It All Depends on Perspective

My brother is mad at me for raving about Ken Wilber but not explaining his work. On one hand, that is like being mad at me for not trying to sing a new post-punk ballad that I have listened to and you haven’t. But on the other hand, you would expect me to say more than, “Listen to this song, Dude. It rocks!” So listen up, Dude, because this stuff rocks. But if you really want to experience it, you have to read and/or listen to Ken Wilber.

Ken Wilber has written over 20 books, of which I have only read 5 or 6 so far. Obviously, even if my understanding was as complete and as deep as Ken’s, I would need thousands of pages to discuss all the things Ken discusses. So instead of being comprehensive I will only tackle small bits of his theory.

As an English Major and lover of the power of language, I was first attracted to Ken’s use of Perspective. Ken observed that all human languages have a natural range of perspectives: First Person (I), Second Person (You), Third Person (It) and Singular and Plural versions of these (We, Its). We naturally construct sentences that incorporate all of these perspectives. Ken also explains how most of us tend to focus excessively on one of these perspectives and ignore other perspectives.

One of Ken’s driving motivations is his idea that everybody can’t be 100% wrong about everything. Or to state it more positively, everybody is right, but probably not 100% right. This is a problem most of us have faced in one way or another. Science can examine your body (an It) and tell you if you have a tumor, but Doctors can’t tell you why you feel depressed (an I experience). The scientist can study neural pathways and endorphins (Its) but never fully explain the fact of your disturbing relationships with your coworkers (a We experience).

Part of what Ken does is take truth wherever he finds it and tries to figure out which Perspective that truth is true from. My experiences inside my thoughts and feelings are true, but so are the doctor’s descriptions of my blood chemistry and X-rays. These things don’t explain each other or make the other go away, but they do correspond to each other. My emotions correspond to different endorphin levels in the brain. The It and the I are both two different perspectives on the same event. Both of these truths are part of a bigger multi perspective truth, an Integral Truth.

Ken doesn’t claim to be an expert in every field of knowledge, but what he does know he arranges within his Map of Quadrants (see the grid above), and these sometimes contradictory truths quite often make more sense and illuminate each other in surprising ways when they can illuminate the insides and outsides of each other, when individual things can be combined into richer collectives.

Try it: take any thing in your experience (a person, fact, thought, belief, organization, etc.) and place it in each of the four quadrants, take those four perspectives in relation to that thing (I, It, We, Its) and see what emerges.

Ken’s Integral Model encompasses more than just these four quadrants (there are Levels, Lines, Stages and States) but even just this one tool is worth the price of admission. With just this one dimension of the map you start to figure out riddles like why science and religion can’t talk to each other. Science is all about outside things (It and Its) and religion is all about inside experiences solitary and social (I and We). Both camps refuse to give up their truth but the tools of the other side can’t be used to verify the truths they are defending. Science can’t find god, but Religion can’t explain gravity.

Of course endlessly taking different perspectives has its own dangers and you have to watch out for the portions of each position that are not 100% true (because remember, everybody is right but nobody is 100% right). But the 4 Quadrants really do open up a lot of new territory for exploration. You still have to go out and explore the territory in person, but it is good to have a better map as you navigate.

So I hope you find this thing interesting and that we can fit it into a broader network of interesting things. Maybe I’ll tackle some other Integral topics later.

Reading Ken Wilber

I remember the first Ken Wilber book I ever saw. I was prowling the stacks at the Barnes & Noble when I saw a book called, “A Brief History of Everything.” Wow! What an egotistical blowhard. Who could possible believe they could explain EVERYTHING in a couple of hundred pages? Who did this Ken Wilber guy think he was?

So I picked up the book and started reading, just to get a sample of the obvious crap that was bound to be inside. And I kept reading, and reading, and reading. Then I bought the book and took it home and read the whole thing. Ken Wilber really was attempting to describe a framework or map that helps to position EVERYTHING in relation to everything else. EVERYTHING. It was skeptical. But it was just so damned interesting. It made my brain hurt at times, but I kept on fighting my way through his theory. Ken Wilber was obviously a compulsive learner who had dipped his toes into a vast quantity of knowledge from a huge number of areas: philosophy, psychology, religion, physics, sociology, etc., etc., etc. I was impressed by his reach and intrigued by his ideas, but I had this sneaking feeling that his Integral Model was just too good to be true.

So I put the book down and kept on moving through my life. That was over six years ago. I kept living and reading and trying to make sense of everything. And I noticed a strange thing: I kept placing the things I was learning into Ken’s Integral Model and they kept fitting. Not only did things fit, the more I looked at things from the multiple perspectives of the Integral Model the more things started to make sense.

I will not even attempt to describe Ken Wilber’s Integral Model, or AQAL, or any his stuff here. Ken Wilber does a much better job explaining than I could do in a quick blog entry. But I will say that I am still reading Ken Wilber (most recently, Boomeritis and Integral Spirituality) and I am still blown away by his ability to bring seemingly contradictory realms of experience and knowledge together. And I am increasingly blown away by the circle of like minded people who have gathered around him to share and discuss their areas of expertise. It gives me hope to see so many smart and compassionate people focusing on understanding and growing and evolving so that we can reach our highest potentials.

So why this post? No reason other than to say, I really dig Ken and I think other smart people might like him too.
http://www.kenwilber.com/home/landing/index.html

Hell and High Water

I have been absent from the Internet and this blog for a while.
First I lost over a week to the hell of a serious migraine headache.
Then the local rivers flooded and kept me and my family from returning to our home. Everything is fine—we did not get flooded, just our access roads got flooded. Since recovering from the migraine and regaining access to our house I have been playing catch-up at work. So there has been no time for blogging.

But the Hell and High Water have receded, and in the middle of all that Election Day came and went. Three Cheers for the voters of America! And now I have my fingers crossed, hoping that the Democrats can avoid screwing things up as badly as the Republicans did.