As background: IU's Integral International Development Center
(better known as Integral Without Borders --IWB) held its first meeting
in Perpignan, France in October 2024. (See Holons IV for a brief
account.) For the past six months we have been quite active in e-mail
forum. Now we move to our new home on the Multiplex and also widen our
embrace. I thought I would start with my synthesis of one of the
central themes of this discussion --social holons and social change --
and we'll take it from there.What follows is a bare-bones 3p
theoretical exposition mostly from a Zone 8 perspective, so please hold
it lightly. (Another one of our topics.)
At the outset the task was to explain how society, a collection of
individuals, all with different UL morphologies and centers of gravity
form a coherent whole (society as a social holon) and how societies
change and develop. This then evolved into questions of individual
change, social change and the role of creativity/the emergent.
Here is what I think is a key section from one of my posts:
"One idea (from Integral Politics) is that the center of
gravity in a society reflects the altitude of the dominant mode of
discourse (LL) and the corresponding governance structures (LR) in a
society. A second idea is that the techno-economic base is the most
important determinant of the average level of consciousness in a
society (eg Excerpt D). A third idea (eg Excerpt A) is that as a new
level of consciousness arises in individuals there is a
tetra-transformation. Interiors of individuals (UL), behaviors of
individuals (UR), modes of discourse, shared values, norms (LL), and
techno-economic-base, governance structures, educational, religious,
legal frameworks (LR) all change and a new dominant mode of discourse
and a new governance structure which will regulate the social holon is
established.
It seems to me that the key point here is that every member of the
society changes some, to be able to tetra-mesh with the emergent. This
does NOT mean that everybody moves up to the new emergent level. If,
for example, orange is the emergent, it does not mean that all the
folks who were centered at magenta, red, or amber will move to orange.
But pretty much every individual in the society will change --some will
transform to the new level (at least 10%?! Ken's tipping point), others
will make horizontal adjustments within their level, others, perhaps
will even regress under the influence of the emergent LL-LR. It is most
likely that most will transform in some lines of development (eg
cognitive) but not others (eg values or morals). The point though is
that somehow the society will mesh and be stable at that new level -- a
brand new social whole with a new center of gravity and a new
regulatory structure will have emerged. It will have individual members
with all kinds of cognitive, morals, values, etc. levels, but they will
all have basically adapted to the emergent orange social center of
gravity, be it by curtailing their behavior due to new legal
restrictions or genuine internal translations and transformations. What
we get is a multicolored mess, but it is a different whole, a different
kind of mess than it was before."
A key question that came up in this context was: to what extent does
society make the individual and to what extent do individuals make the
society? It now seems clear that individuals make the society to the
extent, for example, that techno-economic innovations are made and
instituted by individuals and governance structures and modes of
discourse are changed by individuals (leaders), each individual
reflecting their own AQAL configuration, including, most importantly,
the UL Eros emergent.
At the same time, society makes the individual to the extent that
social context (LL-LR) is a component of each indivual holon's AQAL.
Shifts in the social center of gravity (cog) and the techno-economic
base are particularly important, because these influence and change all
individual members; each member's LL-LR is affected. Overall, over time
--ie change may proceed "funeral by funeral" -- the average level of
consciousness in the society will tend to match the level of the social
center of gravity and the dominant techno-economic base.
It is important to note that creativity/the emergent always first
arises in the (UL) individual and individual consciousness has
considerable relative autonomy --eg an individual may or may not
respond to changes in LL-LR with a transformational shift (the social
cog may have moved to orange, but an individual may remain centered at
eg amber with only translational changes) or the individual may develop
beyond the social cog, perhaps becoming a leader for the next level of
change. So, overall, it seems, individuals (especially leaders) make
the society and society (as LL-LR) partly makes the individual.
The other major part is Eros. Microgenetically, each moment is composed
of last moment's AQAL (ie history matters) plus something new (ie
Eros/creativity).
All this underlines the importance of a multi-faceted approach to
social development. Those that emerge as key for me are: ILP to create
emergent and healthy ground for Eros and individual change; nurturing
leadership that will change (transform or translate) society; as well
as skillful policies to shift the dominant modes of discourse, and
institutions like the governance structures and the techno-economic
base more directly.
This is all for now. Let's see where we go!
Emine.
3. Social Holons
at
http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/22101.aspx
Hey everyone,
I thought the stream on Social Holons was so important that it needed its own thread. Agree Emine?
It's
great to be here and to have a place where we can spitfire words at
each other - in lieu of being warmly in the same room as we were in
Perpignan - but I guess this is what we'll need to work with for now.
This
is a carry-over of our off-line discussion from the past several
weeks. What I'd like to hear (read) people talk about is what kind of
attention or shift do we need to apply to the lower quadrants? i.e.
social holons?
Emine has dumped some pretty nifty thoughts on us already - but what do other people think? Come on folks -let's get dirty!
Cheers, Brian.