Integral Politics and Coherence

The Strategic Partnership Cohere+ explores the quality of what we call coherence in social fields, in particular the field of of social change makers working towards transformative change. The underlying assumption is that if groups of people are in a coherent state, cooperation flows much more easily and effortlessly than if there was some kind of unaddressed tension or conflict in the shared relational space.

As part of IFIS‘ contribution to this exploration, numerous on-site workshops, dialog formats and trainings have been conducted over the last 2+ years. Given that Cohere+’s focus is on new paradigm transformative change, and that one of IFIS’ areas of expertise is the newly emerging integral paradigm of understanding and doing politics (IFIS’ previous Strategic Partnership LiFT Politics has spent three years exploring the essential qualities and elements of this), our spotlight in these events was on how these two concepts relate. More specifically, we looked at how integral consciousness provides new ways of dealing with tension and conflict, allowing for more wholeness in public deliberation and decision-making. How would serving greater coherence within the respective groups or fields build a basis for innovative solutions and a better future for all?

Cohere+ has come up with a model that illustrates how a group’s dealing with tension and conflict can actually serve as a marker of their ability or potential to achieve higher or lower degrees of coherence. In a nutshell, we hold that on the one hand, the more tensions or conflict are ignored, denied, avoided or repressed, the more the respective social group or field is located at the pole of what we call cohesion or pseudo unity. We understand cohesion as a collective state of “sameness” that is superficial, rather than real.  This is mostly the case in societies characterized by authoritarian systems of rule and lack of civic freedom.

 

On the other hand, we understand coherence as a collective state of integration that is the result of tensions or conflict being openly embraced as important indicators of unmet needs that have gone unnoticed before. On this end of the spectrum, tensions and conflicts are welcomed and processed productively. We assume that valuing and exploring tension is a precondition for addressing unmet needs in a group. If this is done successfully, the latter can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction before things escalate into more serious conflict.

In other words, exploring and processing tensions productively is a way for a group or society to “get more real” with itself, i.e. to move from a “pseudo community” to deep connection, based on trust and felt community which we call coherence.

While the concept of coherence as described above has not yet been in focus during the LiFT Politics project, it turns out that coherence is actually at the heart of integral politics. What’s more, the essence of this new, holistic paradigm of understanding politics and of designing better futures for all can be beautifully summarized in that ultimately, it is all about creating deeper qualities of coherence throughout.

This paper relates the essential insights of our exploration of coherence to those of the LiFT Politics project on integral politics, in order to better understand the role of coherence in new paradigm politics on a deeper level.

In our book “Foundations, Principles and Inspirational Resources of Integral Politics“ (2023), we have harvested the wisdom and experiences of ten important inspirational thinkers and approaches to integral politics from Sri Aurobindo until Quantum Politics. The essence of these can be summarized in the form of the following ten core principles which describe the new, integral paradigm of understanding and doing politics:

 

10 Principles of Integral Politics

Integral Politics…

1. integrates more perspectives, in particular inner dimensions;

2. is based on a developmental understanding of political action logics;

3. works with states of presence and awareness;

4. is grounded in spirituality: connected with all living beings;

5. serves a higher purpose, the common good, that transcends particularistic perspectives;

6. translates the integral understanding of the nature of human beings into corresponding structures, institutions and politics;

7. walks its talk by translating theory into experiential praxis;

8. acts with lightness and playfulness;
9. rethinks agency on the basis of a quantum social science paradigm;
10. offers space for not-knowing and emergence.

This paper spells out how each of these ten principles relates to the quality of coherence and how each of them helps to better understand different aspects of coherence in individuals, groups and the larger society.

 

1. Integral Politics integrates more perspectives, in particular inner dimensions

As per definition, the first core principle of a new, integral/holistic politics is to make politics more whole. And the most straightforward strategy for doing this is to expand its perspective beyond the usual competitive ways of politics as usual where privileged perspectives tend to dominate the discourse, and to strive for including previously neglected perspectives. In view of working towards deeper coherence in groups, this principle helps to detect and to pro-actively counteract instances of incoherence before they produce detrimental effects.

The first step for doing this is to adopt a curious, explorative attitude, asking: what perspectives might we have neglected to far? Who else might need to be at the table or in the conversation in order for us to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the issue or challenge at hand. Sometimes, it is neglected stakeholders, minorities, or simply people who are less comfortable speaking up and making themselves heard in public settings. However, if we neglect or ignore their views and needs, they might one day develop a sense of frustration, anger or even resistance for not having been included.

While the respective voices might or might not add substantially new information to the picture, ignoring them always builds up subtle tension, and as explained earlier, unaddressed tension reduces coherence. So this first principle is all about identifying potential causes of tension, ideally before they actually arise, in order to weave their observations and concerns into the self-perception of the given field and hence, increase its quality and fabric of coherence.

Beyond this straightforward strategy for including more perspectives, integral politics also uses a number of tools for a deeper exploration of potential causes of tension. One of them is the four-quadrant-model by Ken Wilber, which helps to systematically identify blindspots of our attention that are often due to habitual patterns of perceiving the world.
Very often, a four-quadrant analysis shows that we have been neglecting inner dimensions, such as our inner mental or emotional states, or our patterns and structures of meaning-making which are often so automated that we are unconscious of their role in the ways we perceive and understand almost anything. Section 2 below elaborates on this dimension of integral politics.

Another strategy for including more perspectives is to explore shadow dimensions of a given issue or challenge. In cases where tension is felt, but not addressed in appropriate ways, we need to make extra efforts to specifically look at difficult aspects of the respective issue. In public settings, this is sensitive when it comes to taboo topics, taboo perspectives or minority opinions. Most people are more at ease when they feel that they are with the majority in a group or society, while it tends to need more courage to speak up with minority perspectives. Hence, the latter tend to remain silent if they are not actively facilitated into the conversation. As a result, they can develop into tensions or resistance as explained above. Integral approaches such as deep democracy offer a variety of tools for addressing shadow issues and for bringing difficult topics and perspectives into public awareness.

In other words, these are ways to actively work towards deeper coherence in a group through inviting, exploring and constructively processing tension before it turns into felt incoherence or open conflict.

 

2. Integral Politics is based on a developmental understanding of political action logics

The second core principle of integral politics honors the many decades of research in various areas of structural adult development, which shows that humans potentially develop through increasingly complex systems of cognitive functioning and meaning-making. In other words, every person’s patterns of thinking, perceiving, and processing “reality” are subject to structural development, i.e., to increases in complexity of their cognitive “operating system” as humans mature. All humans start their developmental journey at an embodied, “egocentric” place, where considering anything beyond their own personal needs is physically impossible. From there, we gradually develop more complex and more differentiated ways of perceiving, thinking, and problem solving, as we are going through various kinds of challenges and educational support.

As a result, people on different levels of complexity development perceive the same reality differently, and hence identify different things as good/bad or normal while also holding different ideas as to how society could or should be governed. This fact is so far rarely taken into account in the political realm, even though, holding true for every person, it applies to citizens, politicians, and all other societal actors alike. Moreover, the degree of complexity by which every one of us perceives, understands, and makes sense of the world has a direct influence on how we act on it, on what we perceive as “problems” in the first place, and what we assume to be (im)possible or good solutions to these.

For example, a person operating at an egocentric level will view and evaluate political events and developments through the lens of their own personal interests (“[how] does it serve me?”). Someone at a conventional level will evaluate events with regard to their specific system of norms or rules (“Is it socially/morally/legally acceptable? Will my peers or my authority X approve of it?”). In contrast, a person at a post-conventional level will likely weigh various perspectives, options, and arguments and prioritize choices based on overarching, higher principles such as “the value of human life beats specific interests or rules”. Moreover, I would argue that similar differences are the root cause of many of the tensions, conflicts, and challenges we are facing in our societies.

So if we want to create greater coherence by addressing similar tensions at their root causes, we have to take differences in meaning-making into account. When it comes to politics, a minimum level of cognitive complexity and perspective taking are preconditions for understanding what is at stake in a given conflict and, hence, for successfully acting in systems as complex as modern societies. This is especially the case in democratic societies, where many stakeholder positions – and (ideally) every citizen’s voice is considered as equally valuable and important. Likewise, successful problem solving in and between social groups and even whole societies (as in foreign politics) calls for a certain capacity of empathy and taking others’ perspectives into account (àwise relating).

It is therefore not surprising that open, liberal and democratic societies tend to be governed on more complex levels of consciousness and meaning-making as compared to more authoritarian societies. Liberal societies tend to try to process conflicts through various forms of negotiation, compromise or settlement of interests. In contrast, in authoritarian systems, political leadership is often unable to address tensions and conflict in welcoming and productive ways, and rather tend to fight them by fighting those who voice them. This, of course, will ultimately increase tensions and incoherence instead of solving them and making social relations more coherent.

So while a high level of complexity development would be desirable for people in political offices, especially in open, democratic societies, a majority of people, including political leaders, are thinking, making meaning, and acting at levels below the most complex known levels in each area of development (i.e. post-formal or post-conventional ones). According to available data, a majority of adults operates on one of the conventional structures of consciousness.

A developmentally informed politics is therefore much more effective in understanding and addressing these differences and thus, some of the root causes of incoherence and social conflict. It is thereby better at understanding what can(not) be done about them, based on the specific actors’ logics of thinking and action. In other words, it is better equipped to facilitate conflicts such that the underlying needs and tensions can be integrated in view of increasing the coherence of the social fabric.

So, based on its developmentally informed understanding of thinking and behaviors, integral politics is much better equipped to understand and hence, resolve socio-political challenges in ways that increase coherence by processing tensions more adequately and more effectively than more conventional approaches.

 

3. Integral politics works with states of presence and awareness

Third, new paradigm integral politics consciously works with states of presence, attention, and awareness in political, leadership, groups, and all kinds of cooperation contexts. By putting a strong focus on how we are being together (lower left quadrants in Wilber’s model), integral politics directly addresses the relational qualities which are at the heart of the work on increasing coherence. As indicated before, incoherence arises if tensions and conflicts are not addressed, in other words, if “weak signals” of discontent or resistance are ignored. Integral politics does the opposite: it puts its focus right onto the quality of our interrelations.

Moreover, it offers a rich body of experience and tools for actively shaping the qualities of communication and presence in groups and in social fields more generally, with the aim of transforming them towards deeper qualities of interbeing. By definition, this implies that relationships become more authentic and thus, more coherent.

One of the most prominent resources for actively working with collective states of being and thus, deepening the qualities of presence in groups, is the work by Otto Scharmer (2007) and his colleagues on “Theory U” and presencing (Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers, 2008). Its essence is all about the art and skill of using state awareness to improve the quality of listening and communication.

As integral theory points out, states are much more fluid and flexible phenomena than stages (or levels) of skill development (see section 2 above). Whereas it usually takes years to develop new structures of meaning making and reasoning by just one level, states can be modulated and changed quite easily through appropriate exercises (individual level) and skilled facilitation (in groups). This allows to modulate different state experiences in the course of just one group session, for example. In this way, groups can be guided from more conventional, superficial modes of listening and communicating into deeper and more meaningful ones in a short period of time. This helps them to access new perspectives, as well as potential shadow sides of an issue which had previously been overlooked or avoided. Moreover, it helps to transform shadow into potential and supports the co-creation of better, more visionary, and more effective responses to socio-political challenges.

The magic of Theory U lies precisely in gradually taking groups into deeper collective states of awareness, in which fresh perspectives arise and new solutions appear that draw on an emerging future, rather than the patterns of past thinking. By integrating methods and approaches for promoting state-awareness into its standard repertoire, integral politics lays the ground work for a political culture of depth and coherence and thus, for building communities of coherence.

 

4. Integral politics is grounded in spirituality: connected with all living beings

The fourth principle holds that new paradigm integral politics is grounded in spirituality and based on an ontology of inter-connectedness with all living beings. In other words, it promotes wholeness both inside the individual and in view of humans’ role in the larger fabric of all life. This principle thus strongly promotes personal coherence in the sense of bringing all elements of the personality into harmony and resonance. At the same time, it strives to heal interconnections both among humans and between them and their natural environment.

As to personal coherence, integral politics draws on Sri Aurobindo’s (1999) view of the human person, which proposes an anthropology consisting of four equally important pillars: body, emotions (vital), mind, and spirit (see Figure 3). By adding spirituality as one of these, integral politics is very explicit in going beyond the modern, primarily materialistic worldview. Moreover, by claiming that physical, emotional (vital), mental, and spiritual needs and capabilities are equally important, it turns this anthropology into a political statement.

In this perspective, all humans have basic needs in all of those four dimensions. Consequently, politics needs to address all four of them with equal attention and care. This integral anthropology makes clear to what extent the current modern worldview and the politics as usual based on it try to compensate emotional or spiritual needs by material consumption or mental distraction. Both of these endeavors are bound to fail – and lead to experiences of incoherence. Moreover, personal coherence can be increased precisely by rebalancing these four basic needs dimensions within each person.

This spiritual foundation of interconnectedness also helps to recognize – and to ultimately heal experiences and phenomena of incoherence beyond the individual person. Moreover it is a powerful antidote to the three “divides” identified by Scharmer and Käufer (2013): our separation from ourselves and our inner source (spiritual), from each other (social), and from nature and the ecosystem (ecological).
On the ecological level, it is clear that we won’t heal the ecosystem by perpetuating our currently dominant mindset of exploitation which has produced significant levels of incoherence in the first place.
On the social level, an attitude of interbeing will put the focus on deep, healthy relationships as a precondition of social coherence, happiness and, hence, a flourishing society. On the personal level, connection with the origin/source and with one’s higher self and purpose helps to move beyond ego, to transcend self-centered concerns and identities, and to give a deeper meaning to one’s life and actions. Living according to our higher purpose and inner calling (see Principle 5) instead of primarily pursuing material interests can be considered a crucial element of personal coherence.

To sum up, an anthropology based on a spirituality that is grounded in interconnectedness is a political project that profoundly invests in deeper levels of coherence in all areas.

 

5. Integral politics serves a higher purpose, the common good, that transcends particularistic perspectives

This principle is essentially inspired by Frederic Laloux’ research into what he calls “teal” (integral) organizations (Laloux, 2014). He found that organizations operating on the basis of teal (integral) consciousness have implemented three basic principles: self-management, wholeness, and an evolutionary purpose as their raison d’être. In view of the very mission and legitimacy of politics, the principle of putting the deeper WHY into the center is a crucial game changer. As opposed to politics as usual which is primarily interest-, power and stakes-driven, integral politics defines and builds its whole agenda and strategy around its core mission and identity, namely to be in service of the larger common good.

The ambition of being aligned with its higher purpose means that inner coherence is put in the center not only of political activity, but of the very existence of political groups. Laloux stresses that purpose-driven organizations are so focused on their purpose that if the latter changes, they either have to change themselves too – or dissolve.

By its commitment to serve a higher, evolutionary purpose, new paradigm politics sets clear priorities and acts based on the question “What is ultimately at stake?”. It thereby transcends silo thinking and particularistic interests in favor of solutions that work for everyone (see principle 1). The idea of purpose is thus closely connected with a larger sense of coherence that radiates all across the social fabric.

While this might sound like a high ambition, it turns out that many people actually get excited if you invite them into doing meaningful work, especially as problems get bigger. This seems to be because they sense that something fundamental is at stake – and that they can do something about it. Jim Rough (1996), the inventor of the wisdom circle and citizens’ assemblies format, found that if people have been involved in a collective process of decision-making, they are very ready to make personal sacrifices for a higher cause. This illustrates the fact that acting on the basis of a powerful, coherent vision and sense of meaning and interconnection increases the vibrational quality of aliveness, which generally makes purpose-driven work attractive.

 

 

6. Integral politics translates the integral understanding of the nature of human beings into corresponding structures, institutions and politics

The next five principles deal with implementing and enacting the above visionary principles in a coherent way, and with putting them into practice in ways that increase peoples’ felt sense of coherence.

Principle 6 is all about bringing the new integral political culture into coherence with the more stable features of the political system, i.e. with its structures, institutions and processes for deliberation and decision-making. For ultimately, it must be sustained and scaffolded by replacing the incentives of the current political systems for competition with incentives for cooperation and interbeing throughout the political operating system (lower right quadrant in Wilber’s model). Note that according to sociological research, polarization is to a large degree produced and co-created by the political parties themselves, while they are acting out the current system’s compulsion for self-presentation at the expense of political opponents (Mau, Lux, & Westheuser, 2023). In some sense, we can say that the behavior of our politicians (politics as usual) is coherent with the existing systemic incentives. So if we want to sustainably change behaviors, we must also change the system of incentives on the level of the political (operating) system.

There is no single blueprint for designing integral (or TEAL) political institutions, since integral consciousness is a newly emerging phenomenon. Moreover, every society has to co-create their own version of next-level structures and institutions in order for them to be in coherence with the emerging consciousness and culture – and hence, to function sustainably.

At the same time, the good news is that countless pioneers and initiatives are already prototyping new paradigm structures that can inspire this process. We see many examples of next stage deliberation and dialog processes, decision-making formats, and behaviors all over the world. New structures for overcoming partisanship are being created and tested, showing that party bickering can be replaced through cultures and practices of nonpartisanship. Moreover, this co-creative process of inventing new structures that are in coherence with an integral political culture and consciousness is an agile, iterative process that involves many feedback cycles and rounds of testing and prototyping better versions of the newly emerging entities.

As one of the products of our LiFT Politics project (2019-2022), Indra Adnan and Harald Schellander have created an interactive Prezi-based universe of new politics called “Planet A”. It suggests that a new planet built up of countless pioneering initiatives of a new, more integral politics is virtually emerging underneath our feet. You can enter the universe of Planet A through many different doors and walk your own way through your personal exploration.

Another prominent example for translating the core principles of an integral worldview into policy recommendations is Hanzi Freinacht’s suggestion of six forms of metamodern politics (Freinacht, 2019).

 

7. Integral politics walks its talk by translating theory into experiential practice

This principle is about coherence in the most direct sense. While the above principle 6 aims to bring inner and outer quadrants (consciousness, culture, behavior and institutions) into coherence, this one spells out the need for coherence in an even broader, more general way.

Many great thinkers, philosophers, and models have described integral consciousness. However, a new integral paradigm of understanding and doing politics will only gain traction if it can be experienced in practice by people, whether they are familiar with the “theory” or not. As an all-quadrant approach, integral politics needs to be embodied and speak to people’s hearts, minds, and souls alike, in a language they can hear and understand, or it is not integral. In other words: we need to walk our talk in order for people to feel and experience it first-hand.

While this principle appears to be a no-brainer at first sight, it is probably one of the most difficult ones to implement. Many an integral political initiative failed precisely because its members did not manage to walk their talk and to embody their vision and theory in a coherent and, thus, convincing way in “real life”. Admittedly, given the gap between the politics we are used to and the integral vision, this is not an easy task. This does not mean that integral projects have to display perfect coherence in all areas from the start. However, it includes the willingness and openness to build a coherent entity, to engage in a purpose-driven process of transforming politics toward the integral vision and to learn from mistakes.

This might imply to be willing to engage in shadow work, to get in touch with traumatic experiences, and to process and heal tensions and conflicts in oneself, one’s group or organization, as well as within the larger social fabric. Calling for a truly transformative attitude and approach, this ambition requires the willingness and the commitment to live up to these principles and to embodying them in everyday life and actions. Integral politics thus aims to practice what Otto Scharmer (2016) calls “seeing with fresh eyes”, i.e., to start with what is, rather than what should be. It values process qualities just as much as actual results. It happily makes mistakes and learns from them, keeping the overall vision in focus. It values doing over talking and resists dogmatism by making sure its ideals are translated into visceral practice.

Ultimately, integral politics’ striving for integrity can be measured by how much vitality and joy it generates among those who practice and experience it. In fact, after successful meetings, participants would state that they are leaving “more alive” than they came in. In other words, the coherence barometer would show an increase in coherence.

 

8. Resonance, creativity, and flow: Integral Politics acts with lightness and playfulness

Expanding on the previous principle, the degree of joy and “aliveness” that participants experience in a meeting can be considered a good indicator of the degree of coherence that was enacted there.

One of the ways for achieving a degree of coherence that makes people “more alive” is to draw on all senses, the whole body, and the arts when inviting people into integral political experiences. It is well known that the mind (our mental and cognitive capabilities) – even though highly valued in Western culture – is but one among many modalities by which humans can communicate and express themselves. While we all are trained extensively in using our minds, many, if not most of us, have other talents beyond thinking – or are even more at ease in using these.

Integrating music, dance, art, and other playful, more “feminine” approaches into our ways of doing politics not only increases the level of fun and aliveness. It also helps to strengthen a sense of interconnectedness and, thus, trust in new modalities of collective intelligence that allow to give up narrow ego perspectives, identities, and their desire to control outcomes.

While we might think that “politics” is or has to be something serious, given that it deals with serious issues, experience shows that once a group of people has developed a sufficient degree of vibrational coherence, based on mutual trust and safe enough spaces, new levels of creativity, lightness, and flow emerge. These, in turn, help them to open up, let go of narrow, fear-based assumptions and perspectives, and to access collective states where out-of-the-box thinking is welcome and new ideas can emerge easily.

After all, integral politics’ ambition is to change our political cultures towards more collaborative, co-intelligent, and co-creative qualities, while limiting incentives for competition to areas where they don’t produce losers or other forms of exclusion. Even though global problems are of course very serious, not taking ourselves too seriously helps us to remain open to new solutions. It allows for positive surprises, and for grace, coming in the form of wisdom, deeper insights, healing, and synergies of all kinds.

To sum up, this principle calls for dancing tango with our challenges, including our creative abilities. In this way, we are inviting miracles that our cognitive mind might not be open to, but that start to appear once we open up all channels of our humanness.

Note that dancing tango is very much about being present with what is in any moment, and to respond to it from the core of our being. In other words, it is about personal and relational coherence in action and interconnection. When Hanzi Freinacht speaks about the attitude of principle 8 as “sincere irony” (Freinacht, 2017, 2019), he describes the mixture of lightness and sincerity that appears to be a product of that sense of personal coherence that has us be ok and present with whatever is.

 

 9. Integral politics rethinks agency on the basis of a quantum social science paradigm

What stories are we telling ourselves about the world, about ourselves and about what our role could be – in other words, about if and how we could have a positive impact? Our (often unconscious) narratives are at the heart of our thinking, which then influences the choices we make and hence, become our behavior. Are our stories and narratives coherent? And are they in coherence with the latest science? In other words, are they aligned with the best of what we, humanity, know about how the universe works?

Integral politics draws on an epistemology that, in turn, is grounded in a new paradigm ontology, namely quantum theory. Even though quantum theory has actually been around for over 100 years now, its basic insights, such as entanglement (interconnectedness), non-locality, and complementarity as described by generalized quantum theory (Walach & von Stillfried, 2011) seem to not have arrived in many other areas of everyday life yet, including politics.

So what does radically rethinking politics and agency on the basis of a quantum social science paradigm imply? Taking the insights and principles of quantum theory seriously implies a completely different understanding of and perspective on the world and of our role and potential agency in it.  Karen O’Brien has spelled out the consequences of what she calls a “quantum social science” perspective for politics in her contribution to our handbook (Fein, 2023). She holds that:

• Our current paradigms limit the ways in which problems are defined and approached, including what we assume to be realistic, legitimate, effective, and possible.
• A quantum lens provides an alternative perspective that challenges, provokes, and invites people to engage with politics in a profoundly different way: It sees humans as “‘walking wave functions’ of potentiality and possibility”.
• It supports the ontology of wholeness and interconnectedness, in which we see ourselves as entangled parts of a much bigger whole, where politics is essentially about how we manage our entangled relationships.
• Quantum theory sees space, time, and matter not as given, but instead as iteratively performed and produced in every moment (nonlinearity, serendipity).
• Its fractal approach to politics calls for generating patterns that reflect integrity at all scales, which, in turn, impact each other.
• This alternative paradigm, grounded in connections, intra-actions, and values applying to all life on the planet helps us to relax fixed mindsets and to open our minds in view of making the potential for sustainability a reality. It offers a way of seeing solutions that are obscured by the current lens and provides alternative ways of responding rapidly and collectively to interrelated problems (O’Brien, 2023).

A quantum politics approach thereby offers a new (meta)narrative in which both personal development and political agency are (re)framed towards the power of infinite possibility. In this metanarrative, we are profoundly interconnected, in other words, we operate on the basis of coherence across all levels.

If all our actions impact everything else, we are extremely powerful. We begin to see that we have created the world we live in and, thus, we can also change it. Our mind and every thought held in our consciousness counts as an origin of our actions – and as the potential source of other actions. “We matter” in the double sense of being important and because of the fact that we are materializing what we hold to be true or important. In a coherent state, thoughts can become material actions and thereby change the world in no time.

In this new paradigm informed by quantum science, we are fully aware of our power. Barack Obama’s slogan "Yes we can" is embodied knowledge. Due to the power of this new paradigm agency, social scientists now speak of “positive social tipping points” (Otto et al., 2020) which can be reached if enough people start to subscribe to this ontology and start to enact it. In this case, unexpectedly positive, regenerative human action can start to constructively counteract the bio-physical tipping points of our Earth’s system by implementing behaviors and solutions that have been unthinkable in the current paradigm. In other words, we can bring our inner and outer systems back into coherence.

 

10. Integral politics offers space for not-knowing and emergence

The last, tenth principle is, in a way, complementary to the previous one. Even though integral politics’ rationale is based on the latest available science, it would never mistake the latter’s insights for the “ultimate” or “final truth” about the world. Rather, it takes a position of humility in view of its own status, relevance, and agenda, adopting an attitude that goes beyond ego-driven aspirations, claims and desires.

From a developmental perspective, all knowledge is subject to evolution, to constant improvement through probing, testing, trial, and error (see principle 2). Therefore, our concept of integral politics self-identifies as a vision and attractor, rather than as a concise program that can or should be implemented in ten (or so) well-defined steps.
As explained in the context of the first principle, in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture, we have to include “more perspectives”. In other words, we always have to ask: What else do we need to include and consider, beyond what we already know is important? Metaphorically speaking, this principle invites the habit of making sure there is always an additional empty chair at the table, as a symbol for the incompleteness of our knowledge and wisdom at any time.

Moreover, principle 10 is about actively putting ourselves in a state of not-knowing (Buddhist traditions speak of the beginner’s mind) in order to make space for deeper resonance and coherence to emerge. For ultimately, tapping into the vast realms of potential that lies beyond our individual minds, requires us to do less (of what we habitually think or do), but to rather step aside and make room for collective intelligence and the overall evolutionary purpose (Principle 5). Note that one of the first inspirational thinkers of integral politics, the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo, observed that, at the end of the day, we cannot act against the power of evolution which, by nature strives to unfold towards greater complexity, aliveness and overall coherence in all areas.

Integral politics offers a set of tools, methods, and processes for developing the practice of entering the energetic state of not-knowing, helping both individuals and groups to listen to their intuition and to the voice of wisdom that emerges from silence. Thus, it is a powerful agent and driver for bringing more coherence into our societies on all levels.

I would like to close these considerations with a quote received as a feedback from a participant of one of my workshops on Integral Politics which describes the visceral quality of their experience. The immersion into integral politics, they said, was like “a sip of wisdom, combined with resonance, soothing connection, and calming togetherness”.

 

References

Mau, S., Lux, T., & Westheuser, L. (2023). Triggerpunkte: Konsens und Konflikt in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft| Warum Gendersternchen und Lastenfahrräder so viele Menschen triggern. Suhrkamp Verlag.