OVERVIEW PART I PART II PART III Notes 1-9

Integral Methodological Pluralism

     In the above example about representative democracies and the social contract, we pointed to two broad areas of social practice, a macro-practice (or techno-economic base) that included industrialization, which, for all its pathological downsides, had as some of its positive accomplishments the lessening of the demand for physical strength in the public sphere (which therefore lessened the rule of might and hierarchies of physical power), which tetra-supported worldviews that, for the first time in history, began publicly valuing freedom, liberty, and equality--and actually fought and died in revolutions for those values. On a smaller or micro-scale, that social revolution was pioneered in cultural elites whose social practices included, for the first time in history on any sort of significant scale, a dialogical discourse and social behavior conducted via the orange probability wave of postconventional awareness (where "postconventional" does not mean post-cultural or post-social, only post-traditional forms of sociocultural). At that point, written theoretical treatises about the social contract--by Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson--actually contributed to an increase in the span of those who wished to implement the new paradigm or practice on a wider scale, by revolution if necessary (although reform, if genuine--i.e., if riding the new wave of Eros--can accomplish the same increase in authenticity via a quieter but equally effective route).

     What types of micro-practices at today's leading edge might be the harbinger of an integral wave set to emerge on a wider scale? It is still a bit early to speculate, but perhaps we can glean several possible characteristics.

     First and foremost, it seems, would be an expansive and inclusive methodology (or paradigm) for generating the types of experiences that can be taken as legitimate by the new and integral wave. Legitimacy, as we saw in Excerpt A, involves, among other things, the "believability" of a worldview (and therefore the likelihood that its adherents will adopt it). Each cultural worldview (in the LL) is accompanied by a series of paradigms or social practices (in the LR), and these practices or injunctions generate, enact, and bring forth the types of experiences that are held to be true, good, right, or--in general--valid, believable, and legitimate (which are then codified in the reigning worldview, which in turn legitimates the practices supporting the worldview, which governs the thoughts and behavior of those who are members of that particular culture or subculture: tetra-legitimacy).

     Before moving to any sort of integral paradigm, let's look at the basic paradigm that it would be succeeding, namely the postmodern or pluralistic wave. Beginning in earnest about four decades ago, most postmodern paradigms or social practices (embodying the pluralistic or green probability wave) involved social behavior that was often grounded in group discussions that attempted to include every participant in a mode of nonjudgmental listening; this social behavior generated collective experiences of group solidarity and an indictment of individualism, with an powerful emphasis on intersubjectivity in all its forms and a condemnation of empiricism and subjectivism; academically, written texts or chains of signifiers were therefore deconstructed according to a general practice of inverting hierarchies (making marginal center and center peripheral--thus deconstructing any and all prevailing hierarchies and hegemonic marginalizing, while simultaneously placing a premium on confessional displays of diversity); deviant behavior was therefore judged according to tone, not content.

     Around those very specific social practices, all occurring within the probability space of the pluralistic wave, sprang up various worldviews that conceptually codified what it was to be legitimate in this new worldspace, maps for how to find one's way around in this new territory. That is, legitimacy at the green wave included adopting a worldview that was: nonhierarchical, nonjudgmental, nonmarginalizing, and nonranking. Positive items, such as intersubjectivity, could be part of legitimacy, but only if they fit the foregoing exclusionary criteria (e.g., one's intersubjectivity was not allowed to be developmental).

     The benefits of the healthy green wave were many and profound, including most environmental reforms and the civil rights movement. The downsides were that, as the legitimacy list suggests, many of the characteristics of green legitimacy consisted of what it was not (it was not hierarchical, not judgmental, not ranking, not...). This is why its primary paradigm or social injunction was deconstruction (by whatever name, a thorough-going criticism and often condemnation of everything other than pluralism. That this was a performative contradiction--pluralism means to accept all views, not attack so many of them--was generally overlooked). Deconstruction (or tearing down) worked quite well, at least initially, because red and blue and orange had built much that needed to be un-built or taken down. But once the deconstructive work ended in its healthy form, there was little to put in its place in terms of reconstruction, because actual construction requires taking a concrete stand, which this form of pluralism disallowed. The endgame of the pluralistic paradigm was thus all-too-often a social behavior of politically correct thought police, green Inquisitors, and boomeritis of one unpleasant sort or another.

     The social practices of the integral wave will almost certainly include the healthy aspects of the pluralistic wave (via Whiteheadian transcend-and-include). For example, healthy deconstruction (as a prelude to reconstruction) will likely continue to play a central role, as will hermeneutics and collaborative inquiry. But a key ingredient of integral social practices stems from what is perhaps the main defining characteristic of the integral probability wave itself.

     Namely, whereas all previous waves of culture and consciousness (traditional, modern, and postmodern) believed that their values were the only valid or correct values, any integral wave acknowledges the importance and validity of all of those values, not just as historically appropriate (which the other waves will acknowledge), but as inherent ingredients in today's spiral of growth and development. Orange, for example, claims to possess universal truths, truths that cover all the really important bases, but it rejects blue truths outright and it recoils in disgust in the face of green pluralism. Green pluralism fares no better, in that it claims to be inclusive and nonjudgmental, but in fact it explicitly rejects red values, it explicitly rejects blue values, and it explicitly rejects orange values. In contradistinction to all of those exclusionary social practices, an integral wave attempts to acknowledge, honor, and actually include all of those values in the ongoing spiral of its own unfolding, thus bringing together the best of premodern, modern, and postmodern, while pledging exclusionary allegiance to none of them.

     So what does that mean when it comes to social practices? If the integral wave includes the essentials of the first-tier waves (traditional to modern to postmodern)--and then moves beyond them with its own defining emergents--then an integral social practice would of necessity include and exercise all of the important practices, injunctions, and methodologies of the first-tier waves, but now set in an integral framework that included their enduring contributions yet transcended their partialities, absolutisms, and exclusionary practices.²

     The result would a set of paradigms, behavioral injunctions, and social practices that might be called an integral methodological pluralism. "Integral," in that the pluralism is not a mere eclecticism or grab bag of unrelated paradigms, but a meta-paradigm that weaves together its many threads into an integral tapestry, a unity-in-diversity that slights neither the unity nor the diversity. "Methodological," in that this is a real paradigm or set of actual practices and behavioral injunctions to bring forth an integral territory, not merely a new holistic theory or maps without any territory. And "pluralism" in that there is no one overriding or privileged injunction (other than to be radically all-inclusive). Unlike postmodernism, which practiced a type of exclusionary pluralism that condemned all other first-tier values (not to mention second-tier values), integral or inclusionary pluralism is a conscientiously adopted set of behavioral paradigms for acknowledging--and actually seeking out--the enduring truths in categorically every major methodology in first- and second- and third-tier probability waves.

     Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) has two main parts: paradigmatic and meta-paradigmatic. The paradigmatic aspect means a careful compilation of all the primary paradigms or methodologies of presently existing modes of human inquiry--which means, the major methodologies that are presently accepted within their own fields or disciplines. We have already given (in Excerpt A) an overview of many of those fundamental paradigms--and we will continue to explore those "need-to-be-included" paradigms as we proceed--from hermeneutics to phenomenology to behaviorism to systems theory to meditation to collaborative inquiry to vision quest to quantum physics to depth psychology to molecular biology. All of the major modes of human inquiry possess general practices and injunctions that bring forth and illumine various types of experiences, revelations, data, and phenomena held to be legitimate by those disciplines, and an Integral Methodological Pluralism quite literally makes room for all of those major modes of inquiry.

     At this point, no attempt is made to judge whether a particular practice or paradigm should or should not be included in the mix. The fact is, these paradigms or practices already exist, they are already being practiced by human beings around the world--by men and women who are sincerely convinced that these practices bring forth something of value for themselves and others--and practices that accordingly deserve a fair hearing in the integrative forums or salons now nascently self-organizing. The first or paradigmatic part of IMP is thus a respectful compilation, without judgment, of the major methodologies for enacting, illuminating, and bringing forth various worldspaces or ways of being-in-the-world. These are the various paradigms or methodologies that already exist and are already being practiced by caring and concerned men and women around the world.

     The second part of any integral methodological pluralism, and the part that prevents it from being a first-tier eclecticism, is a meta-paradigmatic set of practices that conscientiously relate the various paradigmatic strands to each other. Put simply, integral methodological pluralism includes a compilation of the most important, time-tested methodologies, as well as a set of practices that weave them together or integrate them into ways of being-in-the-world that are radically nonexclusionary. This aspect of IMP can be summarized as, "Everybody is right."

     (Put technically, such a meta-paradigmatic practice enacts a new domain upon the individually-enacted paradigmatic domains, such that their individually-enacted phenomena overlap, their brought-forth horizons merge to some degree, and there is enacted upon the enacted phenomena--and accordingly there is brought forth, illumined, and most fundamentally disclosed--a new territory or domain of integral interrelationships. In other words, this is a paradigm of paradigms, which means, as we now know, a practice of practices and not a theory of theories.)

     These types of meta-paradigmatic practices--as they apply to an individual, a group, a research setting, a society--will be outlined as we go along, but here is a quick preview of what might be involved. Please keep in mind that we are at this point discussing integral practices at the leading edge, which often involve nothing more exciting than arcane academic debates, abstruse experiments, and highly technical--which is to say, boring--streams of discourse organized around issues of methodology. These integral methodologies, as they are refined and streamlined, and as they begin to slip out of their integral salon settings and into the culture at large in a more popular fashion, will be vastly simpler (and hopefully more interesting) than their pioneering forms, standing in a similar relation of, say, the handheld calculator (which is now the size of a matchbox) to the original computers (which were the size of a house). But the point is essentially the same: what kind of practices build bridges between other practices?

     In a research setting, for example, a meta-paradigmatic practice might involve "simultracking," where phenomena in various domains are simultaneously tracked according to the accepted methodologies of those domains. For example, during collaborative inquiry (which enacts the Lower-Left or intersubjective dimensions of being-in-the-world), simultaneously track the participants' brainwave patterns (which discloses aspects of the Upper-Right or objective dimensions of being-in-the-world), and then look for correlations between them. This practice of simultracking is not something that would ordinarily occur to the postmodern pluralist (who does not believe in objective science) nor to the scientist (who does not believe in pluralism). Caught in their respective quadrant absolutisms, they rarely talk to each other.

     In that particular case, the paradigmatic aspect of IMP includes both of those practices (not just theories, but the actual practices of engaging in collaborative inquiry and of running an EEG flow pattern), and then IMP adds the second or meta-paradigmatic practice, that of simultracking (or running them together and actively noting any correlations), which is a practice that can enact, bring forth, and illumine the integral interrelationships between various holons originally thought discrete or even nonexistent. In other words, this practice on a set of practices (or this meta-paradigm on the individual paradigms) brings forth and illumines the mutual interactions between actual occasions, and it does so only from a space that theory would later call a second-tier probability wave. That is, meta-paradigmatic practices stand forth only in the worldspace of second-tier consciousness, which discloses holonic and integral relationships that were operative but not visible at first-tier waves.

     On a more personal side, IMP involves things like Integral Transformative Practice (ITP), wherein a full range of human potentials are simultaneously engaged and exercised in order to enact and bring forth any higher states and stages of human potential, leading individuals through their own personal legitimation crisis to an increase in authenticity. On a societal scale, it involves approaching social ills with an integrative tool kit, not a piecemeal series of ameliorations that often create as many problems as they solve. Second-tier solutions to social problems involve sustained inquiries into ways that will allow each wave (e.g., purple, red, blue, orange, green) to freely explore its own potentials but in ways that those waves would not construct if left to their own exclusionary practices. In academic settings, integral methodological pluralism allows the creation not so much of more cross-disciplinary studies (which confirm each other in their first-tier prejudices) but in trans-disciplinary studies (which enact a new territory of integral displays between old rivalries).

     In general, to put it in orange terms, any sort of Integral Methodological Pluralism allows the creation of a multi-purpose toolkit for approaching today's complex problems--individually, socially, and globally--with more comprehensive solutions that have a chance of actually making a difference. Or, to say the same thing with green terms, an Integral Methodological Pluralism allows a richer diversity of interpretations of life's text to stand forth in a clearing of mutual regard, thus marginalizing no interpretation in the process.

     On an individual scale, the same approach can be applied to one's own profession, converting it into a practice of integral law, integral medicine, integral business, integral education, integral politics, integral ecology, integral psychotherapy and family practice, and so on. We will see examples of many of these as we proceed.

     Most of the tools to do all of the above already exist (i.e., the MP of the IMP are already out there). All that is required, at least to get started, are a few integrating principles to initiate the "integral" part of the IMP. These heuristic principles suggest simple ways to practice on those practices already out there, thus quickly converting any given practice into an integral practice. Let's look at three such integrative principles as examples.

The Essence of Integral Metatheory: Everybody Is Right

     At this point we have been mostly talking about social practices in a micro-elite, particularly in academia. As we saw, methodologies generate the types of experiences taken to be valid and legitimate by the knowledge community practicing the paradigm: each cultural worldview (in the LL) is accompanied by a series of paradigms or social practices (in the LR), and these practices or injunctions generate, enact, and bring forth the types of experiences that are held to be true, good, or right by the knowledge community (or--in general--are held to be valid, believable, and legitimate by those within the horizons brought forth by the paradigm), experiences that are codified in the legitimating worldview, which in turn helps govern the behavior (UR) and the types of phenomena held to be significant (UL) by individuals who are members of that culture (with all of them, of course, mutually tetra-evolving and tetra-enacting).

     In short, around social practices, paradigms, or methodologies, theories or worldviews grow.³ Paradigms bring forth new territories, which new maps attempt abstractly to reflect.⁴ Integral Methodological Pluralism is no different. It is a series of concrete practices; engaging these practices enacts, brings forth, discloses, and illumines a series of phenomena, data, experiences, and mutual or intersubjective prehensions--and around this entire set of disclosures and new experiences, various theories and worldviews grow, theories (and meta-theories or supertheories) that attempt to elucidate, explain, and codify the plethora of phenomena (subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective) thrown up by the social practices.

     With regard to IMP, we can put the crucial point very simply: what if an individual (and right now we are still talking mostly about elite academics) accepted the basic validity of hermeneutics AND systems theory AND introspective phenomenology AND empirical science AND shamanic states of consciousness AND developmental psychology AND collaborative inquiry AND ecological sciences AND postmodern contextualism AND neuroscience.... Well, perhaps the point is annoyingly obvious. If the basic legitimacy of all of those time-tested methodologies is allowed, then the experiences that all of those social practices enact, bring forth, and illumine become grist for the mill of a new supertheory or metatheory that accounts, or at least attempts to account, for all of them in a believable, coherent fashion.

     At this time, one such metatheory is AQAL (pronounced ah quil), which is short for "all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types." This metatheory did not precede integral methodological pluralism, but, as usual, vice versa. That is, the ingredients of the AQAL metatheory are the phenomena (subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective) enacted and brought forth by literally dozens of time-honored methodologies, injunctions, paradigms, and practices. It is the existence of these many paradigms and social practices--and the phenomena they generate--that are some of the crucial ingredients of Integral Methodological Pluralism (i.e., the "paradigmatic" part of IMP).

     The novel component of AQAL is the meta-paradigmatic aspect, or the practices on the practices (which generate theories on the theories, or the metatheory or supertheory known as AQAL). This component can be most simply summarized as the assumption that "Everybody is right," which generates a meta-practice of honoring, including, and integrating the fundamental paradigms and methodologies of the major forms of human inquiry (traditional, modern, and postmodern). In other words, the experiences enacted by all of those methodologies are given a legitimacy by the AQAL assumption and are actively cultivated by the meta-paradigmatic practices--that is, are actively cultivated by an integral methodological pluralism, whether in the research setting of simultracking, the personal setting of an Integral Transformative Practice, or the social setting of revolutionary reforms that actually have traction because second-tier potentials are effectively tetra-engaged.

     AQAL, then, is a metatheory that attempts to integrate the most amount of material from an integral methodological pluralism, thus honoring the primary injunction of an integral embrace: Everybody is right.