Urban Hub 30 : Worlds within Worlds 2 - Entangled Kosmos

IntegralUrbanHub
Urban
Hub
30 Paul van Schaik
integralMENTORS
a meta-pragmatic approach
Thriveable Worlds
Worlds within Worlds: 2
Entangled Kosmos

Urban Hub
Worlds within Worlds
Paul van Schaik
Integral UrbanHub
0
3
Thriveable Worlds
Entangled Kosmos

Kosmic Entanglement
Copyright ©©integralMENTORS– March 2023
‘In fullness and Freedom
A graphic series of integralMENTORS integral UrbanHub co-lab on Thriveable Cities-Worlds.
Founder & Managing Editor Paul van Schaik
“keepers of dreams”
Irrupting consciousness

Content
Context
Kosmos
Entangled Worlds
Protopia
W.I.E.R.D World
Indigenous Wisdom: Not in the World but of the World
Integral Theory (Mental Mutation frameworks)
Integral Evaluation
Books
Notes

This book is ‘tastes’ of ideas,
theories, graphics, praxis,
and quotes, to spark interest
for further explorations
Best explored with the previous volume in the series:
Urban Hub 29 – Worlds within Worlds : Entangled Cosmic
(& earlier 28 volumes in the series)

Context
People do not
perceive worlds
but enact them.
Different mindsets
bring forth
different worlds.

What is this series?
A collection of visions, ideas, ideas, theories, actions, etc. that give rise to a
taste of the many visions in our world.
How we use all the best elements of the many worldviews, modern and
ancient, visible and still hidden, together and in collaboration, will define how
successful we are.
It is the morphogenetic pull of caring that will determine how we succeed as a
human race. It is the ability and need to generate an equitable, fair, resilient
and regenerative ‘system’ that must drive us forward.
The means will be a combination of many of the ideas showcased here but
many more still to be discovered on our exciting journey into the future. Held
together through a Integral Mythological Pluralistic approach.
Sharing and listening to stories, philosophies, cosmologies and metaphysical
understanding of each other and through experimentation, research and
archology developing theories, praxis, and activities/interventions to move
towards a more caring world of people, cultures, caring for the planet and
systems of which are all a part.
Too little courage and we will fail – too much certainty and we will fail. But with
care and collaboration we have a chance of success. Bringing forth emergent
impact through innovation, syngeneic enfoldment & collaborative effort.
A deeper understanding of a broader framework will be required – this would
be more that an integral vision and beyond the Eurocentric AQAL & SDI.
Explore and enjoy – use as many of the ideas as possible (from the whole series)
enfolding each into an emergent whole that grows generatively.
At each step testing – reformulating – regrouping – recreating.
Moving beyond, participating, through stake-holding, through share-holding, to
becoming thrive-holders.
Inordertofindyourway
youmustbecomelost
generouslylost-
it’sonlywhenyouarelost
thatyoucanbefound
bysomethinggreater
thanyou
BayoAkomolafe

Other Worlds
Walking in the world not talking of the world
No one vision is sufficient in and of itself – visions can guide
but only by collaborative action in a creative generative
process can visions grow and become part of an ongoing
positive sociocultural reality.
Without taking into account the many worldviews that
currently co-exist and crafting ways of including them in a
positive and healthy form we will continue to alienate vast
sections of all communities and humankind.
It is through the cultivation of healthy versions of all the
different worldviews that we can attempt to move towards
an equitable, regenerative and caring world living within
the planetary boundaries.
Through action we will move forward – through only
ongoing talk we will stagnate and fail.
These curation are to be dipped into – explored and used
to generate ideas and discussion.
A catalyst for collaboration and action.
And most importantly grown, modified in a generative
form.
For more detail of integral theory and Framework see
earlier books in this series.
This is a living series - any suggestions for inclusion in the next
volume send to: Paul,vanschaik@integralmentors.org
Dan Gluibizzi

Kosmology -
cosmology
Definition of cosmology
: branch
of metaphysics that
deals with the nature of
the universe
: a theory or doctrine
describing the natural
order of the universe
Definition of Kosmology
Kosmos refers to the
traditional and pre-
scientific worldview
which acknowledges not
only matter, but also life,
mind, soul and spirit.

KOSMOS
Wilber's concept of "Kosmos" (with a capital "K")
differs from the scientific view of the cosmos.
Where cosmos is by definition a physical reality
(which pronounces physics as the perfect and only
real science), Kosmos refers to the traditional and
pre-scientific worldview which acknowledges not
only matter, but also life, mind, soul and spirit.
In a real sense, the Kosmic worldview offers us a
map of our own inner world -- the world that can
never be seen with the physical senses.
Huston Smith has argued all religions teach at least
four levels of being, worlds or spheres:
1. INFINITE WORLD
2. HEAVEN WORLD
3. INTERMEDIATE WORLD
4. PHYSICAL WORLD
"Science only takes the lowest world to be real, but
a wider view of science can handle all four of them.
The fact that science has found no proof for heaven
should not worry us in the least. It is exactly what
we should expect! Science, basing itself on the
physical senses, can only reveal a physical world.
But our inner senses reveal an inner world, or more
to the point, worlds within worlds, which are as
real, or even more so, as the world that can be
touched and seen outwardly.”

Volume 1dealtwiththepredominately
‘exterior’ -thatwhich canbemeasuredor
seen. ‘Behaviour’and‘Systems’.quadrants.
TheCosmos
Thisvolumeaddspredominatelythe‘interior’
–thatwhichisfelt.‘Psycho’and‘Cultural’
quadrants–makingthe‘whole’
TheKosmos
Interior perspectives L-HQ
Subjective(psychoetc.)
Intersubjective(culturaletc.)

No society has ever been
without its vision holders;
the only difference has
been in the nobility of the
vision.
To whom are we to look? —
awakened sages or Wall-
Street advertisers, shamanic
revelations or
deconstructive narcissism,
growth to goodness or
wallowing in ego?
Structuralism, by whatever
name, has always pointed
to the deeper and higher
waves of awareness that are
the birth right of all sentient
beings.
Therefore, choose your
visions carefully, for as even
the earliest sages
counselled: you become
what you contemplate.
The Look of a Feeling: The
Importance of Post/Structuralism
Excerpt D: Kosmic Karma &
Creativity © 2006 Ken Wilber.

Entangled
worlds The manifestation of the
mutational process should not be
construed as a mere succession of
events, a progress or historicized
course. It is, rather, a manifestation
of inherent predispositions of
consciousness, now incremental,
now reductive, that determine
man’s specific grasp of reality
throughout and beyond the
epochs and civilizations.

The aperspectival subject is an
assemblage: a self realized not as
hypertrophied ego—in the Western
image of the solitary genius—but as
an ecology, the network of their
relations and imprints. This view of
knowledge and art making releases
us from perspectival fixation
(knowledge as created solely by the
individual) to aperspectival relation
(knowledge as flow, assemblage,
comprised not only of its visible
factors but also sustained by the
invisible, spiritual whole).
Entangled
worlds

To enter the world of Gebser, the first
and most important shift required is
to recognize that we are indeed
talking about structures of
consciousness, not stages.
Forget “onward and upward.” Each of
these five structures [Archaic; Magic;
Mythic; Mental; Integral] is indeed an
authentic mode of participation in
the world,” and if they are not,
perhaps, fully equal partners, they
are at least fully entitled partners.
Each is as qualitatively real as the
other, and each adds its particular
strengths and giftednesses to the
whole.
They are not so much steps on a
ladder as planets in orbit around the
sun, which is their central point of
reference, the seat of their original
and continuously in-breaking arising.
Gebser calls this sun “The Ever-
Present Origin.”
Huang Po-Hsun

Gebser makes clear that the cliche "transcend
and include" is a mistake. The "earlier" structures
do not simply roll over and fold into the onward
and upward movement of consciousness. They
must each speak with their own voices, in a bell
rack sturdy enough to let them all resound.
Time-as-duration is the foundational convention
of perspectival consciousness; it's the invisible
electric fence that holds all things within its limits.
To escape from this habituated mode of thinking
into a new and wider field of consciousness is
frustratingly difficult, because ultimately it's not a
matter of will, sincerity, or even merit; it's a new
developmental capacity that unfolds within an
individual (and a rising cultural age) according to
its own inscrutable "time” table. An infant will
walk when she's ready, and as most parents
eventually learn, you can't push the river. Trying
to describe four-dimensional time to those (most
all of us) who have not yet developmentally
accessed it is like trying to describe three-
dimensionality to the plane-dwellers of Flatland
We don't yet have the capacity to grasp it.

For me the most useful
starting point for beginning to
get a sense of this new mode
of temporicity comes in a
single brief comment (EPO, p.
285) where Gebser lists
several presentational formats
of time as:
• clock time,
• natural time,
• cosmic or sidereal time,
• biological duration,
• rhythm,
• meter;
• as mutation,
• duration,
• relativity;
• as vital dynamics,
• psychic energy ['soul' and
'the unconscious’], and as
• mental dividing.
AI generated by Dalli E

The muting or repression of any of these structures leads to
an impoverishment of the whole; this is true both
individually and across the broad sweep of cultural history.
While these structures may emerge into manifestation at
certain points along a historical timeline, they are not
created by that timeline nor determined by events
preceding them in the sequence.
Their point of reference is the Origin, which is outside of
linear time altogether and intersects with the linear timeline
by a completely different set of ordering principles. They are,
one might say, timeless fractals of the whole, each bearing
the living water of that original fontal outpouring in their
own unique pail. They are ever-present and ever-available
“at the depths,” even those that have not yet emerged into
full conscious articulation on the linear timeline.
The “final” structure, then— the true Integral in Gebser’s
worldmap—may in fact be not so much a new structure itself
as a capacity to hold all the other structures simultaneously,
in what Teilhard de Chardin once famously called “a
paroxysm of harmonized complexity.”
It is not so much a new window on the world as the capacity
to see from a deeper dimension which transcends both
linear and dialectical thinking and can deeply, feelingfully
encompass both jagged particularity and the unitive
oneness flowing through it, holding all things in relationship
to their source. CynthiaBourgeault
Huang Po-Hsun

To open new futures is to find new pasts. Reclaiming
time, after all, begins with envisioning alternative
possibilities for the shape of history: its contours,
directions, entanglement.
To “open” time invites dramatic re-imaginings of our
cultural mythologies of time.
It means that the walls between past and futures are
no longer opaque but more like the doors and
passages of some greater pattern of being, that time
is present to us in its freedom and transparency.
Realising the complexity of time, beginnings and
endings would make little sense to us: we would
enter everywhere and nowhere in our living, dying
and becoming in the radiant body of time.
In short, we would become present, and so learn to
become presence, fulfilling time in its marvellous
plenitude and trans-lucid splendour.
Our Bodies become radiant time as consciousness
realises an awareness of this innate and originary
presence.
Jeremy Johnson
Fragments of the future
Huang Po-Hsun

To go back, to return home, is always to arrive
somewhere new.
Here we meet another shape of time, time-as-spiral,
rather than time circle, and certainly not a line or
track. “You never come back to the same place” Le
Guin wrote. ”To go is to return,” the mysterious turtle-
like aliens in the Lathe of Heaven tell our protagonist
George Orr. “True voyage is return” are etched on
the grave of Taoist-anarchist philosopher Odo in The
Dispossessed.
There is something important in the paradoxical
movement, spiralling through time and place, an
oscillation that gradually morphs into a moiré
pattern of past-futures; what wondrous
entanglements! “The immense processes of
transformation like those taking place today” Gebser
wrote, “and the far- and deep-reaching mutations
that have been occurring for generations and extend
into the present … are already (ever-) present future.”
It reveals something about this new- and ancient-
shape of time we are beginning to learn about, but
also about the significance of reversal in the history
of consciousness transformation.
Jeremy Johnson
Fragments of the future Huang Po-Hsun

“Scale-linking systems imply a holism in
which everything influences, or
potentially influences everything else —
because everything is in some sense
constantly interacting with everything
else.
Nature is infused with the dynamical
interpenetration of the vast and minute,
an endless dervish mixing. Matter and
energy continually flow across scales,
the small informing the large and the
large informing the small ...
Unless we work with nature’s own finely
tuned scale-linking systems we
endanger the stability of life on the
planet...
If we are to properly include ecological
concerns within design, we must take
seriously the challenge offered by scale
linking. We need to discover ways to
integrate our design processes across
multiple levels of scale and make these
processes compatible with natural
cycles of water, energy, and material.”
Van der Ryn & Cowan

The condition of today’s world cannot
be transformed by technocratic
rationality, since both technocracy and
rationality are apparently nearing their
apex; nor can it be transcended by
preaching or admonishing a return to
ethics and morality, or in fact, by any
form of return to the past.
We have only one option: in
examining the manifestations of our
age, we must penetrate them with
sufficient breadth and depth that we
do not come under their demonic and
destructive spell.
We must not focus our view merely on
these phenomena, but rather on the
humus of the decaying world beneath,
where the seedlings of the future are
growing, immeasurable in their
potential and vigour.
Since our insight into the energies
pressing toward development aids
their unfolding, the seedlings and
inceptive beginnings must be made
visible and comprehensible.
EPO – Jean Gebser
Dan Gluibizzi

Protopia
“Protopia is a “vision of
visions”. It works not with
one future, but with the
entire event horizon of all
possible futures.”.

PROTOPIA
"I think our destination is neither utopia nor dystopia nor status
quo, but protopia. Protopia is a state that is better than today
than yesterday, although it might be only a little better.
Protopia is much much harder to visualize. Because a protopia
contains as many new problems as new benefits, this complex
interaction of working and broken is very hard to predict.
Today we've become so aware of the downsides of innovations,
and so disappointed with the promises of past utopias, that we
now find it hard to believe even in protopia - that tomorrow will
be better than today.
We find it very difficult to imagine any kind of future we would
want to live in. Name a single science fiction future that is both
plausible and desirable? No one wants to move to the future
today.
We are avoiding it. We don't have much desire for life one
hundred years from now. Many dread it. That makes it hard to
take the future seriously. So we don't take a generational
perspective.
We're stuck in the short now. We also adopt the Singularity
perspective: that imagining the future in 100 years is technically
impossible.
So there is no protopia we are reaching for. It may be that this
future-blindness is simply the inescapable affliction of our
modern world. Perhaps at this stage in civilization and
technological advance, we enter into permanent and ceaseless
future-blindness. Utopia, dystopia, and protopia all disappear.
There is only the

“You start looking for the pattern that connects the many little Eutopias—The Good
Place found in strange corners and exceptions—and in that pattern, you begin to
see the vast field of potential of many different social realities that have been, that
could be, and that should be.”
Not a singular thread but rather the ever shifting perimeter of the probable,
possible, plausible, and, most importantly, desirable.
Both Science Fiction and corporate foresight visions directly influence reality, and
their predominantly dystopian/utopian stereotypes more often than not limit our
understanding of the possibility space of tomorrow’s choices. Protopia research is
intended to open such imagination doors so that many others can “walk through
them” and take our ideas further than what we could ever do by ourselves. We are
here to journey together — with you — in crafting Speculative Fiction world design
and foresight practices that challenge, rather than further entrench the status quo.
Mainstream futurist discourse tends to extrapolate from the status quo and
proposes singular, predetermined future visions. The problem with a lot of such
foresight is that it is bound by the constraints and suppositions of dominant
perceptions of reality (*Radha Mistry).
What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?
Within the Protopia Framework, however, we position that there is no singular
“future” trajectory but rather a vast scope of many alternative futures. It is
continuously shaped not just by our actions but also by our inactions and our
apathy.
Extracts from
What’s The Difference between Utopia, Eutopia and Protopia? by Hanzi Freinacht
Protopia
https://metamoderna.org/whats-the-difference-between-utopia-eutopia-and-protopia/

UTOPIA: A COLONIAL PROJECT
Even today, the majority of “mainstream” figures in the foresight field
position Utopias as antidotes to Dystopias. Yet this approach tends to be
deeply exclusionary, perpetuating the gaze and the experience of
privilege, even if with a “green” twist. It must be said here that
“environmental utopias” that do not address racial, Indigenous, gender,
and disability justice are at best greenwashing, and, at worst, eco-
fascism.
Utopian Futures are generally envisaged as so “perfect” that they can
only exist by prodigiously leapfrogging all of the most urgent inequities
of the present. Consequently, they are mostly closed to critical inquiry.
Utopian imaginings pertain to communicating a peaceful and magically
post-austerity world, yet somehow the peace of such a future is always
peace without justice.
A non-whitewashed history tells us a horror story of 20th century top-
down dreams of the “perfect society” morphing into eugenic, genocidal
nightmares. We must remember that the Third Reich’s extermination of
Jewish, Roma, Queer, and Disabled people was seen as a means to
achieve an “Aryan Utopia”. As recently as 1994, apartheid was the Utopia
for Afrikaaners, with the price paid by everyone “one shade darker” than
white. The most recent chapter of these “Utopian” nightmares features
Silicon Valley evangelists peddling technology to “connect all humanity”
which has quickly shifted to extreme surveillance capitalism —
commodifying every interaction, radicalizing us for clicks, exploiting us
as products, and tearing at the very fiber of our social fabric.
And yet, even with all of this becoming public record, the best that many
Futurist “thought leaders” seem to propose for the 22nd century is the
absurdity of endless economic growth based on “exponential
technology”.

THE PRINCIPLES OF PROTOPIA
PLURALITY — BEYOND BINARIES: We consider mere “tolerance” a failure and actively
resist the violence of sexism, misogyny, racism, colorism, xenophobia, homophobia,
transphobia, ableism, ageism, classism, and any other forms of exclusionary
categorization and discrimination. Nothing embodies our approach as accurately as
words by Alok Vaid-Menon: “Creativity reveals all categories to be artificial and
unambitious.”
COMMUNITY — BEYOND BORDERS: Our narratives are narratives of communities
coming together rather than glorifications of individual “hero journeys” of magical
saviors. COMMUNITY is the hero of our futures.
CELEBRATION OF PRESENCE: Our futures are embodied and interdependent. We revel
in expanded sensory experiences and consciously make vital space for neurodiverse
and disability inclusive expressions of intimacy, care, and radical tenderness.
REGENERATIVE ACTION & LIFE AS TECHNOLOGY: With recognition of destructive
feedback loops already in motion, we consider sustainability solutions entirely
insufficient and aim for regenerative practices in every aspect of our civilizational
construct. We prioritize biological over mechanical technologies as the only truly viable
long-term strategy. We grow, not just build.
SYMBIOTIC SPIRITUALITY: We appreciate the importance of spiritual practices from the
dawn of humanity and their role in human culture-making. We therefore quest for
spiritual practices that acknowledge ancestral wisdom, whilst also expanding rather than
stifling scientific inquiry.
CREATIVITY & EMERGENT SUBCULTURES: From the interwoven journeys of our
Ancestors to the future living fabrics of our cities, we celebrate the role of creativity
beyond the elitism of disciplines previously labeled as “artistic.”
EVOLUTION OF VALUES — CULTURE OF CONTRIBUTION: We must depart from
colonial/neocolonial individualist cultures of exploitation and greed, and endeavor to
nurture cultures of equity, contribution, and planetary mutuality. We envision the values
of a material degrowth society.

Protopia is a state of becoming, rather than a destination. It
is a process. […] This subtle progress is not dramatic, not
exciting. It is easy to miss because a protozoa generates
almost as many new problems as new benefits. […] It is a
process that is constantly changing how other things
change, and, changing itself, is mutating and growing. It’s
difficult to cheer for a soft process that is shape-shifting.
But it is important to see. […] We are constantly surprised
by things that have been happening for 20 years or longer.
(Kevin Kelly)
The dominant historical narratives within both
entertainment media and education have brought on a
crisis of our collective futures imagination. Industrial
markers of “progress” lead us to dead ends: the speed and
quantitative aspects of our mechanical technologies have
advanced to 21st century paradigms — culturally, socially,
and politically, however, so much of our lives remain
informed by a multiplicity of biases and injustices of
centuries prior.
These flawed narratives of progress predicated on
colonialism have privileged treacherously incorrect
scientific theories, such as Cartesian dualism, that distort
any true understanding of human community and our
complex interdependence with all life on Earth. The
narratives of “colonizing progress” and individualism have
blocked us from more expansive scientific inquiries and
innovative discoveries (*Mary Katherine Heinrich).

When I think of "the human", I don't settle my gaze on the anthropomorphic forms we
habitually imagine as representative of what it means to be human. Instead, I notice
patterns, fields, web-like connections, thresholds, processes, and multi-species
arrangements.
The "Human" is the traversing lines of the ships that plied the Atlantic Ocean and the
hungry bacteria that fed on the sugar in the guts of the sailors and elites that sponsored
the slave trade. The "Human" is the flattening and clearing of the wilds to make room for
settlement; the logistics of the public; the compromise of identity; and the yearning for
transcendence. The Human is the public order that shapes bodies and measures
privilege, composing subjectivities in the ways it stretches and bends and contorts itself.
In other words, in a sense that escapes popular analyses, the Human is a colonial
worlding agent. It is "a nature" (as opposed to "the nature"), with its own creativity and
agency. This "Human" is the crisis.
This is what is called into question by the impasses and limitations of our times. The
Human. From an Anthropocentric perspective, limitations are terrible reminders of our
fragility. From the Afrocenic perspective, limitations are exquisite sites of re-pair...where
the monster slips through the parallax of the crossroads to shapeshift relations of
becoming. We will not survive climate chaos and loss without becoming-monster. We
will either harden in rejection of the composting intercession of the wilds or we will fall
to it's gravity. Either way, we will not make it intact.
Bayo Akomolafe

W.E.I.R.D
world how the world is being
colonized and influenced by
Western ideas of what it
means to be a developing
human being.

Integral Theory and its Implicit W.E.I.R.D Bias
Many adult development theorists (Wilber,
Loevinger, Kohlberg, Kegan, Commons, Beck)
appear to be mono-lingual English speakers.
Thus, their understanding and depiction of
adulthood is conditioned by the structure of English
and Western ideas of what shapes human growth.
While the theories are eminently useful to explain a
great deal of cultural evolution and human
behavior, they do not appreciate the richness and
variety of human meaning making across time and
geography.
Summary:
1) Integral theory (AQAL) is a powerful means to
investigate human experience through the
millennia and across different domains and
different epochs
2) With English as its most wide-spread vehicle, it
has a specific lens through which to study its
objects.
3) It’s view of adult development reflects the
common W.E.I.R.D. bias inherent in most
developmental theories.
4) II and most AD are thus perpetuating a remnant
of colonialism in their assumption of Western
superiority and know-it all.
W.E.I.R.D
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic
White, Educated, Integrally-informed, (post) Rational,
Developmental
Extracts from
Our W.E.I.R.D, English-mediated View of Reality
Susanne Cook-Greuter PhD
Full piece available in Urban Hub 23 Integral Africa

Aimé Césaire in his Discourse on Colonialism, points out
“that the colonizer is only able to colonize by removing the
humanity from his colonial subjects — and in doing so he
removes his own humanity. From an Indigenous perspective,
it’s perhaps more that such a mindset stops you seeing
things as fully alive and conscious, and that makes you
become less alive and less conscious yourself.”

Indigenous
Not in the World but of the World
wisdom What an enormous amount of
wisdom, and people, the
Western extractive mindset,
and religious dogmatism has
killed or ruined.

Self-Actualization - Blackfoot Niitsitapi
Maslow appeared to ask, “how do we become self-actualized?”.
Many First Nation communities, though they would not have used the same word,
might be more likely to believe that we arrive on the planet self-actualized. Ryan
Heavy Head explained the difference through the analogy of earning a college
degree.
In Western culture, you earn a degree after paying tuition, attending classes, and
proving sufficient mastery of your area of study. In Blackfoot culture, “it’s like you’re
credentialed at the start. You’re treated with dignity for that reason, but you spend
your life living up to that.”
While Maslow saw self-actualization as something to earn, the Blackfoot see it as
innate. Relating to people as inherently wise involves trusting them and granting them
space to express who they are (as perhaps manifested by the permissiveness with
which the Siksika raise their children) rather than making them the best they can be.
For many First Nations, therefore, self-actualization is not achieved; it is drawn out of
an inherently sacred being who is imbued with a spark of divinity.
Education, prayer, rituals, ceremonies, individual experiences, and vision quests can
help invite the expression of this sacred self into the world. (As some readers have
commented, this concept appears in other belief systems, such as Paulo Freire’s
challenge to the “banking concept of education” and the Buddhist notion that all
beings contain Buddha-nature.)
Ryan Heavy Head explains that such communal cooperation is especially important for
the Blackfoot because of their relationship to place, something Maslow entirely
omitted in his theories:
…the one thing that [Maslow] really missed was the Indigenous relationship to place.
Without that, what he’s looking at as self-actualization doesn’t actually happen. There’s
a reason people aren’t critical of their tribe: you’ve got to live with them forever.

Community Actualization
As Maslow witnessed in the
Blackfoot Giveaway, many First
Nation cultures see the work of
meeting basic needs, ensuring
safety, and creating the conditions
for the expression of purpose as a
community responsibility, not an
individual one. Blackstock refers to
this as “Community Actualization.”
Cross (2007) argues that human
needs are not uniformly hierarchical
but rather highly interdependent
[…] [P]hysical needs are not always
primary in nature as Maslow argues,
given the many examples of people
who forgo physical safety and well-
being in order to achieve love,
belonging, and relationships or to
achieve spiritual or pedagogical
objectives. The idea of dying for
country is an example of this as men
and women fight in times of war.
{For other examples of indigenous
Kosmology see Urban Hub 28
Stepping In)

Maslow’s Western Perspective based on Blackfoot Pyramid
derived after spending a number of weeks with a Blackfoot community in Canada

A
Mental
mutation
Integral
theory
TheQuadrants
Domains of knowing

Perspectives – Domains of change – Quadrants and Quadrivia
Self Bio-region viewed from etc.
‘B-r’ viewed from
a personal perspective
–
through personal
mindsets & values
‘’B-r’’ viewed from a
social & systems
perspective –
(data and observation
driven)
‘B-r’ viewed from an
empirical perspective
–
(data and observation
driven)
‘’B-r’’ viewed from a
cultural perspective –
through group
culture & worldviews
Psychological
drivers
(new manifestation)
Cultural
drivers
(new manifestation)
Social (systems)
manifestation
(new driver)
Behavioural
manifestation
(new driver)
AQAL Quadrants AQAL Quadrivia
All tetra-meshed All tetra-meshed
www.integralmentors.org

BEHAVIOR
Individual-Exterior: Brain and Organism
The visible, objective, external reality of an individual
Context: empirically measurable individual qualities;
physical boundaries or surfaces; biological features;
brain chemistry; bodily states; physical health;
behaviors; skills; capabilities; actions; etc.
Examples of areas addressed: energy level of a
practitioner; nutritional intake; conduct toward
environment or opposite sex; response to rules and
regulations; money management; computer
skills; acidity;
Tools for transformation: e.g., diet; hygiene; exercise;
skill-building; clear rules, regulations, and guidance
from a respected authority; use of litigation to enforce
regulations
EXPERIENCE
Individual-Interior: Self and Consciousness
The invisible, subjective, internal reality of an individual
Context: self-identity and consciousness; intentions;
personal values; attitude; religious or spiritual beliefs;
commitment (e.g., cognitive, emotional, moral);
cognitive capacity; depth of responsibility; degree of
care for others and the environment; etc.
Examples of areas addressed: psychological health
and development; educational level; emotional
intelligence; motivation and will; understanding of
one's role in the community and impact on the
environment; personal goals; the practitioner's
intrapersonal intelligence, mental model, and self-
knowledge;
Tools for transformation: e.g., psychotherapy;
religious or spiritual counseling; phenomenological
research; introspection; goal-setting;
Upper Quadrants
People do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different mindsets bring forth different worlds.

SYSTEMS
Collective-Exterior: Social Systems
& Environments
The visible, inter-objective, external realities of groups
Context: visible societal structures; systems & modes
of production (economic, political, social,
informational, educational, technological); strategies;
policies; work processes; technologies; natural
systems, processes & interactions in the environment
Examples of areas addressed: stability &
effectiveness of economic & political systems; legal
frameworks; strength of tech., educational &
healthcare infrastructure; poverty alleviation; actual
power, class, race & gender inequities; job creation &
trade; corporate regulation; organizational structure;
food security; health of local biota or global
biosphere; climate change; restoration, protection &
sustainable use of natural resources;
Tools for transformation: e.g., policy-making;
capacity building; systems thinking; "upstream"
strategies; organizational reengineering; micro-credit
& micro-enterprise;
CULTURE
Collective-Interior: Cultures and Worldviews
The invisible, inter-subjective, internal realities of groups
Context: shared values and worldviews; shared
meaning; mutual resonance; cultural norms, boundaries
and mores; language; customs; communication;
relationships; symbolism; agreed upon ethics; etc.
Examples of areas addressed: cultural
"appropriateness"; collective vision; relationship
between practitioners and the community; relationship
amongst communityIfamilyIorganization members;
language differences; collective interpretation of power,
class, race and gender inequities; collective perception
of the environment and pollution
Tools for transformation: e.g., dialogue; community-
directed development; inclusive decision making;
consensus-based strategic planning; organizational
learning; support groups (religious or secular); trust
building exercises techniques; community visioning;
cooperative participation; storytelling; collective
introspection; meme development and propagation
Lower Quadrants : The context

Cultural and social
norms
that are unseen but
nevertheless inform
institutions, decision-making,
and action.
Behaviour,
actions, and
practices
that support adaptation to
climate change.
Worldviews,
values, and
“meaning-making”
that create an internal
understanding and motivation
regarding climate change
adaptation.
Systems & social
institutions
that influence
adaptation strategies
and decisions (positively
or negatively).
inte g ral
Adaptation and Change
Behaviour, actions,
and practices
that support adaptation to
climate change.
Worldviews,
values, and
“meaning-making”
that create an internal
understanding and motivation
regarding climate change
adaptation.
Cultural and social
norms
that are unseen but
nevertheless inform
institutions, decision-
making, and action.
Systems & social
institutions
that influence adaptation
strategies and decisions
(positively or negatively)
Un-integrated
What can give rise to adaptation?
What does not give rise to adaptation?
Siloes
tetra-meshed

Behaviour
Functional fit
Social Systems
Intensions
Values/Mindsets
Culture
Behavioural manifestation
Systems manifestation
Values/Mindsets
deep drivers
Cultural deep drivers
All quad.- or Tetra-meshed
Deep drivers and manifestations of quadrant-entanglement

Zones
‘Insides and Outsides of Dimensions
of Experience’ - Quadrant
Each ‘dimension of experience’ can be
view from the inside (how it feels or
felt experience) and/or from the
outside (how it looks). These are the 8
primal or indigenous perspectives of
an individual [holon].
“Each view or perspective, with its
actions and injunctions, brings forth a
world of phenomena; a world-space
that (tetra-) arises as a result; a world-
space with a horizon. The sum total of
all of that we simply call a zone. A zone
is a view with its actions, its injunctions,
its life- world, and the whole lot called
forth at that [Kosmic] address. You can
think of it as a life-zone, or zone of
awareness, or a living space— any
number of terms will do.”

Second-tier solutions to social problems involve sustained inquiries into ways that will allow each wave (e.g., tribal, traditional, modern,,
post-modern and integral) 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 ‘modern’ 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 post-modern 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. …….. 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.
1. The Essence of Integral Metatheory: Everybody Is
Right (excluding fake news)
2. Subjects do not perceive worlds but enact them.
3. Non-exclusion

Integral Mutation (as against Mental mutation’s Integral)
What Gebser’s Integral is NOT:
- It’s not about political or social inclusiveness.
- It does not equate to “tolerance,” “broadmindedness,” or affirmative action. (This is
all still synthesis, solidly ensconced within the perspectival modus operandi)
- It is not about “soul work,” self-awareness as we typically understand it, or “integrating
the shadow.”
- It is not “non-duality,” “a higher state of consciousness,” “self-realization,” or
“enlightenment.” In that sense, it has nothing to do with spirituality whatsoever.
- It is not the top tier of the evolutionary pyramid (what part of “perspectival” do you
still not understand?)
- It is not “living in the now.” It does not negate the past and future, but radically re-
perceives them.
- It does not require the suppression of the mental structure of consciousness, simply
the release from its hegemony.
- It is not an “it” at all—neither a “state” nor a “stage” of development—but rather, a new
integrating capacity that allows all other structures of consciousness to come into a
dynamic, harmonious balance.

Integral compared with Integrated
Integrated
Balance, equilibrium and harmony -
minimise tension and reduce chaos
Strives for:
• certainty
• order
• sureness
Places a lot of emphasis on harmony
within systems
Integrated strives for uniformity of
similar things
Leads to a constrained sense of reality
Tends to concentrate on The exterior
perspectives (RHQs)
Integral
Emergent and healthy tension that holds
things together as they evolve
These tensions provide order in the chaos
Respects:
• uncertainty
• disorder
• insecurity
Respects creative, dynamic and evolving
nature of human and natural processes
Integral strives for a sense of unity in
differences (emphasises unity as much as
diversity)
Leads to a fuller sense of reality
Tends to concentrate on The exterior
and Interior perspectives (AllQs)

A
Mental
mutation
Integral
theory
Lines of personal development
UpperLeftQuadrant

Lines of Development – Intentional (interior) Quadrant (ULQ deep drivers)

Stages of Human Adaptive Socio-psychological Development (mental Integral model)

Clare Graves was at pains to say that his theory was not
intended to imply that people cold be categorised into
developmental boxes. He was also clear that we do not
personally evolve from basic levels to higher ones. Cowan
makes it clear that he follows the same viewpoint:
“While it is an expansive sequence in some respects, this is not
a hierarchy of wisdom or decency or even intelligences, much
less happiness and worth. Instead, it delineates a series of
different ways of prioritizing and framing those things as
solutions to one set of problems create new ones which
require new thinking to resolve. First congruence then, if
necessary or possible, growth.
There is an increase in cognitive complexity as we move
through the systems, but not in intelligence. Different
intelligences are valued differently at different levels, just as
different levels have their own sense of the spiritual, of the
social, and of the essential.
To the extent that higher levels offer more degrees of freedom
and consider a more expansive group of elements, they are
‘better than’ lower levels in the long run. However, the
qualitative key to this point of view is appropriateness: using
the brain which is there in ways that are constructively adaptive
to the realities at hand with the openness to deal with the
world to come.”
This is very different from the way in which many people
present Spiral Dynamics and especially those influenced by the
SDi approach.
Stages of Mature Western adult psychological development

A key part of Dr. Graves research
methodology was to ask student subjects to
write a statement describing the mature
adult personality in operation. He was able
to compare what some of these subjects
said across time in longitudinal studies, as
well as to observe the kind of change, if any,
that occurred under various pressures such
as authority and peer pressure. These data
also gave him a sense of the direction of
change and served to build the levels of
existence.
Dr. Graves was skeptical about creating pencil-
and-paper tests to locate people in the
psychosocial space described in his theory.
Dr Clare Graves
“The psychology of mature human beings is
an unfolding, emergent, oscillating,
spiralling process marked by progressive
subordination of older, lower-order
behaviour systems to newer, higher-order
systems as man’s existential problems
change.” Dr Clare Graves

Myth of the Given
Perhaps the most difficult thing for Green
to understand is that its values — peace,
harmony, healing, transformation, sharing,
feeling, embodiment — are values shared
only by Green. They are not values
shared by magenta, red, amber, orange,
teal, turquoise, indigo, or violet.
If I want to transform the world, implicit in
that desire is the assumption, “You are
screwed up, but I know what you need.”
This imposition of my values on you is a
subtle violence of values.
The point is that different world-spaces
contain different phenomena. It is not a
matter of saying which worldspace is the
“real” worldspace, because any age will
always feel that its view is the real view.
But there is no “real” or “pre-given” world,
only these various world-spaces that
creatively evolve and unfold in novel
ways, then settle into Kosmic habits that
then must be negotiated by all
subsequent humans as stages in their
own unfolding and levels in their own
compound individuality.
This classic limitation shows up especially in postmodernism’s incapacity
to escape the hermeneutic circle, which it absolutizes (i.e., quadrant
absolutism—in this case, the LL, and then only up to green). This is
captured in its claim that there are no extra-linguistic realities, a claim that
AQAL categorically rejects (along with Habermas and other more integral
thinkers).
Subjects do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different states of subjects bring forth different worlds.

“In finding the world as we do, we forget all we did to
find it as such, and when we are reminded of it in
retracing our steps back to indicators, we find little more
than a mirror-to-mirror image of ourselves and the world.
In contrast with what is commonly assumed, a
description, when carefully inspected, reveals the
properties of the observer. We observers, distinguish
ourselves precisely by distinguishing what we apparently
are not, the world."
Spencer Brown

Guiding principle here is that you need enough
diversity in what data you are gathering and how you
are gathering it, that you can adequately capture
impacts that are occurring in all quadrants.
Types of data to be collected:
- third-person data (objective) such as surveys or
other quantitative ways to measure change,
- second-person (intersubjective data) such as data
that is generated and interpreted together as a
group or within a process, and
- first-person (subjective data) such as reflective
answers, thick description, or other qualitative
descriptions (one-on-one).
Impact on Practices
(practices & conduct
carrying out work)
Impact on Systems
(policies, structures that
support innovation in
work)
Impact on Mindsets
(ways of thinking about
and approaching
problems)
Impact on Culture
(collaboration, cultural
perceptions, and social
discourse in issues)
www.integralwithoutborders.org

LOW POINT ASSESSMENT:
Moving potential forward, addressing gaps
and sticking points
FOUR QUADRANT MAP:
Working With Complexity
Topic or Issue:
Topic or Issue:

Systems inquiry
Description: quantitative measurement of seen changes in social, economic, political systems
in which the work is carried out.
Methods: systems analysis
Methodologies: systems-analysis tools
S
E
Empirical inquiry
Description: quantitative measurement of seen changes in behaviours, for example shifts in
land-use practices, uptake of conservation practices in the household, behavioural change in
gender relations.
Methods: empiricism
Methodologies: measuring, ranking, and quantitative analysis (pre/during/post measurement
that ranks certain behaviours from 1-10 and can compare/contrast to later assessment, after
which time that data can be analysed using quantitative methods to create graphs and figures
of what percentage of behaviours changed through the lifetime of the project.)
Integral Methodological Pluralism application - international development framework : Gail Hochachka IWB

Reflective, experiential inquiry
Description: interior felt-sense, how one feels (about oneself, org, project, issue),
Methods: phenomenology
Methodologies: personal ecology sheet
self-reflection (can use this tool to guide the process, can be an ongoing cascading reflection-stream, and/or
can be accessed through journaling).
Developmental inquiry
Description: interior personal change, developmental stages, changes in motivation, attitudes, and values.
Methods: structuralism
Methodologies: developmental assessment (includes pre/post interviews that are carried out one-on-one
with a sample of the population and the interviewer is trained to ask the same questions that hone in on
indicators for motivational, attitudinal
R
I
Interpretive inquiry
Description: culture and meanings held by the group or community; for example, how do people generally
feel and what do they know about “conservation”, what does “conservation concession” mean to them?
Methods: hermeneutics
Methodologies: focus group (using a guided method, shared below, as a pre/during/post method of “taking
the pulse” of the group—where motivation lies, what is working what is not, how can the project shift and flow.
Ethno-methodological inquiry
Description: changes in social discourse, implicit “background” social norms, and shared worldview.
Method Family: ethno-methodology
Methodologies: participant-observation (using a tool with focus questions on specific domains of change)
Integral Methodological Pluralism application - international development framework : Gail Hochachka IWB

SECOND-PERSON DATA COLLECTION
• At the Evaluation Pod meetings and
Development Evaluation (DE) meetings
generate discussion and reflection through
prompting with skillful DE questions. Then,
harvest the insights and doing pattern-
finding; that is where indicators come in.
• Community Liaison carry out this pattern-
finding afterwards then reflect back to the
other participants later.
• During the DE sessions, do some group
pattern-finding with indicator tables written
on flip-charts, and participants use post-it
notes to tag where in the spectrum they
would say the outcome was achieved. This
is based on participant-observation and is
co-generated in a focus-group style
meeting.
FIRST-PERSON DATA
COLLECTION
• To generate thick descriptions on
these indicators (about how and
why changes occurred as they
did):
• use more in-depth reflective
questions posed within one of the
activities, such as a qualitative
question in a survey
• or by doing key-informant
interviews with a sample of the
target audience.
THIRD-PERSON DATA
COLLECTION
• Build in content from the
indicator table into the feedback
forms, proposal questions, grant
reports, forum retrospectives, etc.
• This will generate actual numbers
along the 1-5 spectrum for these
indicators, which can be
quantified and used in evaluation
analysis and reporting.
• Any thing you quantify (numbers
of participants, proposals or multi
sector tables) can be useful to
analyze and include.

Key to an Integral approach to urban design is the
notion that although other aspects of urban life are
important, people (sentient beings), as individuals and
communities, are the primary ‘purpose’ for making
cities thriveable. All other aspects (technology,
transport & infra-structure, health, education, sustain-
ability, economic development, etc.) although playing
a major part, are secondary.
Urban Hub Series
These books are a series of presentations for the use
of Integral theory or an Integral Meta-framework in
understanding cities and urban Thriveability.
Although each can stand alone, taken together they
give a more rounded appreciation of how this
broader framework can help in the analysis and
design of thriveable urban environments.
Guides for Integrally Informed Practitioners
The Guides for Integrally Informed Practitioners
(adjacent) cover much of the theory behind the
Integral Meta-framework used in these volumes. For
topics covered in other volumes in this series see the
following page.
Pdf versions are gratis to view
& download @:
https://www.slideshare.net/PauljvsSS
Hardcopies can be purchased
from Amazon
Urban
Hub
series

Urban Hub manuals
prepared for C40
Cities Thriving Cities
Initiative and others
published by
vS Publishing

Pub. April 2022
Other books
published by
vS Publishing

Notes

What is Real?-Street Art Cape Town 2023

Urban
Hub
Integral
UrbanHub
Thriveable
Worlds
A series of books from integralMENTORS Integral
UrbanHub work on Thriving people & Thriveable Cities
Without taking into account the many worldviews that
currently co-exist and crafting ways of including them in
a positive and healthy form we will continue to alienate
vast sections of all communities of humankind.
No one vision is sufficient in and of itself – visions can
guide but only by collaborative action in a creative
generative process can visions grow and become part
of an ongoing positive sociocultural reality.
Worlds within
Worlds 2
0
3

Urban Hub 30 : Worlds within Worlds 2 - Entangled Kosmos

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