the average person five years to transform, then any given researcher could study by acquaintance only one structure every five years or so. But the thirdperson or descriptive component of structuralism, by temporarily removing the structuralist from the burden of first-person transformation, allows the researcher to follow and observe various outward aspects of the development of a large number of structures and stages that he or she would never be able to observe if confined to the necessities of only first-person methodologies. This is why these important stages of consciousness evolution cannot be seen or accessed by first-person of first-person paradigmsthese stages of development cannot be seen by collaborative inquiry, participatory epistemology, action inquiry, hermeneutics, or phenomenology. You can introspect all you want, or practice collaborative inquiry and hermeneutics and participatory pluralism all you want, and you will not see these types of stages.19 Nor will meditation disclose these particular types of developmental stages. Sit on a zazen mat for years, and you will never see a thought that says, This is stage-3 morals, this the multiplistic value structure, this is the conscientious self-sense, etc. These important stages are invisible to zone #1. Nor, of course, will you see these stages if you practice merely zone #3 or #4 methodologies, such as systems theory or ecology. They are, rather, the special gift of the zone #2 event horizon of indigenous perspectives. Take the example of the medicine for the ill wife. Should the husband steal the medicine? If you introspect your own awareness for an answer, you might begin to morally reason about this dilemma and come up with some sort of answer. It might be a very good answer, too. Or perhaps you might discuss this issue with some friends or colleagues, and engage in a hermeneutic or collaborative inquiry to see what answer seems most appropriate. The former is a first-person of first-person singular, and the latter is a first-person of first-person plural. Both are extremely valuable paradigms or modes of human inquiry.

54 But none of those methodologies, no matter how intensively engaged and successfully completed, will ever reveal stages or waves of the moral responseunless you and your friends are willing to have that conversation for a decade or two. What the structuralist does instead is simply pose that question to very large groups of individuals and then note, say, their verbal and cognitive behavior in response to those questions. What structuralists have found is that individuals tend to give three very different responses to that particular questionshould the husband steal the medicine? The first response is yes; the second is no; and the third is yes. Response 1 is yes, the husband should steal the medicine. Why? Because what is right is what I say is right. What is morally right is whatever I want, and if I want to steal it, Ill steal it. Response 2 is no, the husband should not steal the medicine. Why? Because what is right is what society and the law says is right, and the law says you cannot steal the medicine, and therefore the husband should not do so under any circumstances. Response 3 is yes, the husband should steal the medicine. Why? Because there are larger principles involved here, and in this case, life is more important that a conventional rule amounting to a few dollars. Life is more valuable than that. What the structuralist has done is pose a dilemma to a group of individuals, note the responses to that dilemma, and then see if those responses show any pattern (or fall into any types or classes). This, for example, is exactly what Carol Gilligan did with the research summarized in her book In a Different Voice. Instead of Should the husband steal the medicine?, one of her questions was, Should a woman be allowed to have an abortion? Gilligan, too, found the same three general responses that I just summarized: yes, she has the right to an abortion; no, she does not have the right to an abortion; yes, she does have the right. (Those classes of responses are, of course, the outside or third-person descriptions of the interior realities of the individuals responding to the questions. Hence, a third-person of first-person.)

55 If the structuralist notices any general classes of responses, such as the ones Carol Gilligan found, then the structuralist might follow that same group over a period of a year or more. If it is a large group, and if the responses that the structuralist noticed are actually stages, then the structuralist will find the following: if a person who originally gave one response changes her response, it is in the direction of the next response, not in the direction of the previous response. In other words, if the person originally gave response 2, and if she then consistently changes her response, it is always to response 3, not 1. In short, there is a directionality here, or a stage sequence, at least for that group. Thus, if the first general step of adequate structuralism is noticing any classes of responses, the second step is trying to determine if those classes are actually stagesthat is, if they emerge in a sequence that cannot be altered by social or environmental conditioning. (If they are real stages, the reason they cannot be altered by social conditioning is the same reason that the sequence atoms to molecules to cells cannot be altered by environmental conditioningyou cant have cells first and then atoms, because cells are composed of atoms. True stages are compound individuals that become ingredients, elements, or subholons in succeeding compound individuals, and you cannot alter that sequence without destroying it, just as you cannot change the sequence letters to words to sentences: you cannot first have sentences and then words, no matter how much social or environmental conditioning you apply to somebody. The same is true of real stages in any realm. They represent the directionality of development or evolution in that realmwhat Prigogine calls the asymmetry of times arrow and that directionality cannot be reversed without destroying the entire sequence. They represent, in fact, what we are calling Kosmic habits in that realm.) The structuralist therefore follows this group over a period of yearsa longitudinal studyand watches very carefully the sequential relation of these classes of responses. If they do indeed emerge in a sequence that does not seem alterable by environmental conditioning, then the

56 structuralist provisionally accepts that these classes of responses are stages in a developmental sequence of some sort (at least for this group). At the next step, structuralists generally attempt to extend their studies to larger groups in an attempt to determine how local or how universal these stages might be. This is a purely reconstructive inquiry after the factit is an empirical inquiry in that sense. As we have seen in previous excerpts, some stages apply only to a few people, some to small subcultures, some to cultures, some to humans in general, but this is a matter of actual research by those versed in the social practice of adequate structuralism (grounded in adequate hermeneutics). No competent structuralist has ever implied stage sequences for individuals without appropriate evidence. If these responses continue to appear to be stageswhether local or universalthen at some point, the structuralist will very likely attempt to zero-in on the actual structure of each stage itself (which is obviously the heart of structuralism). We will return to this last and important step in a moment.

Holism: The Great Gift of the Third-Person Indigenous Perspectives First notice our original point: a structuralist does not necessarily have to transform to all of those stages in order to study aspects of their behavior. For example, a researcher herself might be at Gilligans stage 2 and still be able to notice and describe the outward behavior of responses 1, 2, and 3. That is one of the advantages of structuralism: it allows certain major transformations to be seen that would never be seen otherwise. It is the third-person component of structuralism that confers this temporary freedom on the researcher, a freedom that, within obvious limits, all third-person approaches share. The whole point about being a third person is that you are not a first person, and although that means you lack the strengths of a first-person view, it also means you lack the weaknesses. The reason that third-person approaches are so valuable, and the reason they have always been considered a cornerstone of sound epistemology, is that they do not stop inquiry with how

57 I or we might view this event. Rather, if you and I want to make sure that what we just saw is actually realand not just a hallucination on our part, on a prejudice that we are caught in, or a distorted perception, a mistaken view, an unfair bias, and so onthen we will call in other peoplewe will call in numerous third personsand we will ask them to look at what we just saw and find out if they see the same thing. The more third persons that we bring in, and the more of them that tell us that they see the same thing, then the more likely that what we saw was real. The third-person approaches (or the third-person components of any approaches) thus attempt to determine the types of things that any competent person might see if they approach this particular event with this particular paradigm. (Which is why they are the foundation of most sciencesphysics, biology, chemistry, systems theory, and ecology). The third-person approaches are the great curb to narcissism (and hence are the first approaches denied by boomeritis), and they are the approaches most dedicated to truth for all, not just truth for me or truth for us. The only time the third-person approaches run into trouble is when caught in their own absolutismswhich is, alas, pretty much all the time (like virtually all the other major paradigms and zones, each of which is a partial truth often intent on being the whole). Still, that is technically called scientism, not science. The third-person approaches as part of an integral methodological pluralism are the great anchors of truth; when used exclusively, they are the great robbers and destroyers of the interiorsas we have often seen, they (intentionally or unintentionally) kill culture and consciousness. The third-person approaches, as a rightful part of a more integral embrace, are also useful for the panoramic view that they can offer, even to an individuals perception. I can look at a tree from an objective or third-person distance, and I can also feel the tree up close in a first-person touch: both approaches are important. But the 3p or looking approaches become mandatory when it comes to whole networks and systemsfor example, when it comes to forests and not merely treesbecause you can only see forests, you cannot touch forests.

58 That is, only the modes of inquiry that have a 3p component in them actually see wholes, systems, and networks, all of which can only be perceived/conceived from a distance. The methodologies from zone #2 (3p x 1p) and zone #4 (3p x 3p)precisely because they have 3p componentsare therefore our only major sources of information about holism of any sort (whether the interior holism of structuralism or the exterior holism of systems theory and ecology). Wholes can indeed be felt from within, but not adequately seen or conceptualized. These profoundly important zone #2 approachesby enacting, bringing forth, and highlighting the third-person dimensions of being-in-the-worldindeed remind us of the many ways that we are in this together. This honoring of holism is perhaps the greatest of the many gifts of the zone #2 paradigms of indigenous perspectives.

Harmonic Resonance At some point, as we were saying, structuralism is both grounded in, and must directly reconnect with, hermeneutics, a move not overtly required by the merely 3p approaches, such as traditional systems theory or ecology. With systems theory (or any 3p x 3p approach), you and I might be studying, say, a particular gorilla and his family as they forage for food in the wild. Using the paradigm of ecological systems theory, we are looking at their objective behavior, what they eat, when they eat, how often they eat; the types of local flora and fauna that support the gorilla family; changes in the local ecosystem and how they affect the gorilla family; and the entire web of observable inter-relationships and their intricate impact on each other. In short, we are studying the objective (and interobjective or third-person plural) dimensions of the gorilla family and its ecosystem. In order to make sure that we are not mistaken, we bring in other researchers to look at the situation: they are third persons looking at our third-person research (3p x 3p). If these third persons see the same third-person events that we did, then that increases the likelihood that what we saw was real (e.g., the gorillas in this local ecosystem eat an average of 5 kilograms of bananas each week).

59 The structuralist, on the other hand, is not studying merely the exterior behavior in order to see any exterior patterns (objective or interobjective), but exterior behavior in order to deduce interior patterns (subjective or intersubjective). Unlike a systems theorist, who is content to abstract his abstractions and thus work a third-person of third-person realitiesnever prehending or attempting to prehend the interiors of the its that he studiesthe structuralist must work within a hermeneutic space, because her endeavor is a third-person OF first-person realities. In this case, if we are attempting a hermeneutic of gorilla felt-meaning, we would attempt to discern, feel, intuit, or resonate with the interior of the gorilla himself. The great ape family has a very sophisticated symbolic and signaling capacity, capable of communicating numerous interior states of hunger, desire, irritation, rage, urgency, and jealously. How do we know that? Because the humans, including the scientific researchers, who have actually spent time with the apes say so. The humans who interact with apes almost unanimously assert that those sentient beingsthe apeshave the capacity to feel those feelings. These humans are spontaneously engaged in a native hermeneutics or a native resonating with the interiors of other sentient beings, in this case, the apes. In the previous excerpt we called this harmonic resonance or empathic resonance. According to AQAL metatheory, because both humans and apes possess a limbic system, this indicates that they can also share interiors up to that level of evolutionary complexity (as well as a significant amount of neocortex signs and symbols, including a rudimentary language). This means that both humans and apes can share cultural solidarity up to at least that general region in the AQAL matrixthey can share interiors up to that level. Hermeneutics looks at those interiors from the inside (e.g., What is the ape feeling?), structuralism looks at those interiors from the outside (e.g., How do those feelings manifest in the apes behavior?)and hence structuralism must use hermeneutics to get started, and to finish. (Systems theory, of course, ignores those interiors altogether and examines only interobjective exteriors, which is fine for what it does.)

60 Here is a typical dictionary entry for gorillas (Microsoft Bookshelf): Gorillas are shy and amiable creatures, usually living in groups of 5 to 15. Mature males may form all-male groups or loosely attach themselves to other bands. Gorillas build makeshift camps each night after a day of foraging for vegetation. Their calls include a hooting sound uttered as an alarm signal, sharp grunts for invoking discipline, and low growls for expressing pleasure. Living in groups of 5 to 15 is an example of a third-person or objective fact or claim; but note the words shy, amiable, alarm, and pleasurethose are all clearly on the firstperson or hermeneutic side of the street, and rightly so. How do we know apes have those feelings? Well, like we said, and like with all first-person aspects: you had to be thereso hang around gorillas for a while and see what you think. As noted, virtually every third person who does so claims that gorillas feel desire, alarm, pleasure, jealously, rage. And if those humans study ape behavior as motivated by those feelings, then they are engaged in structuralism by whatever name: a third-person look at first-person feelings (as they manifest in behavior and are deduced from that behavior). Hence, 3p x 1p in an integral calculus of indigenous perspectives. Nobody is denying that hermeneutics is the hard part of that or any knowing; hermeneutics is just as hard to do with humans as with apes, dogs, deer, bacterium, or any other sentient holon. And, obviously, the lower the holon, and the less interior it has, then the less a human can easily resonate with it (and hence must resort more to the third-person side of the street). But less interior does not mean no interior; and hard to do does not mean therefore can be completely ignored. Certainly when it comes to any integral methodological pluralism worth its name, to dismiss hermeneutics is to dismiss the entire within of the Kosmos as we said, to completely kill culture and consciousness. This is why so much of the great and enduring research on the ape family has come from investigatorsDian Fossey and Jane Goodall, for examplewho either intuitively or methodologically used both hermeneutics and structuralism to access the phenomenological reality of those rather extraordinary sentient beings.

61 (Would it help to point out that they were women? And that women tend to natively emphasize first-person and not just third-person? And probably do so for evolutionary reasons? And that they., well, that is another story, surely.)

Structures Inside and Out The thesis of AQAL metatheory is that the four quadrantsthe indigenous perspectivesgo all the way down, but that their self-reflexive grasp tends to emerge only at senior waves of evolution. By the time we get to humans, any systematic methodology must take the quadrants (and their zones) into conscientious account, and that certainly applies to structuralism and hermeneutics. This is why we have been saying that in order to finally and fully describe a structure or stage of development, I must know that structure both from within and from without. A structuralist cannot give an authentic or adequate account of moral-response 3 without herself inhabiting that wave and knowing it by acquaintance. If a particular researcher is gifted, and she herself is predominately wave 2, she can nonetheless spot many higher waves in their outward form or behavior; but at some point other researchers who are at those waves will do a more competent job in knowing that wave from both within and from without, and will therefore do a better job of elucidating the structure of the agency itself. Hermeneutics alone would never be able to spot these stages (since, as a first-person of first-persons, it is confined to the within of its own horizon, horizons that transform every five years or so, on average), and structuralism alone would never be able to elucidate them (since, as a third-person of first-persons, the third person of the researcher herself may or may not be at the first-person stage being studied). Systems theory, of course, can neither spot interior stages nor elucidate them (nor does it care to, which is fine, as long as it does not violate the nonexclusion principle). Integral Methodological Pluralism conscientiously makes room for all of them, and points to the disasters that otherwise result.

62

Structures as Interior Holism We can now briefly listen to the heart of structuralism itself: a structure. The elucidation of a structure is the fourth and last major step in the paradigm or social practice of adequate structuralism (first: pose a dilemma to groups and notice any classes of responses; second: check to see if those classes are stages; third: perform cross-group studies to see how widespread those stages are; fourth: attempt to elucidate the structures of those stages). For AQAL metatheory, a structure is simply a probability wave (in any quadrant). For the paradigm of adequate structuralism, the probability wave refers specifically to the pattern or agency of interior holonstheir internality codes or coherence profile (the wholeness aspect of the whole/part holon), whether in an I or a we. For AQAL, what all structures have in common is simply the probability of finding a certain behavior in a certain spacetime locale, and thus the safest orienting generalization is that an interior structure is a third-person description of finding a certain first-person reality in particular milieu of the AQAL matrix. Unless otherwise specified, in this section structure means interior structure. The first and most central feature of a structure is that it is a dynamic holistic pattern; in fact, the simplest definition of structuralism is interior holism. The first major psychological structuralist was Americas greatest psychologist, James Mark Baldwin, working at the turn of the century. Following in his pioneering footsteps was Jean Piaget (rather literally; Baldwin ended up teaching in Paris, where Piaget was paying very close attention). Although nobody imagines that Piagets metatheory is adequate, even in the cognitive stream, nonetheless many of his contributions have endured among those doing adequate structuralism. In Piagets book Structuralism, he summarized many points about structures that are still useful today. A structure, Piaget explains, simply means a self-organizing holistic pattern. All schools of structuralism, he notes, take their cue from wholeness: For the mathematicians, structuralism is opposed to compartmentalization, which it counteracts by recovering unity

63 through isomorphisms. For several generations of linguists, structuralism is chiefly a departure from the diachronic study of isolated linguistic phenomena... and a turn to the investigation of synchronously functioning unified language systems. In psychology, structuralism has long combated the atomistic tendency to reduce wholes to their prior elements. More precisely, according to Piaget, The notion of structure is comprised of three key ideas: the idea of wholeness, the idea of transformation, and the idea of self-regulation. He continues:

That wholeness is a defining mark of structures almost goes without saying, since all structuralistsmathematicians, linguists, psychologists, or what have youare at one in recognizing as fundamental the contrast between structures and aggregates, the former being wholes, the latter composites formed of elements.... Moreover, the laws governing a structures composition are not reducible to cumulative one-by-one association of its elements: they confer on the whole as such overall properties distinct from the properties of its elements [they transform parts into wholes, which is what structuralists mean by transformation20].... The third basic property of structures is that they are self-regulating, self-regulation entailing self-maintenance and closure.

The structure or internality pattern will almost always be some sort of holistic configuration, for the simple reason that the holon must hang together in order to endure; it must have some sort of unity or wholeness in order to exist as an entity. Parts of my dog Daisy cannot head in different directions when she decides to walk across the room. A holon is always a whole/part, and the structure of a holon refers to the whole-ness or unity aspect, which is why structures are always presented as holistic, transformational, and autopoietic patterns.21 As Piaget eloquently explained, structuralists of all varieties have historically been united in their attempts

64 to honor and recognize the wholeness aspects of occasions: they were the first great interior holists. However, even though these structures or patterns tend to be stable, they are patterns OF things that are in constant dynamic flux. In a living cell, for example, not a single molecule remains in that cell over time; there is literally nothing concrete in that cell that remains unchangedit is a constantly changing, self-renewing, dynamic flux. There is, however, one thing that remains stable and unchanged, and that is the pattern of the change itself. That pattern is the holistic, autopoietic, or self-regulating structure, which is why adequate structuralism is indeed marked by an elucidation of wholeness, transformation, and self-regulation. It is looking at occasions that already exist and asking, for example, how can some bacteria remain essentially the same for a billion years when all of their components change ceaselessly? This is true for all structures (exterior or interior, although we are concentrating on interior). The game of chess, which we have been using as a typical example, is not dependent upon a particular set of material pieces. In fact, you can use 16 pieces of almost anything and still have a game of chessit is the rules that define chess, not the material components, which, as in all structures, can be ceaselessly changed and renewed. In short, structures (in any quadrantwhether linguistic, psychological, mathematical, biological, sociological) are simply self-regulating holistic patterns. Maturana and Varelas concept of autopoiesis owes much to Piagets structures. Unlike many early structuralists, Piaget believed that structures underwent developmentthat all structures were con-structed.22 He was thus one of the first great constructivists (and in that sense he was a healthy postmodernist, itself a rare accomplishment), which means: the world is not given, but constructed.23 (Piaget is not often thought of as postmodern, because he believed in worldcentric or universal pluralism, a perspective that emerges with the yellow wave, and not ethnocentric pluralism, which emerges with the green wave and came to dominate postmodernism, and thus he was usually attacked by most postmodernists.) He also was one of the first to attempt to integrate synchronic (present)

65 with diachronic (developed) structures, an integrative intent shared by all subsequent developmental structuralists.24 Piaget was therefore the first great evolutionary or developmental structuralist; he gave the first consistent and highly sophisticated account of genealogy (which he called genetic epistemology), backed by research and observation, of how different cognitive structures enact and bring forth different worlds, worlds which are then taken to be given by the percipient but are actually (tetra)enacted by structures of consciousness. This was much more than the mere rhetorical assertion, offered by other postmodernists, that intersubjectivity creates worlds and hence knowledge is socially constructed; this was a highly meticulous research into exactly why and how that construction of reality occurs. Whereas most green-meme postmodernists, flying under the jet stream of integral awareness, used a constructivist stance to fall into pluralistic fragmentation and incommensurable lifeworlds, Piagets integral-aperspectival stance allowed him to see both universal deep features and pluralistic surface featureshence, universal pluralismmuch as the rules of chess are similar for Malaysians and Manhattanites, even if no concrete or actual chess game is ever the same. This allowed Piaget to give the first constructivist developmental view of the world that was not a performative self-contraction. (All pluralistic views exempt themselves from the relativity claimed to infect all views, and present themselves as universally true for all cultures, something their own theory disallows; hence, they contradict their own claims and dissolve their own credibility. This is why Habermas uses the general Piagetian frame as part of any coherent discussion of the evolution of culture; as noncontradictory genealogy, it has no rivalwhich is to day, adequate developmental structuralism is a crucial ingredient of any integral methodological pluralism). All of these accomplishments were truly extraordinary. As it turns out with any great pioneer, the ongoing paradigms and practices of adequate structuralism have revealed phenomena that do not gracefully fit into the metatheoretical conceptions advanced by Piaget. Cognitive development, which Piaget believed to be the one

66 central axis of development within which all other developments unfold, turns out to be merely one of at least two dozen developmental lines or streams (albeit a necessary-but-not-sufficient one); within cognitive development itself, there are levels or waves higher than formal operational thinking; development is not decalage as an exception but levels and lines as a rule; states of consciousness get little attention (and altered states, none at all); Piagets biologism is unnecessary but mostly surprising (from one of his genius); and Piagets actual definitions of the structures (such as conop) didnt quite work out, although his descriptions of the behavior of the psychological phenomena at those waves are amazingly accurate and still stand up to ongoing cross-cultural research. (Piaget adequately described the behavior of certain interior psychological holons but his theoretical model did not do them justice. In other words, the paradigm, injunction, or social practice of adequate structuralism brought forth a series of experiences or phenomena that Piaget then attempted, in an appropriately reconstructive fashion, to explain with a series of theoretical conceptionssince theories always arise within specific paradigms or social practicesand although his practice was adequate, his theories were not. But that is simply the definition of a great pioneer.) But as for those descriptions of the behavior of the psychological holons internal to the agency of the structure (i.e., the behavior falling within the probability space) of the first four major waves of the cognitive stream (sensorimotor, preop, conop, formop), Piaget is still right on the money according to those doing adequate structuralism. As we have seen, it is not necessary that a particular structure be cross-culturala structure can be held in common by only two people, or perhaps a family, or a tribe, or a culture, or a nation, or sometimes all humans as far as we can tell, and sometimes all sentient beings (as disclosed in Kosmic consciousness and Kosmic solidarity of a causal and nondual paradigmatic practice). In that continuum, Piagets descriptors up to formop are impressively cross-cultural for humans wherever they have been tested by researchers adequately engaging the practice, showing up in Amazon Rainforest Indians,

67 Australian Aborigines, and Manhattan yuppies.25 Some of Piagets descriptors are even crossspecies (e.g., cats go through the first four stages of sensorimotor cognition). As one of the many developmental streams of consciousness, the Piagetian cognitive stream takes its rightful place with the Loevinger self stream, Kohlberg moral stream, Maslow needs stream, and Graves values stream as among some of the major currents of consciousness disclosed by zone #2 methodologies. This particular stream has been further explored by present-day researchers from Robert Kegan to Michael Commons to Kurt Fischer. Some people confuse self-regulating with self-contained, which is not the case. All holons are agency-in-communion, or structures-in-exchange, where structure means the defining agency, the deep features, the internality codes, coherence profile, or the specific and enduring patterns of any self-organizing holon, and in exchange refers to the fact that all holons possess not just autonomous agency or closed self-regulating patterns, but also exist in networks of open communion, relationship, and embeddedness. This is why Maturana and Varela define autopoiesis a a closed organization (or pattern) with open components. The closed part is the autonomy, stability, enduring pattern, Kosmic habit, or structure that allows a holon to continue to exist. The open part refers to the fact that, although the deep features or agency may be relatively autonomous (and hence self-regulating), the surface features consist of patterns of relational exchange with the surrounding environs, an exchange upon which every holon depends for its very existence. Thus, all holons are self-regulating but not self-sufficient, because all holons are always agency-in-communion (or coherence-in-correspondence, or being-in-theworld). Neither agency nor communion, neither autonomy nor relationship, neither coherence nor correspondence, are alone enough to define a holon.

The Structure of a Song We have been following the general steps in the social practice of adequate structuralism: (1) a hermeneutic (first-person-plural) interaction in search of third-person classes

68 of responses to a set of conditions; (2) longitudinal studies to see if those classes are stages; (3) cross-group studies to see the applicability of those stageswhether they are more local or more universal; and (4): the search for the structure or coherence pattern of each of the stages.26 In this section, we focus on the fourth and last step. Once stages of interior responses have been identified, most researchers attempt to specify the coherence codes or structures of those stagesthat is, the agency that governs the elements that are internal to that particular interior holon (individual or cultural, subjective or intersubjective, I or we). We have been using the game of chess as an example of a structure. A musical song is another good example. A song can be played on numerous different instruments and still be the same song (because structures are not defined by their material components but by their rules of internal relationship). Moreover, many songs have universal resonance: Russians, Croatians, Aborigines, and Hawaiians can all hum the same tune and respond to it. A song has holistic deep features that define it (its melody, tune, internal arrangement of musical notes), which are the same for everybody; yet no actual song is ever the same, since it is sung by different people, using different instruments, in different times and places (universal deep features, pluralistic surface features). Just so, there are many melodies, tunes, and songs in the human heart and soul, and structuralism is the study of those exquisite melodies. Whereas hermeneutics studies those songs from the inside, as they are being sung and shared, structuralism looks at them from the outside, not as pregiven ontological structures, but as unfolding, developing, and evolving patterns that emerge as human beings learn new and different ways to sing and dance. Some of these songs are so popular they become repeated over and over and thus settle into Kosmic habits, and some of the really great songs of evolution become universal or planetary Kosmic habits. The structuralist, after spotting a song of consciousnessor what appears to be a Kosmic habit followed by a particular interior holon (or group of holons)moves from descriptions of that habitual behavior to possible definitions or elucidations of any underlying patterns, codes, or

69 regularitiesthat is, from a description of the Kosmic habit the holon is following to a possible definition of the agency or internality of this habit. The structure of a song is its melody, tune, or pattern. A person is singing that song when his or her vocal actions produce notes that are internal to that melody (or internal to the nexus of relationships among notes that define that song). Likewise, the structure of chess is a set of rules that the 16 chess pieces or tokens must follow; two people (or compound individuals) are in a game of chess (or compound network) if the behavior of the 16 tokens that they both use are internal to the game (i.e., follow the rules of chess)the individuals are in the game, or inside the we situation, if the intersections of their 16 tokens are internal to the nexus-agency or rules of the communal holon. The structuralist is interested in those rules, rules that express the Kosmic habits or enduring patterns of the particular holon (and rules that therefore display wholeness, transformation, and closure or autopoiesis). 27 The game of chess has a structure, a bacterium has a structure. The major differences between them is that the former is an artifact, the latter, a sentient holon; and the former involves a compound network, the latter, a compound individual. Nevertheless, both have a structure in the broad sense, which represents the enduring patterns or Kosmic habits of its reproduction in spacetime. As we were saying, a structure in the broad sense is a song, not a material thing; it is a flow pattern, not a fixed entity; it is a melody that can be played by many different instruments but is not the instruments themselves. There are important differences between individual, communal, and artifactual, but what their structures all have in common is that they are like songs.28 A song does not exist apart from some sort of instrument (human voice, bird voice, violin, piano, etc.), but neither is it any actual instrument or combination of instruments, nor can it be captured in any sense by a description of the instruments playing it. Thus, once structural holists have spotted a song (in an individual or cultural holon), they generally attempt to elucidate its melody or identifying pattern. Different structuralists have approached this task in different but useful ways. Some structuralists, like Piaget, have attempted

70 mathematical definitions of these Kosmic songs and patterns. Other structuralists, like Erik Erikson, offered more literary descriptions of psychosocial patterns. Some focus more on the third-person side of the structural street; these are generally known as the formalists (e.g., a brilliant pioneer here, and still one of my favorites, is the incomparable Roman Jakobson). Other structuralists stay closer to the first-person side, the intuitional and hermeneutic side of the street (e.g., Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes). Many have attempted a strong synthesis of both the firstperson and third-person aspects of structures (or the semantic and syntax of songs)an early pioneer in this integrative endeavor (and easily one of the most gifted) was Paul Ricoeur. And, as we just saw, Michel Foucault attempted his own synthesis (of first-person interpretation and third-person structuralism) to arrive at an interpretive analytics. Special mention, however, must be made of Jean Gebser, who comes to mind as perhaps of the greatest of the postmodern structuralists (not postmodern poststructuralists, who crashlanded). All adequate structuralists today are in fact postmodern structuralists, which I would call post/structuralism, except nobody will get it. (Still, every now and then, Ill dust off that phrase, as in the title of this excerpt). Adequate structuralists or post/structuralists cover both sides of the street (3p formalism and 1p interpretation); recognize the relativity of surface features; are alive to numerous different levels and lines; and rest their claims only on careful research. Gebser was a wonderful exemplar here, outlining various structures of consciousness with wonderful lucidity and keen insight, often combined with literary greatness, making room for both the insides and the outsides of interior holons. Reading such genius as Gebser always humbles one in the extraordinary generosity of a spirit willing to make so much room for so many radiant realities. Earlier I gave a sampling of various types of structures that have been suggested by competent researchers (for convenience, here is the list):

71 Carol Gilligans three stages of selfish, care, and universal care in female moral development; Robert Kegans five orders of consciousness; Spiral Dynamics elucidation of the blue meme, orange meme, green meme, turquoise meme, etc.; Jean Gebsers famous archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and integral structures; Jane Loevingers symbiotic, conformist, conscientious, individualistic, and integral self-identities (etc.); formal operational cognition, the relativistic-pluralistic value structure, the constructaware self, fourth-order consciousness, moral-stage 2, the participatory stage, preconventional stage, the conscientious self, sensorimotor cognition, and so on.

The simple point is that each of those structures is like a song; each has a unified wholeness that defines the types of phenomena that are enacted and brought forth by those structures; each represents the way a world is co-created and co-constructed by the structure of consciousness perceiving/enacting that world; each has a melody or identifiable structure (or internality code), which means, for an individual structure, that any phenomena within the structure are following that melody (are internal to its rules or patterns), and, for a collective structure, that any compound individuals are inside the structure when their intersections are internal to it; each structure or melody has deep features that represent the common elements of the song wherever it appears, as well as surface structures that are always different wherever they appear; none of these are pregiven ontological structures but rather the results of creative and emergent novelty that eventually settled into evolutionary habits (that are therefore, nonetheless, independent of particular individuals, and thus preserve the trans-individual features of metaphysical levels or planes but without their ontological baggage). In this section, we have covered a few of the great pioneers and profound gifts of the zone #2 approaches of indigenous perspectives of being-in-the-world. But there is one last group of structural pioneers we would be remiss not to honor, and they were in some ways the greatest of them all.

72

The Original Structuralists The earliest structuralists were, of course, none other than the great metaphysicians of the spiritual traditions, as they outlined and codified the higher levels of being and knowing, the higher Songs of the Self Supreme. Through unexcelled growth into the further reaches of human potential, they saw, heard, felt, touched, and realized deeper and higher realms of the Divine. When they returned from their journeys, they described what they felt and saw, and often outlined maps of these higher territories, for the benefit of those who had not yet taken the journey. They created third-person stories and maps (or a knowledge by description) of realities they saw first-hand (in a knowledge by acquaintance). In other words, they were the first great structuralists. Classic premodern structuralism included the descriptions of journeys taken to the higher and lower worlds given by the great shamans, some of which (e.g., African, Tundra) reach back before history began, and possibly represent interior realities glimpsed by Eve herself (or the common ancestor of all humans now believed to have lived around 175,000 BCE). These pioneering shamanic maps, like all maps, were actually a four-quadrant affair, and thus their terms, structures, and symbols were embedded in particular cultural backgrounds and contexts; which is to say, their songs were part of an enacted worldspace expressing Spirit in its own unfoldment at that time and place. As the cultural background continued to evolve and develop, and as red (magicalanimistic) value contexts evolved into blue (or mythic-membership) contexts, structuralism began to take the form of a Great Chain of Being, an understanding of a Great Holarchy of nests of being within nests of being, endlessly. The higher worlds and the underworlds were related in a great continuum of consciousness, and it was said that a human being could operate at any of these levels of awareness, depending upon his or her own spiritual realization.

73 The Great Nest of Being (like the shamanic maps before it) was simply a third-person map or description that the great saints and sages of that era often used to interpret their firstperson experiences and realizations. The spiritual realizations were as authentic as authentic can be (just as the shamanic were); but the interpretations expressed the four-quadrant realities of that time and place (and particularly a blue-value intersubjective cultural context). The two great currents of classical structuralism were, in the East, the authors of the Upanishads; and, in the West, the Pythagorean/Parmenides/Platonic stream. So widespread, so influential, so similar were these currents during that general epoch that they have been viewed as a type of perennial philosophy, which perhaps obscures more than it elucidates. (The perennial philosophy is simply a set of abstract features that describe a few of the structures of the four-quadrant interpretation of being-in-the-world that was common to some, not all, of the cultures of that era, but that were not common features before that era, nor after it. The perennial philosophy is neither universal nor perennial, but simply an abstracted statement of a form that the AQAL matrix took in a few highly evolved philosopher-sages of that particular era.) Although the structures they presented were burdened with ontological and metaphysical accoutrements that are, by todays lights, unnecessary and outmoded, the higher realizations themselves were not, and the descriptions of these higher states are extraordinary, exquisite, and still as awe-inspiring as ever. The Great Nest, in virtually any of its many interpretive forms, was one of the first profound realizations that Spirit manifests in a series of dimensions, grades, or levels of complexity (which also represent levels of care, compassion, and consciousness, to which human being can align themselves in greater circles of love and awareness). This morphogenetic scale of increasing unfoldment would reappear in the modern era as the theory of evolution (although shorn of its upper or transpersonal reaches, which AQAL metatheory analyzes as the disaster of modernity, but only alongside the dignity of modernity, which escaped much of prepersonal nightmares inherent in earlier eras.)

74 The greatest of these classical structuralists in the West was, no doubt, Plotinus; and in the East, Nagarjuna and Shankara stand out; but they are simply first in a very long line of geniuses: Maimonides, Luria and the Kabbalah, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, Chih I and Tien Tai system, Fa-Tsang and the Hwa Yen, Abhinavagupta and Kashmir Shaivism, the anuttaratantra or Highest Yoga Tantra in Tibetan Buddhism: all are breathtaking descriptions of interior phenomenal states and stages of higher consciousness (disclosed by the paradigm of meditation and codified by the paradigm of classical structuralism), higher levels that are third-person descriptions that can only be known by first-person transformation (using the paradigm or social practice of contemplation or meditation). The best known of these great systems, and in some ways still the most compelling, is that of the 7 chakras, which are 7 structures of energy and consciousness. (In Excerpt G, Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies, we will return to the chakras and attempt to reconstruct them in a post-metaphysical or AQAL fashion.) But what all of the versions of the Great Nest had in common was an understanding that levels of consciousness generate levels of reality (i.e., a hierarchy of knowing is also a hierarchy of being)which means that these pioneers were, in their own way, the premodern postmodernists; and a few of the greatestNagarjuna in particulargive a more accurate, more profound constructive postmodernism than anybody before or since. But the weight of background cultural contexts made a clean post-metaphysics impossible to come by on any sort of large scale, and the vast number of less gifted souls took levels of reality as pre-existing structures. Still, the thundering wonder of it all is that these great metaphysicians accomplished what they did, which was breathtaking. Even Bertrand Russell, archetypal rationalist and antispiritual theoretician, said that the most beautiful philosophy ever conceived was that of Plotinus.

75 The Emancipatory Power of Structuralism Those are some of the great, classic, premodern zone #2 approacheszone #2 approaches that, as always, demand first-person transformation to finally disclose the referents of those third-person descriptors. But those approaches also exemplify what is perhaps the primary incentive of using zone #2 approaches, both yesterday and today: their emancipatory power. For all the reasons we outlined earlier, it is almost impossible to construct any sort of reliable map of higher states or stages using merely phenomenology, or hermeneutics, or systems theory, or any other conceivable approaches. Rather, you have to back up a bit, look at interior development not just in yourself but in others over a long period of time, and codify the various paradigms and practices that can be used to enact these higher domains. A great pioneersuch as Gautama Buddha or St. Teresamight be able to traverse many higher levels of consciousness in a single lifetime and describe these higher domains to us, the less evolved. But even then, they are using structuralismor a third-person description of higher first-person realitiesin order to help emancipate us, liberate us, and free us, by pointing to higher dimensions that move beyond the narrowness, pain, suffering, and torment of less developed states and stages. They are using structuralism as part of the path of liberation: third-person maps that can only be realized by firstperson spiritual practice. Further, in presenting maps of higher dimensions of awareness, they are pointing out and making consciousthe restrictions, limitations, and binding power of lesser dimensions. By pointing to a higher wholeness of higher structures, they are exposing the lesser wholeness of lesser structures. We can think of these as maps of higher realities, or, alternatively, as maps of illusion. These great pioneers, by virtue of realizing a deeper or higher realityby virtue of getting out of the cave of shadowscould give us a map of the cave itself. That has always has been one of the main driving forces of zone #2 methodologies: by giving us maps of the prison, make emancipation more likely. (AQAL, for example, is a map of the prison, not a map of Suchness.)

76 What do you think Foucault was doing? Same thing. He was describing how webs of unconscious patterns were limiting and narrowing our awareness. Look at how these networks of power-knowledge control you, he is saying, and rise above them, be free of them to whatever extent you can. It is only through zone #2 methodologies that such emancipatory interests can be effectively engaged and enacted, and that is as true today as it was in the time of the first shamans who pointed to higher realities not bound by the torments of lesser domains.

Short sidebar on Michel Foucault: I spent several years studying everything written in English by and about Foucault. It is always interesting that so many theorists, who have a genuine interest in various forms of emancipation, have gotten that interest by way of mystical, spiritual, or transcendental experiences, and Foucault was no exception. He had a life-long, deeply serious interest in limit experiences, particularly mystical experiences, as manifested in everything from the mad poets that he lovedArtaud and Nerval in particularto extreme states of consciousness induced by sadomasochistic sexuality, which he believed pointed to an entirely new economy of pleasure, or new and liberating modes of distribution of sexual pleasure throughout the body. Combined with his own homosexuality (which was harshly judged by the human sciences of his time as being pathological), his interest in mysticism, which was also harshly judged by conventional discourse, kept Foucault keenly aware of the ways that normal society actually marginalizes, represses, and oppresses not just human beingsthe ultimate injustice of slaverybut, in lesser yet still devastating ways, aspects of interior potentials of human beingsthe miniature injustices committed daily in the name of conventional truth, which is nothing but thinly disguised power. It was also fascinating to read Foucault in light of his deep and lifelong interest in mystical states, and then read his American interpreters, who made virtually no mention of any of this. (I constantly had a dj vu experience, similar to the one I had

77 about Gustav Fechner, another profound theorist whose deeply transcendental roots have been expunged from college textbooks.) The green-meme postmodernists, driven by new left agendas, ended up marginalizing, ignoring, or actively repressing some of the absolutely crucial components of Foucault and his work, thus inadvertently displaying exactly the exclusionary and rarefication rules investigated by Foucault; and they presented their results as pluralistic diversity when it was, Foucault would say, largely power. As Foucault would point out, their discursive networks had exclusionary rules that screened out any discussion of transcendence from the official, legitimate, and legally sanctioned realms of discourse. This marginalization of Foucault is something Foucault himself would definitely wish to emancipate us from.

Emancipatory interests have never been far from structuralism in its many forms. Emancipation: to be Free of limitation by finding a greater Fullness. Shamans could offer a greater Freedom in a greater Fullness, as likewise could the great saints and sages of the traditional or axial period. None of this depended upon the existence of pregiven higher levels, only the emergence of levels higher than those presently existing. Anytime that any pioneer pushes into higher, wider, deeper domains and returns to tell us about it, they are in effect using structuralism, or third-person descriptions of first-person realities. And anytime that we believe that we have a higher, wider, deeper, freer, or fuller view of the world, we are using structuralism to tell others about it, and encourage their own emancipation by a transformation of their own consciousness, so that they are not merely translating third-person descriptions but are immersed in first-person realities, finding thereby a greater Freedom and a greater Fullness (in the I, we, and it domains). (It amounts to the same thing to say that, just as structuralism is our only access to interior holism, it is our main call to interior emancipation, in that greater Freedom and Fullness always amount to the discovery of ever-greater wholeness.)

78 All of the great structuralists or interior holistspremodern to modern to postmodern are testaments to the richness and vitalityand emancipatory powerof the zone #2 approaches that can be brought forth by our own indigenous perspectives. And anytime we are involved in the call to emancipation, we are involved in the noble goals and ideals supported by structuralism in its many guises.

Part IV. Conclusions of Adequate Structuralism

Overview Although structuralism is only part of an integral methodological pluralism, it is nonetheless clearly an important part, at least on a par with phenomenology, hermeneutics, and systems theory, but elevated to a special importance by virtue of its emancipatory interests and holistic capacities. Its paradigms and social practices continue to energize the important work of researchers such as Howard Gardner, Carol Gilligan, Juan Pascual-Leone, Susann Cook-Greuter, Michael Commons, Francis Richards, Jenny Wade, Kurt Fischer, Don Beck, Patricia Arlin, Jan Sinnott, Deirdre Kramer, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Cheryl Armon, Robert Kegan, among many others. (Integral Psychology presents a very brief overview of around 100 of the most important models with a structural dimension.) And the general conclusions of adequate structuralism? Both subjective psyche and intersubjective culture contain regularities, patterns, songs, or Kosmic habits. None of these can be easily spotted by phenomenology, empiricism, systems theory, hermeneutics, ecology, action inquiry, or collaborative inquiry, but can be spotted by studying individual or cultural responses over time (a third-person investigation of first-person realities that, if successful, moves from

79 responses to classes to stages to structures). These structures or patterns of being-in-the-world are marked by wholeness, transformation, and closure.)29 What follows is an outline of the findings of adequate structuralism in both the subjective and intersubjective realms: explorations in zone #2 of the indigenous perspectives available to sentient beingsthe look of a feeling, the patterns of the interiors, an outside survey of the songs of the heart (known finally only by singing them ourselves).

A. Structure/Stages in Individuals Recurrent patterns and melodies, rhythms and songs in human consciousness, that have unfolded, evolved, and developed over time: in the human psyche, there appear to be at least a dozen major developmental lines or streamsdifferent types of songs, if you willincluding cognitive, moral, interpersonal, affective/emotional, needs, self-identity, object relations, and values. We will start with a look at these developmental streams.

Developmental Lines or Streams of Consciousness Lines or streams can be legitimately conceptualized in any number of ways. Cognitive scientists and linguists (operating more on the third-person side of the street) tend to view them as independent modules that have evolved to cope with different environmental challenges: there is a linguistic module, a kinesthetic module, a cognitive module, and so onall of which evolved under natural selection pressures (for us, tetra-evolved). Howard Gardner refers to these as multiple intelligences (musical intelligence, cognitive intelligence, mathematical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, etc.). Gardner, however, also incorporates the paradigm of adequate structuralism into his research, and thus he points out that these different intelligences, modules, or streams evolve or develop through a series of levels, stages, or waves. Waves and streams are terms Gardner himself made popular; he and his students at Harvard have done important structural research that

80 suggests that each of the streams that he has identified, even though they develop relatively independently, nonetheless move through the same basic stage/levels or waves, a conclusion I share, and a conclusion we will return to below (Basic Levels of Consciousness). However we conceive of these multiple intelligences, here is what they amount to. Sit a person in a room and ask her to describe what she seesthat is, ask her to describe what is. Of what is, or of the things she is now aware of, which does she think are beautiful? Of the things she is now aware of, which does she value the most? Of the things she is now aware of, which does she identify with her self or her identity? Of the things she is now aware of, if there is a moral dilemma, what does she think she should do under the circumstances? An awareness of what is, is cognition (e.g., Piaget, Kegan, Fischer). Of the things a person is aware of, she might value some (Graves), she might identify with some (Loevinger), she might need some (Maslow), she might have to choose between some (Gilligan, Kohlberg), she might have to interact with some (Selman, Perry), and so forth. In other words, the cognitive stream represents the types of answers that people give to the question, What is? The values stream represents the types of answers that people give to the question: Of what is, what do I value most? The self-identity stream: Of what is, what is I or me? Needs: Of what is, what do I require? Morals: Of what is, what should I do?30 It appears that life presents a series of questions to us, and we have evolved or developed capacities, modules, or intelligences that respond to these different types of challenges. Each of those challenges represents a different type of situation demanding a different and appropriate type of response (different songs for different occasions). How and why those different types of responses evolved is open to much debate; that they exist is not. And those different types of responses are essentially what researchers refer to as modules, intelligences, or streams.31 Many pioneering developmental psychologists focused on only one of these lines or streams and studied its waves or stages. As suggested above in parentheses, Piaget especially studied cognition; Maslow, needs; Gilligan, morals; Graves, values; Loevinger, self-identity, and

81 so on. They all concluded that, at least for the populations of humans that they investigated, these developmental lines do indeed proceed through various developmental levels or stages, not as rigid rungs but enveloping spheres (which is why the term waves is better than levels, although both terms are common). If we put all of their research together to get a better picture, the conclusion is that the individual psyche contains many relatively independent capacities, modules, intelligences, or streams; because these develop relatively independently, a person can be at a very high level in, say, the cognitive line, at a medium level in the self-identity line, and at a low level in the moral line, which makes individual development a wildly idiosyncratic affair. Even though the modules themselves might unfold in specific stages, the sum total of the modules is a mess, and certainly does not unfold in anything like a stage sequence. This overall phenomena is referred to as levels and lines or waves and streams, and it is perhaps one of the more enduring disclosures of adequate structuralism. This is often indicated on a psychograph, such as the one shown in figures 4 and 5, which can be summarized as: through the overall spectrum of levels, waves, or orders of consciousness, there proceed numerous different and relatively independent lines or streams of consciousness. As noted, Howard Gardner has done research suggesting that however different the streams or intelligences, they proceed through the same basic waves, stages of development, or orders of consciousness (although often at very uneven rates). Robert Kegan, among others, has found essentially the same thing. James Mark Baldwin was the first to put this finding front and center, suggesting that the three major developmental lines (cognitive-scientific, moral-ethical, and aesthetic-artisticrepresenting it, we, and I, resp.), all proceed through the same generalized levels of consciousness (which he, in a truly pioneering theoretical effortalmost a century agocalled prelogical, quasi-logical, logical, extra-logical, hyper-logical, trans-logical, and unity consciousness).

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Figure 4. Simple Psychograph

AQAL metatheory, drawing on these and other sources (East and West, premodern and modern), suggests the following overview. If you look at figure 5, you will see five major developmental lines or streams (cognitive, moral, self, values, needs). As is often the case, Western psychologists have studied several of the lines in their lower and intermediate stages or waves, but not in their higher stages (a major exception being the altogether extraordinary Baldwin, and his contemporary, William James, although James studied mostly states, not stages, which, frankly, is the easier of the two, since states can be investigated in the present using phenomenology and hermeneutics, and do not have to be followed over time, a laborious task involving structuralism, which was pioneered by Baldwin).

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Figure 5. 10 levels in 5 lines

Therefore, in the various lines, I have often added two or three higher stages based on other reputable sources. For example, in the cognitive line, Aurobindo gave one of the best (and certainly most compelling) presentations of a full spectrum of cognition (using cognition in the broadest sense as consciousness of what is). Aurobindo gave the stages in this cognitive stream as: sensorimotor, vital-emotional, lower mind, concrete mind, logical mind, higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, and supermind. Piaget, on the other hand, studied cognitive levels up to around what Aurobindo calls the logical mind. Above that lay the potential emergents of something like the higher mind (vision-logic), illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, and supermind (although I believe they are tetra-enacted and are not metaphysical pregiven structures).32 In figure 5, I have therefore used some of Piagets terms for the lower

84 levels and Aurobindos terms for the higher levels (with the understanding that all of these are four-quadrant products, not pregiven archetypes). In the needs line, the great pioneer Abraham Maslow followed in Baldwins footsteps and attempted to elucidate a full spectrum of motivation and needs, and thus Maslow definitely included the needs of the higher and further reaches of human nature (e.g., the needs for selfactualization and self-transcendence, as shown in fig. 5, which are, along with the other needs, what Maslow called prepotent, which means they show a wave-like emergence). But his research was not very specific in those higher waves, since fewer individuals reach them and thus studying them is extraordinarily difficult, although Maslow found abundant evidence for their general existence. (Maslow has been a favorite whipping boy of boomeritis theoristse.g., Richard Tarnas, Jorge Ferrerbut he is, by any balanced assessment, one of the three or four greatest psychologists America has ever produced.) In the Graves values line, I have added three suggested stage-waves to those of Spiral Dynamics; in the self-identity line, three stage-waves to those of Loevinger; and also three higher waves in the morals line, in order to cover a more complete spectrum of consciousness. But, of course, all of this is simply by way of illustration; there is nothing fixed about any of those suggestions (and certainly nothing ontological about any of the structures: they are probability spaces, at most. When and if they emerge at large, they will be tetra-enacted and tetra-evolved, they will not fall fully formed from the sky). Likewise, the exact number of developmental lines (and the number of levels in any of the lines) are issues that can only be decided by ongoing structural research. To date, there appears to be at least two dozen relatively independent developmental lines, streams, or modules (including Howard Gardners six or so multiple intelligences): cognitive, musical, kinesthetic, linguistic, moral, mathematical, interpersonal, values, needs, defenses, self-identity, role-taking, ideas of the good, spatialtemporal perception, creativity, among othersbut again, this is a decision for ongoing structural research.

85 At this time, the integral psychograph of AQAL metatheory appears the only viable model that accommodates the most amount of evidence from the most number of those researchers, and thus the integral psychograph is the simplest way to summarize the results of extensive zone-#2 research in the human psyche.

Developmental Levels or Waves of Consciousness As we move from the developmental lines to the developmental levels in those lines, we face two very common confusions, even among adequate structuralists. The first has to do with the nature of levels or stages; the second, with using the levels in one line to talk about levels in other lines. I will devote this and the next section to clarifying some of these difficult issues. For AQAL metatheory, a level, wave, or stage is simply an abstract measure of development in any actual line, stream, or module. As such, even as a probability wave, levels do not exist in themselves; they are simply degrees of something. Take, for example, degrees of temperature. We can take an actual phenomenonsuch as the amount of heat in a liquidand create any number of arbitrary ways to measure that amount. Three common measurement scales are Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin. If we use Fahrenheit, we say that water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees; if we use Celsius (or centigrade), we say water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees. Which is right? Both of them, of course; it is simply a matter of convention which we use. What is concretely real is the actual heat or energy in the water; but there are an almost infinite number of ways to measure it, divide it up, and represent it. Fahrenheit finds 180 degrees or mini-stages between freezing and boiling; Celsius finds 100 mini-stages between freezing and boiling; both are fine, and both can be used to indicate the amount of heat in a liquid, solid, or gas, as long as you and I agree on which scale we are using. Likewise, the developmental levels are abstract measures of the concrete realities that are unfolding in the lines themselves. There are all sorts of ways to measure and indicate those

86 levels, but there is no one correct number of levels or stages in any of the lines (any more than we can say Fahrenheit is right and Celsius is wrong). And one thing we particularly cannot do is use the way the levels are formulated in one line to refer to the levels in the other lines. (This stream absolutism is as common as it is theoretically problematic.) For example, one of the levels in the (Piagetian) cognitive line is formal operational cognition (or formal rationality). This formal rationality can be used to adopt or support orange values, or blue values, or red values (among others)which means that the values line and the cognition line are not the same thing. We cannot say that a person is using orange cognition, because orange refers to the structure of the values themselves, not the structure of the cognition adopting those values. (If you ask an adult who is at the red level in the values line to explain why red values are important, you will often get a very thoughtful and rational explanation of why the world is a very dangerous, raw, red place; these individuals make excellent firemen, test pilots, astronauts, and so onsome of whom score genius IQ in the cognitive line. In other words, cognitive line and values line are indeed relatively independent, as summarized in the psychograph. That is why technically we cannot say orange cognition, but must say formop cognition adopting orange values.) Likewise, we cannot say orange morals, nor orange self, nor orange needs, because all of those other lines are not only relatively independent of values, but the concrete characteristics of those other lines are also quite different. For example, terms that are used in the moral line include preconventional, conventional, and postconventional (those are the 3 stages we examined earlier with Carol Gilligan). But, strictly speaking, you cannot use those terms to refer to the cognitive line (or any other line), because formal operational thought, for example, can adopt several different levels of morals. A person can be at the formal operational level of cognition yet be at moral stage 1, moral stage 2, or moral stage 3.33 Thus, somebody using formal rationality can in fact have a preconventional moral sense (e.g., Nazi doctor), a

87 conventional moral sense (e.g., fundamentalist preacher), or a postconventional moral sense (e.g., classical liberal), all of whom can be at the same cognitive level of development. In other words, levels/stages are measures of something actually occurring in one of the lines; therefore, when those actual occurrences are formulated and some of their stages suggested, those stages necessarily are composed of the phenomena in those particular lines, and thus very terms of the stages themselves (and their proposed deep structures) adequately fit only the particular line or stream of which they are measures. This is why the common terms that were developed for the morals stream (e.g., punishment-obedience, good boy-nice girl, social contract) do not exactly match those of the cognitive stream (preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) which do not match those of the self stream (symbiotic, protective, conscientious, individualistic) which do not match those of the values stream (sociocratic, multiplistic, relativistic, etc.). Of course, there are many important ways that those streams overlap (which we will investigate in a moment), but the important point for now is that the very structures of the stages in the various streams were proposed using the actual phenomena of those streams, and thus the structures of the levels of one line simply do not fit with the structures of the levels of other lines. To try to force them to do so is what got Piaget in trouble: he tried to say that the structures of the cognitive stream were the only operative structures, and all the other structure-stages fit within the cognitive, which subsequent structuralism has demonstrated to be an inadequate formulation. There are many different types of songs in the psyche, and to force all of them to be variations on the same melody is, to put it mildly, unwarranted. Many of the great pioneering structuralists got caught in this unfortunate, if understandable, confusion. They used a particular research methodology or paradigm to spot a particular type of song or human response to environmental challenges (needs, values, identities, morals, etc.). They then constructed a plausible stage sequence in that particular module. They then used those specific stages and built an entire psychological system around the stages taken

88 from only that stream. Its not that you cant do that (many of these early systems were quite elaborate, e.g., Graves). Its simply that you are building a total system based on two shaky foundations: one, you are postulating stages based on partial capacities of the overall the human bodymind (since no stage-conception whatsoever can capture everything); two, you are then extrapolating from those partialities to the entire psyche, thus excluding other capacities that might be captured by different stage-perspectives, and thus you are creating a second partiality on top of the first. (This stream absolutism is simply an occupational hazard of pioneering structuralism. We of today can avoid these missteps, not because we are smarter but because we can look at all of their resultsdozens of different developmental mapsand thus see a larger picture made possible by all of their combined efforts, something obviously not available to those intrepid pioneers. We attempt to avoid this absolutism with the simple reminder called levels and linesmany different lines, many different levels, and hold all of these conceptions very, very lightly.)

How Many Waves in the Ocean? It is useful to keep in mind, then, that streams and waves are relatively arbitrary constructions. Not even a cognitive scientist thinks that if you cut open the brain you will find a discrete little clump of neurons called the linguistic module or the cognitive module or the needs module, let alone that they clunk through rigid rungs of development. This entire game of structuralism is really is like sitting on the beach and saying, How many waves are there in the ocean? Structuralists are individuals sitting the bank of a great River, like the Amazon, and watching its waves and streams cascade. They then attempt to look for any patterns in those waves and streamsany recurrent or stable eddies in the Riverand they formulate those patterns. But all that really means is that if you stand exactly where that

89 structuralist stood and look at the River from that angle, you will see those same waves and streams. Move ten meters down the River and look again, and guess what? At the same time, stable patterns are stable patterns, the very stuff of Kosmic karma. When we say that these stage-conceptions have arbitrary elements to them (like degrees or inches), this is not to say that there isnt something out there called hot water or a stack of wood or a stable eddy in the River. As noted, some of the stable patterns in the Kosmosfrom atoms to molecules to bacteriaare billions of years old, essentially unchanged in their structure or agency. In the human psyche, the Kosmic habits of many of the early-to-intermediate waves in the various streams have been laid down for so long that they are relatively unchanging habits available as potentials to humans everywhere. In the cognitive stream, most of the waves up to formal operational (formop) appear available to humans cross-culturally (this does not mean that all humans develop to that level, only that they inherently have the potential to do so). In the values stream, the waves up to around orange appear cross-culturally available to most humans (and certainly up to red or blue). In the moral line, most of the waves up to level 4, and so on. The older the wave, the more enduring the Kosmic habit it has become. (Notice that, even though these are psychological structures, they are not merely psychological, in that they have an existence apart from any individual psyche and thus are transindividual in that sense. I will pursue this important notion in an endnote and contrast it with traditional metaphysics.)34 On the other hand, levels and waves higher than formop (cognition), higher than green (values), and higher than conscientious and individualistic (self-sense) are at this moment in evolution extremely rare (less than 2% of the worlds population). This does not mean that individuals cannot pioneer into these higher potentials (converting higher altered states into enduring traits/structures), only that those structures are as yet lightly formed, consisting only of the faint footprints and gossamer trails of highly evolved souls who have pushed ahead, leaving gentle whispers of the extraordinary sights that lie before

90 us if we have the courage to grow. These are higher potentials and nonordinary states, but not yet higher stages that have emerged at largethey have not yet become structures settled into stable Kosmic habits (which means that none of them reflect pregiven and pre-existing ontological levels, planes, axes, etc.). The evidence simply does not support that interpretation of peak experiences; and thus, following Occams razor, AQAL metatheory proceeds without it.35 Take, for example, Aurobindos level or stage of the intuitive mind. If we coordinate his speculations with concrete psychological research, we might sayto use the rough correlations with Spiral Dynamics and Loevinger as suggested in figure 5that his logical mind is at approximately the same level as orange/green, his higher mind is yellow/turquoise, his illumined mind is coral, and his intuitive mind is what we are calling lavender. Research by Jane Loevinger and her associates suggests that the percentage of the adult population that is stably at the equivalent of turquoise (i.e., not as a temporary peak experience or nonordinary state but as an enduring trait or permanent competence) is 0.5%, which means that today, 0.005 of the population has a center of gravity at turquoise values, the integrated self, and the higher mind. Those stably at lavender (or the intuitive mind) are probably 1/100th of that, or 0.00005 of the population. It might be one or two centuries or more before that level emerges on any sort of widespread scale. So what do you think the intuitive mind will look like several centuries from now when it emerges on a larger scale? Its absolutely impossible to say, wouldnt you agree? And it is impossible to say because it is not a pregiven, fixed, metaphysical, archetypal, ontologically preexisting structure/stage, but rather represents a higher state potential that Aurobindo, in his own extraordinary and pioneering growth and evolution, pushed into (and gave form to) based on his own four-quadrant psychograph (combined with the general trans-individual features of the higher states, not stages).36 This is why the number of people who will experience the intuitive mind in the same way that Aurobindo did will likely never be more than a few hundred, if that (namely, those who

91 follow his specific paradigm or yogic practice, within the same localized AQAL milieu, and thus push into this higher potential in a very specific way, converting it into an actual higher stage for the more evolved in that specific community of practice, or the relatively few number of people practicing the actual particulars of Aurobindos paradigm and consequently enacting a similar, higher worldspace in a stable fashion). Even then, the higher intuitive mind is not a pre-existing structure lying around and waiting to descend fully formed on people, but is being co-created by the community of practitioners who first begin crystallizing those particular potentials.37 Likewiseand even more soif and when that higher potential begins to actually emerge on a larger scale several centuries from now, it will be moldedgiven form and substance and structureby massive and presently unpredictable events in all four quadrants; it will not plop down from the sky already fully baked, nor will it arrive in the specific form enacted by Aurobindo. Let me give one last example. If you look at the traditional Great Chain, a modified form of which Aurobindo is presenting, you will notice that most of its versions have only 2 or 3 levels higher than turquoise (Plotinus, e.g., has world soul and nous). But centuries and millennia from now, those higher dimensionswhich are not pregiven levels but simply higher potentialswill almost certainly crystallize as 5 or 10 or even more actual levels/structures/stages. Look at what has already happened: the level that both Vedanta Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism refer to as mano (manomayakosha, manovijnana) actually turned out, in the course of historical unfolding, to contain at least 5 or 6 actual levels/stages (e.g., purple, red, blue, orange, green). Each of the two higher levels in the Vedanta (e.g., vijnanamayakosha and anandamayakosha) will also, almost certainly, end up crystallizing in at least 5 or 6 different levels themselves, meaning that, a millennium from now, there might be 10 or more actual stage/structures higher than turquoise that have become stable Kosmic habits available to humans around the world. The reason that is, indeed, these higher potentials are not fully baked pies in the sky, but rather are

92 tetra-enacted and tetra-evolve as their potentials begin to crystallize in the manifest, alreadyexisting world. What we try to do with AQAL metatheory is accept the fewest number of postulated pies in the sky (or metaphysical entities), because sooner or later that metaphysical baggage will backfire (as it already hasrather badlyin the eyes of the modern and postmodern mind). That metaphysical baggageof pre-existing, pregiven, archetypal, unchanging, independently existing, non-physical, meta-physical levels and structures and realms and planeshas almost entirely discredited a spiritual worldview in todays thought leaders, when all that has actually been discredited is the old interpretative framework, not the ever-present realities. The primary task of an Integral Post-Metaphysics is to polish the PR of those realties by updating the framework, or refurbishing the gift wrap in which they are offered to todays world. This is why Aurobindos metaphysicsand essentially all metaphysicshas to be completely reconstructed and moved into an AQAL, or postmodern integral, formulation. (As a secondary and delicate issue, it appears that metaphysical interpretations might even slow growth and evolution into these higher potentials, which is why the actual integral yoga of Aurobindo seems to have relatively few adepts considering its otherwise significant potential. Be that as it may, what Integral Post-Metaphysics is questioning is not the realization of the these great sages, but their interpretive frameworks, because all of the various interpretive frameworksincluding AQALare but transitory footnotes in the winds of ongoing evolution, and all that is required is that each age update the framework as best it can in order to accord more fully with Spirits own unfolding displays. And in the modern and postmodern world, that framework can only be post-metaphysical).

The Basic Levels or Waves of Consciousness We come now to what is surely the most intriguing questionand confusionraised by adequate structuralism. We briefly mentioned earlier that several researchers, such as James

93 Mark Baldwin, Robert Kegan, and Howard Gardner, have suggested that, however different the developmental streams, they nonetheless traverse the same general levels, waves, or orders of consciousness. At this point, of course, we have to be extremely careful, because we just saw that the actual nature or structure of the stages/levels/waves in one stream cannot legitimately be used to adequately categorize the stages/levels/waves in other streams. What I am now about to suggest does not violate that methodological given. Here is the difficult question, not often addressed even by structuralists: if you look at figure 5, what does the vertical axis on that graph represent? In figure 5, the basic levels are simply numbered from 1 to 10 on the y-axis. In the other parts of the graph, you can see the names of the specific levels/stages in each of the developmental lines; those specific levels have names reflecting some of the concrete realities in those lines (e.g., formal operational, pluralistic, impulsive, conformist, etc.). But what does the vertical axis itselfthe 1 to 10represent? In AQAL metatheory, the vertical axis represents basic levels of consciousness (or levels of awareness), but with an important twist: the levels of consciousness are nothing in themselves but are simply the degrees or inches of the various streams. In other words, the levels of consciousness are not levels of a particular and separate stream, but a measure of the degree of awareness in any particular stream. In that sense, the levels of consciousness are indeed like degrees, inches, or kilograms: measures that do not exist in themselves, or by themselves, but are simply measures of concrete realities. As meters measure distance or degrees measure heat, levels of consciousness measure the amount of awareness or consciousness present in any specific stage/level/wave in any of the streams. But those basic levels do not exist in themselves, any more than degrees or inches do. Degrees, inches, and kilograms are not running around out there in the world. We dont wake up and say, I cant build a house today because I ran out of inches, or I cant make hot coffee this morning because I ran out of degrees. The same is true with the basic levels of

94 consciousness: they are measures of the concrete realities unfolding in the lines, but not something running around on their own. I have six meters of wood. The levels of consciousness is the six meters part, not the wood part. That is why a level of consciousness is always a level of something that is appearing or manifesting: a level of moral responses, a level of needs, a level of values. Consciousness is not a phenomena but the space in which phenomena appear, and therefore levels of consciousness simply means levels of the phenomena appearing. And when the specific stages or levels of those streams are specified, they are always in the terms of that actual stream. I simply cannot say, Today I have seven kilograms. I can say, Today I have seven kilograms of water, and seven kilograms of water is NOT the same as seven kilograms of wheat, which is NOT the same as seven kilograms of copper. However, they all weight seven kilograms. The vertical axis in figure 5 is kilograms of awareness, if you will, and that abstract measure can be used across lines because it is not itself a line (because it does not itself exist). This is why levels of consciousness, as used in AQAL metatheory, can avoid stream absolutism. With reference to seven kilograms of water, wheat, and copper: if I am caught in copper stream absolutism, I will try to say that copper is the one basic reality or element, and therefore seven kilograms of wheat is really just a rearrangement of seven kilograms of copper. That is what stream absolutism does. It says, Seven kilograms of cognition is what is really being measured in seven kilograms of morals. It equates cognition and morals because both can weight seven kilograms. What is the same is the seven kilograms, but kilograms themselves cannot be defined using cognitive terms or moral terms, right? Same with the basic levels of consciousness. They are what all concrete streams have (or can have) in common, and what they all have in common is something that cannot be defined or described using any of the specific streams themselves. Another useful analogy I often use is altitude up a mountain. Lets say you have a mountain that is 10,000 meters high. There are, say, four main paths up this mountainone

95 going up the north, east, south, and west face (those paths represent the lines or streams). Each of those paths or lines has a very different view of the world. You cannot describe the northern view using the same perceptions that define the eastern view. But there is nonetheless a sense in which a person going up the north face and a person going up the east face can both be at 3000 meters, or both be at 5000 meters, or both be at 7000 meters, and so on. If a person is at 3000 meters on the north slope, it is the same heightthe same 3000 metersas somebody on the east slope, even though virtually everything else about the views is quite different. The individual paths are the actual streams, modules, or capacities; the altitude is the level or degree of consciousness in any stream. The actual levels/structures/stages/waves in a particular stream/line/path cannot be defined or accurately described using the views from the other paths. But there is a sense in which we can say that a particular path is at 3000 meters, or 5000 meters, or 8000 meters, and so on; that is a genuine measure of how far up the mountain, or along the path, you have gone. But if you want to give the actual structure of a view or perception at 4000 meters in any path, you can only do so using the views from that path, and thus the actual contours of the north path and the east path will be as different as wheat and copper. What this meansand was very much intended to meanis that consciousness is not an entity, thing, process, or capacity. Consciousness is not itself a stream, line, module, function, or intelligenceit is not any thing or event or process of any sort. Consciousness is rather the opening or clearing in which things and events arise. A level of consciousness is simply a measure of the types of things and events that can arise in the first place; a measure of the spaciousness in which a world can appear; a degree of openness to the possibilities of the Kosmos; a sweep of the horizons within which phenomena can manifest; a measure of the awareness inhabiting each perspective, moment to moment to moment. This in keeping with the Madhyamaka/Yogachara schools of Buddhism, which point out that, if consciousness is to be conceptualized at all, it is a pure Emptiness, devoid of specific

96 characteristics, but allowing specific characteristics to arise in the manifest world; and with William James, who pointed out that consciousness does not exist, by which he did not mean that we dont possess something like awareness, but that awareness is aware of things and events and is therefore not itself a thing or event. There are phenomena in consciousness, and if we must conceptualize consciousness, it is not itself a phenomena but the space in which phenomena appear. This is why nobody has ever been able to satisfactorily define consciousnessit doesnt exist, but is the space in which things exist. And a level of consciousness is a measure of the spaciousness of the space in which in they exist. Generally speaking, it is best to simply number these levelswhether using 3, 5, 7, 10 levels or morebecause any name, word, or term implies a characteristic that, ultimately, tends to be misleading. Its almost impossible to think of a term for, say, level 3, that isnt taken from one of the specific levels in an actual stream (and therefore really is not applicable to levels in the other streams). Still, for practicalities, we often have to refer to a general level of consciousness by using the names of some of the levels in a particular stream of consciousness. Thus, for the basic and empty levels of consciousness themselves, I am often forced to use terms such as postconventional, conventional, postconventional; or sometimes the cognitive terms (preop, conop, formop, higher mind, overmind); or the Spiral Dynamics terms (red, blue, orange, green, etc.)but I trust that it is now clear why doing so is a technically incorrect shortcut.38 In light of the above, its certainly easy to see how stream absolutism can get started. For example, in figure 5, you can see that level 5 (or 5000 meters) in the values line is orange, while in the cognitive line it is formop. It is the same height of those two structure-stages (on the mountain of empty consciousness) that allows the levels in one line to vaguely be used to represent levels in the other lines. This is why it is common for people to use terms from the actual levels in one line to refer to the actual levels in other linesand thus say things like, This person is using postconventional cognition, or This person has blue morals, or This person

97 has self-actualization values, or This person has green cognition, when none of those statements are technically correct. (When theorists use the research from one stream, such as values or cognition, and attempt to construct a comprehensive psychology by extrapolating those findings across what are actually other lines, they usually proceed by first expanding the definition of the levels in that line to include more and more characteristics, and eventually end up including so many characteristics in one line that the line itself has actually become meaningless. For example, if you start with the cognitive stream, and identify, say, 6 major levels of cognition, which you then want to turn into a comprehensive developmental model, you will say, Each of these cognitive levels also has a sense of time and a sense of space; and each level has a different sense of self; and each level handles death differently; and it has a different type of morals; and oh, yes, it has different needs, and. And all of a sudden you have tried to account for a dozen different developmental lines by making all of them variations on your original line: wheat and water are all claimed to be variations on copper. But we have compelling empirical evidence that those characteristics are in many ways multiple intelligences that do not develop lockstep: its levels and lines in many ways. What happens as you try to expand your original line to account for all the other lines is that you end up defining your line as something that underlies, or is the hidden code, for everything: it underlies morals, needs, fashion styles, self sense, worldviews, etc. etc. [Link] that which accounts for all of those things cannot itself be any of those things: and thus you have just sneaked in the notion of empty levels of consciousness, which is all that I am talking about, but you have done so under a false pretense, namely, that this is somehow ALL based on your original research into a particular developmental line, which is simply not true.) In short, for AQAL metatheory, the basic levels of consciousness are a measure of the amount of awareness or consciousness in any line, but consciousness itself is nothing; it is not a presence but an absence, an opening, a clearing, a space of perspectives, within which phenomena arise. You cant have more or less of consciousness, but you can have more or less phenomena

98 allowed to arise in consciousness. When the entire Kosmos arises in your consciousness, that is Kosmic consciousnessthe top of the mountain, so to speak (except there is no top, only an infinitely receding horizon that nonetheless gets bigger and bigger the more that you can love). In figure 5, I have presented 10 empty levels, meters, or degrees of consciousness. In Integral Psychology, I used 16 basic levels.39 The number of levels is Celsius and Fahrenheit. We can arbitrarily say there are 10 major levels up the mountain, or 5, or 3. Moreover, we can measure them using meters, feet, miles, etc. Usually you need 10 or 12 levels to cover most of the important bases in a full-spectrum model. The charka-system, however, gives a quite useful 7-level scheme. Sometimes, for much simpler uses, 5 or even 3 levels will doagain, as long as we realize what we are doing with these mere maps of the paths up the mountain: they are thirdperson maps of first-person realities, and in order to actually see those views, you must climb the mountain yourself, not memorize the maps. (In an endnote, I will include a more detailed summary of levels of consciousness for those new to AQAL.)40 The emancipatory interest of such endeavors is often obvious: pioneers who have gone further up the mountain often return and tell us of their adventures, and invite us to traverse that higher path with them. They tell of us the higher potentials that are Freer and Fuller expressions of our own birthright. Faced with such higher maps, we generally have two responses: we can get irritated, or we can get climbing. One last point: levels/structures/stages/waves are not everything. They cover an important part of the psyche, but are not the whole story. For example, in addition to stages of consciousness, there are also states of consciousness, most of which show no particular developmental sequence (and are therefore sometimes modeled more on systems theory for the third-person side of the street, which is fine if done carefully; if not, it usually leads to metatheoretical turmoil, especially since systems theory itself has no first-person side of the street and therefore quickly treats first-person holons as equivalent to third-person artifacts, which is

99 why systems theory is almost always involved in subtle reductionism). Further, there are unconscious and subconscious processes, some of which possess discernible structure/stages and some of which do not, and so on. Andmost important of allstructures and states themselves are still third-person descriptors, which can under no circumstances replace the first-person methodologies of phenomenology, hermeneutics, meditation, and other zone #1 paradigms, which disclose interior realities by acquaintance, not merely by description: by feeling, not by looking; by walking, not by talking; by climbing the mountain, not selling the maps.

B. Structures in Groups Such is a brief overview of structures/stages in individuals. How about in cultural holons? Are there stages of development in collective holons? If so, what does it mean to say that a group is at a certain level of development? This topic, needless to say, becomes complicated very quickly; moreover, we havent yet discussed the social or interobjective aspects of individuals and groups, particularly their techno-economic, institutional, and ecological aspects (which place constraints on behavior and often impose their own stage sequences on events; these will be discussed in the next Excerpt). Nonetheless, a few general considerations of structure/stages in groups may be offered at this point, considerations we will refine as we go along. We will begin with a look at structures in groups, and then focus on any possible stages.

Isomorphism Traditionally, structuralism has attempted to describe the patterns or structures in both individual/intentional holons (UL) and communal/cultural holons (LL), and most structuralists have found what they generally call isomorphisms between individual and cultural structures. This means that the behavioral patterns of individual subjective holons tend to mirror similar patterns in the intersubjective networks of which they are members.41 This is not surprising in

100 that the quadrants tetra-evolve and are tetra-enactive, with many analogous patterns appearing in various quadrants (although this is never a simple one-to-one relation, inasmuch as different perspectives on the same occasion are, indeed, different; that some forms are isomorphic does not mean that all forms are). Isomorphic comes from iso, equal, and morphic, form: forms or structures that are equal (or very similar). As used in adequate structuralism, isomorphic means that some interior behaviors in an individual, when looked at in a 3p stance, show a similar form or structure to communal or collective events when looked at in a 3p stance. Put more simply, if a groups behavior has all the characteristics of, say, the value structure of blue (conformist-absolutistic), then we say that the group and the individual are both isomorphic for blue. However, the situation becomes complicated very quickly, especially because the study of societal or communal occasions involves the difficult issue of the relation of individual and collective. If you believe that a society of organisms is itself an organism (a leviathan or Gaia), then you will approach the study of groups quite differently than if you believe societies are not themselves individuals. Part of the difficulty with the early, pioneering structuralists is that they hadnt come to terms with some of these fundamental issues, and thus their efforts (e.g., LeviStrauss) were skewed from the start. What I will do in this section is present my own conclusions on the nature of structures/levels/stages in groups, and you can decide what parts of it make sense to you. To begin with, it seems important to understand that, whatever you think of the relation of a group and an individual, neither of them is ever at a level. When it comes to an individual, we saw that a person can be at one level in one line and simultaneously at a completely different level in other lines, so it is nonsensical to say that a person is at a level. But even in a single line, nobody is ever at a level. Most often, a person at one level will give 50% of his responses from that level, 25% from a lower level, and 25% from a higher level.

101 For all of those reasons, no individual is ever at a level. The most you can say is that in a particular situation that elicited a particular module response (e.g., a moral response, a needs response, a values response, etc.), this particular persons response at that particular time happened to be of this particular class (e.g., the class called red, blue, orange, etc. in the Gravesian values line; or preconventional, conventional, postconventional in the Kohlberg moral line; or preop, conop, formop in the Piagetian cognitive line; or belongingness, self-esteem, selfactualization, self-transcendence in the Maslow needs line, etc.). To simply say that a person is blue or formop or preconventional is meaningless (and mean).

Horizontal Outlaws Still, here is where saying that an individual is at a level has a limited usefulness (and this is the only way the concept is used by adequate structuralists). We just mentioned the fact that, for example, if confronted with a condition that elicits a moral-module response, I might give 25% of my responses from stage 2, 50% from stage 3, and 25% from stage 4. Even though, in this example, I contain moral-stage-2, moral-stage-3, and moral-stage-4 holons in my own compound individuality, the contents of those holons themselves are usually incompatible. (The senior holons do indeed transcend-and-include the juniors, but they do so by subsuming them, not by treating them as equivalent or compatible). I obviously cannot act as both a stage-2 impulsive hothead and a stage-4 rigid conformist at the same time. In other words, although I might contain several different levels in that moral line, I can only act on one of those levels in any specific moment. Conflicting agencies cannot easily drive a single act of behavior, much as I cannot turn left and right at the same intersection. This is why any particular behavior in an individual tends to express a single type, class, or level of response, even though the individual may contain a multitude of levels in numerous lines. In that specific sense, although we can never say a person is blue, or is orange, or is

102 preconventional, or postconventional, we can say that in that one instance, his or her behavior was indeed blue, or was moral-stage-4, or expressed self-esteem needs, and so on. In short, single deliberate behaviors tend to be driven by single intentions; those intentions can come from any module or stream that is elicited by the present situation; within that elicited stream or line, although the person will contain different levels or waves, when the person acts, that behavior is generally driven by the intentionality stemming from a single wave, because conflicting agencies lead to paralysis, not action. Therefore, in that very narrow sense, we can say that the person was blue at that moment. Essentially the same thing happens with a group. Although a compound network (like a compound individual) is never at a level, some of its behaviors are, and for the same reason. For example, a group might vote to enact a particular law; all members agree that they will obey this law if a majority votes it. But a given law, like a given behavior, cannot easily incorporate conflicting demands. You cannot, at the same time, drive at 55 miles per hour and at 60 miles per hour. Single laws, like single deliberate behaviors, usually reflect single agency, and to that extent, the group, in that instance, is acting from a single structure of intentionality (in the particular module the communal law is regulating). The group law or regnant nexus in this case is: everybody must drive at 55 miles per hour. If you follow that law, you are inside a circle of citizenship; i.e., you are inside the lawabiding circle when your interactions are internal to the law or nexus-agency of that circle. But break that law, such that your interactions are external to the communal rules and laws, and you are rather literally an outlaw and can be fined or imprisoned. In that specific sense, we say the group or collective holon has a structure or pattern that can be elucidated: the nexus-agency of the communal holon can be identified and described, and in this case it includes the rule-governed behavioral pattern of 55 mph, or face fines and imprisonment. Many cultural regnant nexuses are consciously implemented, as in that example. But many, perhaps most, of the regnant nexuses of communal holons are unconscious, preconscious,

103 background, contextual, or otherwise not directly prehended by the individuals whose interactions are nonetheless being governed (or molded) by those patterns of cultural intersubjectivity and nexus-agency.42 Those transformational (or internality) codes, of course, are what the pioneering cultural structuralists, from Gebser to Althusser to Barthes to Foucault, were attempting to elucidate, and what adequate structuralists ever since have been exploring; they are the wholeness patterns of a collective holon, the patterns that, following which, one is a recognized member of the collective, or an in-law, and breaking which, one becomes an outlaw. Many of those cultural codes (or patterns of intersubjectivity), as we were saying, are unconscious to those individuals whose intersections are molded by those networks. Part of the emancipatory work that many structuralists have pursued is an attempt to expose those hidden, unconscious networks and then assess whether they are, in fact, fair and just according to a higher set of standards than those that might have created the societal structures and rules in the first place. That is, many of the sociocultural structures unearthed by structuralists are actually preconventional (egocentric) or conventional (ethnocentric) structures, which humans at postconventional waves wish to redress. This emancipatory component of structuralism is a fruitful area of inquiry; it has continued to motivate, for example, the Frankfurt School (a type of critical inquiry that I believe needs to be included in any integral approach, if not necessarily with their specific details). If development in general moves from preconventional to conventional to postconventionala movement that can only be spotted by zone #2 methodologiesthen a profound motivation of doing adequate structuralism is to help individuals and cultures move from egocentric and ethnocentric stances toward more worldcentric waves of compassion, care, and consciousness. (On the other hand, simply asserting that we should all learn a worldcentric ecology, or embrace a global compassion, is a noble but pragmatically less-than-useful project, because worldcentric waves are the product of development, not exhortation. As noted, the new

104 paradigm approaches exhort a goal without elucidating the path to that goalthey are cheerleaders for a cause that has no means of actualization, which perhaps explains the deep frustration among new-paradigm advocates who know they have a better ideal but are disappointed at how little the world responds to their calls.) We will return to the topic of unconscious structures (and possible emancipation from them) in a moment. For now, all we need note is that patterns such as linguistic signs and symbols, semantic fields of meaning, various worldviews, background belief systems, interpretive codes, regulative intentionalities, intersubjective fields of feelings, discursive and nondiscursive practices, cultural networks of symbolic interaction: such are a few of the nexus-agencies that various schools of cultural studies, genealogy, archaeology, cultural anthropology, neostructuralism, and other investigators of intersubjectivity have elucidatedall of which, for simplicitys sake, we call cultural anthropology in figure 2. Because there is no good term that includes all of those various approachesfrom cultural studies to neostructuralism to cultural anthropologyand because all of those terms have been abused by the culture wars in academiaI will often use the neologism culturology to refer to the objective study of intersubjectivity, or a third-person look at first-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world, whether that applies to ants, apes, or humans.

Vertical Outlaws The simple 55 mph example suggests how a single structure can govern a compound nexus; heres an example of how levels of structures often become involved in a group nexus. A town in Kansas recently voted to outlaw the teaching of evolution because it conflicted with its community values or community standards; specifically, it was claimed that the scientific theory of evolution conflicts with Biblical teachings. It appears that, in this particular instance, and in response to the challenge presented by the theory of evolution, the values module or stream has been elicited in many of the members of the township. It also appears that a

105 majority of those members are behaving according the level in the values line called blue (or saintly/absolutistic). In terms of AQAL metatheory, we would say that the majority of town members were insisting that the public and educational intersections of all town members should be internal to a nexus-agency whose exchanged values conform to blue structures. That is, the aspects of your subjectivity that can legitimately or legally enter the public sphere (or that can traffic at public intersections) must be internal links in an intersubjective network whose nexus-agency (internality code or regnant nexus) is isomorphic with the value patterns of blue (mythicmembership, absolutistic/saintly, ethnocentric, conformist, etc.). Under those circumstances, the teaching of evolution will therefore fall outside the law (outside the boundary of the towns sociopolitical we; more specifically, outside and external to its regnant nexus)and thus, falling outside the law, it will be illegal to teach evolution; if you do so, you are therefore an outlaw and can be fined or imprisoned. If you were a Foucault of the future, studying this situation, you would look at those rules of discourse (the discursive structures, or the things that you can, and cannot, officially or legitimately discuss), and attempt to discern the patterns they are following, particularly their exclusion ruleswhat is not allowedand their transformation codeswhat is allowed. You would further look at the types of social practice and nondiscursive (nonverbal) modes of interactionfrom the shape of the school buildings, to the types of discipline used to instill the transformation codes, to the ways in which those who teach evolution are deemed mentally illor, in this case, are sinners with a sickness of the soul (because evolution is evil); and thus those sinners instill a disturbing nihilation that must be treated with therapia: emotional torture, confession, conversionall being instances of a knowledge that is in fact thinly disguised power parading as truth and goodness. (For nihilation and therapia, see below.) The ultimate aim of such archaeology and genealogy is, of course, an emancipation to some degree from the binding power of those cultural structures of unfreedom.

106 So the township passes a law outlawing the teaching of evolution. In America, however, that nexus-agency can be overruled by senior nexus-agencies, including the Supreme Court, whose actions are institutionally driven by intentionalities that are at a particular level or higher; for the Supreme Court: implicitly by cognitions of formop or higher, by values of orange or higher, by morals of stage-5 or higher, and by a self-identity of conscientious or higher.43 (In other words, the internality codes of the legal network of behavioral injunctions that govern, by force if necessary, the interactions of citizens of the United States, when considered as members of a federal holon, contain regnant nexuses that are isomorphic with those structural levels in those lines.) In this example, the Kansas township was attempting to act in a way that was outside a higher law (in that states, in that particular area, are legal subholons in a federal holon); the township was therefore found to be acting illegally and unconstitutionally according to a higher level of nexus-agency (or regnant nexus) governing the nation.44 The township accordingly (under threat of legal action) repealed that law. We can see in this example that the structures or codes of a groups nexus-agency embody at least two important items. One, they embody various types of horizontal translation patterns (such as exclusion and rarefication), or all of the translation injunctions and rules, both positive and negative, implicit and explicit (such as, Do not teach evolution). In this case, evolution is marginalized discourse. But we can also see in this example that the structures or codes of a groups nexusagency implicitly embody, in addition to horizontal translation codes, vertical levels of development in any of the lines that happen to be involved in the behavioral patterns that are subject to the groups regulation. We can use the more abstract levels of consciousness measure and say, for example, that the Kansas township, operating at level-4 consciousness, attempted to implement a law (a horizontal translation rule or regulation) that the Supreme Court overruled from a level-5 consciousness. Or we can be more technical and say the group was

107 acting from a cultural level isomorphic to the ethnocentric/blue level in the values line, which was overruled by the Court acting from a cultural level isomorphic to the worldcentric/orange level in the values line. The point is that the structures of collective behavior embody not only horizontal solidarity but vertical solidarity, breaking either of which results in a communal-holon boundary violation. (Any boundary violation, as we will see below, is a threat or nihilation that must be met with therapia, or treatment to restore boundaries.) Of course, the descriptions of structures are in third-person terms, whereas the experience of solidarity is the quintessential firstperson plural (or intersubjective) experience; the point is simply that structures are the outside view of that inside feeling. (The outside view we call internality codes, structures, regnant nexus, and the like, whereas the inside feelings cannot be described but only feltyou had to be therealthough we do use terms like first-person plural, knowledge by acquaintance, felt-meaning, mutual understanding and the like to convey those inside apprehensions. The point is simply that, whether looked at from within or without, intersubjectivity has horizontal and vertical dimensions.) To use the more abstract measure, the internality codes of any communal holon embody not only horizontal translation rules (such as, You must drive 55 miles per hour, or, You must not teach evolution), but also vertical levels of development in any lines thus regulated. The horizontal rules stem from basic levels of consciousness within which the groups members tend to operate, basic levels that define the scope of the event horizons (or the degrees of consciousness) within which the members intersections will be internal to a we. Thus, the law is defined not just by horizontal patterns but by vertical patterns as well. Again, much of these structural patterns are unconscious to the members of the group. It is the structuralist who, after the fact, subjects the groups intersubjective patterns to a thirdperson inquiry and thus discloses possible structures or regnant nexuses of those intersubjective

108 patterns (i.e., it is only third-person inquiries that reveal holistic patterns.) Such a methodological inquiry, conducted as a third-person plural investigation of first-person plural realities, has found that various interactions of group members are internal to a nexus-agency whose patterns, textures, codes, rules, or flow-patterns can often be specified or described. Those codes represent kosmic habits in both vertical and horizontal dimensions that embody the collective requirements of the societal holon in order to recognize its own members and thus reproduce itself in spacetime.

Center of Gravity The Kansas township is an example of what it means to say that a group is at a particular level in a particular line (i.e., the group is behaving as if from one level; in this case, level 4). Not only do compound individuals and compound networks sometimes act (as if) from one level, it is empirically the case that sometimes they consistently act as if from one level. In AQAL metatheory, this is summarized with the concept center of gravity. That is, individuals and groups have something like a center of gravity that expresses the sum total of their overall inclinations in all levels and lines. In individuals, the center of gravity is usually in the vicinity of the proximate self in the self-identity stream; and in groups, it usually resides in the communal action systems (whether educational, governmental, medical, etc.). All of this is encapsulated in the simple formula that these conceptual constructs are referring to probability waves, or the probability of finding particular types of occurrences in particular spacetime regions of the AQAL matrix, whether in individuals or groups. The center of gravity is simply the probability space in which you will most often find a particular holon, and it is a useful concept to just that degree.

Nihilation and Therapia

109 The reason that something like a center of gravity seems to exist is that healthy pluralism is one thing, morbid fragmentation, quite another. In the individual, wildly uneven development in the various lines induces something like self dissonance, an internal stress and tension that can lead to significant dissociation, an inner dissonance that the self-sense accordingly seeks to minimize (failing to do so can result, in extremis, in pathologies such as multiple personality disorder and schizoid splitting).45 A similar dynamic seems to be operating in groups. To the extent that a group of individual Is recognize themselves as a we, then to just that extent they defend the boundary of that we against both inside and outside disruptions. Here I might point to the work of sociologist Peter Berger on what he calls societal cohesion, nihilation, and therapia. Briefly: Any social group, as a group, operates with some sort of regulating principles and patterns (explicit or implicit) that hold the group together and give it some sort of cohesion (which we are calling its nexus-agency, pattern, or structure; its regnant nexus). Even a pluralistic group is held together by a majority adoption of pluralistic principles or attitudes (a process Berger also calls legitimation, another term for consensus cultural cohesion). If anything threatens the legitimacy or the life of the group (i.e., if any occasion breaches the boundary defined by the internality codes of the nexus-agency of the group), then group members experience that breach as what Berger calls nihilationas a painful, frightening, or death-like experience. The group then seeks to evade and/or repair the damage to its collective identities, values, properties, or agencies using what Berger calls therapia, or therapies to restore its cohesion boundaries. The same principles of cohesion, nihilation, and therapia are at work in individual holons (because they are essentially at work in all holons; these principles are a simple set of definitions of what is required for a stable identity patternindividual or collectiveto endure in space and time). Whenever the boundary of any individual or communal holon is threatenedwhich means, whenever the wholeness aspect of any whole/part is threatenedit experiences or

110 proto-experiences a nihilation or death-like perturbation in its AQAL configuration, and must therefore, upon pain of dissolution, take remedial steps to repair the damagehence, therapia (and that occurs whether in an ant colony, a coral reef, or a Kansas township). The main difference between how this nihilation/therapia works in individual and communal holons is that in individual holons, the agency or regnant nexus is often associated with a dominant monad, which means that its regulation often involves one sentient being, such as a molecule, actually becoming internal to another sentient being, such as a cell, so that the molecule becomes a literal subholon in the senior cell; whereas in collective or systemic holons, the regnant nexus itself never contains a sentient being as a dominant monad within which other sentient beings become internal subcomponents (as in a giant leviathan), but rather the intersections of the sentient beings become internal to a nexus-agency of which they are members. That regnant nexus itself can be commandeered, taken over, and controlled by dictatorial sentient beings, but never in the sense that other sentient beings then become internal to the dictators, only in the sense that the fascistic holons now have some degree of power over the interactions of the sentient beings inside, not internal, to the network. The types of power exerted in both are dramatically different (which is another reason that the leviathan or Gaia views of ecology often become confused and tend toward fascism, in theory and in practice; in other words, an organism is an I, an ecology is a we, and whenever ecology is called an organism, there is a hidden I, often that of the theorist; see Excerpt E). In the Kansas township example, the dictatorial government of the town controlled the intersections of its teachers, not because those teachers became subholons in a bigger sentient being or leviathan, but because their public interactions were subject to political-legal force if those interactions did not conform to city ordinance (or the internality codes of the collective holon defining legal membership). The town experienced nihilation (in this case, a threat to its level-4 values) and thus responded with its own therapia or attempted cure (in this case, a

111 banishing and outlawing of the offending speech acts)a cure that the Supreme Court, in turn, experienced as nihilation and responded with its own higher-level cure. Of course, some of these therapies look rather barbaric to outsiders, and some look more healthy, but no collective (or individual) holon is without them. On the morbid side, some premodern therapies include cannibalism and human sacrifice; some traditional therapies include the Inquisition and burning at the stake; some modern therapies include frontal lobotomies; some postmodern therapies include politically correct thought police. On the happier side, therapia that appear to heal have included shamanic voyaging, religious rituals, democratic justice, and multicultural sensitivity (resp.). The essential point is that groups, as groups, have a type of center of gravity which itself constitutes something of a boundary phenomena. Groups, like individuals, can tolerate only so much internal dissonance without coming apart at the seams.46 Groups have a series of regulative patterns or laws, some explicit, some implicit, expressing their Kosmic habits of stability and duration in spacetime. Outsiders are thus out-laws, which threaten the existence of the social cohesion patterns necessary for individual and group existence. To say that groups initiate therapeutic actions in order to diminish nihilation and protect their boundaries is only to say that all holons do so. The barbarism does not lie in the therapia itself, but in the level of the expansiveness of the boundary being protectedegocentric to ethnocentric worldcentric to Kosmocentric.

The Politics of Consciousness This raises an important, related issue. In A Sociable God, I began drawing attention to two different types of outlaws: pre-laws and trans-laws. Both of them, although as different as night and day, are treated the same by the groups lawyers and copsboth prelaws and translaws are lumped together as outlaws that threaten nihilation and therefore must be met with aggressive therapia.

112 Many of historys great pioneers in consciousness evolution were actually translaws who were treated as common outlaws and crucified, burned, banished or otherwise placed aggressively on the other side of the boundary of the we. Nihilation is threatened not only by holons outside the we-boundary on the same level of consciousness, but by any holons on significantly different levels of consciousness. The politics of consciousness is the study of the types and levels of awareness that are legitimated by a groups nexus-agency, and, conversely, the types and levels of awareness that are de-legitimated, excluded, banished, marginalized, scapegoated. Illustrative examples of the politics of consciousness can be seen in the cultural responses to countercultural movementsfrom the Reformation/Counterreformation to the Sixtiesas well as in the countercultural responses themselves to movements that transcend their own levels of consciousness. The Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries, for example, which established Protestantism as a viable alternative to Catholicism for large-scale cultural cohesion, was, at that time, a countercultural movement that represented early oranges attempt to break the hegemony of blue; it was met with a Counterreformation that included, among other things, the Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition, and the Holy Office, as a panicked and intensified blue lashed back with brutal therapia. You dont need an Inquisition when everybody believes the myths. In the Sixties, the green center-of-gravity movements came to dominate academia in the humanities, where they often displaced a traditional orange liberal education. Thirty years later, as countercultural green became the cultural norm in academia, new countercultural movements attempted to emerge beyond green; and green, sensing the threat, instituted its own inquisitors, which the media promptly dubbed politically correct thought police. This inquisitorial therapia was especially aimed at any higher or post-green levels of consciousness, which were now perceived (correctly) as a threat to the hegemony of the interpretive codes dominating academic discourse.

113 (Several students went through a catalog of the California Institute of Integral Studies and made a list of the number and types of exclusionary practices and rules found in the discursive formations of the course offerings; the degree and extent of the exclusionary practices in integral endeavors offered illustrative examples of Foucauldian power structures. Some of todays countercultural forms of nihilation/therapia are explored in Boomeritis.) This is not to suggest that collective holons can do otherwise; short of Emptiness, there are only boundaries, and all boundaries experience identity, therefore threats to identity, therefore nihilation, and therefore the need for therapia. It is to suggest, however, that boundaries can expandegocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to Kosmocentric. With regard to prelaws, holons of a lesser depth (or lesser authenticity) are a threat to the communal holon because they cannot (or do not) responsibly participate in the exchanges and interactions that are internal to the nexus-agency (or the togetherness codes) of the various wes that constitute the cohesion of the communal holon (a cohesion necessary for the existence and survival of both the individual and the group). In that sense, it is entirely appropriate, from the view of the communal holon, that prelaws are outlaws. They do indeed threaten the immune system or boundary of the collective holon (hence the need for therapia). Of course, there are relatively healthy and relatively unhealthy versions of the treatment of prelaws, where unhealthy means that the modes of detection of deviancy and their punishment or correction are excessive, or considerably beyond the degree required by that particular level of development of the cultural holon. Therapia, in other words, can go into overkill. Still, no known cultural holon is free of some sort of perception of outlaws and therapia; the wonder is that most forms of therapia function relatively well (when judged on a realistic, not utopian, scale). As for translaws or postlaws, holons of a greater depth (or greater authenticity) are also a threat to the communal holon, although of a different order (a difference spotted by the structuralist or cultural anthropologist, rarely by the culture itself). Translaws threaten the

114 legitimation process of any we, but this time from above, not belowthe translaw represents love resisted, not hate imprisoned. Classic translaws, treated like outlaws/prelaws, include Socrates, al Hallaj, Jesus of Nazareth, Giordano Bruno, Meister Eckhart its a long list. More mundane examples from recent history include, as briefly noted, the reception that orange center-of-gravity culture gave to the green center-of-gravity student and countercultural movements of the Sixties, a counterculture often called, appropriately enough, the cultural creatives (whose healthy versions ushered in civil rights, health reform, and environmental protections); and the subsequent treatment that those green countercultural movements in turn gave to the emerging integral (second-tier) center-of-gravity movements. Although green often pictures itself as integral, we have seen that it is pluralistic and actually resists integral; the resultant paradigm clash is a legitimation crisis that is becoming more intense as an integral age at the leading edge attempts to emerge, an edge that is translaw to the prevailing law and regnant nexus of allowable discourse in the counterculture of the cultural creatives.47 At this time, integral discourse is still largely marginalized and suppressed in both cultural and countercultural centers. However, there has of late been encouraging, potentially profound shifts (hence the possibility of an integral age at the leading edge). As an ironic twist, many of the most respected conventional academic universities are becoming open to integral approaches faster than are the countercultural centersyou can, for example, legitimately study transpersonal developmental theories more accurately at Harvard than at CIIS or Naropa. One of the reasons for this turmoil in countercultural centers is that countercultural movements themselves are often a mixture of prelaw and translaw, and the prelaw elements effectively derail any further evolution. As the conventional/cultural centers continue to naturally evolve and progress into postconventional and previously translaw areas, it is a relatively seamless move; whereas the prelaw elements ensconced in countercultural centers make progressive expansion almost impossible. This is one of the great ironies explored in Boomeritis.

115 Structural Integrity We have often noted that any cultural holon or we can be approached from the inside or the outside (fig. 2). As briefly noted earlier, cultural cohesionthe cohesion of any weis, when approached from within, nothing other than cultural solidarity, or the felt-meaning and shared-touch explored by hermeneutics; and, when approached from without, the cultural cohesion of the we appears as the structural cohesion or structural integrity of the wethat is, appears as the internality codes, regulative patterns, rules, laws, transformational codes, or nexus-agencies that embody the dynamic but stable patterns of any enduring and ongoing we. In short, cultural solidarity represents zone #1, and structural integrity, zone #2, of any wethe inside and outside features of an interior we (the inside and outside of a first-person plural holon).48 Just as there is vertical and horizontal solidarity, there is vertical and horizontal structural integrity (which means that the regnant nexus of a we embodies both horizontal translation patterns and vertical levels of consciousness, by whatever name). For example, when we examine the impact that a prelaw or a postlaw has on the communal lawsuch that they are both treated as outlawsthen from the outside we might attempt to describe the regulations, rules, or patterns of discourse that the prelaws and postlaws are violating. In the Kansas township example, we saw that a level-4 rule violated the laws of a level-5 federal holon and thus was overruled. In the case of an Integral Age at the Leading Edge, yellow-level discourse is outlawed and suppressed by green-level regnant nexuses governing most academic discourse in cultural and countercultural institutions. The structuralist is interested in those rules not only as a scholarly pursuit, but often with a vested emancipatory interest in freeing discourse and praxis from those oppressive regimes. When viewed from the inside, however, those cultural structures do not appear in thirdperson terms but in first-person feelings, awareness, and vital meanings, a rich texture of we-ness and togetherness that is the heart of any communal occasion. No individual or cultural holon says, Let me see how closed and narrow I can be, but rather operates, mostly with good and

116 decent intent, within the boundaries and horizons of its own enacted worlds, worlds that an outside study might determine are at, say, a particular level of consciousness, but whose inside feel is simply one of belongingness and togetherness (at whatever level). A violation of the communal boundary or togetherness codesa nihilationis not an academic description but a painful feeling of threat, disruption, being unfairly attacked and harmedtruly a nihilation, a death-like experience, whether posed by prelaws or translaws. And attempts to restore the togetherness boundarythe various forms of therapiaare, for the most part, also decently intended and are simply part of the immune system or any individual or social holon. As we have often said, boundary threat and defense are inherent in any finite holon. The emancipatory interest of structuralismthe emancipatory interest of an interior holism that tracks degrees of consciousness and wholenesssimply asks: since you must defend a boundary, which boundary do you want to defend? A red boundary, a blue boundary, an orange boundary, a green boundary, a yellow, a turquoise, a coral, a silver, a platinum? In the manifest world there are only boundaries that represent the number of perspectives that will fit into your awareness, so choose your boundaries with care. Still, there is no upper limit to boundaries; the manifest world continues to expand correlative with the amount of love sentient beings can bring to it; but lesser, smaller, narrower boundaries are still relatively more exclusive, they cut into the Kosmos in more brutal ways, leave awareness bloody and torn where togetherness could abound. It is simply that the greater the degree of the evolution of consciousness, the more transparent the boundaries themselves become to Emptiness, so that, at this point in time, a platinum wave seems to exhaust (transcend and include) the sum total of Forms that have evolved to date, an embrace of which thus leaves the Witness one with All Form, not as a passing nondual state but a permanent trait or acquisition. A millennium from now, as more and more Forms continue to emerge and evolve, there will likely be a dozen higher (post-platinum) waves that one will have to embrace in order to be one

117 with All Form, as Spirit continues its own game of playful hide and seek, which is the game you started when you yourself got bored with being God.

C. Stages in Groups

Societal Streams Finally, a separate and very complex issue is whether the nexus-agency of any communal holon itself has developmental lines that are not merely the intersections of the lines of compound individuals. That is, do groups go through their own stages? Granted that communal or societal holons have some sort of structure, as all enduring entities do. But do those structures develop in stages? The answer to this partly depends, once again, upon ones stance on the relation of individual and collective. The essential point, in my opinion, is that any waves and streams in a group cannot be reduced to combinations and permutations of those of its members (every we has a life of its own), but neither do those waves and streams reach escape velocity from individuals and become themselves waves and streams in a higher compound individuality or superorganism (no we becomes a super-I or leviathan).49 Here is what seems to be happening. We noted that, in individuals, the various modules, intelligences, or streams are basically the types of responses to the questions that life seems to throw at us. Human beings have a wide variety of functional capacities or streamscognitive, emotional, psychosexual, moral, interpersonal, [Link] intersections of which provide much of the stuff of collective holons or we/its.50 In collective or societal holons, these stream or modular intersections tend to differentiate-and-integrate with a life of their own, and the results are the various sub-systems of a society (such as education, military, marriage/family, government, healthcare, religion, etc.). These subsystems are composed in part of the intersections of the correlative or isomorphic

118 individual streams (e.g., cognitive and education, psychosexual and marriage, defense and military); but also in part of occasions that have no parallel in individuals. In other words, there appear to be at least two different types of communal streams. The first we have already briefly discussed, namely, isomorphic streams, which means developmental lines whose levels or waves have similar forms in both the individual and the collective (hence, isomorphic). Typical examples are when we refer to individuals and groups as expressing a particular value meme in a particular instance (a blue person, a blue group, a blue movement, etc.), or when we say that a communal artifact (e.g., the United States Constitution) expresses a moral-stage-5 notion of justice as social contract. Usually, the components in societal functions that are isomorphic with individual streams are fairly easy to spotfor example, the psychosexual stream in marriage, the cognitive stream in education, the self-defense stream in the military, and so on. But there are also what we might call para-morphic societal streams, which have few if any correspondence with specific streams in individuals. Isomorphic streams are those parts of groups or collectives that are recognizably similar to aspects of individuals; paramorphic streams are those parts of groups that have no recognizable or obvious similarities with any individual streams or capacities. Paramorphic streams arise because many of aspects of the various the sub-systems in a society are not merely complex reworkings of individual intersections but are themselves novel emergents. The things that we do with each other do not always have parallels with what we do with ourselves. Even the simple game of chess has pieces that move with rules that have no obvious parallel in the individual players of the game (as far as I can tell, there is no idea in my mind, or cell in my body, that moves two spaces forward and one space to the right). These collective rules are not so much isomorphic to me as paramorphic to me (forms that stand alongside me and you).

119 Another very important example has to do with steering mechanisms and the means of control. Individual holons and their streams often have a dominant monad, whereas societal holons and their streams do not. Societal governance systems are therefore paramorphic in most ways (with their cultural dimensions often operating by consensus and their social systems by automatized mechanisms). Lets more closely at what look at what that means.

Cultural Streams and Social Streams Lets pause and quickly review our terminology here, since this entire areastages in groupscan be especially tricky, and we need to make sure we are on the same semantic page before we proceed. A collective, communal, or societal holon (or we/its) has an interior and exterior, which we respectively call cultural (we, intersubjective, LL) and social (its, interobjective, LR). Any aspect of that societal or communal holon that shows evolution, learning, or development is a societal line or stream (or communal stream, collective stream, group stream, etc.). That collective stream or developmental line has its own waves, stages, levels (or, at any rate, that is the topic we will be examining). Like any communal occasion, that societal stream can itself be looked at in its cultural dimensionsor cultural evolution (of the we)and in its social dimensionsor social evolution (of the its). Needless to say, those dimensions cannot be separated in reality, but they can theoretically be focused on separately. Finally, I have just suggested that societal or sociocultural streams can have isomorphic as well as paramorphic aspects. Isomorphic means that the collective developmental lines show obvious similarities or parallels with individual developmental lines; paramorphic means they do not. (Paramorphic and isomorphic can occur in either or both cultural and social evolution, as we will see.)

120 In this section, I am going to focus mostly on the LR or social system and the developmental streams in the LRin other words, on social evolution and its waves (in both iso and para forms). Obviously these cannot be separated from their LL or cultural dimensions; but, as we will see, the sheer materialities of the social system make it a profound influence on the other quadrants in general and on societal streams in particular. As we saw in Excerpt C, something is internal to a holon (in any quadrant) when it is following the agency or regnant nexus of the holon. This is true for social (LR) holons as well. The internality of a social network (or system of its) consists of those items that are internal to, or follow, the regnant nexuses or governing patterns of the system. We also saw that this means that social systems are composed not of individuals or organisms but of their exchanges or communications: what is internal to the system is the communication, not the organisms. Organisms are not strands in a Web, their intersections are. Organisms are members of a system, their interactions are components or parts of the system. 51 That network or social system also includes any material components or artifacts that are following the functional patterns of the system and thus are internal to the system as well. Thus, when it comes to a social network (or system of its), those it items include both (1) the behavioral intersections of the members of the network and (2) the exterior artifacts that are the material components of the network. Both of those aspects are indeed it or its. The exterior behavior of an organism and the exterior artifacts are both third-person dimensions of being-in-the-world. 52 Because both of those items are it or its, then if we are careful, we can refer to both the intersections and the artifacts as internal parts, components, threads, strands, or elements of the system, in that those items do indeed compose the system (and thus they follow, or are internal to, the system and its overall behavior). This means, as indicated, that no organisms or individuals are elements, strands, links, or parts of the system, only their exterior intersections or

121 communications (and their exterior artifacts): individuals are members or partners, their intersections are components or parts, of the social system. (Remember the chess game: the chess rules, governing the moves or intersections that can be made, and the artifactsthe chess pieces and their definitionsare internal to the game, not the humans playing it; only their intersections that follow the chess rules are. Humans are in the game when their intersections are internal to it).53 A social system or network, unlike a cultural system or network, always has some sort of physical boundary, because all exteriors, including exterior intersections and exterior artifacts, are located in sensorimotor space (which, of course, is true for all exterior or RH occasions). A forest has a physical boundary, a circle of friendship does not. (Cultural membership involves shared values, shared identities, shared interiors; social membership involves shared geography, shared ecology, shared exteriors. To be a member in both cases is to be interactively both inside and internal to the collective boundary.)54 A member of a social system is thus a sentient being whose physical organism is inside the physical boundaries of the system and aspects of its interobjective behavior are internal to the physical system (are following the behavioral patterns or regnant nexus of the system). A social members interactive behavior is thus both inside and internal. Other organisms that are inside the physical boundaries of the system but are not following its internality codes are foreigners, aliens, externals, even though they are inside the boundaries of the system (just as a parasite is inside a cell but external to its identity, because it is not following the internality codes of the cell). Thus, if I am driving through a local ecosystem, I am inside its physical boundaries but I am not an actual member of the ecosystem. A more extreme example is that I could be wearing a self-contained space suit and walk through the Redwood Forest in California. I am clearly inside the physical boundaries of that ecosystem but I am certainly not a part of it; my interactions with other organisms are not internal to the system, and thus I am not a functional member or partner

122 of the ecosystem. I am external or alien to that system (my behavior is exterior-inside-external, not exterior-inside-internal).55 Whereas cultural streams involve various types of we, social streams involve exterior behaviors and artifactsand this is where it starts to get interesting.

Social Streams and Artifacts Whereas the behavior of compound individuals has some sort of intentionality (or drive or motivation or will), artifacts themselves do not. Artifacts, as artifacts, have no interiors (although their subholons do). A painting of a woman, for example, has no consciousness (although the molecules in the paint do). The agency or defining pattern of an artifact is imposed on the artifact by the intelligence of the sentient being that produced it (whether the artifact is a birds nest, an anthill, a gun, an airplane, a dollar bill, a surgical scalpel, a school building). Likewise, the behavior of an artifact is supplied by the network of sentient beings (compound individuals or organisms) that are utilizing the artifact. A cardboard milk carton, for example, is an artifact that is part of the collective holon (is a material component of the social system) as long as the milk carton is actually incorporated in the functional exchanges in that society. The milk cartons behavior, like the behavior of all artifacts, is not initiated by the artifact, which lacks intentionality, but by the sentient beings using the artifact. The milk cartons behavior and actions are thus being moved around by the intentionalities of various individuals in that society; if the milk carton is being moved around by a machine (e.g., a milk truck), that machine itself is an artifact whose intentionality came from the sentient beings who built it. A milk carton is a functional aspect or part of the overall social system when it is actually being used by that system, which means that it follows various collective patterns or regnant nexuses of the systemfor example, where and how it is used, how it is disposed of or recycled, how much it costs, and so on.

123 If, however, a particular milk carton is, lets say, tossed aside in a forest and is left there, that milk carton is no longer a functional part of the social system that produced it; it might still be inside the larger physical boundaries of the social system (e.g., if the forest is inside the nation), but it is no longer internal to the social system, it is no longer following the behavioral patterns of that system. It is, however, now inside the physical boundaries of the ecosystem of the forest, and as it begins to decompose, its own elementscells, molecules, atomsnow enter into exchanges and interactions with the other members of the ecosystem (at the corresponding levels: cells with cells, molecules with molecules, atoms with atoms), and thus the milk carton or whats left of itis now both inside and internal to the ecosystem, although it is inside and external to the human social system that produced it. Very quickly, of course, it is no longer a milk carton, since that particular identity (or agency) was derived from its functional partness of the system that produced it. That artifactual holon decomposes into its structural subholons polymers, molecules, cells, atoms, quarksthat are now members in various networks of relational exchange of the local ecosystem at any of its corresponding levels.56 To return to the human social system and its streams, and tie this in with artifacts. Much of the stuff of social streams involves material artifacts and the ways that those artifacts are functionally moved around. The concrete accoutrements of social occasions are systems of material artifacts (and the exterior intersections of the organisms utilizing them). These exterior-material artifacts include everything from techno-economic modes of production (the actual materialities of a bow and arrow, a digging stick, an animal-drawn plow, a steam engine, a computer, an internet system); architectural buildings (wood, straw, stone, concrete, steel); modes of transportation (foot, horse, buggy, car, plane, rocket); types of media and modes of communication (drums, ideographs, alphabet, typesetting, digital); foodstuffs (nuts and berries, hunted meat, grains, refined grains, processed pablum); types of weapons (spear, bow, crossbow, gunpowder, gun, bomb, airplane, warship, hydrogen bomb, neutron bomb); types of money, forms of business exchange, types of medical tools, and so on, and so on, and so on.

124 All of those artifacts, as artifacts, are dead. They are insentient material entities that do not have intentionality, interiority, prehension, life, etc. Thus, those artifacts, as artifacts, do not show stages of development (since growth and development only occur in living, sentient holons, not their dead artifacts. Birds show development, bird nests do not). However, the consciousness that produced those artifacts does show growth, development, and evolution. Therefore, in a special sense, we can speak of growth and development in technology, agriculture, architecture, medicine, transportation, and so on, based on the degree of growth in the intentionality, cognition, or consciousness producing those artifacts. An Intel digital chip is more technologically advanced than a steam engine, not because it is more complex (it isnt), but because the degree of cognitive capacity required to produce a microchip is significantly greater than that required to produce a steam engine. Likewise, a steam engine is more advanced or more evolved than a plow, which is more evolved than a digging stick (in that the intentionality or consciousness that created them is more evolved in each case). Most social (LR) streams consist of those kinds of material artifacts and the behavioral intersections of the sentient beings producing and driving them. They are developmental streams to the extent that the intentionality or consciousness of the sentient beings that produced them develops or evolves; this intentionality becomes part of the internality codes of the system of which the artifact is a functional component. At this point in the discussion, however, we enter the fascinating and complex world of artifacts and their relation to the consciousness that produced themthat is, the relation of LeftHand intentionality (individual and cultural) and Right-Hand behavior (individual or social)a topic that is also quite beyond the scope of this Excerpt. Once again, however, a few important items need to be noted.

Consciousness Evolution and Artifacts

125 Individual-interior or subjective (UL) developmental streams (such as cognitive intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, artistic intelligence) produce exterior (UR) behavioral artifacts (such as a written book, an artwork, a painting, a hand tool, a sewn dress, a spoken idea, a mathematical formula, a cooked meal). 57 Those physical behaviors and artifacts become parts of a social system if they are in any way shared or exchanged with other members of a group (friend, colleague, family, tribe, company, nation, world), because if they are exchanged, those exchanges themselves follow various patterns, relationships, habits, intersubjective contexts, regnant nexuses, or shared currents of the group (or we/its) in which the exchange occurs. (If they didnt follow a pattern, they would be completely random and meaningless activities, which they are not if they are exchanges.) The I can grow, the we can grow, and so can their artifacts (in the special sense described above). For example, cultural streams can grow; the we can grow, in the sense both that the Is in a we can grow, and this impacts the we; or the we itself can grow, in the sense that a type of group learning can occur that would not occur, or does not occur, in any I alone. We know better now means that both you and I know better now, based on experiences that we have shared and that neither of us alone would have had. In that sense, a cultural stream can show development (which is what we mean by cultural growth, cultural development, or cultural evolution). Isomorphic cultural development means that the development in the we shows obvious similarities or parallels with that in the I (such as various types of cognitive growth in both, or values growth, or mathematical growth, or psychosexual, linguistic, musical, moral, spiritual, etc.). Paramorphic cultural development means that the development in the we is showing patterns that have no obvious parallels in the I. The most common forms of paramorphic development involve all those aspects of a we that are not, in fact, leviathan-like. As we saw, an individual exerts control in part via a dominant monad, a cultural nexus never does so; thus most cultural-social governance systems are paramorphic. (The ways that a cultural and

126 dialogical we reaches a consensus as to the behavior that its social system will follow are profoundly different from the way that my I decides whether I will lift my arm or not.) One of the finest overviews of sociocultural evolution is still Habermass Communication and the Evolution of Society (which, of courseand of necessitydraws significantly on cultural evolution disclosed by zone #2 methodologies, including developmental structuralism, and social evolution disclosed by zone #4 methodologies, including a reconstructed historical materialism [see below]). If we now focus specifically on social evolutionor the social dimension of streams and their growthwe find the influence of artifacts starts to enter the picture in a profound way. When an individual-I or a cultural-we produces artifacts (which they do whenever they move or act, since their exterior behavior is itself an artifact of their intentionality), then we have UR artifacts and LR artifacts. An individual might write a poem, a group of men might build a log cabin (the former is an artifact of an individual holon, the latter, an artifact of a communal holon.) Every I and we has some sort of exterior behavior and artifacts, and those exterior aspects (both UR and LR) come together in social systems. The social systems, considered in themselves, consist of the sum total of the exterior intersections of their members (their exterior behavioral intersections and communications), the physical artifacts involved, and the rules, patterns, or regnant nexuses of the system that both the intersections and the artifacts are following (or are internal to). Any aspect of a social system showing growth, development, learning, or evolution is called a social stream, and that growth is called social evolution. Of course, the physical, exterior, interobjective, social stream of its (or third-person plural) cannot be separated from the interior, intersubjective, cultural stream of wes (or first-person plural)every communal occasion is at least a we/its (or an I/it/we/its); at this point we are simply focusing on the social dimension and the immense gravity (rather literally) that it possesses.

127 If the we or I components of a communal stream show growth and development (consciousness development), that development is manifested in the behavioral, social, and artifactual components of the stream. It is usually easier to read development from the artifacts of the stream (e.g., microchip, steam engine, plow) than from the intentionalities that produced the artifacts (e.g., formop, conop, preop), simply because the artifacts are physical, obvious, and concrete, and thus leave less room for misinterpretation. With reference to social streams, the isomorphic aspects of those streams refer to behaviors of systems that are similar to behaviors of individual organisms (e.g., an individual organism has an immune system, a collective system has a type of immune system or defense mechanism). The paramorphic aspects of social streams refer to systems behaviors that have few or no parallels in those of individual organisms. These particularly involve all of the vast materialities of the artifacts that are coursing through the system. These massive networks of material artifacts and its do indeed have a life of their own, even more so than a we, and for the simple reason that, unlike a we, which can continue to reach consensus among its members, artifacts often settle into autonomous routines, simply because they are dead.

The Staggering Weight of the Social System Unlike human beings, many artifacts live on and on and on. Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, the Tower of London, and countless other artifacts, precisely because they are material, survive long after their creators have been recycled. It is this simple stubbornness of dead material that makes social artifacts so persistent, so influential, so full of gravity. Which leads to the whole Marxist dimension of artifacts (which we briefly touched on in the Introduction, Excerpt A). The material forces of production (foraging, horticultural, agrarian, industrial) exert an extraordinary, often over-powering influence on the sentient beings utilizing themwhether those sentient beings themselves produced the artifacts or not. A person using a

128 computer for much of his communication with others has his consciousness subtly molded by that mode of communication, whether or not he himself could invent and produce a computer. Likewise, on a bigger scale, when an entire society meets its subsistence needs using horticulture, every single member in that society has his or her consciousness molded, from birth, by the relentless ever-present realities imposed by that pervasive horticultural mode (whether they like it or not, created it or not, want it or not). This is why, if you look at the data of researchers such as Lenski, you will see with monotonous uniformity that the various societal types (foraging, horticultural, herding, maritime, agrarian, etc.) share a staggering number of similarities, no matter how wildly their cultural traits differ. Virtually every matrifocal (or matriarchal) society is horticultural; there simply are no matrifocal agrarian societies. An astonishing 97% of herding societies are patriarchal. Wherever you find a Great Mother religion, you find a maritime or horticultural base. Slavery reaches its peak in horticultural societies, and is outlawed only in patriarchal industrial societies. Bride price is most prevalent in horticultural societies; and so on. Looking at that type of data, its easy to see why Marx maintained that, to paraphrase: It is not the consciousness of men that produces their material existence, but their material existence that produces their consciousness. The mode of techno-economic productionand the LR quadrant in generalhas such a profound influence on individual consciousness that is it easy to get carried away and slip into a LR-quadrant absolutism (and end up with historical materialism). Still, the enduring contributions of Marx are clear enough (to highlight a few as reinterpreted with AQAL metatheory): the LR quadrant in general, and the material modes of production in particular, exert a profound influence on the other quadrants in the tetra-enaction and tetra-evolution of being-in-the-world. Because these material artifacts and modes outlive individuals, they are a significant part of the fabric of social cohesion and social reproduction (along with cultural habitus), forming part of the sociocultural background that enmeshes individual consciousness and behavior. Evolution in the social stream places demands and

129 constraints on the other quadrants (particularly cultural and individual); often, if various social streams run ahead of cultural streams, a legitimation crisis occurs and a cultural revolution or transformation is required to re-balance the quadratic scales. Finally, it my own conclusion, after a long look at the historical evidence through an AQAL lens, that the mode of production does not determine consciousness in any strong sense, as Marx thought, although it profoundly influences individual and cultural consciousness (via tetraenaction). However, it does appear (and this is a conclusion to be presented in volume 3 of the Kosmos trilogy) that the mode of techno-economic production is the single strongest determinant for the average level of consciousness in a society. Thus, if the mode of production is foraging, the average level tends toward magical (purple); if the mode of production is agrarian, the average level tends toward mythical (blue); if industrial, rational (orange); if informational, pluralistic (green). Individuals in those societies can be higher or lower than the average (precisely because the social mode does not determine the consciousness), but the average itself (or the cultural center of gravity in the LL) parallels those systems in the LR: cultural center of gravity and social level of development are often isomorphic. Theoretically, of course, that is easy enough to understand, at least with AQAL, in that a particular cognitive level produced the corresponding material artifact (e.g., preop invented foraging modes, conop invented horticultural modes, formop created industrial, postformal created pluralistic). Once an individual consciousness (UL) has conceived a particular invention (e.g., the steam engine), and behaviorally communicates it (UR) to others such that they understand it (LL), then that group of individuals might eventually produce that artifact on a large scale and make it part of the social institutions of that society (LR). At that point, the material artifacts themselves, which were created and produced by a particular level of consciousness, in turn tend to inculcate the same level of consciousness that produced the artifact. Individuals brought up in foraging societies tend toward magical

130 consciousness; in agrarian societies, toward mythical consciousness; in informational, toward pluralistic consciousness, and so on. Even though they did not themselves produce the artifact, they are growing up within the realities supported (and tetra-enacted) by those systems of material artifacts, which then have an enormous influence on them (like it or not, want it or not). (There is actually a fair amount of research on this. For example, when men and women raised in an orange-industrial mode, which tends towards equality between the sexes, take up life on an kibbutz where agrarian modes predominate, then the men do the plowing and the women congregate in the kitchen, and soon enough blue-value structures tend to emerge, with strong polarization between the sexes, gender asymmetry in social and political relations, men dominating the public/productive sphere, women taking over the private/reproductive sphere, etc. Likewise, individuals who become members of street gangs begin to evidence a higher probability of red-meme values and behavior, and so on.)58 Again, individuals in those cultures can be higher or lower than the average, but the single strongest (not sole, but strongest) influence on the average level of consciousness is the techno-economic mode of production. By the way, I ran this conclusion by Alastair Taylor, coauthor of the monumental Civilization Past and Present, and he replied, I think that is exactly right.

The End of Slavery That is why James Watt did more to free slaves around the world than any other single human. Amory Lovins has done work that he summarizes as the slave power made available to various societies by virtue of their techno-economic infrastructure. There are various ways to calculate this, but here are a few just to indicate what is involved. Each man, woman, and child in a modern industrial society has the equivalent of 50 slaves, which is the average amount of

131 work that machines do for people in industrial societies. In agrarian societies, it is around 4, and in foraging societies, around 1.5. That is one of the main reasons that industrial societies, and ONLY industrial societies, could outlaw slavery. Since every man, woman, and child already has 50 slaves, you can magnimously forgo any more of that. But agrarian, horticultural, and foraging societies all needed and used slavery for their own survival, and hence none of those societal types could afford to do without slavery. The first humansthat is, the first Africanswere the first to enslave Africans, and the practice of one human enslaving another human has continued more or less uninterruptedly, in all parts of the world, until the Western Enlightenment, or the industrialrational societal type, which finally delegitimated it. Of course, this is a four-quadrant affair, with slave power being a key ingredient in the Lower Right. In the Lower Left there was the equally important emergence of postconventional and worldcentric morality, which found slavery intolerable to its legitimated sense of justice. Not so the previous societal types, all of which were at ethnocentric or lower levels of social justice. 50 slave power in the LR coupled with worldcentric morality in the LL gives powerful impetus to abolition (as well as to feminism, which also emerged in large-scale only in industrial-rational societies). The great dignity of modernity, then, was that it was the first societal type that, on a widespread scale, had enough human power in the LR and enough worldcentric morality in LL to outlaw slavery. (Modernity has it own disasters and dissociations, of course; but those can only be discussed in the integral context of its dignities and differentiations). And precisely because the LR quadrant is the heavy-handed quadrant, the quadrant that affects people no matter what level of interior development they have, then the single most important (not the sole, but the most) important factor in abolition of slavery was the industrial techno-economic base, because that gave every person 50 human-power, and even a red-meme

132 thug will thus feel less need to enslave his neighbors under those circumstances. Thus, James Watt did more to free the slaves around the world than any other human in history.59

Excursis: Marxist Structuralism Let me very briefly mention one more item simply to show the power of both zone #2 and zone #4 methodologies, and then we will look directly at some developmental stages in groups. The example of abolition shows how powerful the LR quadrant can be in terms of its capacity to emancipate or enslave. Various sociocultural theories and practices have taken these factors into account, and this is part of what we have been calling the emancipatory interest contained in various paradigms. For emancipatory interests involve not only finding higher levels of consciousness that are Freer and Fuller, but finding behavioral and social systems that can allow those to manifest. True emancipation, in other words, is very much a four-quadrant affair. Freedom (at any level) is not Freedom (at that level) unless it can fully manifest in all four quadrants. Part of the problem with the new paradigm approaches of the Cultural Creatives is that they speak of higher consciousness, but have no way to reach that consciousness nor ground it in social institutions of the LR. Again, they offer a vaporware freedom, which is one of the reasons we need to combine the emancipatory interests of the Left-Hand quadrantse.g., shamanism, Freud, Buddhawith those of the Right-Hand quadrantse.g., Marx, Locke, Lincoln. Emancipatory interest in any form, we have seen, is often inherent in the third-person perspectives of being-in-the-world, because they can stand back and see bigger pictures. We saw that this emancipatory interest is especially true of zone #2 methodologies (such as structuralism, which is a 3p x 1p). But it can be true as well in social system analysis (3p x 3p), if and when that analysis is coupled with a developmental focus on evolving structures and streams (e.g., of production and techno-economic modes), since those reflect the artifacts of the evolution of

133 consciousness, an artifactual developmental (historical material) analysis that Marx pioneered. As Marx would put it, certain forces of production are necessary in order to free relations of production from slavery. But that theoretical overview comes only from incorporating thirdperson big picture capacities into your theoretical framework, two of the most powerful being structuralism (zone #2) and social systems analysis, in this example, Marxism (zone #4). If you put those two paradigms or methodologies togetherstructuralism and Marxism you will have what is probably the most powerful European version of emancipatory social practice yet offered. Throw in the structural components of Freud, and you have a set of methodologies, critical theories, and social practices that embody a very profound, if not yet integral, set of emancipatory paradigms. This overall Marxist/Freudian/structuralism has driven everything from Gramsci and Althusser and Jameson to the Frankfurt SchoolMax Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Jrgen Habermasas well as truly brilliant notables such as Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukacs (and down to the poststructuralist reworkings of Zizek, Laclau, Mouffe, whose poststructural elements are variations on, not rejections of, the general themes). With the exception of Habermas, I find some truly deep problems with their specific details, but the fact remains, that general school is the only serious, sophisticated, emancipatory theory (and practice) offered by the modern and postmodern West. I believe much of its enduring insights can be rescued and reconstructed in a more adequate AQAL configuration. Be that as it may, the power of that approach was that, drawing on the structural capacities of zone #2 and the developmental systems analysis of zone #4, it was able to give a compelling (if not convincing) overview of higher levels, deeper structures, wider modes of being-in-the-world that were both Freer and Fuller for human beings, and thus drive an emancipatory interest that has always been at the core of the healthy liberal or progressive impulse in the human heart.

134 The Sociograph We can now look specifically at stages in groups (or societal streams and their waves). Some prominent societal streams include: maturation/education, marriage/reproduction, bodily health/medical, cognitive/technological, leadership/political/governmental, group identities/collective egos, religious/spiritual, physical defense/military, cultural defense/worldview, moral defense/ethos, needs/collective goals, artistic/aesthetic, technoeconomic (base), business/markets, object relations/foreign relations, behavioral regulative/legal, linguistic/communication/media, modes of play, games, work, and death-ritual.60 Those can tentatively be called the various streams or lines of a societal holon. (Of course, each societal stream has LL and LR dimensions, and each of those has iso and para aspects). A societal stream represents a specific stream of we/its, which means that compound individuals are members of the specific we/its when their interactions are internal to the we/its. Certain modular streams or subsystems of a society are participated in by virtually all members of that society (e.g., linguistic); others subsystems are participated in by many, but not necessarily all, members of that society (e.g., higher education, types of work, modes of play); other subsystems are participated in by only a few members (e.g., artistic production, medical caregiving). Because those are societal streams or developmental lines, those are some of the subsystems of a societal holon that can show development or the capacity for societal learning. Societal learning means that the members of a we/its can evaluate their own responses to a particular challenge and adjust their behavior accordingly, so that there is at least the possibility of learning more adequate responses to those challenges. Of course, a society might regress in its capacities; but that also means, it might progress. To deny social progress is to deny that groups of human beings can learn. If we keep all of the various qualifications in mind, we can construct a sociograph of groups that in some ways parallels the psychograph of an individual. (See fig. 6.) The modular

135 streams in a society (whether paramorphic or isomorphic) can, as with all streams, develop in a relatively uneven manner, so that a society can be highly developed in some capacities, medium in others, and low in still others. Just as individuals cannot be ranked, but their developmental lines can, so societies cannot be ranked, but their streams canaccording to stream-specific (paradigm-specific) criteria which do not violate the nonexclusion principle.

Fig. 6. Sociograph.

For example, human rights and issues of slavery. As we saw earlier, and as Gerhard Lenski and others have documented, the only societal type (among foraging, horticultural, herding, maritime, agrarian, and industrial) to officially outlaw slavery was the industrial; all previous societal types, including tribal and horticultural, patrifocal and matrifocal, had some degree of slavery. (In AQAL metatheory: rational-industrial societies found slavery to be a

136 prelaw condition that was unacceptable to the cultural solidarity and ethics of a worldcentric stance, and hence banned that behavior from the internality codes of their structural integrity. Those who trafficked in slavery henceforth were criminal outlaws. In a one-hundred year period, from 1770 to 1870, every industrial nation on earth outlawed slavery, a monumentally historical event and a first for humankind.) On the specific scale of human slavery, then, premodern tribal and traditional societies score very low. On that particular scale, modern societies are categorically better, higher, more moral, and more evolved. (That is intra-stream judgment, or a judgment within a paradigmatic stream, and thus is allowed by the nonexclusion principle.) The relation of a society to slavery is a strong indicator of a type of isomorphic stream of interpersonal relations. Those high on that developmental scale will treat others as they would treat themselves; those low on that scale treat others as objects. (In fig. 6, the society represented is very low on the interpersonal scale, which means there is a high incidence of degrees and types of sanctioned or legitimated slavery; this would be typical of, say, a horticultural society.) According to Lenskis extensive research, the percentage of premodern tribal societies with slavery was 10%; simple horticultural, 14%; advanced horticultural, 83%; agrarian, 54%; industrial, 0%. That is a specific type of societal stream that can be entered directly on the sociograph. Likewise, on the medical/health scale, if one measures physical health by physical longevity, late-modern societies added approximately three decades to average life expectancy, thus significantly outpacing tribal and traditional accomplishments. The average age in tribes was 23; agrarian, 33; industrial, 45; informational, 73. (By tribal and traditional, of course, I mean those societal types as they originally existed, not as they might exist in todays world. What are known as indigenous cultures in

137 todays world can be at any number of levels in any number of linesan indigenous culture can be tribal, traditional, modern, postmodern.) There is another complexity that needs to be kept in mind when adjudicating intra-stream societal development, namely, there exist not only stages but states. I myself have seen little convincing evidence that original tribal societies were at higher levels of development in various lines than are modern or postmodern societies (in their healthy versions). In fact, it seems that most of what is claimed to be a higher level of development in premodern societies is actually referring to various higher states (not stages) that were often accessed in tribal traditions. For example, the notion that original tribes possessed an abundance of ecological wisdom has not weathered critical scrutiny very well, with much of that wisdom appearing to be due to lack of means, not presence of postconventional awareness. But a greater access to certain altered states is both plausible and empirically supported. I believe that the evidence is abundant that original tribal societies often had a much richer access to various altered states of consciousness (as officially sanctioned or legitimated by the regnant nexus of the tribal holon). Of course, because states of consciousness do not generally show development (if they did, they would be stages), they cannot technically be entered on a psychograph or sociograph, but because they are so important, states most definitely should be factored into any sort of adjudication process. One way to do so is to include a polyphasic scale on any sociograph. Polyphasia means many states. Although polyphasia is technically not a stream (because states do not show stages), it still serves as important reminder that development is only a part of a larger story. In tracing the sociographs of various cultures across epochs, one cant help but be struck by the ways in which allowable states of consciousness become part of the internality codes of various culturesthat is, the ways in which certain altered states are allowed or disallowed by group identities, group values, and collective egos. Some cultures are enthusiastically polyphasic, allowing or even encouraging multiple states of consciousness; whereas other

138 cultures are more monophasic, officially sanctioning one or two states of consciousness while outlawing the otherswhich means, most altered states of consciousness were viewed as nihilation, and various forms of (often unpleasant) therapia were brought to bear on the adventurous souls taking such journeys. For those societies, this was often justifiable (wild prophets can wreck havoc on stable structures); still, that is simply to say that those societies score well on the social stability scale, and quite poorly on the polyphasic scale. Most of the championing of tribal consciousness is a celebration of polyphasia, a specific celebration I share. Particularly as one moves from tribal to traditional, and then again to modern, one almost always sees an increasing distrust of nonordinary states of consciousness again, often for good-enough reasons (on a societal level). Still, a more polyphasic stance within modern moral structures is something I personally think is worth championing.

Uneven Societal Development At the same time, other scales need to be factored into the calculus of torment. As noted, most of the ills blamed on modernity are actually due, not to modernity, but to the tribal elements in modernity. Auschwitz is not the product of the orange meme, but the product of the red meme getting its hands on orange technology. Part of the problem of modernity is simply that, on the sociograph, the technological stream can run far ahead of the interpersonal stream. Although original foraging tribes did not have the cognitive capacity to produce, say, a gas chamber, once formop (level 5) cognition had done so, the technological results of that higher cognition could be commandeered by groups at much lower levels of development. (We see the same problem today with terrorist tribes getting their hands on biological weapons, weapons they themselves could not invent but can deploy.) On the other hand, such a wildly uneven sociograph is impossible in original foraging tribes not because they were integral but undeveloped. You can only do so much damage to the

139 environment, and to other sentient beings, with a bow and arrow, and that relative lack of damage does not necessarily mean presence of postconventional awareness. The problem of modernity is that often modern societies have 5 or 6 major levels of development leading to their center of gravity, and something can go wrong at every level, leaving subpockets of culture that are not well developed but that do have access to the technological fruits of higher developmentand that sociograph, which is tribal interpersonal mixed with formop technologicalis a prescription for horror. One of the difficulties in tracking social progress (or the lack thereof) is that, when it comes to artifacts, it often takes only a few individuals to create an artifact, whereas millions can then use it, no matter what level they are at. Once a plow is invented, almost anybody can use it; same with a computer, an automobile, a gun, an atomic bomb. Because those are all exterior material artifacts (and not interior stages of development), almost anybody can pick up the piece of matter and use it, even if they could never invent or produce it themselves.61 If you take a level-5 technology, such as gas chamber, and put it in the hands of a tribal level-3 ethnocentric stance, the result is Auschwitz. Auschwitz is not a moral level-5 endeavor; it is not a pure product of modernity, but a product of tribal consciousness getting its hands on modern technologies, even though it could not produce them itself. Part of the problem, then, with increasing social and cultural evolution is that, precisely because societal development is also levels and lines, you can have very high development in some lines (e.g., technological) coupled with very low development in other lines (e.g., moral), and the result is an epic nightmare that neither tribes themselves, nor modernity itself, would have produced. A level-5 moral response is worldcentric, not ethnocentric, and thus on its own would never engage in such ethnic cleansing. (To conclude, however, that tribes are more moral is exactly the wrong conclusion; in that particular capacity they are less moral, but also less technologically capable of inflicting that tribal morality on other sentient beings.)

140 The debate in this entire area has been severely polarized, unfortunately. There are those who maintain that societies cannot be ranked, and those who maintain that societies can be ranked. I agree with both. Events within streamssuch as slavery and physical healthcan indeed be ranked. (And all cultures themselves engage in such ranking, including partnership cultures.) Likewise, centers of gravity can be ranked; so can access to polyphasic states; so can degrees of cross-stream integration. But the uneven nature of sociographs makes it virtually impossible to simply say, this society is better than that one. Societies, in that sense, cannot be ranked. Claiming, for example, that premodern partnership societies were better than modern patriarchal societies is as unfair as it is unjustifiable (given that, for example, it was only modern patriarchal societies that outlawed slavery, created representative democracies, supported the rise of feminism, and increased average lifespan by three decades).62 On the other hand, saying that certain premodern societies seemed to score better on some scales (such as the polyphasic) than do some modern societies is at least something of a testable hypothesis. So is using a scale of physical longevity, bride price, genital mutilation, slavery, and cannibalism, scales on which modern societies score considerably better than do premodern and traditionalist societies (using the intra-stream enfoldment principle as the adjudicating measure; see Excerpt B).63 The problem is that those wishing to appreciate premodern societies for some of their undeniable accomplishments often find it necessary to whitewash the rest of those societies, when an integral sociographic approach would allow both their strengths and weaknesses to be acknowledged in a larger, non-ideological framework. The only point I would like to emphasize in this very brief overview is that the psychographic, sociographic, and polyphasic studies of societies should, in all cases, be guided by the integrative principles of nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment, in my opinion. Such an integral appreciation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of various cultural occasions is just in its infancy; there are as yet no integral studies of any cultures.

141 But the future of such studies is bright, I believe, in that they are an attempt, on the societal scale, to parallel an integral methodological pluralism and thus arrive at something of a more balanced appreciation of all those occasions that are arising in the Kosmos anyway. Of course, for integral metatheory, any such judgments on the relative or manifest planeinvolving degrees of intrinsic and extrinsic value (which can indeed be greater or lesser among holons)are set in the context of Ground value (which is radically equal for all holons). All three types of value judgmentsintrinsic, extrinsic, and Groundare surely part of any integral holding in consciousness, where the one thing we do not want to do is champion merely one of those three value sets to the exclusion or marginalization of the others.

Lets See What She Thinks: A Final Word on Zone #2 The third-person perspective of being-in-the-world has always offered one great gift: it curbs narcissism, curbs the ego, curbs the inclination to take my first-person view as if it were the only view that mattered. When I say, What you do think?, then I am checking my own perception with yours; and when we both say, Lets ask them what they think, then we are signaling our desire to get as much feedback as possible from as many sources as possible, and that we are willing to learn to adjust our perceptions based on more opinions from more sources. The third-person approaches to the exteriors (3p x 3p) have always been the basis of what any society took as its science and technology, exemplified in its tools and techniques of hunting, agriculture, architecture, astronomy, medicine, engineering, communications networks, automobiles, and airplanes. The third-person approaches to the interiors (3p x 1p) were always the basis of its knowledge of the inward landscape of awareness, dreams, ideals, values, virtues, visions. Starting with the earliest shamans, maps were made of these interior voyages, maps that were third-person descriptions of first-person realities, maps that were always versions of: Many other people have made the interior journey following this map and these instructions, and when they did so, they found these incredible vistas; follow this map and you, too, can see and feel

142 these extraordinary dimensions of your own being, dimensions that can liberate you from the binding power of lesser, narrower visions. These third-person maps of first-person realities have been the theme of this Except, and they were, by any other name, structuralismthe look of a feeling, the way that a joyful song, which can only be known by singing, looks from the outside. Sing those songs, and you have hermeneutics; write down their melody, and you have structuralism. These maps could be very simple and elegant, or incredibly complicated and sophisticated; and, of course, they reflected the times in which they were drawn (they were an AQAL configuration), with many of their interpretations being a bit outmoded (which is not a fault or a lack but a sign of Spirits moving on). But all of them had one absolutely crucial thing in common: they instinctively drew on zone #2 of the indigenous perspectives of being-in-theworld: the way interior realities look from the outside. Whether these maps were presented as shamanic upper and lower worlds, the Great Chain of Being, the 10 sefirot, the 7 chakras, the 8 vijnanas, or the 5 koshas, they all pointed to deeper, higher, wider vistas of awareness laying on the other side of the ordinary, through a gate of ego death, and onto a plain of dazzling possibilities holding the inner secrets of the Kosmos. No society has ever been without its vision holders; the only difference has been in the nobility of the vision. To whom are we to look?awakened sages or Wall-Street advertisers, shamanic revelations or deconstructive narcissism, growth to goodness or wallowing in ego? Structuralism, by whatever name, has always pointed to the deeper and higher waves of awareness that are the birthright of all sentient beings. Therefore, choose your visions carefully, for as even the earliest sages counseled: you become what you contemplate. A full-spectrum structuralism, as part of an Integral Methodological Pluralism, calls us to the highest potentials pioneers have glimpsed, implores us heed previously ignored whispers from within, shed density gladly and float all the way to stars, a secret journey to the center of the Kosmos revealing a light of which the sun is embarrassed imitation, luminosities the stars steal in

143 order to twinkle at all, a compassionate bliss that overtakes the universe in cascading waves of exalted release, drenches the world in chocolate-flavored fullness, licks its lips as it tells the tale. Maps of the soul, paths to the stars, charters of the far shores of consciousness, an atlas of Atman, songs of the Self Supreme, sketches of Spirit, drafts of the Divine, these third-person maps of first-person realities, these great, great gifts of zone #2..

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Notes

Thus, phenomenologists who claim that consciousness is always intentional (or always a

consciousness of something), are still caught in a monological prejudice that abstract subjects perceive abstracted objects. They are half-way right, so to speak, which is that all manifest consciousness is always consciousness of. But that is still a low-order abstraction mistaken for the reality of the situation, which is that a first person is always already in a series of relationships with other first, second, and third persons, and awareness, consciousness, and feelings arise within those networks, not outside of them.
2

To be more specific, we have to use an expanded form of the integral calculus. To summarize

the essentials: we have been using a two-term expression, such as 1p x 1p (zone #1) or 3p x 1p (zone #2), to represent the zones, but a three-term expression gives more of what is actually involved (see Excerpt D, Appendix B, An Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives). Thus: Zone #1 is 1p x 1-p x 1p, which means a first person takes a first-person approach to first person realities (as with phenomenology or hermeneutics). Zone #2 is 1p x 3-p x 1p, which means a first person takes a third-person or objective approach to first person realities (as with structuralism). Zone #3 is 3p x 1-p x 3p, which means a third person takes a first-person or inside view of third person realities (as with Maturana and Varela autopoiesis). Zone #4 is 3p x 3-p x 3p, which means a third person takes a third-person approach to third person realities (as with systems theory). We sometimes summarize these as, respectively, 1 x 1 x 1, 1 x 3 x 1, 3 x 1 x 3, and 3 x 3 x 3. These are explored in more detail in the next excerpt, using a four-term expression in both singular and plural, as well as second persons; e.g., 1p(1p) x 1p(3-p*pl) x 1p(1-p) x 2p(1/p), which means my first person has a objective view (i.e., as seen by a community of third-person

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plural) of your interior as seen from within. See Excerpt E, Appendix, An Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives (part 2).
3

This does not mean that abstractions are less real than sensations; by any meaningful

definition, they are usually more real. They are a higher level of experience (in the continuum sensory experience, mental experience, spiritual experience). The dichotomy experience vs. thought (as if experience is direct, thought indirect) is a dualistic nightmare, and privileges sensory experience over mental experience, a regressive move. Unfortunately, Varela shares the standard phenomenological prejudice that thinking is a move away from immediateness, whereas it is simply a higher wave of immediateness. This higher wave can be used to represent other realities, but that does not make it less real, simply more sophisticated. Idealism in general denies the split between thought and experience, claiming that both are experiences of consciousness; in this regard, I agree entirely. See One Taste, Sept. 10 entry; also chap. 2 of Eye to Eye, CW3.
4

Needless to say, this phenomenology, which we are simplistically representing as 1p x 1p, can

in fact get quite complicated, for within my own I-space there is an I-I, a proximate-I, an I/me, a distal-me, and a mine (among numerous others). These can all be indicated with a more sophisticated integral calculus, using not just two terms (1p x 1p) but three or four. For example, 1p(1p) x 1p(3-p) x 1p(1-p x 1/p), which means my first person has a third-person view of my first persons interior (stop), which is an objective or third-person view of my own interiors. These are explored in Excerpt E, Appendix, An Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives (part 2). For this present Excerpt, the simple two-term expressions (e.g., 1p x 1p, 3p x 1p, etc.) will be used to convey the general ideas.
5

Notice I use behavior of an interior holon. The word behavior, which classically refers to

the UR, is the objective or third-person component of structuralism, the outside part of the outside-interior approach. We will explore this further in Integral Semiotics, Excerpt E.
6

See note 2.

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The probability wave in this case is the internal agency or structure of that interior holoni.e.,

the probability wave here is synonymous with the internality of the agency, where internality means the rules, patterns, or regularities of those subholons following the agency or structure of the dominant monad of the individual holon or the regnant nexus of the cultural holon. To describe the holons agency or structure is simply to describe a probability space whose definitions are those ascribed to the structurei.e., the probability space is the phenomenological space in which subholons that are internal to the interior holon arise.
8

This can technically be stated more accurately as a first-person study of the third-person

dimensions of second-person interior realities (where second person is as we defined it technically: a third person that can be, or is, within a first-person plural space). Thus, structuralism is a type of 1p x 3-p x 2p. (See notes 2, 4). Even more specifically, we would have 1p(1p) x 1p(3-p) x 2p(1-p x 1/p), which means my first person has a third-person or objective approach to your second persons interior (i.e., your first-person experience of your first person). See Excerpt E, Appendix, An Integral Mathematics of Primordial Perspectives (part 2).
9

In terms of an integral calculus of indigenous perspectives, structuralism is essentially a third-

person of first-person (3p x 1p), as opposed to behaviorism and systems theory, which are a third-person of third-person (3p x 3p, singular and plural, respectively). Phenomenology and hermeneutics are essentially a first-person of first-person (1p x 1p, singular and plural, respectively). Although hermeneutics includes the exchange of third-person signs and outside tokens of interiors, successfully it results in either a direct or reconstructed shared-insidesinterior, or we (first-person plural). This is the feel of the holon from within an I or we (first-person singular or first-person plural). See notes 2 and 8 for more details.
10

Hermeneutics is the study of those interior wes from the inside of those wes (1p x 1p);

structuralism is the study of those interior wes from the outside of those wes (3p x 1p); systems theory (and ecology) is the study of their exteriors from without (3p x 3p). We are also

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calling those a first-person of first person (1p x 1p, inside-interior), a third-person of first person (3p x 1p, outside-interior), and a third-person of third person (3p x 3p, outside-exterior), respectively. Is there a study of the third-person exteriors from within, not without? Yes, and we have already introduced it: it is autopoiesis, or biological phenomenology, which attempts to describe the view from inside the organism (in a first-person-like perspective) but does so only in third-person terms such as autopoietic structures (which gives us the inside view of the exteriors, or simply the inside-exterior, 1p x 3p). See endnotes 2 and 8 for more details.
11

To put it in technical terms, structuralism is the study of the outside and exterior of a holon in

an attempt to discern the interior patterns or structures driving the holons behavior, and it essentially stops at an outside description or definition of the structure (or internality codes) of those interior holons driving the behavior. All of those wordsinterior, exterior, outside, internalare used in their technical sense. As we have seen, outside and exterior are not the same thingexterior always means Right-Hand or physical, or appearing in the sensorimotor world; outside means the outside of a holon in any of the four quadrants; in this case, outside means the outside of an interior holon: an I or a we/thou studied in a third-person or outside fashion; and exterior means its behavioral component in the sensorimotor world (such as my verbal behaviorthe physical words I speak as I talk to you about our interiors). Internal means the internality code of, in this case, the interior holon, or the rules and patterns followed by holons that are constitutive ofi.e., internal tothe I or we. Structuralism is the study of a holons outside/exterior landscape in an attempt to discern the structure of its internal/interior landscape: but not its inside landscape inside a holon is anything inside the boundary of the compound individual or the compound network, whether it is an essential part of that holon or not (e.g., the invading parasite is inside the cell but not internal to the cell)and structuralism is interested specifically in what is interior and internal, not what is insidei.e., it is interested in the internality codes, agency, or structures of

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interior (subjective or intersubjective) holons as they express themselves in observable behavior. For example, structuralism wants to know the rules of chess, it does not want to know who is playing chess todayit wants to know what is internal to the game, not who is in the gamethe structure of chess, not its players: internal, not inside.
12

This is important because structuralism (3p x 1p) is, so to speak, the study of the interior

landscape (the look of a feeling), whereas systems theory (3p x 3p) is the study of the exterior landscape (the look of a system). The study of or the looking at part is essentially similar in both (namely, a third-person, objective, or 3-p approach, which is why the first term in both is 3p), but the landscapethe studied or the looked at partis quite different (namely, an interior field of felt-meanings, 1p, versus an exterior field of observed processes, 3p). Put one last way, structuralism is a knowledge by description of a knowledge by acquaintance; systems theory is a knowledge by description of a knowledge by descriptionthe look of a feeling versus the look of a look. As we will see in the text, the positive gift of the third-person approaches (or the third-person component in any approach, which both structuralism and systems theory possess), is that they alone disclose holism or big picture views. Structuralism is interior holism, systems theory is exterior holism.
13

My italics. Michael Foucault, p. 57. Although I fully agree with the conclusions of that

paragraph, Dreyfus and Rabinow are not, of course, using the words internal, external, or exteriority with precisely the same technical definitions I have given them. The same goes for the other inside and outside quotes given in this section; I agree with their general conclusions even if they use slightly different semantics. Most of the authorities, for example, use inside, interior, and internal as being essentially synonymous, whereas those are specific dimensions for AQAL. Nonetheless, the strong general agreement should be obvious.
14

Michael Foucault, p. 57, 51. My italics.

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Within zone #2, the only major problem with Foucault is that he often confused emergent and repressed. That is, whenever Foucault found a truth that he felt was being ignored or denied, he tended to assume that it was not present because of some sort of oppressionsome sort of exclusion and rarefication ruleswhereas it often was not present simply because it had not yet emerged. This is the classic error of retro-Romanticism, the assumption that something important is missing because it is repressed: it was once present, but has been lost, and we need to recover it; whereas often, important truths are not present because they have not yet emerged in development: they were never present and then repressed, but they can become present with further growth. As Plotinus put it, sin is a not a no, but a not yet. This is the difference between repressed goodness and growth to goodness models (see One Taste). The ways in which Foucault embraced retro-Romanticism, and then strongly repudiated it, are explored in Boomeritis. Basically, as critics have amply documented, this confusion led him to initially read modernity as nothing but a nightmare, which is both factually and interpretively incorrect, as Foucault himself came to acknowledge.
15

Michel Foucault, p. 79, 85. That this form of poststructuralism was essentially a narcissistic move is explored in

16

Boomeritis.
17

What we see in all of this is indeed the history of postmodernism in a nutshell: starting from a

zone #2 structuralism, in constant tension with zone #1 hermeneutics and phenomenology, then handling that tension not by integrating the two zones but by sliding into an incoherent social systems theory (zone #4) of deconstructive surfaces with no interiors at allincoherent because it was supposed to account for intentionality and interiority, whereas it merely pronounced them nonexistent, exactly as systems theory does from the start, except that systems theory had the good sense not to claim that it was capturing interiors, whereas postmodernism claimed to elucidate them (but merely deconstructed and erased them). At the point that postmodernism

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began denying the existence of any form of interiority or depththat is, any form of first-person realitiesit had erased all 1p components from any mode of inquiry (at which point books and articles began appearing showing that Derrida and systems theory were quite similar), and thus postmodernism had erased not only hermeneutics and phenomenology (1p x 1p) but also structuralism and neostructuralism in any form (3p x 1p)because it has erased and deconstructed 1p in any formand thus it handed the world a sloppy version of 3p x 3p, which could not account for even its own truth claims; and, in the academia where it now ruled, was forced to assert its power merely by threat: postmodern pluralism had come to exemplify the power-over knowledge that it had begun its history by so nobly criticizing. AQAL metatheory suggests that one of the main reasons for this is that typical postmodern poststructuralism was driven by the pluralistic-relativistic probability wave (e.g., the green meme), and thus moved beneath the cognitive currents of second tier, which would have allowed it to develop integral methodologies tying all of these important moments together. Foucault, almost alone, had always been driven by yellow cognition, and thus he alone of the major postmodernists agitated toward integral formulations, as explained in the main text.
18

Michel Foucault, p. xii. See SES, endnote 12 for chap. 7, for further discussion of Foucault,

part of which reads: His early archaeology of actual existence was a neostructuralist reworking of the traditional structuralists analysis of possible types of experience, but it still placed emphasis on the exterior surfaces and structures of discursive formations and the transformation rules (of rarefication and exclusion) that individuated serious speech acts. This neostructuralism scorned any attempt to get at the interior meaning of the discursive formations (which is the ultimate exterior or monological move: you absolutely never have to talk to the bearers of the linguistic formation because you dont even care what their utterances mean; this is simply the endgame of structuralism taken to an absolutism: just the exteriors of the structures, with no hermeneutic

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touch or feeling, at which point it veers into systems theory). In his later and more balanced view, the discursive episteme was replaced by the dispositif, or overall context of social practices (encompassing, as it were, the episteme), whose meaning could still only be seen in the coherence (all structuralism is holistic), but whose insides also had to be hermeneutically entered. This new method, comment Dreyfus and Rabinow, combines a type of archaeological analysis which preserves the distancing effect of structuralism [the exterior, objectifying, 3p component], and an interpretive dimension which develops the hermeneutic insight that the investigator is always situated and must understand the meaning of his cultural practices from within them [the 1p component supplied by zone #1].
19

If you do, you are taking a 3p stance to them and thus have just stepped into zone #2, or

structuralism by any other name, an objective third-person description of interior first-person realities. Meditative traditions access a type of structural phenomenology when they outline stages of meditative development. Indeed, that type of structuralism (or a third-person map of first-person meditative states and stages) is part of their power and usefulness (and their emancipatory interests, as explained in the main text). But those meditative stages are brought forth by one specific paradigmthe lineage spiritual practiceand thus a particular meditative paradigm does not disclose numerous other developmental lines and their stages. For the same reason, the traditions often excel in a certain line of development (cognitive, meditative, spiritual) but score very poorly on other lines (psychosexual, affective, musical, mathematical, social skills, interpersonal, etc.). Because other lines and their levels are not well understood, neither is the phenomena of levels and lines, where a person can score quite high in some lines, medium in others, and low in still others. All progress is therefore judged according to the single developmental line enacted by the meditation paradigm. (This often has grave consequences.)

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Likewise, the extremely important phenomenon of states and stages (in which states of consciousness are interpreted by different stages of development) is also not well grasped by any of the traditions. Finally, the phenomenal meditative stages are essentially subjective, not so much intersubjective. Those meditative stages are the result of practitioners watching the interiors of an individual consciousness, not the interiors of a group. That is, they dont watch the group itself over time; they watch individuals in the group over time. They dont watch the cultural nexusagency, only the individual agency. They do not watch interactive capacities or intersubjective capacities, and thus they do not dig into the intersubjective background. Those can only be spotted, not by following individuals over time, but the group patterns of behavior over time, something that no spiritual tradition did (or even suspected; this is a postmodern realization; i.e., cultural contexts molding perception). Moreover, since, in most cases, everybody in a premodern tradition was of one culture, this made it all the harder for the traditions to spot cultural contexts. The phenomenal stages in meditation (as offered by various traditions) are fairly simple: they are classes of enacted phenomena, classes that, paradigmatic experience in that tradition indicates, emerge in a generally sequential, stage-like, or wave-like fashion (according to the traditions themselves). But they are not the rules or patterns underlying the phenomena. Those patterns are spotted by a more sustained third-person approach to interior realities, an approach specialized in by the sophisticated forms of modern developmental psychology (whose major drawback was that their data faded out around centauric levels, and thus they did not, at first, study the higher stages and waves of development; but the stages they did access were elucidated in extraordinary detail based on both subjective and intersubjective assessments). For all of the above reasons, you will find interior stages of meditative development such as those outlined by St. Teresa, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the ten Zen ox-herding pictures, Abhinavagupta, vipassana, the Sefirot, and so on (which is the stage structuralism of the

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premodern Great Chain); but you will not find interior stages such as those discovered by Jane Loevinger, Lawrence Kohlberg, Clare Graves, etc. Integral Methodological Pluralism finds all of those worthy of inclusion in any integral model.
20

What structuralists call transformation is what we would call holistic translation.

Structuralists call the coherency codes of a structure transformational because all structures enact a phenomenological world by taking the chaotic, incoherent, blooming buzzing confusion of experience and transforming it into a coherent whole, a unified perception (which then appears to awareness to be pregiven, or simply the way things are, when the way things are is actually a construction of structures). AQAL metatheory agrees entirely with that assessment; but for AQAL, the word transformation usually applies to vertical shifts in structures, not what a particular structure is doing, which is generally called translation. What structuralists are pointing out is that every translation is a miniature transformation, in that a structure is a higherorder pattern enacted upon lower-order perceptions. Still, for AQAL, that is more accurately called holistic translation, but this is essentially a semantic issue.
21

Autopoietic is the 3p descriptor; if its referent is within a model of the objective organism,

that is the UR theory of Maturana and Varela (3p x 1-p x 3p); when the referent is interior feelings and awareness, that is UL structuralism proper of, for example, Carol Gilligan (1p x 3-p x 1p). See endnotes 2, 4, and 8. Autopoiesis is not a term generally used by structuralists, but as the Piaget quote makes obvious, the meaning is essentially the same. Still, in most cases, I reserve autopoiesis for the RH approaches, where it originated. As for transformational, see endnote 20.
22

As for Piagets main cognitive stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and

formal operational): As developmental psychologists know, Piaget presented three main stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, concrete operational (conop), and formal operational

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(formop). Preoperational is not itself a true stage, but the first phase of conop. It has become common, however, to refer to Piagets four main stages, which is fine as long as we know what we are doing. Piagets stages are ones that I still use, in a very general way, but only for the cognitive line of development, and then only for the lower half or so of the spectrum of consciousness (beyond formal operational is centauric vision-logic or higher mind, then illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, supermind; see fig. 5). Piagets major misjudgment, most critics now agree, was attempting to subsume all developmental lines within the cognitive line alone, which simply does not allow for the empirical fact that different lines show sometimes pronounced differences in rate of development and dynamics of unfolding (see The Eye of Spirit). But Piagets brilliance in meticulously investigatingand theoretically formulating, within a Hegelian/Kantian schemethe development of cognitive worldviews, moral sense, space and time construction, levels of self sense, and so onall within a largely nonreductionistic, holistic, constructivist, developmental/evolutionary, self-organizing paradigmwas a monumental contribution.
23

This is healthy or constructive postmodernism as opposed to the more common fragmented or

deconstructive postmodernism. Both of them postulate that the world is not given but interpreted and constructed. The healthy postmodernist outlines the structures that human beings must possess in order to be able to construct their world, many of which must be universal if human beings universally construct their worlds. The unhealthy postmodernist also outlines a theoretical system of what must be universally present and necessary in order for knowledge to be constructed, contextual, and pluralistic, and this system, like that of structuralist, is said to be true for all peoplei.e., it is said to be universally true that people interpret reality, that knowledge is contextual, that intersubjectivity molds all knowledge, and so onbut the pluralistic postmodernist claims that there are no universals and that universals are oppressive. In other

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words, both of them are presenting structures and claims that are said to be universal; one of them is open and honest about the claims, the other is not; or, at the least, appears deeply confused about the truth-status of the pluralism that is claimed to be universally binding on all peoples and all cultures. Basically this amounts to a type of transparent universalism versus hidden universalism, the latter being the core of boomeritis. For an editorial on this state of affairs, see Sidebar F, Participatory Samsara, posted on this site.
24

For AQAL, most of the deep features (or self-regulating codes) of holons (in all domains) are

not given ahistorically but rather are laid down in the process of evolution and development itself (i.e. all present synchronic codes were laid down diachronically). However, once laid down as evolutionary memory, they tend to become fixed Kosmic habits (or a priori structures) in their developmental domains, acting as teleonomic omega points for all future members of the class, which is why, in very general terms, ontogeny does recapitulate phylogeny. But even when a holons deep features appear as a priori forms or Kosmic habits, nonetheless the surface features continue to be socially molded, historically fashioned, and often culturally relative. No part of a holon thenwhether deep or surfacestands completely outside the molding hands of time and history and evolution (except, of course, for the Timeless itself).
25

See boomeritis endnote 6 for some of the cross-cultural research on the universality of these

stages.
26

Structure in structuralism can refer to the structure of an individual psychological agency

(UL) and/or the structure of a cultural nexus-agency (LL)a subjective structure and/or an intersubjective structurewhere the structure is the third-person descriptor of the probability patterns displayed by the first-person realities. But precisely because a structure is simply a postulation that attempts to account for certain phenomena brought forth by the social practice of adequate structuralism, these structures

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can be legitimately described and defined in any number of ways, as long as those ways conform to the enacted data or phenomena themselves. In fig. 2, structuralism is given for the outside of the individual interior, and cultural anthropology for the outside of the collective interiors. Structuralism can be, and is, used in both, but the complexities of collective holons render structuralism one of the many useful tools in cultural studies, whereas for the outsides of individual interiors over time, it has no successful rivals and thus is listed as the exemplar of zone #2 in first-person singular. For AQAL metatheory, as we have seen, a structure is simply one way to conceive the regularities of behavior that arise in a given probability space. From the description of the behavior one attempts to define the structure or agency at work (i.e., one attempts to define the patterns or Kosmic habits that have built up over time wherever a particular holon has appeared). The habitualness (or regularity) of the pattern constitutes the internality of that holon (i.e., its agency, regime, coherence code, regnant nexus, or governing patternthe more habitual the holon, the tighter the pattern). The regime, coherency, code, or agency of the structure (the deep part of the structure) simply defines what is internal to that holon, and hence indicates the probability of finding a particular occasion within the holons boundary in the relation subholon to holon.
27

The phenomenologist attempts to describe the phenomena or chess tokens as clearly as

possible; the hermeneuticist gets to know the players themselves; the systems theorist looks at all of the players and the tokens as equivalent exteriors in a social system connected via information; and the structuralist attempts to discern the hidden, invisible, internal patterns (conscious or unconscious) that the sentient beings in the system might be following. These Kosmic habits are part of the holons karmic continuitynot bad karma but good karmahabits these sentient holons have settled into as the platforms for their own stability in the midst of the degradation,

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dissolution, and decomposition tugging at them in all four quadrants (which is another way to say that structures must tetra-evolve, as all holons do).
28

Technically, a song is an artifact and as such cannot adequately be used as an example of an

organism or compound individual; if we do so, we would have to say that the organism is a selfsong: it is autopoietic. This is similar to saying that an organism is a system, which is acceptable but slightly misleading in that it is a system with a dominant monad, which is not what we usually mean by a system (and which is why system is mostly used for communal or collective, not individual, holons). There are similar problems with the metaphor of a song, which does not adequately apply to an organism or sentient holon, nor to a stream or line in a sentient being, but rather to an artifact of a sentient holon. Likewise, the interaction of those artifacts is a song sung by a choir, not a big organism. Gaia, for example, is not a big compound individual, nor a song sung by an individual, but a song sung by a chorus or choir of all sentient beings. That choral song, alas, is being sung off key, it is out of harmony, due to one species singing off-key loudly. (another story). Individual organisms sing songs; Gaia is a chorus/choir, not itself another song sung by a big critter. There is, however, one sense in which interior developmental lines are indeed artifacts, namely, artifacts of the transcendental Self (e.g., koshas of the Atman). Still, that view introduces several complicating factors, in that artifacts of the self and artifacts of the Self involve relative and ultimate dimensions, respectively, which are apples and oranges in explanatory theory. I will continue to refer to developmental lines or streams as songs, simply because the analogy is so useful, but only with all of those qualifications.
29

These structures or patterns of being-in-the-world are holistic, self-regulating, and self-

organizing, although they always exist in networks of mutual exchange with other structures (agency is always agency-in-communion); they are self-organizing, not self-sufficient.

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Likewise, self-organizing does not mean ahistorical. Assuming that structures are ahistorical or merely synchronic was perhaps the biggest faux pas of the pioneering structuralists, an assumption rejected unanimously by adequate structuralists todaythat is, unanimously rejected by the community or we of those within the social practice of adequate structuralism, or those inside the hermeneutic circle whose nexus-agency consists of the legitimated or paradigmatic exchanges of this mode of inquiry (a mode of inquiry that uses aspects of the thirdperson dimensions of being-in-the-world to illumine, enact, and disclose aspects of first-person dimensions of being-in-the-world), such that all structuralists today agree that we reject the theoretical assumption of merely synchronic, and not also diachronic, structures. These self-organizing structures are not outside of history or culture; they themselves developed and evolved (i.e., tetra-evolved as Kosmic habits); and they may continue to evolve, but the whole point about structures is that they provide the stability components in the evolving Kosmos, they are the karma upon which creativity depends (or else creativity would have nothing to push against, no way to transcend and no way to be novel), and thus structures are themselves appropriately resistant to change, with some structures (enduring structures or basic holons in the Kosmos) being millions and even billions of years old. In the human psyche, enduring structures include the earlier stages of the various developmental lines (e.g., sensorimotor, preop, conop; beige, purple, red, blue; etc.). Enduring structures are the Kosmic habits in any line necessary for the unfolding of that line up to the average expectable level in that line (to date); beyond that, structures are not laid down with any sort of habit or stability, but are tetra-structured by pioneers into those higher potentials (later to become Kosmic habits if they stick). If these structures themselves are enduring habits, they can nonetheless be incorporated (transcended-and-included) in senior holons, an incorporation that usually occurs in some sort of stage or wave-like fashion, with the structures (or holons) of one stage becoming sub-structures

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(or subholons) in subsequent stages or waves. These structures may be shared by a few, or many, or all human beings, as determined by reconstructive or a posteriori research. Common terminology: any stable pattern, event, or occasion, in any quadrant, has a structure in the general sense, as when we speak of the structure of a cell, or a city, or a solar system, or a meme, or a game of chess. Researchers can identify or elucidate that stable pattern (in any quadrant) by attempting to outline the coherency codes, rules, patterns, autopoietic structures, or simply the general features of the stably dynamic patterns. Structure in the narrower sense means those stable patterns found in the interior (subjective and intersubjective) dimensions. As we saw, these interior structures are usually disclosed only by a third-person of first-person methodology, a general attempt known as adequate structuralism.
30

Notice that cognition is necessary but not sufficient for all of those developmental lines. All of

those lines say, implicitly or explicitly, Of what is, what I want is, or what I need is, or what I value is. The of what is means, of those things that I can cognize, which is why cognition is necessary, not sufficient, for most of the other developmental lines accessed with these types of research tools. This is what got Piaget headed in the wrong direction.
31

The adequate structuralist is especially interested in these streams as they unfold over time (in

an individual or culture), because many of these streams, especially ones that have been around a while, seem to evidence stable or enduring habits or patterns as they unfoldthey are, or soon become, self-organizing and self-regulating Kosmic habits (which builds stability into the Kosmos). Many streams proceed through waves or stages of unfoldment; and many of those waves appear to have a defining patterna holistic deep structure or agencythat defines which elements are internal to that structure (i.e., structures define the boundaries of an individual or collective holon). This is true for any structures in any quadrant (e.g., the immune system, autopoietic structures, geopolitical structures, etc.), but the structuralist specifically means a researcher

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who is studying structures as they appear in the UL and LL quadrantssubjective and intersubjective structures.
32

Of course, for Aurobindo, all of those levels are grounded in Satchitananda. Also,

Aurobindos use of supermind was quite specific; in a sense, it is the first form of manifestation in a transformed bodymind. Still, the word supermind has escaped into popular parlance and taken on a life of its own; I use it as a generalized term for the highest recognizable wave of cognitive development, even if that wave has only appeared in a few and is thus not yet any sort of universal structure or Kosmic habit. Aurobindos interpretive framework is metaphysical and pre-quadratic, but the data that he studied, using himself as a subject of one, is still suggestive.
33

The only caveat is that moral development cannot run ahead of cognitive development; the

latter is necessary but not sufficient for the former, which still shows that they are indeed relatively independent. See endnote 30.
34

Traditional or metaphysical critics claim that what is lost in the post-metaphysical approach is

the notion of the independence of levels or planes of existence apart from individuals, an independence that the traditional Great Chain offered with its ontological structures, and that independence allows the postulated ontological planes of existence to have an influence on an individual that cannot be reduced to his or her own individual psychology. But the post-metaphysical approach has the same functional independence without the discredited ontological baggage. All that is lost in the Integral approach is the claim that the higher-than-average levels exist with the same determinedness as the lower-than-average levels, a claim that cannot believably be supported in any event. The lower-than-average levels concretely exist as Kosmic habits, already formed and laid down not by involution but by tetra-evolution, and carried in all four quadrants; and therefore their existence, their deep structures, and their stage-nature are indeed trans-individual and not alterable by any individual psyche. The higherthan-average realms are available as general states and potentials, which are also trans-individual

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(because the great states of waking/gross, dreaming/subtle, and formless/causal are available to all humans). However, those higher states have not settled into concrete, widespread, universal habits, levels, structures, or stagesnot yet, anywayand thus postulating them as pre-existing ontological structures is not only unwarranted but unnecessary. Thus, the bulk of the metaphysical baggage of the premodern ontological interpretive framework can be set aside in any postmodern Integral approach without losing the slightest explanatory power. That is one of the essential moves in the creation of an Integral PostMetaphysics, which at this time is the only metatheory supported by extensive psychological research.
35

This is not to say that there are no involutionary givens at all; see Excerpt A. Further, the

human at birth has access to the three or four great states and their corresponding energy/bodies (see Excerpt G), as well as to the Kosmic habits already formed.
36

See endnote 34. The four great states present are at birth as a result of prior evolution, so that

even these higher states are not involutionary givens. See Excerpt G.
37

If a significant number of actual practitioners of Aurobindos yogai.e., those who practice his

specific yoga, not merely use his maps or ideasdevelop into the higher intuitive mind, then that development might indeed become a Kosmic habit in that particular lineage stream, and hence be carried forward as a higher stage/structure now available to those who engage the practice. Certain lineage streamsrepresenting a particular series of stages in a particular developmental line in a particular AQAL configurationhave indeed been carried forward for hundreds of years, as witness vipassana, ashthanga yoga, raja yoga, etc. Even still, the temporal aspects of those lines continue to evolve and adapt to current AQAL realities; only the formless or emptiness aspects of the lineages do not change.
38

In the past, I have often used basic levels as the substrate on which the self-system acts to

produce the self-related lines. Since I am here technically separating basic levels from any

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actual existent, what takes their place as the actual substrate are the levels in the cognitive stream (which I often used as vaguely synonymous with basic levels anyway, although they are clearly not the same thing, as I also pointed out.) Thus, it is the specific identification of the self-system with the particular levels in the cognitive line (which itself is necessary but not sufficient for the other lines) that generates much of the self-related lines of development. As the self identifies with a particular cognitive level, it generates various exclusivity (and transitional) structures; when it moves to the next level, it disidentifies with that cognitive level, identifies with the new and higher level, and (if healthy) integrates the lower level with the higher. Each of those fulcrums of self development, that is, occurs around a specific level of the cognitive line. Virtually everything I have written about that self-development and its fulcrums remains unchanged (including the tripartite nature of each fulcrum, with subphases a, b, c & d; the nature of pathology at each of those fulcrums and subphases; the treatment modalities, etc.). The only switch is that the basic structures or basic levels of consciousness are now used technically as the abstract vertical measure of development, and their concrete place is taken by actual cognitive structures. See endnote 39. (The term basic structures can still be useful as a very generic term meaning a type of sum total of enduring structures in all the various lines. The 7 chakras are a classic example of basic structures in that sense, although AQAL interprets them without the metaphysical accoutrements. All of this is dealt with in a future work about terminology. In the meantime, basic levels of consciousness means the abstract levels as outlined in the main text, unless otherwise indicated.)
39

Some structuralists work with 3 or 4 stages in a stream, others work with 7 or 8, others have

legitimately highlighted 12 or more enduring waves in a particular stream (i.e., If you stand right here, and look right there, you will see 12 eddies in that stretch of the River. By jove, youre right!). And, of course, some structuralists cover more of the levels or waves in a full spectrum

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of consciousness, including prepersonal, personal, and transpersonal waves, or prerational, rational, and transrational stages; or subconscious, self-conscious, and superconscious. But as a stage sequence, those refer only to streams, not to states. Transpersonal states can occur at prepersonal stages, a fact that has confused more than one critic outside the hermeneutic circle. If transpersonal specifically means post-personal, then it is solely a stage phenomena; if it means simply nonpersonal, spiritual, subtle, or causal, then it can be a state phenomenon present at any stage. AQAL metatheory explicitly makes room for all of those observed phenomena. Again, because research indicates that the cognitive line is necessary but not sufficient for most of the other lines, I have in the past often used the actual levels in the cognitive line as the best representative of the empty or basic levels of consciousness. I did so in Integral Psychology, for example; the 16 basic levels are presented in cognitive terms, even though I explained the importance differences. But this continues to thoroughly confuse critics, somewhat understandably, and so, starting with presentations such as this one, I am often going to use strictly neutral terms, such as numbers, letters, meters, degrees, orat some pointperhaps colors. In shorthand, if I use the names of the actual levels from any particular line to represent the general levels themselvese.g., if I use any of the terms or definitions form any actual levels such as formop, conop, postconventional, magic, mythic, SD orange, green, yellow, [Link] is only for convenience. All of those terms are technically correct only when referring to the data in their specific streams.
40

Summary of Levels of Consciousness Human beings possess various capacitiessuch as cognitive, interpersonal, moral,

emotional, [Link] are often called modules or intelligences. If those capacities show development, they are usually called developmental lines or streams, and various milestones in those developmental streams are called developmental levels, stages, or waves. Each of those levels/stages/waves has a specific structure, pattern, or agency (which defines the boundary or the

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internality of that stage). The actual structures, contours, or patterns of the levels/stages in any line are specific to that line (e.g., the deep structure of orange is not the same as the deep structure of formop). But evidence suggests (and AQAL metatheory postulates) that all of the levels in the various lines are running through the same general morphogenetic gradient of increasing consciousness. Consciousness itself is not a stream alongside other streams, but the space in which the phenomena of the streams arise and manifest. As such, the basic levels or basic waves of consciousness do not indicate levels of something called consciousness, but levels of the phenomena that can arise in consciousness, or in unqualifiable Emptiness, or in the vast spaciousness of I AMness. Thus, there is a sense in which we can say that moral development and cognitive development are at basic level 7, even though, if we specify the actual contours and contents of level-7 cognition and level-7 moral development, they will be wheat and copper. As a matter of concrete research, there appears to be at least two dozen relatively independent developmental lines, streams, or modules (including Howard Gardners six or so multiple intelligences): cognitive, musical, kinesthetic, linguistic, moral, mathematical, interpersonal, values, needs, defenses, ego/self, role-taking, perspectives, ideas of the good, action inquiry, spatial-temporal perception, creativity, among others. Generally speaking, the actual development of the various lines is often quite uneven (as depicted in fig. 4), reflecting the relatively independent nature of the developmental modules themselves (e.g., many people who have 7 pounds of copper have only 2 pounds of wheat). This general phenomena is referred to as levels and lines. Development in each line is indicated by the developmental levels, stages, or waves in that line. Those developmental levels or stages are specific to that line and are formulated in the terms of the capacities of that line (e.g., values, cognitive, musical, mathematical, etc.).

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In any particular module, once adequate structuralists have identified a class of responses that unfold over time in a stage sequence, they generally attempt to formulate the structure of each of those stages, which is the internality code for the interior holons that are following the rules, patterns, or regnant nexus of the particular structure. The internality code is like the melody of a songthe tune that brings together many notes into a recognizable entity. The various modules are like the different songs in the psyche, and structuralism is an attempt to discover a 3p way to write down the notes, melody, harmony, and patterns of those songswith the understanding that in order to really know those songs, you must sing them yourself. The exact number and nature of the developmental levels in a developmental line is somewhat arbitrary, but if formulated adequately, developmental levels or stages are measuring a real and concrete occurrence, namely, the unfoldment of interior holons (in the I or we) as they are studied from the outside (a 3p of 1p), which is why we say that structuralism is the study of the behavior of interior holons over time. However, in order to compare the degree of development in one line with the degree of development in another line, a cross-line scale must be used, otherwise it is apples and oranges (ignoring which, you get a stream absolutism). For AQAL, the cross-line scale is the notion of basic levels of consciousness (see fig. 5). The number of basic levels is also somewhat arbitrary (in this presentation we have been using 10 of them), but they, too, are a measurement of something real, which in this case is the general amount or degree of awareness or consciousness in any given developmental line; or, more technically (because consciousness is not itself a stream or entity or quality of any sort), the basic levels of consciousness are a measure of the paradoxical-sounding degree of absence, or the amount of emptiness, openness, transparency, or spaciousness in which various phenomena can arise. This is why, technically, it is best not to name the basic levels of consciousness but simply use a number or color to refer to them (although pragmatically we are often forced to use a name, still).

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The terms developmental stage, developmental level, and developmental wave are almost always used to mean the specific concrete stages in a particular developmental line (e.g., the level of formal operational cognition, moral level 5, the multiplistic stage, preconventional waves, etc.), whereas the general cross-line scale is usually referred to as basic levels of consciousness or sometimes basic waves or basic structures. Context will determine which is meant, but their important differences are always implied.
41

Technically, when aspects of the inside-interiors of an I (which are governed by a particular

internal agency) enter into networks of mutual exchange with other Is, those exchanges are internal to a nexus-agency that is often isomorphic to the individual agency. I.e., the agency of the individual I and the nexus-agency of the we are isomorphic in important (but not all) ways. Each individual holon exists in networks of relationships with similar-depthed holons, and therefore the agency of the individual holon in the exchange network and the nexus-agency of the exchange network will share many similarities or isomorphisms. Like exchanges with like, and thus the agency of both are alike. E.g., a compound individual (whose interior center of gravity is, say, at a blue wave) will exist in many different types and levels of exchanges with other compound individuals, but the exchanges will be mutual and mutually understood only when those exchanges are occurring with other holons who are also exchanging blue tokens. In these cases, structuralists will often say that the individual and the group are behaving in blue ways, which simply means, in AQAL metatheory, that the probability of finding a certain type of interior holon in an individual and the probability of finding it in the group of which the individual is a member are similar. That is, the probability of finding a holon of type x internal to the agency of an I and internal to the nexusagency of which similar Is are members is essentially the same. Thus, for example, atoms exist in networks of other atoms. The agency or defining pattern of an atom and the agency or defining pattern of the system of which it is a member are in

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some ways isomorphic patternsat the very least, they share the same level of vertical depth or complexity (a group of atoms is not on a higher level than atoms, but is simply the collective dimension of atomsi.e., UR and LR dimensionsindividual and social are not different levels but different dimensions of the same level). Cells and atoms cannot exchange cellular tokens, only atomic tokens; and therefore atoms cannot talk to cells at all, not mutually, although cells can talk down to atoms and atoms can look up to cells, and hence influence each other through asymmetrical influences known generally as upward and downward causation, which in AQAL metatheory refers to the complex relationships between fundamentals and significants. In technical detail, the surface structures that are inside an interior I and internal to the patterns of the agency of that I, are represented by tokens or signifiers that are exteriorly communicated to another I, who decodes those exterior signifiers and converts them into interior signifieds. If those interior signifieds reconstruct or enact a phenomena similar enough to the original referent (the surface structures that were inside-internal to the first I), then mutual understanding can occur. In order for that to happen, the original referents must be internal to an agency or code in the sender (or the first I) that is isomorphic to an agency or code in the receiver (or the second I), or else the message cannot be decoded at all. The original referent will not be evoked because there is no way for the signifiers to be translated into appropriate signifieds. Its all Greek to the receiver. But this also means that the networks of exchangeor the nexusagencymust also be conductive to the patterns of the signifiers, or else the message cannot get through the communicative channel or network. In short, the pathways of the communicative tokens or signifiers must share a similartype agency in the sender, the receiver, and the channel. This is basically what structuralists mean when they say an individual and a group are isomorphic.
42

There are also the social systems and patterns of interobjectivity and their nexus-agencies with

which individual behavior also must tetra-mesh, which we will return to the next excerpt. Since

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there is no intersubjectivity without its correlative interobjective dimensions, the examples that I give of cultural nexus-agencies will always have some sort of social-ecological dimensions as well, even though we will be focusing on the former in this excerpt.
43

Institutional means sanctioned by a recognized legitimation process of the body politic and

embedded in social systems, including, in this case, the Constitution and the sociocultural habits that followed in its wake, a Constitution that itself expressed predominately the moral-stage-5 intentionality of its framers, including a blue-to-orange values structure and a self-sense of conscientious-to-individualistic.
44

Where nation here means the federal legal nexus-agencies governing both the interactions of

all states and the interactions of citizens as members of the nation, or those compound individuals whose interactions are internal to the nation; there are also laws governing the interactions of foreigners or aliens, or those inside the nation but external to its membership (i.e., inside its physical boundaries but not inside its culture).
45

See Integral Psychology for discussion of self-dissonance. Which is to say, the internality code of the nexus-agency of the compound network can only

46

cohesively translate a certain degree and type of communicative intersections.

Again, this is not to imply that any cultural holon can do otherwise, but only that, with the

increasing development and evolution of consciousness, the boundaries of the we can get larger and larger until all sentient beings are members of a Kosmic solidarity. However, even in that ideal case, there are humans who will not develop to the levels of consciousness capable of holding a Kosmic solidarity, and thus, even in an enlightened society, where all individuals are still begin at square 1 and must evolve through the spectrum of consciousness, there will always be inlaws, outlaws, prelaws, and translaws. Any sort of ideal society is not ideal because it has no outlaws, but because it arranges their therapia as humanely as possible given its present level of unfoldment.

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48

Cultural solidarity is the semantic of intersubjectivity; structural integrity is the syntax of

intersubjectivity.
49

The only time that individual Is are subsumed into a super-I is when individual holons are

actually taken up and incorporated (in their entirety) into a new and higher holon, as when many different atoms are incorporated into one molecule, or many different molecules are incorporated into one cell, or many different cells into one organism. That does not happen, however, when many different organisms come together into an ecosystem, where they are partners, not parts, and members, not cogs, in the social system. Again, Gaia is not a giant critter that contains individual organisms as cells in its single body. Gaia is the harmonious song sung by a choir of organisms, it is not itself a really big organism.
50

Although, again, it is not that individual precedes communal, or vice versa, but that they tetra-

arise.
51

This is true for both cultural and social holons. An individual subjective holon (UL) is a

member of a cultural network, intersubjective holon, or we (LL) when its intersections with other subjective holons follow the regnant nexus of the we of which they are members. An individual objective holon or organism (UR) is a member of a social network, social system, or interobjective system (its, LR) when its behavioral (exterior) intersections with other organisms follow the regnant nexus of the system of its of which they are members.
52

An organisms behavior (or it dimension) is internal to a system of its when the organisms

behavioral intersections (and communications) with other organisms are following the regnant nexus of that system, and it is external to the system when they do not. Likewise, a material artifact or it is internal to a system when its behavior is following the patterns of the system (as we will see in several examples below).
53

Technically: what is internal to any social system (or dynamic system of holistic its) is the sum

total of the exteriors (intersections and artifacts) that are the third-person components (elements,

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parts, links, threads, strands) of the third-person plural network, web, or system, along with its internality codes or defining patterns (regnant nexuses), all of which are third-person dimensions of being-in-the-world. The member organisms are not internal to the system, although their relevant interactions and artifacts are.
54

Interactively means intersubjectively for cultural membership and interobjectively for

social membership; in other wordsand as alwaysthe individuals themselves are not internal to the collective, only their relevant interactions or intersections.
55

This is a very important point that we will return to in Excerpt E, where we will see that

organisms can be members of different levels of a local ecosystem. What that means is that, in the exterior holarchies of increasing physical complexity, the interobjective behavior (or intersections) of various organisms are holarchical parts of systems at different levels, and thus the organisms themselves are actually members of various levels of interaction (or levels of ecosystems), and the level is determined by the complexity of the interactions and their components. Quick example: a wolf, hunting in a pack, lets out a warning call to the members of the pack. That vocal, physical vibration is part of a physical social systemin this case, the social system of communication among member wolvesand thus those particular wolves have dimensions of their being-in-the-world that are both inside and internal to that specific social system of wolf hunting. Those physical sounds also fall on several surrounding trees, but have no discernible or significant impact on them, nor are they registered as communicative sounds by the trees, which are therefore not part of (i.e., not members of) the small, local, wolf-pack social system itself. However, the wolves and the trees are participating in exchanges involving biochemical life functions, vegetative physiology, cellular and molecular interactions, and so onthe wolves and trees are members of various local social systems at those levels, but not at the level of evolutionary complexity of vocal communication. Thus, the trees are actually external to several ecosystems that the wolves are members of. Both the wolves and the trees

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and all sentient beingsexist in holarchical levels of ecosystems and social systems (or holarchical levels of relational exchange), based largely on the levels of evolutionary complexity of the organisms themselves (which determine the levels of the interactions with other samedepth holons). This allows us to construct holarchies based on complexity or depth, not merely on size or span (which typical ecotheories do, and which is disastrous). As we will see, as complexity or depth increases, size or span decreases, and thus ecotheories based merely on bigger size are generally regressive.
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That is, the artifact as artifact ceases to exist; the sentient holons composing itmolecules,

cells, atomsthus revert to their own individual self-identifies with their own intentionalities; those holons are not artifacts but real holons, and thus they, unlike artifacts, can become actual members in the ecosystem, which happens when their own intersections become internal to the system. The ecosystem itself has many artifacts as parts of it own material components, such as bird-nests, anthills, lions lairs, coral reefs, etc., and they remain part of the ecosystem as along as they, like the milk carton, are actually a functional unit in the system; their identity, like the milk cartons, is not intrinsic but extrinsic, or imposed on them by the sentient holons that built them (e.g., the bird that built the bird-nest). Sentient holons, on the other hand, have both intrinsic and extrinsic value (and all of them have Ground value).
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Technically, the individual behavior is Upper Right, not the artifact, although it is common to

treat individual artifacts as an upper right occasion. An individual interior (subjective agency or intentionality, UL) produces exterior (UR) behavior, some of which produces artifacts, such as spoken and written words, tools, material products, and so on. The UR quadrant technically means the exterior dimension of the individual holon, and that does not include its artifacts per se. The four quadrants are dimensions of an individual sentient holon, and an artifact is not a sentient holon.

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However, notice: the UL subjective agency is a member of a LL cultural-we when its intersections with other subjective agencies are internal to that we (i.e., an intersubjective circle); and its UR physical behaviors are parts of a LR social system when the intersections of those behaviors with other organisms in the system are internal to that system (i.e., an interobjective system). Because those exterior intersections always include some sort of artifacts (such as physical signifiers and communicative tokens), then it is acceptable to include artifacts in the LR, because a social holon is composed of the exterior occasions internal to the system, and those include exterior behaviors and exterior artifacts. This is why it is technically correct to place items such as agrarian mode of production in the LR (but only if that mode is actually being inhabited by sentient holons; if not, then, like the milk carton, the agrarian artifacts revert to their individual holonsmolecules, cells, atoms, [Link] are members of, say, the local ecosystem, but are no longer components of the human social system).
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See the work of Janet Chafetz for insightful discussion of some of this research. Spiral Dynamics often says that life conditions bring forth various memes, but that is

not quite right. What actually happens is that a new and higher level of consciousness (a new and higher meme) emerges, and it can conceive and create higher artifacts, which may become part of the LR quadrant of overall life conditions. It is not life conditions that create the meme, but the meme that literally creates the life conditions. Once that happens, then the life conditions of the LR can indeed act as a strong pull on individual consciousness. But to say that life conditions elicit memes or activate a certain intelligence is to subscribe to a naive realist epistemology. Memes create life conditions, which in turn inculcate similar memes in others under the influence of the same life conditions created by the original memes. There is not a pregiven world whose conditions elicit consciousness, but

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consciousness that enacts and constructs various worlds and conditions (which then enter subsequent tetra-enaction).
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By James Watt I mean the handful of pioneers in industrial technology, and the communities

of learning that implemented them socially. Of course, because of tetra-evolution, if there was not also a LL development of postconventional/worldcentric morality (the social contract of moral-stage 5), then the abolition of slavery would not have happened, either, because those 50 slave-power units would be used to drive tribal and ethnocentric endeavors. However, because the cognitive levels of ethnocentrism could not have invented the level-5 industrial technology that would create 50-human power societies, it would take the rise of modernity to both implement abolition AND, due to levels and lines in the sociograph, allow ethnocentric pockets of modern cultures to use modern technology for ethnocentric ends: hence, Auschwitz, which could never happen in premodern cultures (because they lacked technological capacity) and would never happen in a truly modern culture (operating with worldcentric morality), but could happen only in that hybrid made possible by levels and lines: higher technology, lower morals. Unfortunately, the critics of modernity blame modernity for exactly the part of that horrifying mix that is not modern, and they eulogize tribal for the part of the mix that is actually the culprit.
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All of those functions are present in all known human communal holons, including tribal,

although they are not necessarily differentiated into discrete stations, roles, or institutions; many of them remain fused or predifferentiated.
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Once a single persone.g., James Wattinvented the steam engine, using a very high level-5

cognitive development, almost anybody could use it, no matter what level they happened to be at. If you grow up in a society whose techno-economic mode is, say, level 5, then it is true that that mode will act as a strong force helping bring awareness up to level 5. But in itself, any level-5 artifact is simply a piece of matter that, if you can read the instruction manual, you can use.

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Part of the problem with the word patriarchal is that it is impossible to define. It cannot

simply mean an asymmetry in sexual relations (because any woman giving birthwhich a man cannot dowould be engaged in a patriarchal act). Nor can it mean a society in which valued goods go more often to males, because that demands a definition of what the researcher is including as valued (e.g., a society in which males have a higher average job salary might also be a society in which women have more access to relational and caring modes of being, and thus focusing only on salary and calling that society patriarchal is simply a biased and entirely derogatory judgment). The fact is, patriarchal is largely a boomeritis jargon term that is impossible to define in any meaningful sense. Most of what postmodern (green) scholars called the modern patriarchy is actually not a product of modernity (orange), nor of industrialization, nor formal rationalityall of which have pejoratively been labeled patriarchalbut rather are the products of the previous epoch, the mythic-membership (blue) era, including rigid social hierarchies, the existence of slavery, calcified gender asymmetries, and the concentration of public/productive wealth in male hands. Virtually all of those factorsblamed on patriarchal modernitywere actually undercut and dissolved by patriarchal modernity. In any meaningful sense, the Western Enlightenment marked the beginning of the end of patriarchy, not its height. Likewise, what postmodernity calls the other of reason is actually the other of myth. But these deep confusions are part and parcel of boomeritis, and the chance of reversing them among green-meme scholars is virtually nil, but I point it out for what its worth. See Boomeritis for a further discussion of these topics.
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What about two scales used most often: male/female asymmetry and spirituality? The former

is the focus of much culture wars, and thus even-handed scholarship is hard to come by. Janet Chafetz deals with these issues as fairly as any scholar I am aware of, and she finds that in most quality of life scales for females, the modern industrial societies score as high, or higher, than any previous societal types.

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As for spirituality, there are some cultures, such as the Tibetan, where not only higher states but higher stages of consciousness were fairly common, or at least were officially sanctioned for monks and practitioners (higher stages were legitimate for that societal holon). Modern and postmodern societies, by contrast, appear to score lower on that scale. But that is not quite accurate. The idea is not whether a larger percentage of individuals in that traditionalist society were practicing higher levels of consciousness compared to the percentage in a postmodern society, but whether the structures (or regnant nexuses) of a postmodern society allow those types of practices to occur, or whether they possess what Foucault called exclusionary principles that outlaw those practices. And the answer is, postmodern societies do indeed fully allow those spiritual practices in groups of individuals who so choose to pursue them. On the other hand, the center of gravity of the traditionalist societies would rarely allow modern and postmodern gender relations, for example; nor democratic representation; nor public education for women. In other words, the exclusionary principles of such spiritual cultures actually score significantly worse than those in postmodern cultures. Thus, we can indeed admire the profound advances made in a particular line of development by certain premodern cultures, but only if set in a balanced sociograph that gives, as it were, the overall story.