I'm pulling together the same issue I've noticed in two different threads:

In "Integral Psychology and Psychotherapy," Coppersun wrote:

here's another conundrum: if you've taken the iWET weekend course, you might know that the instructor uses a rose to demonstrate the four quadrants. the UR includes red petals, sharp thorns on smooth green stem, etc.   per the course, the UL includes beauty, romantic ideas, etc.   note how they have switched from the UR of the rose to the UL of the person!!  my idea of the UL (of the cut rose) is "i am dying of thirst".   what kind of perspective is that, using integral calculus?  is it different from "roses without water will wither"? 

In "How to explain AQAL to beginners," RalphWeidner responded to this 4q of a dog (from  http://www.tomcintegral.com/tetraglyph.htm),

writing:

There's also an important distinction between individual holons and collective holons that's good to mention without going into it in an introduction, and that is that only individual holons are conscious and able to take perspectives. The members of a social holon may share a certain level of consciousness and ability to take perspectives, but the social holon itself isn't conscious or able to take perspectives. So the four perspectives above of a dog are ones that could be taken by an individual holon, presumably in this case, a human being. Notice that the last two perspectives taken above are not actually of a canine social holon, but of a human social holon. This is definitely tricky, especially for someone who has never owned a dog, but let me hazard a correction: in the LL, Alaskan huskies are very good at working together to pull a sled; in the LR, dogs communicate with each other by means of their urinary behavior.

Both of these posts have to do with the slipperiness of mixing and matching the subject with respect to which you're taking quadrants.

So if I want to talk about 4q of a dog, I should be looking at dogs intentionally, behaviorally, socially and culturally. Where on the map is the spot for dogs as part of a human LL and LR? Where on the map do I talk about my perspective of the rose, as opposed to the rose's perspective of itself.

I'm guessing that if I perfectly understood quadrants, quadrivia, and zones, this would all be really easy. Unfortunately...

I have a few thoughts about each of these, but I want to wait a day or two to let them settle before embarassing myself. In the mean time I want to open the floor. Let's help each other resolve these conundrums (conundra?). And please add similar conundrums of your own.

Yotam

So if I want to talk about 4q of a dog, I should be looking at dogs intentionally, behaviorally, socially and culturally. Where on the map is the spot for dogs as part of a human LL and LR?

If I am understanding you question correctly,

1.) Dogs are part of both our LR and LL as soon as both species exist and come in contact with one another; so somewhere around number 6 on the standard SES Four Quad Map.

but

2.) Dogs as we would probably most often look at them today -i.e. as our pets or "man's best friend" or animals we have put to work for us - goes back to, I am pretty sure, magical times (certainly mythic 2-10,000 years ago?) and in the LR somewhere around foraging. I am not an expert of the history but doggies have been a pretty integral part of our LL and LR for a long time.

In the LL - I think they're our friends and pets and, for sure, members of our families ( right? and sometimes pains in the ass . . . I have three . . .!) Also we engage them culturally in dog races, dog shows, and in some sad cases underground "dog fights," etc.

In the LR, very often they act as protectors, natural burglar alarms, and then in many cases, as noted, they work for us with all sorts of utility -sled dogs, sheep dogs, St. Bernard rescue dogs, hunting dogs, seeing-eye dogs, etc.

So, in fact, that is a good question: Can we list all the ways we interact with dogs in the

LL culture as "friends"            and              LR social as "utility or technology"

 

Also, interestingly, becasue of relations with them in the LL, all kinds of LR holons have emerged: laws and city ordinances, animal control depts., tools for controlling them, tools for caring for them, collars, leashes, dog bowls, dog foods and the factories and businesses that manufacture all that stuff, the stores that sell them (most particularly Pet's Mart, etc.), shelters, resuces and of course vets, . . . and alot of money is made of of these things and all of the people who are employed. Think of what a devastating blow the economy would suffer if there suddenly were no more dogs!

How they see us in another very interesting story. It has been oft noted, it must be as "gods" if anything more than just top, top dogs and some seriously comforting technology.

Another thing that really fascinates me or makes me curious is how WE are effecting their evolution.

 

Tim

---

It's a new time, it's a new day, it's a new dawn, it's a new man, it's a new woman. The world is Integral, and so is the spirituality.

here's another conundrum: if you've taken the iWET weekend course, you might know that the instructor uses a rose to demonstrate the four quadrants. the UR includes red petals, sharp thorns on smooth green stem, etc.   per the course, the UL includes beauty, romantic ideas, etc.   note how they have switched from the UR of the rose to the UL of the person!!  my idea of the UL (of the cut rose) is "i am dying of thirst".   what kind of perspective is that, using integral calculus?  is it different from "roses without water will wither"? 

 

Hold on a second here . . . are we sure they've switched perspectives? Or, rather, has the unfolding of the description simply cause the listener to switch perspectives - or realize he was assuming a different perspective than the instructor at the onset of the description?

i.e. the instructor was taking about the rose from 3rd person while the listener thought he meant 1st person.

 

 

---

It's a new time, it's a new day, it's a new dawn, it's a new man, it's a new woman. The world is Integral, and so is the spirituality.

Yotam,

I've never heard the rose example used before, but a rose would be quadrivium, since "I", Lynne, am viewing the 4Qs of that rose. 

 A 4Q analysis of a dog might be UL= thirsty, UR= curly hair, LL= we love smelling butts and hate cats, and LR= the biggest dog rules.

Lynne

Hold on a second here . . . are we sure they've switched perspectives? Or, rather, has the unfolding of the description simply cause the listener to switch perspectives - or realize he was assuming a different perspective than the instructor at the onset of the description?

i.e. the instructor was taking about the rose from 3rd person while the listener thought he meant 1st person.

 

great point! thanks. but isn't it true that the 4 quads are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person?  the issue then is what the instructors said about the 4 quads.  is it the 4 quads of the rose, or is it the 4 quads of the viewer?  iow, if you are going to talk about the I, WE, IT, (hey, that's almost like iWET) of a holon then it has to be about the holon. which holon are we talking about?   if you are going to draw the 4 quad diagram and label it "dog", i assume that the 4 quads are of the dog.  thus, i agree with lynne's 4-quad example of "dog" because it uses the "i,we,it" :    A 4Q analysis of a dog might be UL= thirsty, UR= curly hair, LL= we love smelling butts and hate cats, and LR= the biggest dog rules.

what i'm gathering from the mark edwards/ken wilber dialogues, and from lynne's comments, is that each holon possesses 4 quads, but each holon can be looked at via 4 quadrivia.  [is it true then, that the entire book SES is about quadrivia because it is talking about holons, but the book itself, the ink, the paper, possesses 4 quads]    thus, the iWET exercise is an exercise in quadrivia, NOT quadrants, because the actual "I" quadrant (UL) of the rose is "i am thirsty".  the "I" quadrant of the person is "i feel romantic."

or is it?

is it possible (under integral theory) for a human to have a 1p experience of a rose (zone 1)?   no!  so, is it a zone 2 approach to the UL of a rose to say "i am thirsty"?  is it just fiction, fantasy?  are all we allowed to say, truthfully, is "a rose without water will wither" (UR), and the zone 1 UL of a rose is experienced only by the rose? 

corollary [if this isn't all bull to begin with]: the only holon whose 4-quads i can know is myself.  all other holons i can only know via quadrivia.

is that right?

later,

gene

btw, the distinction i took away from the ken wilber/mark edwards dialogue is that ken was focusing on looking through 4 quads while mark was focusing on being looked at via 4 quads (aka quadrivia). 

 

later,

gene

I was perusing the Integral Naked media files and found something that seems to be very relevant to this discussion. Most of it went over my beginner's head, but I got that there were three basic ways to look at/create the information for the quadrants: Ontologically, Methodologically, and Epistomologically (or what, how, who). I didn't completely understand the distinctions between the three, but at least I got that there are distinctions!

It's in the section on Integral Ecology and Sustainability and it's the file called "4Q x 3 = Lake" down near the bottom of the page.

Peace, Love, and Bicycles,
Turtle

Turtle,

I think you are on to something.  I just listened to the first part of it.
So ontologically, we are looking at an object from the four quadrants.  Methodologically, are the different rules within each quadrant that govern how we study things.  And, Epistomogically, we sit in the middle of the quadrant and look from there. 

So the rose example would be an ontological look at the rose, while the dog example we have been playing with has been more of an epistomological look, but one we can only assume because we are not the dog, but describing what we might experience as the dog.  I guess we are taking about zone 2 (something I am just wrapping my head around - like I don't have enough already with all of KW's old material).

Best,
Kelly

---

It's ALL soul. Junior Wells

Let me take my own crack at sorting these things out. I've been looking over your responses and thinking a lot, and I think I've got a decent take on it.

When encountering an object, I can do either of two things:

1 - I can consider the four quadrants of it as a holon (i.e. look at it through four quadrivia)

2 - I can see how it influences the four quadrants of me as a holon

UL "I am thirsty" /"It's so pretty"

UR Green, thorny, exuding a scent, a foot long, etc / holding it, smelling it, being pricked by it (the strictly behavioral components of these actions)

LL We need rain (???) / Roses mean love

LR Systems of pollen exchange / The rose farming and distribution industry

The same breakdown could be done, of course, for a dog or anything else. I think the issues that got me to start this thread come down to that.

I think this is basically a generalized form of Tim's point (though I want to point out to you that our friendship with dogs has LR components, and their utility to us has LL components, too)

Putting it this way got me to start thinking… There’s a LR of human beings. There’s even a LR of, say, University of Chicago students. But there’s no LR of me as such. There’s only the one of me. So when I talk about my LR, it’s really my status in the variety of LR’s that are formed by groups of people I share something with. Similar goes for LL. So you can learn one set of information by looking at 4q of “human beings” and a different set by looking at 4q of any given human being. For the latter, the lower quadrants will consist of that person’s role in various communities and systems.

Allow me to make sure I understand something:

Quadrants are the actual being of a holon in 4 ways (its intensionality, its behavior, its cultural context, and its social context). Quadrivia are 4 ways of looking at anything. If you look at a holon through the four quadrivia, you get the four quadrants. Right? Or are the four quadrivia the four views of an object that arise by viewing it in relation to myself in four quadrants? I'm pretty sure it's the former, but I'd like confirmation. And it would be nice to have a fun, jargonny word for the latter, for future reference.

You know... Between the "Explaining AQAL to beginners" thread and this one, I'm realizing that actually using quadrants is very hard. It's really easy to make a lot of mess, even long after you're comfortable with the differences between UL, UR, LL, and LR themselves.

 

I think this is basically a generalized form of Tim's point

Yes, I agree with you! No seriously though, that is exactly what I was thinking and I love the way you illustrated it.

 

(though I want to point out to you that our friendship with dogs has LR components, and their utility to us has LL components, too)

Yes, I saw this as I was exploring all those things -it's actually really cool!- but I think it is also just another illustrative way of demonstrating how all of the qudrants tetra-arise, or arise together. In some of those instances they are tied at the hip very clearly or truly wed.

But there’s no LR of me as such. There’s only the one of me.

Actually, this is pretty vast topic to exlore in itself becasue if there was no LR of you there would be no you! I do understand what you mean by "as such" and you are accuate, but these things that you/we share, up to a certain point of your development are you, and continue to remain part(s) of "you" even after you have fully differentiated yourself from them as a distinct individual. In fact the more you authentically individuate yourself from all of that the more you can see how essential and fundamental.

Remember, "feral children" -or human children with no contact with other human beings do not develop past animal levels (so SD beige); no language, no symbols, no concepts and even the accompanying brain wiring for those.

To be even more fundamental, without two people -your mother and father -you would not be here. Trace that back through previous generations and you will begin to see that you indeed have a LL as a fundamental part of your very existence and everything that you are. The most recent genetic mapping -from which your exact genetic history and all the strands which have contributed to it from all over the world with exact precision can be traced all the way back to the dawn of man in Africa-is a soberingly profound revelation in this regard. I think this may be the most profound quadrant of all to contemplate becasue of all this.

We share cultural food both as food and as "food" (language, ideas, biology, genetics, etc) and you know the saying "you are what you eat."

Okay, I am going on vacation tomorrow so I hope I haven't gotten myself in a lot of "hot topic" trouble -if so, I'm gonna have to get back to y'all in a couple weeks.

 

Peace, Tim

---

It's a new time, it's a new day, it's a new dawn, it's a new man, it's a new woman. The world is Integral, and so is the spirituality.

Oh, also, gene, I wanted to answer this too . . .

coopersun wrote - great point! thanks. but isn't it true that the 4 quads are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person?  the issue then is what the instructors said about the 4 quads.  is it the 4 quads of the rose, or is it the 4 quads of the viewer?

Right. I was going to say that; Did the instructor qualify or orient the description first? If not, they should. Even something as simple as "When you look at a rose . . ." and perhaps they should make an extra effort to be clear about this.

I left this out because I find the "disorientation" of perspectives in presentation fascinating and (as an artist/dramatist) potentially cool . . .

"Cool" as in, we see this in clever movie scenes sometimes -the director deliberately disorienting the viewer's perspective, making you believe it's one thing when it's really another.

The simplest example is the oft used "mirror shot" where the camera seems to be focused directly at a person (so 3p) but then the camera pulls back and you see it was the mirror image -and now see a person looking into a mirror and realize it was 3p x 2p(? is my iMath right there?).

The other side of this is what potentially happened at iWet where the presenter might not have been clear and so perspectives were accidentally disoriented.

This definitely something to consider steps to avoiding.

Peace, Tim

---

It's a new time, it's a new day, it's a new dawn, it's a new man, it's a new woman. The world is Integral, and so is the spirituality.

i'm as confused as anyone about this, but let me, at least, try to clarify my confusion. i'm going to leave out ontology, methodology and epistemology, because that went completely over my head.

i just finished reading fred kofman's integralworld post 'holons, artifacts and heaps'. it sounds like most of you haven't yet read this, because you seem to be leaving artifacts and heaps out. i also don't see much reference to the distinction between individual holon and social holon, which plays a key role in the IN dialogue between mark edwards and ken wilber.

my confusion: there is the traditional polarity between the ONE and the MANY. can we translate them into SPIRIT and 'individual, sentient being'?

sadly lacking in any telepathic capacity, i'm going to have to go ahead without your answer. suppose it is yes. then it appears to me that ken has located yet a third, somewhat intermediary entity called the holon.

so, not only do we not want to identify exclusively with our individual, finite being; not only do we not want to limit ourselves to the finite and infinite sides of the street (am i getting horribly confused here?), the MANY and the ONE, but we also want to include this strange new entity, the holon.

to what extent is this even possible? the pandit remarks at some point, i believe, in his most recent dialogue with the guru that he is not aware of anyone actually walking on both sides of this street at once, which shows just how apt this metaphor is.

my myopic, 3rd person perspective on this is that someone can experience nonduality (btw, is nonduality an experience?), which includes, of course, her own individual, sentient being, but she cannot simultaneously experience her individual, sentient being, as such, without going beyond anything the pandit has ever seen. the best, evidentally, anyone has achieved thus far is the ability to go from one side of the street to the other at will (is that an exaggeration?), something clearly laudable from an integral perspective.

in this respect, am i just a little touched, to want to add yet a third side to this street? please, be kind in your responses to this.

actually, holons are even more evanescent than individual beings, a good reason not to identify exclusively with either or both of these. according to the excerpts, each moment is just a new holon about to be born--only to die in the next moment.

i seem to have come up with a possible answer to my own question. the MANY, the manifest, includes not only finite beings but also holons, which are clearly finite as well. so there isn't really a third side to the street--what a stupid idea!--but, maybe, two entitiies on the finite side, one local and the other nonlocal.

still, we do identify with holons, even with their nonlocality, if not with their evanescence. just think about how closely some people hug green, or amber. we could be beginning to do the same with integral, but i suspect we will be able to do better, because of our awareness of development--of the evanescence of holons. perhaps we will be able to transcend the false notion of a specific, enduring holon, and be able to identify with the spirit-in-action breathing life into each succesive, new holon. so this won't be happening just on the finite side of the street, but, apparently, on both sides!? very confusing.

so, let me backtrack. with 2nd tier we become much more aware and understanding of development than 1st tier, and we describe it best, it seems, in terms of holons. but just who is this 'we' who's doing this? is it you and me? perhaps. as individual beings, but only because we share a certain level of holonic development. this allows us both to identify with, say, integral, a spirit-in-action, evolving holon, not limited to either side of the street.

i think i better stop. i'm going crazy!

ralph

---

i've been delaying responding until i watched the video . . . but that hasn't happened so I'll jump in here anyway. 

we're not talking about artifacts and heaps--those are not holons.  a rose is a holon. a person is a holon.  "human beings" is not a holon, it is the LL of "human being".  mark edwards and ken diverge on this point. yes, ken uses the term "social holon" but he doesn't mean it the same way as mark does. ken uses it, as far as i know, just the way i've described it---humans is the plural of human, thus, humans is the LL. (yes, the LL shares some characteristics with an individual holon, but they are not enough, in ken's definition, to constitute a sentient holon, in other's definitions they are enough)  human infrastructure (visible artifacts) are the LR.  the infrastructure evolves as humans evolve, simultaneously, and it affects how humans evolve.

the lower quadrants are not only a person's role in community or systems . . . we as individual holons are inseparably and simultaneously formed by our LL and LR environmental aspects (i guess you could call that roles).  you might feel you are an individual separate from others, but ken's point is that "we do not parachute into this world", rather, our very own identity is learned via interaction with others (intersubjective and interobjective exchange), the very fact that we talk about our identity is learned--no one invented themselves.  Hence, we are not individuals--as in upper quadrants--we each are in fact all four quadrants arising in this human holon we experience.

i'm still processing the quadrivia/quadrants aspects.

 

later,

gene

gene,

i've been enjoying your posts for some time now--here at i-i commons and, before that, at wilber_nyc. i've never responded before, because you've already said whatever might occur to me.

after my confused post above i went back and read chs. 2-4 of SES, coincidentally, what your local kw group will soon be discussing. what i clarified for myself i find, again, you've already pretty much said in your message above.

i would like to add a few things this time. lately i've been listening to many of the dialogues--technically, interviews by ken wilber--at IN. i'm realizing more and more just how incredibly able he is to go where the other person is. this was especially brought home to me in the opening dialogue with caroline myss. i've never listened to her before, although i have read several of her books, so i don't have much to go on here. i do sense that she's a dedicated professional, who we can count on to bring her full being to whatever task she sets for herself.

so, in this first dialogue, we didn't just hear about the irish woman--we heard the irish woman--brogue, colloquialisms and all. a wonderful performance in itself, but ken, it seems to me, brought out something even more special: the remarkable journey this very remarkable person is engaged in.

i suspect that this is what ken is doing most of the time. he tells us what a holon is. i am a holon. you are a holon. but someone else comes along and says there are two kinds of holons: individual holons and collective holons, he himself being, obviously, an individual holon. ken says 'not exactly. those are just complementary aspects of the holon that you are.' he fails to get this, and goes on to say that a company, for example, is obviously a social holon.

most of us, at this point, i imagine, would say to this other person something like 'you're not understanding what i'm trying to tell you.'--end of dialogue. ken, i suspect, instead attempts to keep the dialogue going, to nurture whatever social subholon is possible, by going to where that other person is, i.e. he descends at least a stage or two to one of his subholons.

this gets tricky, of course, if that other person is also going public with his message, as mark edwards is, because then us poor readers are getting two different messages about what holons are, and about what quadrants are. i'm afraid that, unfortunately, ken's higher message tends to get drowned out and confused with the lower message. i know i was confused.

even without this confusion, the higher message is difficult to grasp, but that's what we want, i feel. at least, i want something that will motivate me to reach higher, and not be satisfied with where i am, oblivious to the evolving kosmos about me and, potentially, within me.

as i understand, holons are the only entities in the kosmos who can take a perspective. we can take a perspective of anything, but the interesting ones are, of course, those of other holons. i don't mean to denigrate mark edwards' work. it's just not at the same level as ken wilber's. clearly, organizations are an imortant part of our lives, but there's something still more important.

ralph

---

hi ralph,

i totally agree with your take on ken's interviewing skills.  "he goes to where the other person is."  absolutely.  he can interview flaming blue or orange or green and tell them "you are abolutely right about that", "that is an incredible insight", "your work has added immensely to our knowledge" and on and on.  i think he is recognizing healthy aspects of the different levels and encouraging that. he can honestly say those things because "no one can be 100% wrong" and his encouragements address the part that is "right".  every once in a while he'll push the envelope and the interviewee either is able to keep up or chokes.  someone at i-i said ken has a "pentium 27" brain.   i'd have to agree.  

later,

gene