CONCLUSIONES

Wilber makes the important point about states, and states of consciousness that they are temporary: “they come and go.”107 A meditating monk or a wilderness walker undergoing a peak experience will eventually return to a normal waking state of consciousness, which itself will be maintained for a period of time and then give way to other states, such as dreaming or deep dreamless sleep. On the other hand, “levels” of development do not come and go. They are, more or less, permanent, 108 albeit arbitrary stages that arise in each quadrant in a hierarchical fashion. In integral theory, hierarchical development is also called holarchical, as at each level a new holon emerges, something that is a whole and also a part. Thus, sustained meditative or other practices may lead to a person having permanent, or at least much more frequent, access to such awareness. An understanding of the levels or stages is essential to grasping Integral theory, as it is, at its core, a developmental theory. Within each of the quadrants we have growth or development. Although there are definable points where new properties emerge that were not present at an earlier stage, we do not say that one stage or level is necessarily better than another, or that these stages are rigid or set in stone. Rather, it is more constructive to imagine them as “waves” of development or unfolding.109 What we can say is that each successive stage, level or wave is more inclusive, more encompassing. Each stage “represents a level of organization or a level of complexity.”110 In terms of the Upper-Left quadrant, a number of models have been put forward to describe the development of individual consciousness, and any number of these can be used within the Integral framework, depending on the phenomenon or problem one is trying to describe or solve111 (these include the developmental theories and methods of Jane Loevinger112, Susanne Cook-Greuter113 and Robert Kegan114).

105

Brad Arkell, 1995, Small Mammal Secondary Succession in Buttongrass Moorlands. Unpublished MSc thesis, University of Tasmania, Hobart.

106

Wilber, 'Introduction to Integral theory and Practice', p.5. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., p.27.

Marquis, What is Integral theory?, p.168. 110

Wilber, 'Introduction to Integral theory and Practice', p.6. 111

Wilber, Integral Psychology, pp.471-478. 112

Jane Loevinger, Paradigms of Personality, Freeman Publishing, New York, 1987. 113

Susanne Cook-Greuter, Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1999.

Susanne Cook-Greuter, ‘Maps for Living: Ego-Development Stages from Symbiosis to Conscious Universal Embeddedness’, in: M.L. Commons, C. Armon, L. Kohlberg, F.A. Richards, T.A. Grotzer, & J.D. Sinnott, (Eds.), Adult Development, 2, Models and Methods in the Study of Adolescent and Adult Thought, Praeger, New York, 1990, p. 79-104.

114

Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982. Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Harvard University Press, London, 1994.

31 The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg posited that the evolution of moral reasoning in individuals passes through three general waves of development, which can be split into six stages.115 The first wave is the preconventional, or egocentric, and is often associated with young children. Individuals at this level have not yet absorbed the ethics, the rights and wrongs, of their society. The morality of any action is weighed by the direct outcome of that action, particularly the direct consequences, or how the outcome meets the individual’s needs and interests. Once the child has adopted the norms of its culture it moves into the conventional or ethnocentric stage. Individuals at this level weigh the morality of an action against society’s conventions and are likely to accept and follow these rules and conventions regardless of how it may benefit them personally. This level of moral reasoning focuses on one’s own cultural group and tends to exclude concern for those outside the group.116 The next wave of development is the postconventional. At this level, there is an increased understanding that the individual is, in a sense, separate from society. There is a realization that one’s own views may be more important than those of society. This appears to be overly individualistic and in some ways could be mistaken for a preconventional view. However, individuals with an advanced postconventional view do not only have concern for their own cultural group, but“the individual’s identity expands once again, this time to include a care and concern for all peoples, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed, which is why this stage is also called worldcentric. Thus, moral development tends to move from ‘me’ (egocentric) to ‘us’ (ethnocentric) to ‘all of us’ (worldcentric).”117 There is a great deal more detail in Kohlberg’s theory that could usefully illustrate development in one of the quadrants; however, this is a simple example of the developmental structure inherent in integral theory. I will return to some of the finer structure of Kohlberg’s theory later, as it has a particular bearing on the evolution of an ecological or integral state. However, before we move on to the other elements of integral theory, it is useful to point out that, although many higher states of consciousness may be temporarily available to us, the higher stages of consciousness do not become permanent without continual learning and practice. Wilber notes: “you can have a peak experience of higher states, because many of them are ever-present. But you cannot have a peak experience of a higher stage, because stages unfold sequentially. Stages build upon their predecessors in very concrete ways, so they cannot be skipped: like atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, you can’t go from atoms to cells and skip molecules.”118 The divisions of preconventional, conventional and postconventional or egocentric, ethnocentric and worldcentric, are useful as they can be used to describe stages or waves in the development of other human capacities, intelligences, aptitudes or “lines”, which I will return to in due course. Wilber draws much of his conception of the self-stages from the more contemporary work of

115

Lawrence Kohlberg, The Psychology of Moral Development, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1984. 116

Wilber, 'Introduction to Integral theory and Practice', p. 7. 117

Ibid., emphasis in original. Visser, Ken Wilber, pp. 186-190. 118

32 Kohlberg Loevinger, and Cook-Greuter, but alsonotes the influence of pioneering theorists in development such as James Mark Baldwin, John Dewey, G.H Mead, C. Cooley, Anna Freud, Heinz Werner, Edith Jacobson, Harry Stack Sullivan, Heinz Hartmann, Rene Spitz, Erich Neumann, Edward F. Edinger, Clare Graves and Erik Erikson.119

A number of other authors have adopted a developmental, level-based, and integral approach to address environmental and sustainability challenges, and have demonstrated the efficacy of such approaches. For example Simon Divecha and Barrett Brown use the constructive developmental theory120 encased within integral theory and refer to it as action logics, which "describes stages of discrete meaning-making, where orders of development unfold in a specific sequence, each transcending and including concepts and cognition internalised at the preceding stage."121 Their action logics draws on the work of Cook- Greuter122,Torbert123 and others.124 Action logic stages express affect reasoning and behaviour in different ways and there are strong indications that the discrete stages are likely to have an important influence on the behaviour of leaders with regard to environmental and sustainability issues. They note that those applying integral thought are likely to make assessments of other peoples' action logics to help develop positive and sustainable outcomes. By proposing a model that associates action logics with statements or interactions with others on sustainability, Divecha and Brown provide a more structured framework for these kind of assessments, not just for the individual subjective perspectives but also collective ones as well.125 They point out that their initial research requires further work to create a more tightly validated metric, but also note that the power of the action logics power is achieved through facilitating improved sustainability interventions. Given the "growing body of evidence that understanding developmental perspectives assists us to generate better organizational or group outcomes", it is clear that the creation of such rigorously tested developmental models is likely have increased relevance to integrative or integral approaches to environmental policy and sustainability politics.126

119

Wilber, Integral Psychology, pp. 471-476. 120

Constructive-developmental theory, or adult stage development, investigates how people interpret experience and how this construction of experience changes and becomes more complex over time. See Sharon L. Spano, 'Constructive-Developmental Theory and the Integrated Domains of Wisdom', Integral Review, March 2015, Volume 11, No. 2., pp. 36-74., p. 43.

121

Simon Divecha and Barrett C Brown, 'Integral Sustainability: Correlating Action Logics with Sustainability to provide Insight into the Dynamics of Change', Journal of Integral theory and Practice, 2013, 8(3&4), pp. 197–210, p. 198.

122

Cook-Greuter, Postautonomous Ego Development; See also S.R. Cook- Greuter, 'Making The Case for a Developmental Perspective', Industrial and Commercial Training, 20014, 36(6&7), p. 275.

123

W.R Torbert, S.R Cook-Greuter, D Fisher, E Foldy, A Gauthier, J. Keeley, Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transformational Leadership, 2004, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.

W.R Torbert, Managing the Corporate Dream: Restructuring for Long-Term Success, Dow Jones-Irwin, Homewood, IL, 1987. 124

D Fisher, K Merron, W.R. Torbert, 'Human Development and Managerial Effectiveness', Group & Organization Studies, 1987, 12, pp. 257-273; T.J O'Fallon, 'The Collapse of the Wilber-Combs Matrix: The Interpenetration of the State and Structure Stages.' Paper presented at the 2010 Integral theory Conference, Retrieved 11 May 2017 from

www.pacificintegral.com/docs/statestagesofallon.pdf 125

Divecha and Brown, 'Integral Sustainability’, p. 198. 126

33 How do we navigate our way through these developmental stages? Gary Hampson and Matthew Rich- Tolsma suggest that a transformative learning approach is required to move individuals and societies away from the predominant late modernism worldviews that are the main causes of climate change to worldviews based on reconstructive postmodernism, which is based on the principle of complex integration.127 Reconstructive (post) postmodernism, and its preceding stage, deconstructive (relativistic) postmodernism both require the deconstruction of numerous constructs and concepts, but a reconstructive postmodernism recognises that the deconstruction should not render impossible the reconstruction. Integral theory is in accord with this "new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions... a creative synthesis of modern and premodern truths and values."128 They use the term 'transformative learning' which was defined by Jack Mezirow129 as when learning occurs via a prior interpretation that is used to construe a new or revised interpretation of experience to guide future action, leading to "a transformation in one of our beliefs or attitudes (a meaning scheme), or a transformation of our entire perspective ("habit of mind").130 Not only do Hampson and Matthew Rich-Tolsma call for this developmental approach they also identify the need for complex integration of existing paradigms via an integral - or 'post-postmodern' approach.131 Others promote alternative leadership development approaches, such as the immunity to change process132 and Otto Laske's Dialectical Thought Form Framework133, which draws on Roy Bhaskar's "four moments of dialectic."134

Divecha and Brown's approach to sustainability leadership and cognitive development can be complemented by constructive developmental theory that integrates wisdom theory. Work by Sharon Spano using a combination of developmental research methods and wisdom studies to assess the stage of development of a number of executive leaders and their understanding of wisdom across a number of domains (cognitive, reflective and affective) showed how wisdom was - contrary to much research in constructive developmental theory- not necessarily associated with post-conventional stages of development. Rather, it was demonstrated at each stage of development, whether conventional or post- conventional.135 This suggests that wisdom may fall into its own 'line' of development, and while it may

127

Gary P. Hampson and Matthew Rich-Tolsma, 'Transformative Learning for Climate Change Engagement: Regenerating Perspectives, Principles, and Practice,' Integral Review, September 2015, Vol 11, No. 3, pp. 171-190.

128

D.R Griffin, ‘Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought’. In C. Keller & A. Daniell (Eds.), Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms. (pp. vii-xi). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002, pp.ix-x.

129

Jack Mezirow, J. Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2000. 130

Sharan B. Merriam, Rosemary S. Caffarella and Lisa M. Baumgartner, Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide, Jossey- Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2007.

131

Hampson and Rich-Tolsma, 'Transformative Learning for Climate Change Engagement, p.180-181. 132

Jonathan Reams, 'Immunity to Change Revisited: Theoretical Foundations for Awareness Based Practices for Leadership Development', Integral Review, January 2016, Volume 12, No.1, pp. 65-110.

133

Otto Laske, 'Laske’s Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF) as a Tool for Creating Integral Collaborations: Applying Bhaskar’s Four Moments of Dialectic to Reshaping Cognitive Development as a Social Practice, Integral review, September 2015, Volume 11, No. 3, pp. 72-92.

134

Roy Bhaskar, Dialectic:The Pulse of Freedom, Verso, London, UK, 1993. 135

34 express itself differently at each stage, it is not an attribute confined to higher levels of development. This type of healthy 'horizontal' development is explored briefly in Chapter 2.