INTRODUCTION PART I PART II PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 PART V NOTES Notes 1-8 Notes 9-19 Notes 20-30

The Fifth Factor

     Another item that is often missed in any understanding of social transformation is the "all level" part of the AQAL parameters. An increase in exterior or social development can only be sustained with a corresponding increase in interior development in consciousness and culture. Simply trying to put a new form of governance, political system, or social distribution network in place without a corresponding development in the levels of the interior dimensions of consciousness has historically guaranteed failure in societal transformation.

     For example, the very notion of a social contract (which is the basis of most forms of sophisticated legitimation, including today's representative democracies) is itself the product of a stage-5 moral development (orange or higher). And yet the orange probability wave emerged on a fairly widespread scale only three centuries ago. For this reason, it is no accident that democratic governance systems (of a social contract nature) are very recent developments in human evolution, emerging only after the Western Enlightenment on any widespread scale.

     In fact, it was the historical emergence of the orange probability wave in the Left-Hand quadrants (i.e., the Gebserian move from mythic to mental), coupled with profound advances in techno-cognitive capacity represented by, for example, the steam engine over the windmill (in the Right-Hand quadrants), that inserted Eros into the sequence of historical-developmental unfoldings and thus profoundly increased the likelihood that of the revolutions occurring at that time, at least some of them would be of a significant, vertical, truly transformative nature.

     That is, the existence of a fifth factor--namely, the significant increase in depth in any of the quadrants in a particular society's AQAL configuration--when added to the other four factors (outlined above), substantially increases the likelihood that a merely horizontal revolution will actually give way to a vertical revolution as well.

     Put differently, when the AQAL configuration of a society possesses the standard risk factors for horizontal revolution, plus a fifth factor (namely, an increase in depth in any of the quadrants), then the AQAL selection pressures will include an element of Eros (or the morphogenetic pull to greater depth, complexity, consciousness, and care), and thus the AQAL selection pressures will agitate toward an increase in authenticity in all of the quadrants, or an increase in the developmental level of consciousness, culture, and complexity, because only by an increase in depth (or an increase in authenticity) in all of the quadrants can the tension, turbulence, and turmoil created by the breakdown in translation processes, signaled by a legitimation crisis, find some sort of resolution. In short, the effective increase in depth in any one quadrant creates a tension that can only be resolved by a corresponding increase in depth in the other quadrants as well.

     The exact nature of this resolution, and the exact nature of the surface structure configurations that will satisfy the agitated selection pressures in AQAL space, cannot be determined or specified ahead of time or before the fact (due to the inherently creative or novel aspect of all vertical transformations and authentic emergents: if we could predict it, it would not be emergent); but, as with any complex vertical transformation, its pathways can be understood after the fact by a reconstructive inquiry that tells us what happened, and an AQAL interpretation that can better help us understand why and how it happened.

     Major vertical social transformations are relatively rare, certainly in any widespread and significant fashion. Historians alive to verticality (in consciousness, culture, and complexity--that is, in any of the quadrants) have found only a half dozen or so truly profound transformations (e.g., foraging-magic, horticultural-early-mythic, agrarian-late-mythic, industrial-rational, informational-pluralistic).¹³ Marx focused on the vertical shifts in techno-economic modes (or the Lower-Right quadrant), which is clearly one of the critically important dimensions in societal change simply because techno-economic materialities constantly touch all members of a society (and are, as hinted in an endnote, probably the singly strongest determinant of the average mode of consciousness in a culture).¹⁴ Gerhard Lenski's work on the stages of techno-economic development is probably the most sophisticated in this line of approach, and his techno-economic stages are now virtually uncontested by scholars: foraging, horticultural, agrarian, industrial, and informational (with side branches into maritime and herding, both roughly at the level of horticultural to agrarian). These stages are a standard part of my own version of the Lower-Right quadrant in the AQAL matrix.

      It was Jean Gebser who gave the first compelling account of the correlative cultural transformations in the Lower-Left quadrant (although the breakthrough insights in this regard were first made by theorists from Schelling to Hegel to James Mark Baldwin). Although Gebser had no clear understanding of their internal relation to modes of production (i.e., Gebser possessed a pre-quadratic approach), his stages of cultural or worldview transformation are likewise uncontested by relevant scholars (although the interpretations of their significance sometimes differ): archaic (beige), magic (purple), early mythic (red), late mythic (blue), mental-rational (orange), integral-aperspectival (green and higher, but especially yellow). These general stages (conceived as probability waves) are one influential way to interpret the Lower-Left quadrant in the AQAL matrix.

     When these cultural worldviews first arose, the level of cognitive complexity embodied in them could, when turned to the exterior world, produce correlative modes of techno-economic production (which in turn tended to inculcate the same level of depth in the users of the base). Thus, when the interobjective dimension of an actual occasion appears as a foraging mode, the intersubjective dimension appears as an archaic-magic worldview; when the interobjective dimension appears as horticultural, the intersubjective dimension tends toward early mythic; agrarian, late mythic; industrial, mental-rational; informational, integral-aperspectival.

     I said these correlations hold "when they first arose," because the whole point about techno-economic modes is that, once they are produced by a particular level of consciousness, they can be used by virtually any level of consciousness (whether it could itself produce them or not). Thus, one of the horrors of the modern world is that ethnocentric tribes, which on their own could only produce a bow and arrow, can now get their hands on orange technology, including nuclear weapons, and thus couple a very low level of moral development with a very high level of techno-cognitive development. Most of the nightmares of the twentieth century--from Auschwitz to the Gulag--which have wrongly been blamed on modernity, are actually the product of premodern consciousness attaining modern weapons. It is this possibility of a jarring disconnect between LL and LR that drove Marx to some of his original insights (e.g., a new and more advanced techno-economic paradigm throws the old paradigm and the worldviews that it supported into a legitimation crisis that can only be finally resolved by a corresponding vertical transformation in cultural worldviews to match the increased depth in the new paradigm).

     My point for the moment is simply that, once a material artifact (including a force of production) is created by a correlative level of consciousness and cognition, it can take on a life of its own. Although the artifact (and the force of production) itself, precisely because it embodies a particular level of cognition, will always tend to evoke a similar level of consciousness in the user of the artifact, this is not in any way a causal or deterministic affair (not, anyway, after its first emergence). Ethnocentric tribes can use gas chambers, even though they haven't the cognitive capacity to produce them themselves: this is the horror of disjunctive development that can occur precisely because material artifacts and the consciousness that produced them can take on a life of their own, so that "levels and lines" becomes a nightmare of global proportions in today's world: high technical development, low moral development, a mixture of which leads straight to Wounded Knee, to Dachau, to Treblinka, to Sorbibor, and to September 11.

Eros and Authenticity

      We have seen that when any of four major sociocultural factors are present, the likelihood of a societal revolution increases. We have also seen that, if a fifth factor is added (namely, a vertical increase in depth in any of the quadrants of the AQAL configuration of a particular society), then there is an added selection pressure that agitates not just for a circular ("revolving") translational change in surface structures but a vertical (or authentically "revolutionary") transformational change in deep structures (following the morphogenetic gradient of increased complexity and consciousness, or Eros by any other name).

     As it turns out, these (exceedingly rare) vertical societal transformations (there have only been a half-dozen or so truly profound ones) are not necessarily of the dramatic revolutionary variety; some are the quieter reform variety. Both occur and have historically occurred. For example, with regard to the vertical shift from blue (late mythic-agrarian) to orange (industrial-rational), and its corresponding shift from feudal-aristocracy-monarchy to implicit social contracts, revolutions that attempted to ride that evolutionary wave included the American Revolution (which succeeded fairly well due to strong factors in all four quadrants), the French Revolution (which aborted badly and reverted to blue Napoleonic), the Russian Revolution (which never had a chance due to a pre-industrial AQAL configuration), and the Chinese Revolution (which eventually ended up substituting Marxist blue for Confucian blue, with an industrial edge).

     Where revolutions thus had a fairly poor track record, reform movements that attempted the same essential vertical transformation faired somewhat better. Prussia (in 1806-1812) and England (1828-1832) managed, via relatively quiet reform and not overt revolution, to implement many of the quadratic potentials of the orange probability wave, including a reduction in the privileges of aristocracy, extending citizenship, and progressive economic and political restructuring. These reforms were "revolutionary" in the sense of being profound, vertical, authentic transformations, but were not "revolutionary" in the overt sense of being accompanied by political insurrection, war, or physical altercations.

     But whether the vertical transformation occurred via revolution or reform, the essential point is that in either case a majority of the elite faction leading the transformation was at the orange probability wave. As with any profound social transformation, it must be inaugurated and channeled by an elite, and the elite, in every case of genuine vertical transformation, has itself been riding the edge of the new and emerging probability wave (in this case, orange). If this is not the case, then the revolution/reform is merely of the old "circular" or "cyclical" variety, being merely a change in surface structures in the AQAL configuration of the society. But should a majority of the elite be representing the leading edge of the newly emerging probability wave, then the fifth factor is introduced into the increasingly chaotic translations of the AQAL landscape, and selection pressures therefore begin to agitate toward a vertical transformation to a new and higher spacetime niche, a new and higher probability wave in the cascading AQAL ocean. The crisis in legitimacy is finally resolved only by an increase in authenticity.

     Moreover, in the case of successful modern revolutions/reforms, a significant fraction of the population at large was also at the orange probability wave (at least in the cognitive line). As history has demonstrated time and again, it does no good to introduce a new mode of governance (e.g., stemming from the orange probability wave) if the consciousness of the population itself is nowhere near that wave. Representative republican democracy is a governance system where sovereignty resigns in systems of holons at the orange probability wave; such a democracy has never occurred at blue, red, or purple. Representative democracies and the reforms they carry are only around 300 years old in any sort of enduring fashion; they are dated with the Western Enlightenment and the emergence of the orange probability wave on a widespread scale.

     Thus, throughout the twentieth century, every time that Western industrial democracies attempted to introduce orange social-contract democracy into red societies, the result was always the "election" of red military regimes. Communist insurrectionaries likewise attempted to introduce socialism into similarly red societies, and the result was once again a red military dictatorship. Exterior developments (in social structures and institutions) demand correlative interior developments (in consciousness and culture) in order to be sustained, and simply forcing "democratic" behavior from a population is worthless without correlative interior growth (a fact that can be adequately tracked only by using something akin to an AQAL analysis).

Summary: Eros and Revolution

      That is simply another way of emphasizing the fact that most "revolutions," "transformations," or "new paradigms" are, like mutations, usually lethal (or at best inconsequential), not beneficial--which is why the original meaning of "revolution" was "a circular or cyclical going nowhere." But part of the brilliance of Marx (and the Idealists themselves) was to spot that, in the long run, there is an Eros to the evolutionary sequence: a slow, fitful, but unmistakable increase in developmental depth and evolutionary unfolding, and therefore the possibility of new and more authentic modes of being, consciousness, culture, and politics continually emerge at the chaotic, frothy, leading edge of the probability configuration of the AQAL matrix in any society, and this new emergence (in any of the quadrants) throws the old forms of being into a destabilizing crisis of legitimacy, which, if profound enough, can only be resolved by an increase in authenticity.

     We saw that in the original Marxist version, a legitimation crisis occurs when the superstructure (or relations of production) no longer mesh with the advances in the base (or forces of production), and therefore the meaning structures of that culture are no longer supported in a believable way. In other words, the prevailing worldview--and the prevailing governing bodies--suffer a loss of legitimacy, a loss of believability. The intersubjective meaning (LL) no longer meshes with the interobjective social realities (LR), and thus a profound legitimation crisis shakes the entire culture.¹⁵ Meaning no longer matches fact; truth no longer matches truthfulness; semantics and syntax are out of whack; base and superstructure no longer support each other--and something has to give, as all four selection pressures swing into play in the violent turbulence of the disturbed AQAL matrix.

     We also saw that in the scientific world, this means that the old theories (the old superstructures) which were adapted to, and generated by, the old social practices and paradigms (the old base), now no longer fit with recent and anomalous evidence. A new paradigm (i.e., a series of new scientific experiments and behavioral injunctions) have generated new data, new evidence, and new experiences that cannot be fitted into or explained by the old theories. The old theories therefore suffer a legitimation crisis: their meaning structures (LL) no longer functionally fit with new material evidence (LR). Old semantics and new syntax clash, and only a new series of theories and meaning structures can match the evidence generated by the new modes of scientific production (i.e., the new paradigms that generate, enact, bring forth, and produce new types of data or evidence). A scientific revolution (or at the least, profound reformation) therefore occurs which ushers in a new series of theories or meaning structures (LL) that are adapted to, and tetra-mesh with, the new modes of scientific data production (LR), so that the new scientific culture (LL) now matches the new social system (LR).

     A similar type of legitimation crisis occurs in the academic world of the humanities, not just the sciences. To give only one example, over the last thirty years, there has been a particularly influential type of data production machine (or techno-economic injunction), but one that was itself malformed to a significant degree, namely, the behavioral injunction and set of social rules for deconstructing texts (or deconstructing systems of signifiers without an equally widespread mode for putting something positive in their place: it was merely deconstruction without reconstruction). This malformed mode of data production and behavioral injunctions (or paradigms) supported a worldview of faux egalitarian postmodernism (i.e., a malformed mode of the green wave often known as "the mean green meme"). This mode of production or social behavior practice helped to determine the consciousness of the humanities professor and his or her unsuspecting students. However, as new forms of social practice and new theories based on them began to generate more integrated and more authentic modes of consciousness and culture, the worldview of extreme postmodernism has been thrown into a profound legitimation crisis, which itself can only be overcome by a revolution or reform to more authentic, more integral modes of consciousness, culture, and complexity in the academic landscape. This particular revolution--an integral age at the leading edge--is, of course, only now beginning to form (and is one of the main themes of this essay).

     In politics at large, a legitimation crisis means that there is a new and rising culture that does not believe the old governing bodies. The new and rising culture possesses a degree of depth and complexity that is beyond the grasp of the old governing bodies, and therefore the entire structure of governance suffers a legitimation crisis for the new culture (at the hands of Eros). A political revolution--perhaps violent (revolution), perhaps not (reform)--will therefore have to occur in order for new governance systems to take into account the new increases in depth of cognition and technology. (As we have often put it, the only cure for a profound legitimation crisis--in any domain, scientific to academic to political--is an increase in authenticity.) If those revolutions/reforms are successful, the new (and more authentic) governance systems will possess a sturdy legitimacy for the new (and more authentic) culture. Failing that, there are only culture wars, as various cultures and subcultures vie for ruling legitimacy.

      All sorts of pleasant and unpleasant solutions to internal culture wars have historically been devised. A fun one exercised by mythic believers was the mass murder of magic witches (possibly hundreds of thousands in Europe's history). But many solutions were very positive: the United States Constitution, for example, stemming mostly from the rational probability wave (orange), demanded that, although you are allowed to have any private beliefs that you want--primitive archaic, egocentric magic, or ethnocentric mythic--nonetheless in the public space you must behave according to rational, worldcentric laws. The democratic Constitution was more authentic than the previous aristocracy, and thus time's arrow was on its side. Of course, as we said, in order to support such an arrangement, a significant percentage of the population itself (and not just the revolutionary elite) must be at a sufficiently evolved wave of consciousness (in this case, orange or higher), or the social contract will simply degenerate into red regimes and blue dictatorships of one variety or another....

     The advantages that any greater technology and deeper cognitions have over their predecessors were many (in addition, of course, to the new forms of pathology introduced by the new modes: the dialectic of progress). We were looking at the example of horticultural-mythic over foraging-magic in its positive forms: one central advantage was that the mythic worldview had a relatively greater depth (which could include and embrace a larger number of individuals and therefore unite many tribes into a social communion much larger than their merely kinship lineage ties which dominated foraging modes). This relative increase in cognitive depth was shared by an increase in the technological depth of horticultural over foraging (evidenced in a higher degree of complexity and integration in the social system)--which is why foragers by the droves adopted horticultural modes wherever they were introduced.¹⁶ And once the a new worldview arose to match the new base (e.g., once mythic supplanted magic), then the higher mythic worldview and the deeper (more complex) horticultural mode were in mesh; they reflected different dimensions of the same probability wave, and thus could tetra-evolve more harmoniously.... (until industrial modes arose to displace horticultural-agrarian, and the old mythic-membership worldviews were challenged by the rising rational-egoic worldviews, and so would go yet another round of world-wrenching cultural and social wars of transformation, whether by overt revolution or quieter reform....)

     The advantage of any higher worldview is not in the "include" but the "transcend" side of the equation: there is an Eros to the sequence, such that the transcendental value of the new and higher worldview moves into a new probability space (or a new niche) where it can flourish outside of old Kosmic habits (while initiating, in that new niche, its own forms of new Kosmic habits)--just as, for example, mammals found a new space outside of reptilian probability waves (although the mammalian brain, of course, transcended and included a reptilian brain stem, which transcended and included vegetative life functions, which transcended and included inorganic molecules, which transcended and included atoms, which...). The new and deeper/higher worldview is therefore selected and carried forward in the new probability space, even though there are fewer holons there than in the previous space (whose Kosmic habits have now become subcomponents of the new holons).

     Thus, foraging-magical modes of governance gave way to agrarian-mythic modes of governance, which gave way to rational-industrial, which is now on the cusp of pluralistic-informational. But even though the leading edge takes control of the major forms of governance systems, all of the previous waves remain as sub-pockets in the culture, even while the culture itself, on the whole, is subjected to the new governance system. Individuals and subcultures span the entire spectrum of the different waves of consciousness (up to the average, and a few beyond). And that is the major source of internal culture wars.

     In this summary it is therefore important to repeat: What Marx failed to see is what virtually everybody else has failed to see in this regard: it is not that each society has a single monolithic technological mode and a single monolithic worldview, and that the two somehow have to match up. Rather, each society is a spectrum of AQAL actualities: there are individuals at every level of the spectrum of consciousness, at least up to the average level of that culture (with a few moving beyond). And there are pockets of every mode of techno-production up to the leading edge: even in industrial societies, there are red street gangs foraging for their existence, and the farmers of Kansas are still out there planting seeds. So there is no single base and no single superstructure, such that an internal contradiction between them could propel the major transformations that have marked history. Marx's general idea--that of a mismatch between LL and LR causing internal communal contradictions and tensions--is still true, but the mismatch spans the spectrum of consciousness up to the highest average wave in that society, and in all four quadrants with their many waves and streams (all of which have to tetra-mesh in the AQAL configuration, or something has to give).

The Idea of Progress

     Only such an AQAL interpretation can allow us to handle the idea of progress in a way that makes sense of actual historical realities. The problem with virtually all previous notions of progress--from the Enlightenment to Marx to present-day liberal democratic versions--is that they made the wholly unwarranted assumption that society has merely a single basic worldview and a single basic techno-economic mode, and therefore history must be a progressive, step by step increase in liberal values, clunking up the great ladder of linear progress. Thus, if the Enlightenment represented the emergence of industrial-rationality over feudal-mythology, then modernity must embody nothing but progress, pure and simple.

     But, of course, a society whose governance system embodies industrial-rational modes (orange), still has pockets of archaic, magic, and mythic subcultures (purple, red, and blue). Moreover, the products of orange can now be used by pre-orange waves. Orange moral consciousness, for example, demands that all people be treated fairly, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed. Orange cognition is also powerful enough that it has to the potential to produce assembly line gas chambers, but orange moral consciousness would never use them. But tribal-red moral consciousness can easily seize orange products and will gladly use them--hence, Auschwitz.

     In other words, "levels and lines" becomes an important ingredient in the AQAL analysis of any idea of "progress," because the higher the level of development in any line in a society, the greater the possibility that those higher products can be seized by lower levels of development in other lines. Thus, the greater the genuine depth in any society--that is, the more there is genuine, real, authentic progress--the more types of pathology that can follow in its wake, due to levels and lines. This allows us to track the "good news, bad news" nature of all social transformations, and not fall into the only two widely accepted options, which either see only progress or deny all progress.

     In short, no matter how "high" a society is in terms of developmental depth, every human being must start its development at square one, and thus the greater the depth, the more problems that can occur. Even in a society whose governance systems were at turquoise, individuals would still have begin at beige, then purple, then red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and turquoise--if they develop fully. But many individuals will remain at junior waves of development, which is certainly their right in all post-orange societies. But just that fact accounts for the peculiar distresses of advanced cultures: the higher the culture, the more stages of development involved, and since every stage has its own pathologies, then the higher the culture, the more ways you can be sick. Thus, good news, bad news.

     Accordingly, we can indeed allow both the idea of progress in any line, and the fact that higher cultures showing authentic progress can nonetheless be subjected to barbarities that primal cultures literally could not even imagine.

     This fact also leaves all societies open to internal culture wars, as pockets at different waves of consciousness vie for legitimation. As we have seen, in today's industrialized West, there are three major subcultures still at war: the traditionalist blue wave (best adapted to agrarian-feudal modes), the modernist orange wave (best suited to industrial mass-production modes), and the postmodernist green wave (best suited to pluralistic informational modes). The governance systems of Western societies are in the slow and painful transition from industrial-orange to informational-green. And the major hazard in today's world is that the green wave is emerging in too many instances in its malformed mode, with its AQAL matrix significantly fractured by a flatland pluralism that erases depth from the Kosmos wherever it finds it. But that's another story, the story of boomeritis, yes?¹⁷

Summary

     We have covered a lot of ground in the first three parts of this essay. Here is a quick summary of the central points to date:

• Each holon has at least four major dimensions of being-in-the-world: subjective, objective, intersubjective, and interobjective.
• In the subjective dimension (UL), the moment-to-moment nature of flowing existence involves prehension--or this moment's feeling of the previous moment--which is a holarchical transcendence-and-inclusion of the previous moment. This is one example of the fact that each dimension of being-in-the-world inherits a type of influence (or Kosmic karma) from its predecessors.
• In the objective dimension (UR), the moment-to-moment nature of flowing existence involves, among other things, morphic resonance and formative causation, where the objective form of a holon resonates with similar forms across spacetime, influencing them to some degree (just as a vibrating string causes other similar strings to vibrate at the same frequency. The two strings vibrating together is called morphic resonance, the one string causing the other to vibrate is called formative causation). In the UR dimension, this inheritance appears most essentially as the past forms of an individual holon influencing its present form. This UR influence, as we will see, also appears to involve various types of subtle energies. Another equally important form of UR inheritance is autopoiesis, whereby living holons self-organize and self-reproduce. (We will discuss autopoiesis at length in Excerpt B.)
• In the intersubjective dimension (LL), the moment-to-moment nature of flowing existence involves the inheritance of a cultural background of shared meanings and mutual prehensions. In essence, this is the basis of cultural memory.
• In the interobjective dimensions (LR), the moment-to-moment nature of flowing existence involves collective morphic resonance and collective formative causation that sets up various morphogenetic grooves that will strongly influence, and sometimes directly guide, the unfolding development of individual holons that arise in mesh with those grooves. This is simply a subset of the general phenomena of systems memory.
• Thus, all four dimensions of being-in-the-world are influenced to some degree by their predecessors.
• Put differently, each holon inherits, as a given or a priori ground, the AQAL matrix of the previous moment.
• These inheritances involve deep patterns of being-in-the-world that are not archetypal givens but Kosmic habits.
• Kosmic habits are not rigid concrete structures but probability waves of finding a particular type of holon in a particular spacetime locale in the creatively unfolding AQAL matrix.
• In order to survive, each holon must tetra-mesh with its AQAL inheritance or face extinction. This tetra-evolution involves selection pressures in all four dimensions of its being-in-the-world (truth, truthfulness, meaning, functional fit).
• If the AQAL matrix of this moment inherits the AQAL matrix of the previous moment, it also adds it own spark of creative novelty and transcendence. Each actual occasion is "transcend and include," giving rise to the Whiteheadian holarchical nature of each moment.
• Therefore, evolution is marked not just by the inheritance of past forms in tetra-mesh, but the emergence of new forms in transcendental leaps of creativity. As Jantsch summarized it, evolution is "self-organization through self-transcendence."
• These emergent leaps therefore create new niches in the AQAL matrix marked by probability waves of greater depth, consciousness, and inclusive capacity.
• These niches take on specific forms as Kosmic habits when that space is quadratically enacted by a sufficiently large number of holons (which then pass on this inheritance to subsequent holons, who will transcend and include it).
• Higher potentials become concrete actualities--and higher states become actual stages--through this process of creative enactment in tetra-mesh. At no point are pregiven levels, structures, or stages required.
• Whenever a new niche is in the process of tetra-emergence, the old niche is thrown into a legitimation crisis, which can only be resolved by an increase in authenticity--or a transformation to the new niche of greater depth, consciousness, culture, and complexity.
• Authentic vertical transformations to greater levels of depth do not automatically spell progress, however, because higher developments in some lines can be accompanied by lower developments in other lines (a phenomena called levels and lines, whether in individuals or societies).
• For this reason, historical development is always a painful mixture of " good news, bad news," as individuals and subcultures in the society span the entire spectrum of consciousness in all of its available waves, in both their healthy and unhealthy forms.
• Thus, the greater the depth of any individual or culture, the more potentials and pathologies available to it.
• An AQAL or integral analysis of all of those factors very likely represents the best chance of increasing the good news and diminishing the bad news in any AQAL configuration (in an individual, family, society, species, planet, or Kosmos), because only an integral analysis takes into account the widest variety of evidence from the greatest number of sources, and is therefore the least exclusionary and least violent approach to self-and-other understanding.