The Universe and the ways we talk about it

I find Ken Wilber’s 4 quadrants of integral theory an elegant way of connecting apparently distinct aspects of the universe and our experience of it. What strikes me is the balancing of the internal experience with the external world that generates the inputs. The predominant current world model largely incentivizes and hypertrophies specific external outcomes, which aren’t always aligned with generating optimum internal experiences. Yet, we attempt to affect the external in accordance with the values from our internal experience. This can be challenging if our world models don’t connect the internal and external accurately.

Additionally, any “one thing” is either a composite of things from a lower level, or a piece of something larger on a higher level. To describe something as singular or individual is ultimately choosing at which level we pay attention to the world. Is that cluster of people over there a tribe or 10 individuals? It depends on the issue that needs addressing. Are we interviewing each person or are we discussing the ecology where they live? An important caveat however, each level of description has it’s own vocabulary, but there may be words that refer to different concepts at another level. Thus it’s important not to equivocate between levels and vocabularies.

Dovetailing with my previous post, I am learning to distinguish between the different wayS [emphasis on plural (ie biology, psychology, physics, etc)] we have for describing the universe, none of which will ever be complete. The image above gives an accessible frame for noticing how one level of description connects to the other quadrants and their levels.

I see many conflicts such as “Are we individuals OR part of a collective, and which takes precedence?” As a recovering libertarian, I had a hard time letting go of the hypertrophied narrative of individualism. Where instead, what might our sense making be like if children were educated to understand that it depends on the issue, and knowing how an individual is connected with the universe can open up a larger solution space.