The Integral Worldview – Deep Psychology

Let’s continue this Worldviews series with an in-depth look at the Integral worldview.

Though this isn’t one of the main worldviews currently active in the world, developmental psychology suggests that this is the following stage of individual human development, and leading thinkers in the integral philosophy movement are witnessing its gradual emergence at a cultural level.

As such, this Integral worldview is likely to signify the next step for human cultural evolution.

What’s more, the emergence of the Integral worldview signifies not only the emergence of a new stage, analogous to Traditional, Rational and Postmodern, but of a new meta-stage of development. If society transforms unimaginably when a new stage comes online, we can only imagine how it transforms when a new meta-stage does. If the theory plays out in reality, we may be set for another revolution of similar impact to that of the 1960s and the Enlightenment.

Let’s begin by looking at the context for the emergence of the Integral worldview.

Context for Integral Worldview

To understand the Integral worldview, it’s essential to be aware of the context in which it appears. Just as plants will only take the root if the soil is right, each worldview only appears if certain individual and collective conditions are met.

It’s worth mentioning that, even in advanced countries, this worldview is nearly invisible and as yet has little influence. There has yet to be an Integral revolution analogous to that of the other worldviews, so it remains in the shadows. It’s difficult to point to real-world examples because there are few.

That said, Integral thinkers, groups, commentators and leaders are gaining a foothold in areas as diverse as spirituality, philosophy, psychology, medicine and art.

Furthermore, an integral-type stage appears in all models in developmental psychology that study development after the postmodern stage, meaning there are enough people at the Integral level of development to enable statistically significant study samples. There is dramatic agreement among these models about many of the fundamental characteristics of Integral consciousness, even when they study slightly different aspects of development.

In individuals, it tends to arise after a period of postmodern dominance. As far as we know, it’s impossible for this worldview to appear directly after traditional or modernist consciousness, because it transcends and includes both.

We must pass through periods of modern domination and postmodern domination before we can even entertain the Integral worldview. Indeed, it’s during the end of an individual’s postmodern stage that it starts to become appealing.

We essentially marinate in the postmodern worldview for so long that we become bored with it. Relativism becomes contradictory, sensitivity becomes restricting, egalitarianism seems naïve, and counterculturalism is rendered ineffective.

In collectives, the Integral worldview begins to emerge once postmodernism has yielded a significant amount of social change, when the limits of postmodern egalitarianism and sensitivity become clear, and when there’s need for a reintegration of all the worldviews that have emerged so far.

In fact, according to several thinkers in the Integral sphere, Western countries are currently experiencing these life conditions, meaning the Integral soil is now fertile.

It’s fascinating to notice how closely the American Culture Wars resemble this description of the context for Integral emergence. The Traditional, Modern and Postmodern worldviews, which roughly correspond to the political right, centre and left, do not understand each other, and it’s leading to considerable social fragmentation and political stagnation.

In a time of accumulating global problems that require large-scale coordinated efforts to solve, integration, synthesis and mutual understanding are essential.

Perhaps we’re witnessing the birth of the Integral age, and Clare Graves’ prediction regarding the birth of the Integral worldview is fascinating:

The accumulation of unsolved problems is such that they will produce the most dramatic change in human behavior that has yet occurred in all of man’s history.

clare graves

Defining Features

The Integral worldview is post-progressive, post-postmodern and post-ideological. It’s multiperspectival, unlike all prior worldviews, which are monoperspectival. It transcends and includes the Postmodern worldview, bringing a new clarity after the disarray typical of this stage.

One of its fundamental features is its ability to see and feel all prior worldviews in individuals and collectives. It appreciates that these worldviews are developmentally and evolutionarily bound, rather than mere preferences or types of people.

It understands that it itself is a product of the process of development, just like those other worldviews, and so respects all prior worldviews. All stages contain mineable gold.

Aware of how we develop through various lines of development to varying degrees, it sees people as multicoloured and multifaceted and as perpetual works in progress. It looks at all prior worldviews as inevitable, necessary and precious.

Seeing the strengths and weaknesses of all stages, it’s able to integrate the best while discarding the worst: to be more traditional yet less so, more modern yet less so, more postmodern yet less so. Thus, it has the capacity to truly relate to all people.

Looking out at the world and current affairs, it sees all the prior worldviews vying for hegemony. It’s not nations or races or politicians or political groups that define the struggle, but worldviews. It views the chaos through an evolutionary lens and learns to trust in the power of evolutionary emergence.

Later, more mature worldviews await us so long as we continue to evolve. Recognising violence and war as natural and inevitable expressions of the Pre-traditional and Traditional worldviews, it demonises them far less than the Postmodern does.

When we hold a predominantly post-traditional, traditional, modern or postmodern worldview, our identity is contracted around it, and seldom are we able to comprehend the others, much less operate from them when necessary.

Furthermore, it’s multiperspectival: it not only values the prior worldview structures, but can actively participate and fluidly identify with them.

At Integral, we enter what the Spiral Dynamics theory calls FlexFlow awareness. This means that perspectives are no longer our masters; we are their masters. We can receive them, breathe them in, explore them, dance with them, hold several at once, switch between them, dance with them.

We’re aware of our own familiar perspectives too, and we find great freedom in letting them go. You might say that instead of striving to enforce our familiar view, we strive to master the process of perspective-taking itself. Beck and Cowan say that under this worldview, “Life is a mosaic of tiles without cement which can be rearranged to make the most appropriate picture of existence at any time.”

When it comes to understand other people, we’re able to identify their dominant worldview, and we comprehend that they fully believe that it’s correct. Though we may hold a different view, we respect theirs, and don’t try to convert or influence them. Instead, we’re ready to be influenced by them.

We go from impatiently chastising “how could you think that?!” to curiously enquiring “how could you think that?”. We’re genuinely interested in the people we used to demonise. We value modern, old, future, past, scientific and ascientific, so long as it points to genuine truth.

You might like these four practices to embody integral consciousness.

As Terry Patten and Jeff Salzman say in this talk, we go in with the attitude of “don’t worry about what you have to say to them; worry about what they have to say to you”, of “where are they right and where am I full of shit?”. We are curious to learn and compare before deciding.

Beck and Cowan make multiperspectivalness lucid when they say the Integral person “can enter the conceptual worlds of the first six psychological systems and interact with them on their frequencies, speaking their psychological languages”, “understands the uniqueness of the conceptual and personal worlds each of the previous vMEMEs creates”, and realises that “Several sets of values are legitimate, depending on the thinker and his/her conditions of and for existence.”

Unlike the Postmodern, the Integral distinguishes the higher from lower, using the developmental path as a guide. However, it also doesn’t demonise the lower. It can simply stand back and appreciate all human behaviour without judging it. It “sees the ebbing and flowing of human systems all over the planet”, and so lets go of ideology and goes meta on human problems.

It’s informed by systems thinking. Not only does it see more than the Postmodern, it’s able to see it all in its proper context, including postmodern relativism itself. It recognises natural hierarchies and intrinsic value. It understands that some worldviews are more evolved than others.

This worldview appreciates the depth and complexity of the world and aims to make sense of it all through learning and synthesis. It recognises that “everything falls short of an ideal”. Rather than judging the human condition according to some utopian ideal, as all prior worldviews do, it acknowledges that all of society, culture and behaviour is human. There is radical acceptance: we trust that things must be the way they are, simply because they are that way.

Thus, it’s comfortable with humanity as it is. We are “able to face existence in all its dimensions, even to the point of valuing inconsistencies, oppositions, and flat contradictions”, and in this worldview, “The world is seen kaleidoscopically with different views demanding different attention.”

It also tends to be comfortable with uncertainty in a way that the other worldviews are not. It takes a 50,000-foot view and looks at long-term trends. Trusting that evolution is behind everything and that on the grand scale it always wins out over destructive forces, we put our faith in it rather than in any limited, temporary trend.

Evolution appears to us as an unfailing system for long-term improvement. As Jeff Salzman put it, “we’re rising out of the swamps… we’re doing really well.”

This is a revival of the modernist mantra of progress, which the Postmodern denies and abhors, but not limited to the realms of tech, biology, economy, medicine and science. The Integral recognises these dimensions but sees evolution in all, both inside us and all around us, and is aware that it encompasses far more than scientific and technological achievement.

This worldview is also dramatically more holistic than the others. It sees life as one whole, thus sees the fallacy of reductionism, is aware of the ultimate unity of all polarities, and views objectivity and subjectivity as inseparably intertwined.

In human issues, it sees a deep unity beyond the surface fragmentation and competing interests. As a result, we commit to universal, existential values and concerns. We want to serve and move evolution forward.

Values come not from selfish interest but from the recognition of the magnificence of existence and from the desire to see that it shall continue to be.

He sees the world and all its things… as truly interdependent. He sees them entwined in a subjective-objective complex.

clare graves

Practicing the Integral Worldview

Having read this description of the Integral worldview, you might be left wondering how it’s possible to come to embody it. It may seem abstract, complex, ungrounded, even impractical.

If so, I want to reassure you by saying that this is a real worldview that is waiting to emerge after we experience the Postmodern worldview, and that it is currently emerging for people across the world. Once it does emerge in you, it’ll no longer seem abstract: it’ll seem obvious, second nature.

Furthermore, it is possible to actually practice the Integral worldview, to encourage it to take root within you. In my article Embody Integral Theory: Integral Consciousness As a Practice, you’ll find specific sets of instructions you can follow to bootstrap this view from within.

If you do these exercises regularly, they’ll slowly become part of your default operating system for life. When this occurs, you may well find that this gorgeous new Integral worldview is active in you.