Day One of the Integral Without Borders Conference was dedicated to getting everyone updated on the latest in Integral Theory. I am not going to go into the basics of theory; if you’re not familiar you’ll have to read up elsewhere.

First we discussed zones (please see the graphic). Zones break the four quadrants down further, giving us more perspectives to consider. We can examine the inner and outer realms of each quadrant:

1. Inside of “I”: introspection, how I’m feeling/thinking
2. Outside of “I”: structuralism, what I’m feeling/thinking
3. Inside of “We”: collective joy/humor, mutual understanding, solidarity
4. Outside of “We”: culture, etc.
5. Inside of “It”: autopoesis, “the dashboard of a frog”
6. Outside of “It”: science, materialism
7. Inside of “They”: social autopoesis, how a tree communicates with the forest
8. Outside of “They”: systems, political science, economics, ecology

We had a big discussion about zones 5 and 7. They are mysterious and confusing to even the most dedicated theoreticians. If you have ideas, send them my way.

Another theme was social holons, and how they are a bit different than other types of holons. Individual holons (people) are members of social holons, not components. More simply: you can take the homie out of the ‘hood, but you can’t take the ‘hood out of the homie. Unlike other types of holons, you can remove smaller holons from a social holon without compromising its integrity. For example, if I decide Ken Wilber is a crackpot and leave the Integral community, the Integral community does not cease to exist, whereas if atoms ceased to exist all the holons above atoms would cease to exist. Similarly, if a social holon makes a change, let’s say societal norms shift, the individuals in the social holon do not have to adopt the change. If my community decides that Amish bonnets are fashionable, I do not have to participate in that trend, however my pancreas cannot decide to stay home when I go to work. Make sense?

Social holons are related to another new topic in Integral Theory: Integral Politics. There are four dimensions to consider when evaluating a political movement:

1. Internalist/Externalist: Am I responsible for my own suffering (conservative, pull-yourself-up-by-your -bootstraps thinking) or does the structure of society cause my suffering (liberal, social justice, the-system-is-corrupt thinking)?
2. Individualistic/Collectivist: Think Ayn Rand vs. Soviet Communism (sorry if that is a biased example)
3. Transformation/Translation: Let’s change to something new vs. Let’s fix what we’ve got
4. Altitudes

So according to my analysis, the American Republican Party would be Internalist, Individualistic, Translative, hovering between amber and orange altitudes. Interesting.

Something else to consider: the socio-economic structure (LR quadrant) of a country is the most important indicator of its social average. Look at the US, in farming communities with light industry you find primarily amber world views, while in a place like San Francisco, with a white-collar information economy, you find orange and green.

Of course, Georgian politics came into my mind during this session. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia’s economy fell from heavy industry to subsistence farming. This dragged down the overall social holon from emergent orange to just barely hanging onto amber, with many people in red. So Saakashivli comes along, a thoroughly orange if not emergent green kind of guy. In order to get into power he had to appeal to Georgian nationalism (God knows there’s no lack of that) which is a very amber tactic. Once he got into power and tried to make all kinds of orange reforms, the red/amber Georgians weren’t quite so enthusiastic (taxes?!). The discrepancy between the Georgian government’s altitude and the Georgian people’s altitude explains why the Rose Revolution is on rocky footing at best. A similar story followed the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

That about sums up Day One of the conference. Forgive my amateur explanations and analysis of Integral Theory. If you have corrections or would like to clarify something, please do so in the comments.