Description of Challenge
How can we find a place for everything that we are aware of? Thoughts and feelings; actions and physical experiences; collective norms and culture; and our ways of organising our lives, organisations and societies? This challenge has engaged Ken Wilber, and other influential thinkers, for many years. How to create a model for everything?In order to understand how the new holographic paradigm fits into the overall scheme of things, it is necessary to have an overall scheme of things to begin with. (Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, p.126)
Solution
Integral theory, as described by Ken Wilber and others in the integral movement, revolves around the concept of two axes and four quadrants. One axis is for the interior/exterior, and the other axis is for the individual/collective. Putting these two axes together creates a simple model of four quadrants: the individual interior (my subjective experience of thoughts, feelings, memories and perceptions); the individual exterior (my physical body and all external perception); the collective interior (culture, norms, values, relationships) and the collective exterior (systems, networks, rules, laws). Locating any issue within these quadrants, and also addressing any issue through all four lenses, is likely to lead to a fully integrated understanding and approach to the matter at hand.
