What does it mean? vs What does it do?

What does it mean? vs What does it do? 

The construct of a holarchy is new to me. A hierarchy without an absolute floor and ceiling, top or bottom. This idea invites visualization. In each quadrant a developmental progression with relationships of value assigned by need and contextualized among four territories. The spaces defined by source, internal or external and sense of self, individual or collective. Each important but relatively so. Each understood: interior by interpretation and exterior by observation. These juxtapositions are distanced by relative degree and call attention to the intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social-ized complexity this model represents. This seems awesome and without clear conclusion, yet when one removes its two dimensional nature and imposes on it three dimensional contours-- significance-as-experienced and -defined by the phenomena-- one can see how it offers value in making sense with judgment.

It is interesting to me that the progression of state and transcendence is described as waves and as a ladder. A wave is dependent on an energy source and environment. Its shape and energy a byproduct of both. Its experience dependent on positionality within a larger context and its impact equally so.  Each wave carrying with it the past and contributing to that just ahead. A ladder dependent on its rungs, distance, and height. Each quadrant has its own trajectory. No one quadrant independent of the other, and no one quadrant ever static.

Quote from Wilber: “So my supposedly “individual thought” actually has at least these four facets, these four aspects intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social. And around the circle we go: the social system will have a strong influence on the cultural worldview, which will set limits to individual thoughts that I can have, which will register the brain physiology… these four seem to be the minimum that we need to understand any holon. And this especially holds for higher transformation, for higher states of consciousness, as I guess we’ll see. ..”[possible coming transformation] This transformation is already proceeding, and if we want to consciously find these evolutionary currents operating in our own being as well if we want to consciously join Spirit-in-action then the four quadrants can help us orient ourselves more effectively, can help us become more conscious of the evolutionary currents already flowing around us and through us and in us.”

The following post is a glimpse inside my head as to what it is I currently believe I understand about an approach to making sense of the world and an approach to taking on the world through ideas that integrate developmental theory across epochs and origins. I present my sensemaking to contribute to the reader’s sensemaking as I am equally aware of my undoubted illusion of learning and would offer caution to any and all who draw connections as truth. Perhaps, what is offered below can be considered merely a description of a personal journey that might shape a future journey, for me and for others.

AQAL: All quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types.

The individual draws space within a quadrant yet energies within a system. 

“Four different perspectives looking at the same phenomenon” with an understanding that half of the holarchies were holarchies that “you can see with external senses” and the other half “interior realities that you couldn’t see in the external world” (Wilber, 2017, np).

A landscape from both a high altitude looking down on a map and within through territories: the presiding variable, its temperatures in the case of waves and its reach in the case of rungs seem to be determined by an individual, a science, a culture, and a system and calibrated by boundless variables across each threshold. Each has meaning-- collectively, greater understanding---yet together still insufficient, just necessary.

Quote from Wilber: One approaches the sociocultural holon from within, the other from without. One is how subjects fit together in cultural space, how you and I reach mutual understanding or intersubjectivity,; the other is how objects first come together in physical space, in the total objective system, in interobjectivity. The one uses hermeneutics, or interpretation of interior depth; the other uses empirical-analytic observation, or objective analysis of observable behavior: “What does it mean?” versus “What does it do?”

Quote from Jacques Derrida: “One could therefore identify deconstruction with twin principles of the contextual determination of meaning and infinite extendability of context.”

Inter- and intra-exchanges of energy- a phenomenon, where control is also inter- and intra-dependent. Transcendence requires knowing as much as understanding and requires judgement as much as motivation. Knowing what to influence and what is of influence. Knowing when to influence and how to influence. 

Knowing is the map. Understanding is the territory. The territory isn’t the map. The map isn’t the territory. Transcendence is map and territory.

The Four Quadrants

The Upper Left Quadrant, Subjective: This is an individual place and space that meaning is explored through interpretation. 

The Lower Left Quadrant, Relative: This is a subjective world place and space that meaning is shared through mutual interpretation.

The Upper Right Quadrant, Objective: A propositional truth-- a single fact that resides in the exterior of the Individual.

The Lower Right Quadrant, Absolute: A propositional truth within a social system composed of holons and their fit within the system.

Left to Right; Right to Left

Quote from Wilber: What is so remarkable about mutual understanding is not that I can take a simple word like “dog” and point to a real dog and say, “I mean that.” What is so remarkable is that you know what  I mean by that! Forget the simple empirical pointing! Instead, look at the intersubjective understanding. It is utterly amazing. It means you and I can inhabit each other’s interior to some degree. You and I can share our depth. What we point to truth, and we are situated in truthfulness, we can reach mutual understanding. This is a miracle. If Spirit exists, you can begin to look for it here.”

Quote from David Long: Truth in the broadest sense, means being attuned with the real... Misinterpret my own depth, I might lie about my own interior... Spectrum of consciousness a spectrum of levels of developmental awareness

Quote from Wilber: All cultural events have social correlates. These concrete social components include types of technology…. The actual social system…. Are crucial in helping to determine the types of cultural worldview

Quote from Wilber: No wonder the human sciences have always divided these into two camps, Right Hand versus Left surfaces can be seen, but depth must be interpreted

From within and from without yet both are described through relative terms. Terms that have in some way a relation to what is experienced and understood by the individual, whether the influence of experience is first person (Quadrant 1), third-person (Quadrant 2); second person (Quadrant 3); or fourth person (Quadrant 4). The Objective reality (Right Side- Exterior) named and situated within Subjective experiences (Left Side- Interior).

When we have inadequate skills to interpret, be it of the self of the context, we lose sight of what is and what is potential, limiting our ability to understand and to transcend. When we have inadequate skills to recognize what is of influence outside of one's control, we lose sight of what is and what is present, limiting our ability to know and to transcend.

Wilber’s, A Brief History of Everything, ends with the Twenty Tenets. He clarifies these tenets as “tendencies of evolutionary systems.”. This distinction seems critical and offers life to these “Kosmic patterns.” I end this post with this list, not to elongate meaning but to ‘C” frame of reference; the reference that enables traversing through theories and seeing connections and recognizing connections as point or condition. The list ends with what seems like an addendum by Wilber: 

Every holon issues an IOU to the Kosmos.

All IOUs are redeemed in Emptiness.

1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons (wholes that are parts of other wholes)
2. Holons display four fundamental capacities: (a) self-preservation (agency), (b) self-adaptation (communion), (c) self-transcendence (eros), and (d) self-dissolution (Thanatos).
3. Holons emerge.
4. Holons emerge holarchically.
5. Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor/s.
6. The lower sets the possibilities of the higher; the higher sets the probability of the lower.
7. The number of levels that a holarchy comprises determines whether it is “shallow” or “deep”; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its “span.”
8. Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span. The greater the depth of the holon, the greater degree of consciousness.
9. Destroy any holon, and you will destroy all the holons abortive and none of the holons below it.
10. Holarchies  co-evolve.
11. The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of depth.
12. Evolution has directionality, increasing complexity, increasing differentiation/integration, increasing organization/structuration, increasing relative autonomy, increasing telos.