FIRST DRAFT...Revisions Added Regularly

Tetraglyphs
(click here for advanced Tetraglyph experiments.)

Integral Perspective Teaching/Learning Tool

This is a self-directed site where you can teach yourself the Integral Perspective. This is a place for beginners, or for teachers who want to learn a really easy model to teach this material with. Remember, this is an introduction. You will get the basics here. The subtleties and refinements you can find in the links and books noted on my Links page.

The core tool of this set of exercises is the Tetraglyph.  A Tetraglyph is a drawing with 4 sections. Here, let’s build one. Get a piece of paper and something to draw or write with.

Step One: Draw a horizontal line. Like this.

Now assume that everything you know, or ever will know, can be located either above or below that line.

What lies above and below that line can be described like this:

Now draw a vertical line. Like This.

Now assume that everything you know, or ever will know, can be located on one side or the other of THIS line.

What lies to the left and right of that line can be described like this:

Now you have stuff above, below, and to the right and left of these lines. Let’s see what that looks like when both sets of knowledge are combined.

ME

Yes, you can add more than one descriptor for each Quadrant. Try it. Let’s use, "father" for this one.

You might think of all the debates you get into that are about the cause of this or that. Most such debates center in one Quadrant: "The President is dumb." But we can see right away with a Tetraglyph that if we have a smart president, but a breakdown in social systems, e.g. Hurricane Relief systems, it wont make the outcome much better.

It won't do much good for me to tell you to take more information into account when you make a decision. There is so much information available today, how in the world would you decide what to include!? We need a system to ensure we are drawing essential distinctions into all important conversations. The Tetraglyph reminds us to at least draw important distinctions from the four Quadrants.

When writing or reading you may come across this shorthand: There are 4 quadrants - ULQ, URQ, LLQ and LRQ. Upper Left, etc.

Now you understand Quadrants, Interiors, Exteriors, Individuals and Groups. You have one set of essential distinctions under control! Great!

Now it is going to get a bit more challenging. You probably know that subatomic particles, make up atoms, and atoms make up molecules, and molecules make up substances, and substances make up things, e.g. electrons etc. make up a Sodium atom. Sodium and Chloride atoms make up salt. A lot of salt can make up a salt mine. There is a Line of development here from least complex to most complex. The notion of LINE will show up in all Quadrants.

Here, let me set you up with the model. Presume that the direction of development for any Line is from the Center of the axis, the most simple, away from the Center towards the more complex:

The Line could be in any, or all, Quadrants. If it is, like above, in the ULQ, then we must be talking about something that develops in the interior of an individual. What might that be? Oh dear, there are endless answers to that question:

Language competency - sounds, words, sentences, paragraphs..

Math skills - numbers, addition, mulitiplication, algegra, trigonometry, calculus.

Ego identity - Me, me and those close to me, all living beings.

 

Notice that the series always goes the same way, the Levels of learning occur in only one sequence, and the earlier Levels are essential in supporting the emergence of the later.

I just snuck in another important distinction. All those steps on the path of development...we call those Levels. Sometimes we call them Stages too, same thing.

Why bother. Well, if we want to sort out endless amount of information so that we can tell what is useful, it is surely useful to know what level a 3rd grader is at when you sit down to teach her math. If she doesn’t know her numbers, we will not be working on addition. If we ignore her Level and start out with addition we will fail!

Let’s add some drama here. What if we intervene in a country to promote democracy? And, what if societies have been shown to always develop along the same Line of Social development? If we try to force democracy on a group of people who have not finished with earlier Levels of development, say tribal, we will fail! So, seems pretty important that we have a knowledge sorting device that directs our attention to Levels.

Please note how important and how earth shaking this notion of Levels might be to your brain. You have probably thought of people as people....most people do. But what if people are NOT people? What if they are people-at-Levels? What if you have been ignoring, in all your engagements with humans, that they speak different languages at different Levels, and you have been trying to talk to everyone from YOUR LEVEL! You have been lucky, at best, and likely very ineffective.

Now you can decide which Quadrant of concerns to speak about, from what Level, to what Level, as noted on what Line of development. Sounds complicated. Isn’t after you practice a while. Just draw some more Tetraglyphs. But this time, put in distinctions that all apply to the same developmental Level.

Let’s try "mature", vs, say, "youth" or "aged".

For contrast, now as "youth". You should draw your own Tetraglyph...mine are just models, suggestions.

Remember! Each of these distinctions, Levels, occur in a sequence of prior Levels and probably future Levels. This sequence is a Line of development.

I’m serious. Your mind functions around the autopoetic principal. That means it is constantly trying to organize your brain space for you, whether you care, want it to, or not. That is just what it does. Draw some Tetraglyphs. Give your mind some food. After a bit of digestion it will begin showing you new links, new meaning, anything it has been able to organize around the Tetraglyph exercise. Just do it.

We have 4 Quadrants. By the way, every object of inquiry has these 4 aspects. Remember this. Your child is a 4 Quadrant reality. Your job is a 4 Quadrant reality. Your bank account, your garden, your parents, all are 4 Quadrant realities. The jargon puts it this way. All things tetraemerge.  All things come to be thru all 4 Q’s at once. To approach an object of inquiry without this knowledge ensures you get only partial, and questionably useful, conclusions.

The 4 aspects of emergence are: Individual Interior, Individual Exterior, Collective Interior (culture), Collective Exterior (society).

Any distinction in a Quadrant shows up in a Line of development. It came from somewhere. It could continue unfolding. This path of natural, ordered, development is a Line. There are Lines about individual interiors and exterioris, as well as Lines pertaining to Culture and Society. They are everywhere. Learn as many as you can...without adding undue stress across your Q’s!

Stabilized distinctions along a Line are called Levels. It is interesting to note that humans can often retreat to earlier Levels. If you are doing Algebra, you can go back and do addition. If you are in a democratic community, you can return to a top dog orientation. Humans can not however simply move up a Line of development. We need to stabilize earlier Levels, in a specific and healthy order, and sometimes the next Level emerges. But we can’t just jump ahead, like we can step back.

This is important: We don’t know how to make humans move up Levels. We do know a lot about the conditions that are necessary for such a move. But we do NOT know where the lever is to simply pull, and make vertical growth occur. I mean, when did your parents’ saying, "Will you please grow up?!" ever make you grow up?

So, not much sense to focus on making vertical growth happen. There is much sense though in adjusting the conditions so that it is more likely an accident of growth will occur. Practice your scales, practice chords, practice voicing, and then one day, bingo virtuosity emerges. But you couldn’t just go from playing one C chord to playing a Concerto. And you certainly couldn’t go from wanting to play a Concerto to playing a Concerto. Practice can put you where the accident of growth is likely to occur.

There should be a different word meaning a good accident. How about benicident? Practice for the sake of benicidents!

There are two final distinctions to cover: States and Types. For States, let’s stay with the music example. One day you sit down with your instrument, and you play like you have never played before. You feel the music, it comes out like it is your voice, creative inflections emerge at just the right moment, and....you are in the flow. You come back the next day, and its all mechanical again. Drat! What happened is that you stumbled into a State of competence, not a Level of competence.

Humans stumble into various States all the time: Elation, flow, mystic absorption, open intimacy, mathematical clarity, etc. And then we stumble right out of them again. They are not stabilized in our life. You might think of States as unstable visits at Levels. You retreat from Levels only by choice or trauma. You have little, if any, control about the endurance of States.

For those of you who want to drill down a little deeper. there are endogenous States and exogenous States. The endogenous ones emerge from within without any essential exterior source. If you find yourself suddenly overwhelmed by love for that special someone, that is an endogenous State. It rather naturally emerged within you.

Exogenous States are created by the impact of some outside factor. Yes, you can create legitimate States by taking a toke, swallowing a pill, or chugging a couple cold ones. Those are exogenous States. They are just as real as endogenous states. They may be just as desirable as endogenous States. You are though dependent upon inhaling or ingesting something you might not have available the next time you want to visit that State.

Now the finale! Types. You might suspect that there are some generalities that hold about female vs male approaches to things. In fact there are. Females tend to process development around issues of connection, caring, and responsibility. Males tend to work out their development around issues of agency, results, and rights. These are two different Types. If you know these are present you will look for them, and design your engagement with these differences in mind.

There are many Types that have been discerned: Myers-Briggs Types, Jungian Types, Enneagram Types, etc. The way a person evolves and the way they express the Levels they are on are influenced by the Types that pertain to this person. So, yes, it probably is important to know you are talking to females or males, Type A’s or B’s, deciders or followers, etc.

Ok, that’s it. You know the following:

Quadrants

Levels

Lines

States

Types.

 

A New Level of Wisdom Now Available To You

That is it! Now when you need to intervene in the course of change somewhere, whether with your date, your kids, your boss, your market, your class, your friends, and your enemies, you now have a system to ensure you are addressing all the important areas of knowledge that apply to that intervention.

You will notice that the Integral Model does not generate much new information, and it is not supposed to. It is simply a model that sorts out what you know, what you could know, and draws your attention to areas essential to address to have an Integral View of your object of inquiry.

When you take on a model it changes your mind. The Integral Model changes your mind so that you can fully respect where you are and where others are, while it arranges your mind to foster change congruent with the model. In other words the Integral Model will support your development. It is one of those elements you can put in place to hasten the occurrence of a benicident!

Remember vertical growth, growth up a line of development, is not something you can make happen, like you make a light go on. It comes of its own accord. You wont be happier if you advance up a Line of Development. You wont be more effective in your life just cuz you advance up a Line of Development. Your capacity to care for yourself and for others will grow however. And for the benefit this bestows on life on this planet, vertical growth is desirable. So, for the 7th generation ahead of us, learn the Integral Model. It is the best model available on the planet at this time for creating planet wide benicidents.

Did you notice I keep referring to Vertical growth? You might be wondering about Horizontal growth. If the underlying structures of meaning and life orientation do not change, but new capacity accrues, then we have Horizontal growth. Getting better at writing, repairing engines, analyzing pollutants in liquids, etc. is a horizontal expansion of competency. Please grow horizontally. This is something we can pull the levers on. This is where opportunity for growth and fulfillment exists in abundance. This is where we can make a difference for ourselves and all of humanity right now! Find out where you are. Love where you are right now. And expand your capacity for whatever you choose. Or don’t. But know that your life tends to occur around one pretty stable Level, and is likely to continue that way for the foreseeable future. Make a home where you are, fill it with love, and become an Olympic house keeper.

Some of us have been distracted from our house keeping with visions of Sainthood just one Level away. Strive to be what you are not if you wish. I found it wasted time. The guys in the Army had a good idea, "Be all you can be!" Much more reward there than, "Be all you could be, if only."

There are a million tangents to go off on from here. But this was meant as a beginners introduction. Consider yourself introduced!

In the Integral Studies and Spiral Dynamics literature you will very soon run across a standard development sequence. This sequence has parallels in each Quadrant. You do not need to know this sequence at the outset. But when you are ready, do get a handle on this.

The Levels in this standard sequence are described somewhat differently at different times. It is best to consider this discrepancy the same kind you find when comparing Celsius to Fahrenheit temperatures. The markers are placed at different points in the continuum, but the continuum is the same.

Here are the descriptions of the the core concerns, an ULQ focus, specific to each Level, beginning with the earliest:

Survival...like a baby at birth. .

Belonging....clan.

Me...the emergence of separate identity.

Me and You....rules for living from objective author.

Rational....self as author.

Connection and sensitivity to others.

Here is the same sequence with focus on character of reality, cultural character, LLQ:

Archaic, instinctual

Magic, animistic

Egocentric, power.

Mythic, traditional.

Modern, rational

Post modern, pluralistic

LRQ Focus - Levels

And here it is focused on LRQ, Society:

Survival Clans

Ethnic Tribes

Feudal empires

States

Nations

Value Communities

Beyond here lies the territory called 2nd Tier.

It appears the Levels repeat themselves, you might say, at a higher octave, beginning again at 1st Level of 2nd Tier. There are not many folks who live from 2nd Tier Levels. You can understand some of what it is like for 2nd Tier folk, but until you move in there, you wont really know the hood.

One important bit of news to take back to 1st Tier from 2nd Tier is the emergent freedom to see all prior Levels objectively. Prior to either waking up in 2nd Tier, or informing your 1st Tier perspective with 2nd Tier distinctions, you, like everyone else in 1st Tier, believes their Level is the ONLY real Level existing. If people show up inconsistent with your Level, you and I figure they are simply wrong. So, please get a 2nd Tier inoculation against this "I'm right - you’re wrong" malady. Recognize the presence of other Levels, grant people validity as who they actually are. Much more opportunity here than making them wrong.

I know you are curious. So here it is. The first 2nd Tier Level is an orientation focused on managing all the internal and external selves and systems to support survival of the self. Remember this is the first Level where all the Levels emerging earlier are experienced as present, having authentic particular needs, and needing to be healthy in order for this 2nd Tier self to be healthy.

The 2nd Level of 2nd Tier is where one recognizes that one IS all the interior and exterior selves, and one lives for the wellbeing of all the systems of life.

Evidence has been collected indicating that some humans have developed at least two more levels, or to the 3rd and 4th Levels of 2nd Tier. Since these Levels emerge, that is show up without precedent, there is no way to predict what is coming until it shows up. You can learn more about all of the Levels by following some of the Links on my Links page.

Oscillating Character of Development Line

The levels oscillate in their focus on the individual and the collective as progress along the Line unfolds: Level 1 is individual focus, 2 is collective focus, 3 is individual, 4 is collective, etc. Why? No clue. Just is. Take note.

I think that covers the basics. If you get a handle on these distinctions and their relationships you will have mastered the basic Integral Theory framework. That means you have left Flatland and live in Spectrum Land. Howz it feel?

Well, in any case, enjoy the perspective from here, you are now Integrally Informed, and what is next is, as always, up to you.

Thanks for joining me here. Hope to see you soon.

Tom C.

Hope I did not mislead you. There is more to learn here than I have covered. Here are some distinctions you will learn if you continue your Integral education:

(Links to be added later.)

Holons

Holarchy

Nested

vMeme

Spiral

Transcend and Include

Agape

Eros

Change State

Alpha Fit

Beta Condition

GammaTrap

Delta Surge

Atman Project

lst Person Report

3rd Person Report

Psychograph

Integral Life Practice

Non-dual

Good, Beautiful, True

AQAL

Integral Operating System

Wizard

Life Conditions

Core Intelligences

Meme Stacks

Open, Arrested, Closed

Boomeritis

Kosmos

Prime Directive

The prime authors of the Integral story, from whom all the above was learned and whose stories are much more rich and complex than this simplified intro:

Ken Wilber

Don Beck

Claire Graves

Christopher Cowan

And there are many other credible authors out there. Here is where you can find most of them: visser link

January 2006