WORLD FUTURES, 58: 241263, 2002 Copyright 2002, Taylor & Francis 0260-4027/02 $12.00 +.

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A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO BUILDING AN INTEGRAL WORLD

SALLY J. GOERNER
Integral Science Institute We stand at the start of a new millennium with a growing awareness of what is wrong with our civilization but little agreement as to what to do. From environmental crises to democratic systems dominated by moneyed interests, the list of dangers is long and growing. Each issue has a band of defenders who struggle to right that particular wrong but, because these bands are disjointed, the broad movement they serve remains incoherent and weak. The broad movement is usually described as toward sustainable civilization, but its precise designation is integral society. The challenge for the emerging new science is to provide a framework for understanding that unifies and gives direction to the disparate efforts that comprise the integral movement. This framework must address three needs. First, it must provide a sound understanding of why, despite our sophistication, things seem to be going badly in so many spheres. Secondly, it must present a believable vision of where our civilization should be headed. Finally, it must provide a sense that there are concrete steps we can take to achieve the deep dreams that most of us actually share. What we need, in short, is not more disparate insights, but rather a collective intellectual unity that integrates existing insights into a logically coherent and emotionally compelling whole. Such integration, however, cannot be constructed artificially, by committee or consensus. Rather, true integration can only come from a unified scientific understanding of why various ideas connect. Today, a scientific story capable of such unifying understanding is found in the expanded theory of evolution that is emerging from the union of a broad range of scientific efforts. This theory also serves as a unifying thread for an integrated new science. This article outlines the dynamic view of evolution and how it unites integral efforts. KEYWORDS: Evolution, integral society, integral science, complexity

BUILDING AN INTEGRAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING The basics of general evolutionary theory of evolution have been laid out, in part or whole, by numerous researchers over the last 100 years (Spencer, 1862; Lotka,
Address correspondence to: S. J. Goerner, Integral Science Institute, 374 Wesley Court, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516. E-mail: sgoerner@mindspring.com

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1956; Prigogine, 1984; Laszlo, 1987). Although recent discoveries have added detail, the overall understanding has not changed. The essence is this: ever since the Big Bang, the universe has moved steadfastly toward increasing complexity. The scientists previously listed, describe this movement as a general evolutionary process that proceeds according to basic patterns and principles. Life and its increasing complexity follow these patterns and principlesso do human systems. Since most of the physical principles behind this process have already been described and documented, one should say that general evolutionary theory already exists. Our challenge is not building per se, but integrating the pieces and then helping people see the relevance and utility of the whole. Here I show how General evolution can create a framework for understanding that shows current dilemmas in a fruitful new light while at the same time unifying reform efforts across fields. The best way to show relevance is to start with the cultural transformation emerging in our time. This article outlines the framework and then uses it to explain why societies go through such evolutionary shifts and where this one is headed. First, however, let met take a moment to address the issue of names. General evolution is the traditional name for the comprehensive story of evolutionthat is, from molecules to humankind (Laszlo, 1987), but this name is hard to explain. Consequently, it has failed to take root despite a 50-year history. Chaisson (1987) and others use the term cosmic evolution, largely because of their focus on cosmic issues such as the formation of matteratoms, molecules, stars, galaxies, and so onafter the Big Bang. However, though this work is exquisitely sound science, most laymen automatically connect the phrase cosmic with new age hype. Because of difficulties with older names, I prefer the term dynamic evolution (Goerner, 1999). This term emphasizes the role of natural forces (dynamics) in the on-going growth and development (evolution) of all organization from the Big Bang to our own time. THE RISE OF WEB VIEW: OUR TIME AS A NATURAL CULTURAL CYCLE Dynamic evolution studies how natural forces create organization and then drive change. The most important of these forces is pressure. Our own time is a case in point. A huge pressure buildup is now pushing us toward a major cultural restructuring. Thus, that apparent chaos swirling around us may represent the birth pangs of a new, more complex form of civilization. I explain the theory behind this later. Meanwhile, let me take a moment to paint the picture of todays change a bit more clearly. Western civilization is clearly already in the midst of a transformation. The main reason for this is simple. Ominous signs abound in many fields education, environment, economics, politics, and so forth. These signs create pressure for change and millions of people in a thousand arenas have been responding to it for many years now. Consequently, the list of reform efforts is long and growing. Examples include: sustainable economics, walkable communities, and democracy restored to popular control. Many fragments of work are now beginning to cohere. As a result a subtle, but significant shift is underway in western civilization as a whole. Scientists might call

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this a paradigm shift, but historians would describe it as a sea change, or a great turning, a time when all aspects of a civilization undergo a change of head, heart, and soul together. The difference between a great turning and a paradigm shift is that, here, the entire pattern of the society changes as well as its worldview. Todays great turning is a powerful, corrective reaction that will sweep through all facets of western civilization. It is being propelled into being by the many woes that plague our time. It will reshape everything from how we build our cities and run our economies to how we educate our children. Its unspoken goal is to restore some much-needed sanity to modern civilization. We can assume all this because such turnings have happened before. They are a recurrent part of human cultural evolution. Europe has experienced three in the last 1,500 years. The classic sign of a great turning is a shift in the basic metaphor that people use (consciously and subconsciously) to explain how the world works. For instance, the last sea change occurred about 400 years ago, when medieval society gave way to modern society. From that time to this, western thinkers have used the metaphor of a machine or a clock to explain how everything worked.1 We are now exiting the age of mechanism and the clockwork universe and beginning something new. Todays sea change is bringing a quiet migration toward the metaphor of an ecology or a web. Environmentalists were the first to make web thinking common fare and systems thinkers were not far behind. Everything is connected to everything and one must understand systems as a whole! they said. Gradually large numbers of people began to see the usefulness of the web metaphor in matters beyond the environment. Nowadays, for example, it is fashionable to reflect on how computers connect us and how a global economy makes us all interdependent. The web shift also shows up in: Holistic alternatives in health. Alternative healers see the body as an ecology embedded in larger ecosystems of culture, work, and home. The sustainability movement. Sustainability activists see the global economy, global civilization, and the environment as one gigantic, fundamentally entwined ecosystem. The goal is to develop sustainable patterns of relationship within and among all three. A renewed commitment to spirituality, now defined in broader and more tolerant terms. Mind, body, soul, and cosmos are also seen as connected these days. Millions now believe a new planetary consciousness is emerging. A multitude of new approaches to spirituality have sprung up and tradi tional religions are changing too. Most are beginning to look less to their dogmas, and more to their roots, both spiritual and human. Efforts toward more integrated and empowering education. Whether it is teaching environmental respect or working toward better integration with the community, education too is already swept up in the web revolution. Many existing reform effortsfrom service learning to community reintegration actually constitute one, very large educational transformation following the web metaphor. Scanning current events through the lens of a web makes it easy to see that todays

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sea change is already taking place in many different realms. It also makes its name, integral society, much more understandable. Integral means whole. Integral society is a time when human beings reconnect and begin reweaving civilization in harmony with each other and the natural world. INTEGRAL SCIENCE Today, integral society and the web worldview are in the process of replacing modern society and the machine worldview. The web views expanded eco-logic will eventually reshape the landscape of civilization. Right now, however, its progress is painfully slow. There are two reasons for this. First, the transformations solid potential is obscured by clouds of hype and misconception spread by the first newagers. It needs more substance and more concrete steps to usability. The second obstacle to progress is lack of coherence. People working on one piece of the puzzle often dont realize that someone nearby is working on an important related piece. Today, for instance, there are people who explore how economies work like an ecology and others who explore how actual ecologies work. These two groups share the same intellectual puzzle and have similar social aims (sustainability), but they rarely support each other because economists and ecologists belong to different disciplinary camps. Many important, high-quality efforts are part of the integral transformation. The main reason the movement as a whole lacks power is that differing language and concerns create yawning gaps. This is where the new science can help. A sea change is also rolling through virtually every field in scienceanthropology, brain research, economics, physics, and so forth. The main reason for this change is simple: computers and other electronic equipment make it possible for researchers to study more complex relationships than they could before. As a result, every field is moving from seeing causality as simple and objects under study as separable to seeing causality as complex and objects as interwoven. Consequently, fields from anthropology to physics are beginning to develop a web view, albeit under a host of different names. Thanks to the popular press, many people know one or more pieces of web science, say Gaia, chaos, complexity, quantum mechanics or systems theory. Still, the vast majority of web fragments remain obscure, including ecological economics and the evolution of consciousness. I call the union of these web changes emerging across disciplines, integral science. Retrospectively, it is the union of these pieces that will change our worldview, not any one facet as is so often claimed. Still, pointing out that they are all part of the same web transformation isnt enough to change peoples view. Worse yet, it isnt easy to fit these pieces together. The scope is daunting: What could possibly unify findings from anthropology to physics? This is where dynamic evolution can help. To unify web discoveries, one needs a scientifically sound story of why various facets and ideas connect. The only story capable of making such connections is a story of evolution. But, to link physics, biology, and anthropology, the term evolution must now be writ large. Genes and survival of the fittest are not enough to explain either the origins of life or the latest cycles of civilization. Instead, one must

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begin with physical principles and see how they carry through the entire journey from the origins of matter (protons, neutrons, etc.) to the current cycle of civilization. (See Chaisson, 1987, for an outline of evolutions real-life journey starting from the earliest moments of the universe.) As befitting the web age, dynamic evolution also helps us see that all evolution takes place in an intrinsically connected universe. Neurophysiologist Roger Sperry summed up the story succinctly:
In the eyes of science, mans creator becomes the vast interwoven fabric of all evolving nature . . . a cosmic scheme that renders most others simplistic by comparison.

Dynamic Evolution as a story of Energy Flow We have arrived at the story of dynamic evolution, now seen in its proper cultural context, namely, the rise of integral society and the web view in science. This section explains the basics of the theory. As the section title implies, energy is the thread that unifies the whole. Ive said that dynamic evolution studies how natural forces create organization and drive change. What I havent mentioned is that energy is the central player in this drama. In essence, energy pressing to flow is the driving force behind all organization and change in the universe. Furthermore, the reason evolution is relatively easy to understand is that energy follows certain basic patterns. Energys patterns show up as similar patterns of change seen across all levels of existencephysical to human. A simple example will make this process more concrete. Energy has a penchant for creating organization and driving change in a recurrent and nicely patterned way. This process can be seen clearly in a simple fluid experiment called the Benard cell or more colloquially, boiling water. So, imagine a container with water in it. When you turn up the heat, the water molecules inside begin moving faster. They keep moving faster until they quite literally cannot go any faster in their current pattern (random collisions). Even though the system has reached its limit, heat (energy) still pushes it on. An invisible crisis sets in. The system becomes unstable and the context becomes ripe for change. Small, naturally occurring fluctuations in the system begin to have a new effect. In this case, little pockets of relatively hot molecules have been accidentally coming together and moving apart. These little pockets are a type of diversity, that is, they have unique characteristics that nature soon puts to use. In this case, hot collections are lighter and more buoyant than their cooler surroundings. Soon a host of hot pockets begin to float upward, like little bubbles of change. Eventually one pocket rises all the way to the top, loses its heat and sinks back down pulling other molecules in its wake. This pattern of rising, falling, and pulling other molecules along triggers a change. All the heat pressing the system finds a new channel through which to flow. As energy pours into this path, the entire region erupts into a coherent, circular motion. The system has organized itself into a new pattern of motion that moves energy faster. The name for this process is self-organization. Nobel Laureate Illya Prigogine also called it, order-through-fluctuation. Under pressure, naturally occurring diversity has triggered a new pattern of movement that allows energy to flow faster.

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The circular movement is called a flow structure. Its underlying reason for being is to help energy flow faster. Still, the story isnt over. If the heat continues, the whole process will repeat. Molecules will move faster in the new circular motion until they can go no faster. The system becomes unstable. Naturally occurring diversity will seed a new, faster cycle. The system will reorganize itself into a more intricate pattern, something like a figure 8. It is more intricate in that it consists of smaller, tighter, inter-linked circles.

Figure 1.

The Benard cell (boiling water), in all its simplicity, teaches us a great deal about the basic principles of energy flow (Figure 1). We see, for example, that, pressure drives change and that diversity is necessary to seed new organization. The Benard cell also teaches us that energy pressures create a recurrent cycle of development. Under pressure, each pattern of flow comes into being and accelerates until it reaches its limits and a crisis ensues. With the right bit of diversity, the system reorganizes, more intricately than before. This increase in intricacy of organization is behind the well-known staircase of increasing complexity seen throughout evolution (see Figure 2). Furthermore, each new step fits other characteristics seen in our simple example. For example, each time a system reorganizes it becomes more intricately

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organized and it moves energy faster, just as in the Benard cell. One reason physicists believe energy is the driving force behind all organization is that this connection between intricacy of organization and speed of energy flow holds from largest systems in the universe such as galaxies to the most delicate ones such as the human brain (See Table 1). Such studies give substance to the idea that energy principles apply broadly indeed. Although we do not know whether energy as we use the term scientifically (heat, electricity, etc.) and energy used figuratively (social energy, human energy), are the same thing, we do know that both kinds behave in much the same way. Thus, it is quite possible that the figurative and the scientific type of energy are both reflections of the same basic process.

Figure 2.

Table 1 Organizational Intricacy and Energy Flow Speed (After Chaisson, 1987)
Structure Milky Way Sun Earths climasphere Earths biosphere (plants) Human body Human brain Free Energy Cycling Speed (in F units) 1 2 80 500 17,000 150,000

Table 1 shows energy cycling speeds through various systems. It uses the rate of free energy cycling per unit time and unity density (F). Here, the most intricate

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organizations like the human brain are also the fastest energy cycling systems. One way to measure the intricacy of an organization, therefore, is to chart how fast energy cycles per unit time and mass. As Chaisson puts it: if what is important is the rate at which free energy enters a system of some given size, [then] the quantity used to specify the order and organization in any system is the flux of free energy density, denoted here by the symbol F. F is energy flux per unit time and per unit mass (F = ergs s 1 gm1). These simple observations about energy lead to an important thought. If energy is the main culprit behind evolution, then energy flow principles should provide an excellent framework for understanding organization and change in general. Furthermore, this framework is easy to use because energy follows certain basic patterns that create certain basic themes throughout evolutionincluding in the human condition. It is this energy framework that allows us to see todays problems in a totally different and vastly more coherent light. Still, since boiling water isnt enough to make this thought believable, let me expand the picture of my plan a little more. INTEGRAL THEORY: A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING A COMPLEX WORLD Dynamic evolution is awash with recurring themes. When it comes to the human condition, the three most relevant are: Structure, the underlying patterns of growth, development, and change, Collaboration, as the central path of evolution in living systems. Mind (Intelligence), as a crucial part of life and particularly of human evolution. All three of these themes fuse in the tapestry of human evolution, but the themes of mind and collaboration give the human tapestry its greatest color. Thus, I believe the best way to show that energy connects to the human condition is to explain how energy principles play out in the evolution of intelligence. Let us call this, Integral Theory. The goal is to tie it to todays big change. The next three sections outline main patterns of structural evolution (growth and development). I then show how these patterns play out in the evolution of intelligence up to humankind. It also leads to an understanding of the evolution of human socio-economic systems including our own day. Let us begin this journey of a thousand miles, with the first simple step of selforganization. Pattern 1: Self-Organization The process of self-organization described in the Benard has three basic parts: Energy concentrations (build-ups or pools) create a pressure to move faster. Diversity triggers change by finding and then opening a new path for flow. Pent-up energy creates pressure, like a balloon ready to burst. The only way to

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change without an explosion is to find a conduit by which pent-up energy can flow. Natural diversity acts like a search pattern, stumbling upon and then opening a new path. Pent-up energy pours into that path, making the resulting flow structure swell from slight to huge. Continual pressure pushes the system through periodic crises and reorganizations, always moving in the direction of increasing intricacy (and greater complexity). Our own time makes a perfect example of this process. For instance, the societal sea change described earlier is being driven by pressure, pervasive pressure on many fronts. Millions of little pockets of reform are already bubbling up, struggling to coalesce into one larger, more coherent whole. If these bubbles do coalesce, civilization as a whole will start changing much faster and more coherently than before. It will do so because blocked energy will be surging through the new paths, driving momentum toward a new pattern. Using the lens of energy also helps us see that we are actually waiting for civilization to reorganize into a new pattern. Great turnings are actually huge reorganizations. If done well, we will enter a new stage of development, though probably not the final pattern of civilization. Pattern 2: The S-Curve Cycle of Development Viewed from a different angle, self-organization also reveals a standard life cycle of development, called the S-curve (see Figure 3). 1. Start-upNaturally occurring diversity seeds a new pattern of organization by tapping an energy buildup. In the beginning, however, the new organization is fragile. Until it gets some infrastructure and energy stores build up, it will have a hard time persisting through natural ups and downs. Growth/MaturityThe start-up grows by accelerating energy flow. Energy surging through its veins builds a storehouse of energy to sustain its motion. Energy flow also helps build the infrastructure (patterns of relationships) the system needs to stay sound. Eventually, the system reaches a point of optimum development: strong enough to persist through ups and downs, but small enough to still be flexible and sensitive to the energy pool it serves. Aging and The Fragility ZoneGrowth, however, can go too far. Inertia increases with size. Adaptive change becomes difficult as the momentum of the current pattern becomes a dominant force. Size also stretches the bonds that hold the system together, creating an invisible weakness. Indeed, the larger the system gets, the more fragile and prone to collapse it becomes (the fragility zone). Meanwhile, the environment is also changing, often because of the systems own behavior. The system is depleting the energy pool that gave it birth and now it must look for new pools to tap. This, in turn, implies a need for new ways, but inertia and momentum have now made the change difficult. Limit/Crisis: The system no longer responds well to new situations but the chang-

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ing environment is creating powerful new demands. The system has also now reached its limits and pressure for change is building. If the system doesnt reorganize by the time bonds reach their breaking point, the concept of crisis becomes literal. In human organizations, the crisis leads to three possibilities: (a) Increased intricacythe system reorganizes into a new pattern that answers the new demands while also restoring the strength of internal bonds. (b) Recedes to a safe nicheIf the system can find a less pressured environment, it can get by in its current pattern; (c) Regression or collapseIf the system fails to do (a) or (b), it must either shrink in size or it will collapse.

Figure 3. The S-Curve. If the horizontal axis is time and the vertical is speed of energy flow, then one can also think of a flow structure as following a standard cycle of development, as follows.

The S-curve helps us see some of the problems associated with moving to a new curve. The main problem is that the momentum of the current pattern tends to suppress diversity, often keeping the organization locked in place until its too late. The story of early hunting societies shows how easily this happens. The earliest human bands foraged for food. Eventually, however, some bands realized that, if they worked together, they could trap more food by hunting (phase #1 begins). These new hunting societies learned how to surround mammoths, drive deer off cliffs and make sharp sticks to help (phase #2 begins). As the hunting idea took root, humans began developing important behavioral patterns (individual and group skills) as well as supportive technologies, spear to bow. Naturally, the best hunters were chosen as leaders because they helped the group perform better as a whole. Over time these societies became extremely adept at hunting (phase #3 begins). As their prowess improved, however, times began to change. The game that had once been plentiful became scarcer. Then too, the days of plenty had caused the population to grow, so now there were more mouths to feed. Hunting bands had to roam farther and farther afield to find enough (phase #4 begins). The leaders of this time helped by doing what they

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did best, namely, finding better ways to hunt. Unfortunately, this only made matters worse. Soon there were no animals left. Children were starving. Every effort was made to improve hunting but these efforts only made the game situation worse. Some hunting societies in this situation collapsed (starvation caused disintegration), some shrank to a manageable size, and some were lucky enough to find a new valley that had more game. Eventually, however, some maverick decided to plant some seeds in order to grow her own food. At first, everyone knew she was crazy (after all there were lots of plants around), but eventually, when times were bad enough and enough people were disillusioned enough with hunting, a new pattern took root. It became the agricultural revolution. The S-curve helps us see that, although evolution is recursive, it is easy to get stuck in a pattern past its time. Energy theory also shows this well-known state of affairs in new light. Since, in this view, transformative change is mostly a matter of when (not if), the real question becomes whether such change will be smooth or catastrophic. This question is apropos for our own time. Pressure is building and stuckness is everywhere (think of education). The S-curve also helps us see life-cycles in terms of larger wholes. Though individual organizations may fail to germinate or regress with age, over time S-curves build up. Sometimes a new cycle is achieved by relatively minor retooling of the culture and infrastructure at hand. Periodically, however, a more massive change is required. In economics, this pattern of progression is seen in the succession from agriculture to industrialism to the information age. At first, most advances in agricultural societythe wheel, the plow, and so onmerely improved efficiency. Each of these striking innovations went through their own S-curve. Eventually, however, the invention of the steam engine and the assembly line shifted the economy profoundly. Agriculture didnt disappear, but the industrial worker became the new dominant form. Industrialism advanced in turn, until computers came into being. The advent of computer networks is now shifting employment again, this time from the industrial sector to the information age. Industrial and agricultural workers will still be there, but information workers are becoming a new dominant form sitting atop the old. These examples also show co-evolution among members of a region. Each organization fits into a larger energy ecology that both connects the many and profoundly shapes the growth of each. An economy, for instance, is like an energy field filled with organizations tapping various energy pools. Though these organizations often play different roles and exist at different stages, over time, the organizations within a region become coupled together such that they evolve together. In industry, for example, ideas flow from one organization and region to another. Some start-up projects turn into broad movements and some turn out to be flops. Because information about success and failure circulates, the entire field evolves as a whole, quietly searching, testing, and developing new ways. Pattern 3: The Complexity CatchWhy Intricate Fabric Is Important The S-curve points out another fact of life. Growth is not easy. The bigger you get, the more the bonds that hold the system together get stretched. Weak bonds

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create fragility. If stretched enough, they break and the system collapses. Thus, evolution holds a hidden rule, which I call the complexity catch. You cant keep growing in one big circle because huge circles eventually burst. Nature prefers small circles because these are tighter and faster. Thus, the trick to getting bigger is to stay small and well-linked. Nature handles the complexity catch by following a simple rule. If a system is to grow soundly, it must do so by keeping small pieces tightly bound in a fine-grained web of connective tissue. This is one reason we say organizations become more intricate as they grow. Intricacy is like a lace tablecloth. It involves lots of small, interlinked circles woven into a sturdy mesh that provides resilience and strength. Intricacy gives one a whole new appreciation of fine-grained social fabric. Any society that tries to get bigger without staying well-knit eventually falls apart (literally). Unfortunately, modern thinking has wreaked havoc on fine-grained fabric. The days of porch-swing soires and gossip at the local grocery have been replaced by the sleek anonymity of the shopping mall. Gone with these days are most of the daily connections that kept our society strong and caring. Running about in cars leaves little time or opportunity to build natural bonds. Grassroots civilization shrivels to dust in these conditions. The lack of direction our young people feel is largely a product of the resulting lack of community and of commitment to anything higher than oneself. Self-organization, the S-curve, and the need for intricacy are essential ingredients of growth and development and they are seen in all kinds of systems from living systems like embryos to human ones like societies. But, so far weve only described how energy creates physical organization. To make the connection to human beings more believable, let us now proceed to the next step. THE EVOLUTION OF INTELLIGENCE: FROM CELLS TO CIVILIZATION The emergence of mind also makes complete sense in an energy world, because what we call information is really a patterned trail of energy. That is, in the beginning, information came in the form of a few photons of light (seeing) or a few energized chemical molecules like those we perceive as smell. Realizing that information is energy also helps explain how the first forms of life (even without brains) might have started responding to information. One of the most important differences between living and non-living systems is that living systems must actively pursue the food (bulk energy) they need to survive. (Even plants pull nutrients up their roots.) Living systems also had to be able to respond to hints in the environment (energy as information) about where food might be located. Those that didnt, died. Therefore, the first cells had a crude kind of intelligence, because they took in patterned energy (information) and responded appropriately. They had to process information correctly to survive. Eventually, living organisms like ourselves became quite adept at processing information. Therefore, if one wants to trace the evolution of intelligence in energy terms, one should start, not with brains, but with the first living cells. Still, this only begs the question: how and why did evolution move from crude cellular minds to the wonder that is the human brain? Natural diversity and happenstance is clearly part of the

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story. Mind evolved because natural selection favored every chance improvement in intelligence. After all, intelligence improves survival, by definition. Another, more subtle process was also at work, the march of increasing complexity. As evolution proceeded, single cells began coalescing into multi-cellular organisms. Multi-cellular organisms are actually collections of cells that take on specialist tasks and then work together to create a more complex whole. The principle at work is: specialize and integrate. Herein lies a rub of great importance to the evolution of mind: a multi-cellular creature has to stay integrated in order to survive. How Nerves and Brains Evolved from the Pressure to Stay in Sync In a multi-cellular organism, like a caveman, cells (playing specialized roles) must communicate in order to stay in sync. If they dont stay in sync, the multi-cellular organism dies. For instance, if you are a caveman chasing a rabbit for dinner, your lung cells must know what your leg cells are doing because running requires energy which requires more oxygen for metabolism (this is why we breathe faster when we run). Cells coordinate their activities by exchanging chemical and electrical signals. Limbs, lungs, eyes, and so on. can only do their jobs if signals are timely and correct. Failure to communicate properly inside, leads to death just as fast as failure to perceive whats going on outside. Thus, if lungs dont get signals from legs, they wont breathe in more oxygen, which means metabolism cant speed up, which means the legs wont get enough energy to catch the rabbit. Our caveman starves. Thus, in an organism built of collaborating cells, growing apart is deadly. Yet, the complexity catch tells us that growth always leads to pulling apart. Consequently, the pressure to stay collaboratively connected has played a major role in increasing intelligence from nerves to brains to civilization. This bears some explaining. Since the first multi-cellular organisms didnt have many cells, communication was easy. Cells were either touching or in close proximity. Unfortunately, signals dissipate over distance. As bodies got bigger, internal cells began to lose touch with each other (literally). Members began to fall out of sync. Because breakdowns in communication are deadly, the evolutionary pressures grew. No doubt, many organisms died as collaboration began to fail. Others stopped growing and settled into a safe niche. Yet, eventually, through some quirk of diversity, some organisms developed a new way of staying cooperatively connected. A new type of specialist cell emerged whose job was to carry signals between distant groups. We call them nerves. Nerves allowed organisms to grow more sophisticated in mind as well as body. The quality of an organisms response to the outside world depends almost entirely on its coordination inside. Better internal communication not only improved coordination, it also opened the door to more complex behaviors and vast new realms of specialization. Living organisms with nerves became vastly more complex because new cellular specialties could develop and still stay in sync (see Figure 4). Still, evolution was not through. In simple forms of life, such as the giant sea slug today, a single nerve cell often serves a whole organism. But as life became more complex, the same pattern of growth and crisis played out again. As bodies grew bigger, collaboration began to fail. Pressure to stay connected grew. At first, nerve cells multiplied, forming multi-lane information highways as it

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Figure 4. Growth Crises: From Multi-cellular Clusters to Nerve Cells

were. Nerve highways brought signals from all over and spread information throughout. Where nerves overlapped, signals from many directions intermingled. At dense cross-roads, a new kind of cell began to emerge. We call this one a brain cell. Brain cells had a unique view. Positioned atop a cross-roads with information pouring in from all over, the information they got was rich and multi-dimensional. As a result, brain cells began to respond to extremely subtle patterns in complex streams of energy (information). The horizons this opened up were truly vast. Brain cells responding to rarefied patterns in massive amounts of information were actually beginning to respond to conglomerate pictures. Pictures helped organisms see complex contexts and make complex choices. The brains owner began to see how any bit of information fit in a larger whole. For example, an organism with a brain is able to see that food and a predator means something different than food alone. As brains learned to synthesize ever more complex pictures, the nuances of how bits fit got complex indeed. Sitting astride mixing centers also allowed brains to coordinate incredibly complex response patterns involving all parts of the body. Like a keystone on top, brains solidified lifes ability to perceive and act as a truly coordinated whole. Thus, brains are what brought life out of the ooze and allowed multi-cellular organisms to locomote with legs and fins. The irony of brains is that staying connected and in sync produced a whole new stage of evolution. Organisms with brains became great sorters of information who chose paths based on subtle patterns. Brains and other mixing centers (like ganglia) helped an increasingly vast collective act like a truly coordinated whole. Freed from knee-jerk responses, animals with brains began to explore the world and to learn lots of new lessons about how to survive. These lessons were not stored in genes, of course. They were stored in the brain of the beholder, in neural circuits etched by experience. Storing lessons in the brain allowed organisms to learn faster and to learn without having to die. Learning, adaptation, and survival all flourished with this wondrous new invention, the brain. Mind-like behaviors also began to take the forms we associate with minds todaychoices, contexts, significance, meaning. Still, the brain did not become the sole arbiter of intelligence nor the controller of everything underneath. This is a machine-age image. Instead, nature built new lev-

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els of intelligence while keeping the old. Local cells dont just send information to the brain and wait to be told what to do. Most bodily responses are handled locally and a lot of processing is done at various stages from bottom to top. Processing information at lower levels increases the speed and often the appropriateness of the response. It is also one of the reasons ones body can operate on auto-pilot while ones thoughts spin off into space. Thus, intelligence is actually distributed, fractally, down to lower levels. Each level has its own type of intelligence and its own functions. Each actively communicates with many other groups without waiting for the brain. The whole thing appears to work on a subsidiarity principle reminiscent of one used by the medieval Catholic Churchdecisions should be made at the lowest level possible. This kind of organization is crucial. Without it, life would be too slow and inept to survive. In an integral view, therefore, mind and body are both built on a fractal principle of groups working within groups working within groups. Everything is social and communication is crucial. New levels of intelligent action always arise from communication between smaller groups and those smaller groups are often built of individuals capable of independent lives (that is, a living cell). Since higher mind systems are made of organisms working together, neurophysiologist Walter Freeman calls them, societies of mind. A brain is a society of mind that is still integrated into a larger mind system called the body that is organized into smaller working groups, like lungs and liver. This does not fit the machine-age picture of how minds and bodies work but, biologically speaking, it is an accurate description. From Signals and Herds to Language and Civilization Increasing intelligence also did not stop with brains. Brains created a vast leap in animals ability to learn to live in a complex world. Unfortunately, lessons stored in brains were lost when the individual who owned the brain died. The next great evolutionary leap came with the ability to preserve lessons by passing them between individuals and across generations. The two big agents here were signaling and role modeling. As life progressed, animals began to congregate in families and herds because cooperation helped them survive. Signaling evolved because communication between animals in a herd has the same benefit as communication between cells in your body. Whether a honey-bee dancing directions to a cache of nectar or a deer signaling the approach of a predator, communication between members is an old and honored way for individuals to survive better by working together. Role modeling added an important second piece. When young animals observe and mimic the behaviors of older animals, they are actually learning appropriate responses gleaned from years of experience. The combination of signaling and modeling allowed learning accumulated from many members to be preserved over very long periods of time. The whole herd was now working on patterns of perceiving and acting. The herd was also learning faster and more thoroughly as many individuals contributed their unique piece. Perhaps you can guess the next step. In human societies the pattern blossomed into truly awesome forms. We communicate by speaking. We preserve lessons by writing. We collect information from billions of human beings over tremendous

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stretches of time and we process it using huge machines as well as billions of brains. This means global civilization is a vast society of minda planetary brain, if you will. Describing Integral Society Part I: Human Civilization as a Society of Mind We have just arrived at a important new view of human societies. What is most unique about human beings is that, as a collective, we gather, digest, and apply information to help us survive and prosper like no other species. This is our evolutionary strategy. We are not swift of feet, sharp of tooth or clever in niche finding. We pool information and we are very, very, good at discerning patterns. We then change our behavior (individually and collectively) as we change our beliefs. Worldviews, scientific theories, and cultural milieus are all a product of this process and they too evolve along similar lines. Our collective intelligence evolves along with these. In short, humankind bet its survival on behavioral flexibility and the pursuit of better pictures. In the process, we gained dominance of the earth. And, the single most overlooked truth is that now, as in the primordial beginning, creating better ways of knowing is a profoundly social event. This vision of human nature provides an important clue as to what integral society must be about. First, for example, it tells us that collaborative learning is central to our species. Learning communities, cooperative learning, and learning teams, are not just hot new techniques, they are basic tools for human betterment that certain reformers are trying to restore. Thus, we now see that part of todays challenge is to learn how to reweave collaborative learning webs, especially now that modern practices have ripped so many grassroots webs apart. Energy principles also help refine our understanding of integral requirements. The whole point of human learning is to keep on building better pictures, yet organizations often stay locked in old ways until they break. Energy theory suggests a partial remedy. An integral society must learn to nurture individualism and strange new ways because these form the diversity that evolution requires. The love of uniformity and conformity that permeates modern institutions daily smothers millions of prospects for improvement, not to mention hopeful young lives. On the other hand, integral society must also emphasize critical thinking. Not all new ways will turn out to be beneficial. It takes a lot of thinking and testing to discover what will work. There are many other insights to be gleaned, but at least a first pass summary is clear. Nature designed human beings to be a marvelous collaborative learning system, but somehow we are not living up to our potential. Modern society is no longer very good at collaborative learning. Because it is bad at learning, a host of reform movementssuch as cooperative learning, organizational learning, and community rebuildinghave sprung up to help. Still, this description of the human condition still lacks realism. Why dont we learn cooperatively very well? Why do we so often stay stuck? Understanding such questions requires a bit more detail on how human cultural evolution has actually played out. The next section will expand our understanding of integral society again, this time by placing the rise of the information age in a very different context. To

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set this context, however, I must first show how cultural evolution over the last several thousand years has been building toward the very large transformation we now face. The Crisis Of Hierarchy: How The Laws Of Growth Affect Us Today The story of cultural evolution will sound a lot like the evolution of intelligence because human societies have all the same characteristics seen in multi-cellular organisms trying to stay in sync. Human societies too are collaborations built of specialists who work together to build the common good. Societies too are subject to the laws of growth and development including the tendency to grow apart and the need to stay in sync as they get bigger. Consequently, human groups have also gone through a series of growth crises not unlike the ones that produced nerves and brains (see Figure 5). In this case, the punctuated progression has produced new social structures and new cultural and socio-economic systems, all of which evolved in tandem (see Table 2). The role of growth pressures are particularly evident in the emergence of the last great cultural innovationhierarchical civilization. As villages grew into cities, people grew apart. Consensus building became difficult and bonds became weak. Unable to respond quickly, agrarian villages made easy prey for marauding tribes envious of their wealth. One man deciding for all and using an efficient system of enforcement allowed societies to mobilize rapidly. Thus, a king with a bureaucracy serves the same role in a large society that a brain with a nervous system does in a large animal. Both schemes allow a complex collective to act as a fast-moving, highly coordinated whole. The catch is that this new level of organization (hierarchy) was achieved by subjugation. Today it still carries many of the same tyrannical tones. Conquering chiefs made themselves kings. They created classes and bureaucracies to manage the people they enslaved. The emergence of this system also followed a pattern of pressure and response reminiscent of the Benard cell. The early agrarians were peaceful and might have remained so if they had ceased to multiply. Unfortunately, when desirable land fills up, quarrels begin to take a different form. Since it is no longer easy to flee, land becomes an issue. The object of early conflicts changed from revenge and prestige to land (controlling space). The frequency and importance of war began to increase. Both hierarchies (coercive ones) and the custom of empire-building arose from wars over space. Thus, at first, crowded tribes tried to annihilate their opponents. This eliminated the threat from the nearby enemies and opened new land for occupation. Eventually, however, some chief concocted the idea of subjugation. A defeated village was allowed to remain on its land, but its people were forced to become servants of the victor. The resulting social organizations were more powerful because they were larger and more highly coordinated. Individuals who were successful in war were assigned the task of administering the new areas. They mobilized work groups from the now plentiful slaves and used them to build roads, irrigation works, and fortresses. They collected tribute (later called taxes), which allowed them to concentrate community wealth and applied it in focused ways. Since administrative classes live off these collected funds, they constantly pressured the lower classes

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Figure 5. Growth Stages: From Loose Band to Hierarchical Civilization (see also Table 2). The pattern of growing apart and then finding new ways to stay coherent and in sync has also played a major role in the evolution of human social systems. Since human social systems are a type of society of mind, the kind of culture also evolves in step. Economic patterns, belief systems, and religious systems all evolve in conjunction with the main organizing social structure.

to produce more. Consequently, from that time to our own day, people at the top of a coercive hierarchy often accumulate gluttonous wealth, whereas those who do the actual work are unable to feed their children. All of this should seem familiar because the effects are still with us (see Table 2). War and empire-building are still major forces, if only metaphorically as in business today. Oppression is no longer blatant, but most hierarchies are still based on coercive relationships of one sort or another. Administrators still pressure workers to produce more and they still take a disproportionate share of the result. Many people still pursue wealth for social status and women and other oppressed groups still earn much less for performing the same job while often being locked out of positions of power. The list goes on and on. Table 2 Stages of Human Social Evolution (Dominant Economic and Organizational Form)
~1.5 million BC100,000 BC Foraging BandsHominid groups began as loose bands of individuals who foraged to survive. Few in number, these early groups would have developed shared meanings easily, in the course of constant contact (even though they did not yet have speech per se). ~75,000 BC20,000 BC Organized Hunting BandsFrom Neanderthal through Cro-Magnon, speech, cooperative behaviors, and tools all began evolving rapidly. Human groups developed more complicated interactions, the most notable being the organized hunting band. Like wolf packs, human beings began to work together to capture their prey. Unlike wolves, humans made increasingly elaborate plans such as herding animals over cliffs or into traps. ~18,000 BC4,000 BC Agrarian VillagesBy 18,000 BC, human groups in Old Europe, the Indus

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valley, and the near east began to settle down in one spot and grow their own food. This agricultural revolution produced the first villages and the first domesticated animals. Staying in one place also allowed craftspottery, weaving, metallurgy, and so onto emerge along with such new technologies as boats and the wheel. New social specialties from policeman to priest emerged along with social management handled by councils. Cultural historian Riane Eisler (1988) describes these as partnership societies. She lists their main characteristics as: Social relationships were cooperative. There was a solid sense of being in the world together. Roles differed but they were definitely more egalitarian than exploitative. Since everyone worked, the fruits of the Earth were seen as belonging to all. Land and major means of production were held in common. Social power was viewed as a responsibility, a trusteeship used for the benefit of all. People worshipped the life force at work in the world.

~3,000 BC2000 AD War-centered Hierarchical CivilizationSomewhere around 4000 BC partnership culture was subsumed by the hierarchical system we use today. Early city-states like Sumer, which had once operated on partnership principles, became increasingly devoted to war as a means of empire-building. The entire structure of society changed in suit. Historian Christopher Brinton (1964) describes the result as follows: Each of the great valley states was ruled by a despot: a king who was also a priest, if not actually considered a God. He ruled through a privileged class of nobles and priests, who commanded a professional army. His subjects had no appeal from his decisions. They obeyed orders and turned over much of their crops as taxes to support the bureaucracy. Bureaucrats included such experts as engineers, clerks who kept tax records, lawyers to argue disputes, and judges to settle them. . . . After these very great innovations of urban civilization, these societies apparently changed very slowly. (p. 8) Eisler calls this dominator culture. She lists its main characteristics as: A hierarchical social structure dominated by strong-man elites. A central focus on war and militarism. Private ownership of land and means of production; Accumulation of wealth for status. Coercive social power including slavery, human sacrifice, and the reduction of women and children to the property of men. The worship of violent, vengeful Gods, usually through a bureaucratic priesthood directed by an autocratic head, often the king himself.

So, the last major transformation, the birth of war-centered hierarchies, colors civilization to this day. However, realizing that this system is but a stage of evolution helps clarify why we might be due for a change. The level of complexity of the modern world is now too much for this ancient command-and-control structure. Our times are too fast to wait for information to wend its way up and down a chain of command. Bonds break; the top becomes disconnected from the bottom; and absurdity is common. It is also no longer reasonable to expect a few people at the top to have all the answers. There is too much to know and people at the top are often too far away to understand, but subsidiarity principles are rarely used in coercive hierarchies. Todays technological power has also made the risks of dominator habits too great. Whether it is the ravages of pollution, the horrors of modern warfare or the callousness of economic imperialists (using no holds barred economic theory),

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dominator pursuits now constitute a major threat to global civilization and the world ecosystem as a whole. All these facts suggest that coercive hierarchies have reached their limit and pressure is building for a major new form of human culture and structure. Even the briefest of examinations suggest that the next civilization must develop a social system that is: More networked than hierarchical. More collaborative than coercive (with metaphors of sustainability and synergy, replacing those of war and exploitation). More flexible and creative than rigid and controlled. Some of the needed infrastructure is already in place. Computer networks, of course, allow grassroots citizenry across the globe to connect and self-organize like no other time in history. There is also a less visible, but equally important trend. Information-age economics is creating huge pressures for a new kind of worker and with it a new kind of citizen. Integral Society: Creative Collaborations in a High Value World We tend to think of the information age as merely requiring more computer-literate citizens, but a much more dramatic evolution is also at work. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (1991) points out that the information age is part of an economic switch from what he calls high-volume to high-value capitalism. The industrial age was all about mass production (high-volume) of uniform goods. Massproduction, however, drove wages so low that workers often couldnt feed their children. Now, thanks to computers, the best way to make money is through customization (high-value). Whether the industry is old or high-tech, service or manufacturing, the pattern is the same. The highest profits in software come from customizing services to particular businesses and individuals. The fastest-growing truck, rail, and air freight businesses meet specialized needs for pickups and deliveries worldwide. The most profitable part of steel-making is no longer in long runs of steel ingots, but in particular alloys with particular properties that serve particular needs. In short, the industries that are thriving in todays fast-paced world are shifting from mass-production to serving unique needs. It is the computers ability to handle vast amounts of information that makes all this possible. For our purposes, the first important fact about high-value capitalism is that it requires a completely different kind of worker. Old-time factory workers were urged even forcedto be blindly obedient. Customization, on the other hand, requires creativity, people who can rapidly envision and build new things. It also requires fast, flexible collaborations because breakthroughs most often come when disparate insights are combined in new ways. Workers must also be able to think critically and act responsibly (with a great deal of autonomy) while keeping the greatest good in mind. Creative collaborative organizations are no place for people who need control or those who have a puffed up sense of importance. Therefore, for us, the real significance of high-value capitalism is that it creates

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tremendous pressure for a fundamentally new kind of culture. One can already see the birth pains of this new, more collaborative, creative, integral culture in the battles over education. Education for an Integral Age In 19th century industrial days, companies needed factory workers whose chief characteristics were the ability to read and follow directions. Traditional education did well by this need. It stuffed important facts into young brains, taught discipline, conformity, and the ability to work alone on isolated tasks. It also encouraged the competitiveness that was thought to make all things good. High-value capitalism reverses all these needs. Teamwork is essential. So is critical thinking, the ability to go beyond the box and the ability to make connections across fields. Commitment to one another is often the saving virtue of a team and the saving virtue of a high-value leader is the knack of helping others be successful. Traditional education tends to obliterate all of these characteristics. Today, therefore, the irresistible needs of the high-value world are meeting the immovable object of modern education with an audible crash. By the 1990s the sense of crisis in the schools deepened. Children tended to live through their schooling like living through a long-distance run. Many children turned off or dropped out and others turned to drugs, violence, and sex. Those who did survive often emerged as conforming, indoctrinated, directionless and largely ignorant about the world they were now supposed to enter. Not understanding the nature of the emerging world, however, many reformers called for a stronger version of the old. More tests! More uniform curriculum! More discipline! More competition! As Reich says, The fact that standardized tests only reflect a students ability to regurgitate factsas opposed to think or collaborateremained an unmentioned topic. The fact that factory schools also make learning fragmented, meaningless, and odious also remained unmentioned. The yuppies who already dominate high-value jobs, however, dont want any of this for their children. They pour their money and children into elite private schools and advance track programs where young minds are trained to be skeptical, curious, creative, and collaborative. Here the curriculum is integrated, interactive, and communal. Instead of regurgitating pre-packaged bits of history and math, the focus is on learning to think and connect. Students learn to examine reality from many angles and to ask why some facts have been emphasized and how current interpretations might be contradicted. Projects often take them into the real world to start discovering their communities on a more realistic basis. The best classrooms also make learning a group project. Students learn to listen to others, to seek help, and to give credit. They learn to articulate the patterns they see and to clarify and restate for one another. The result is better learning, in more dimensions, for everyone. The system that emerges from such schooling reflects a return to the concept of a partnership, now in a more complex form. Human systems are most creative and intelligent when they are collaborative, inclusive, and egalitarian. The agrarian age taught us this, but the time of simple pastoral integration is gone. Partnership is crucial to the creativity of a high-value world, yet we must learn to make it net-

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worked so it can move beyond the small tight circles that our ancestors knew. These thoughts lead us to a more precise image of what integral society must be like, as well as some of the educational reforms needed to produce it. The first challenge for educators is to help restore the critical, creative, collaborative skills that our children and society need. Facts are secondary because information now changes so fast. Childrens greatest need is to learn how to learn together. This is the only way to build a committed, collaborative future and to overcome our dominator past. The second challenge for educators and citizenry at large is to restore the community intricacy, now in more broadly networked ways. We cannot learn as a society if our local webs are not well-knit. Finally, all of us must see ourselves in the business of serving the greater good at all levels, immediate to global. The only selfinterest that serves in a partnership world is that which also serves the greater good. Adam Smith, the 18th century economist who promoted the idea of self-interest, called this self-interest rightly understood. SUMMARY: ON THE EDGE OF INTEGRAL SOCIETY This ends my story. The summary is simple. We are on the edge of a very large change, in both science and society. Many people in many fields are already making important contributions toward this change. The need at this point is to find coherence and a logic that helps point all these contributions toward the goal we all seek. Science is about to provide exactly such a framework. Its basic suggestion is this: learn how nature evolves on the broad scale; it will help you understand where you are, how you connect, and what you need to do. The space here is too short to outline the many connections that can be made, but at least youve seen that it is possible to get from the principles of energy to the latest cycles of civilization while still following a coherent common pattern. Perhaps too, you can see as well that the frameworks main contribution is the ability to show existing events and efforts in a radically new light, one that is both unifying and fruitful. Finally, though it may not be obvious, this framework also addresses the three needs for change: 1) an understanding of why things seem to be going badly, 2) where our civilization should be headed, and 3) a short list of steps that move in that direction. Specifically: Why? We now know that, while human civilization is a society of mind, it has been mired in dominator culture (war-based, coercive hierarchies) for a very long time. Dominator cultures emphasis on control and coercion make it terrible at learning and todays technology makes its exploitative habits profoundly unsafe. Materialism, inequity, callousness, and rationalization? Although we tend to focus on the sins of the industrial age, most of what is going badly today has its roots in the original dominator pattern. Where? Our civilization should be headed toward integral society, of course. We now have a better sense of what that means. Integral society must be creative, collaborative, and well-knit. It must be a partnership society, one with many more interlocking networks. It must distribute control and intelligence

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to a much greater degree and it must remember that it has to learn. Above all, everyones main concern must be for the good of the whole at ever higher circles, from family to planet. What? I have said only a little about what needs to be done. The short discussion on education was meant to indicate the general directionteach collaborative skills, nurture diversity, remain open, try to rebuild community. Beyond this, my main recommendation is to learn more about the framework. Dynamic evolution doesnt provide all the answers, but it helps one develop ones own solutions, often by showing well-known problems in an entirely different light. NOTE
1. Before this switch to machine images, medieval people used the metaphor of Gods Design.

REFERENCES
Brinton, C. (1964). Civilization in the West. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. Chaisson, E. (1987). The life era. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Eisler, R. (1988). The chalice and the blade. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Goerner, S. (1999). After the clockwork universe: The emerging science and culture of integral society. Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Publishers. Laszlo, E. (1996). Evolution: The general theory. Cresskill Heights, NJ: Hampton Press. Lotka, S. J. (1956). Elements of mathematical biology. New York: Dover Publications. Prigogine, I., & Stengers, E. (1984). Order out of chaos. New York: Bantam Books. Ray, P. (1996). The rise of integral culture. Noetic Sciences Review. Vol. 37, pp. 415, Spring 1996, Sausalito, CA: The Institute of Noetic Sciences. Ray, P. (1998). What Might be the Next Stage in Cultural Evolution. In D. Loye (Ed.), The Evolutionary Outrider: Essays Honoring Ervin Laszlo. Westport, CT: Praeger. Reich, R. (1991). The work of nations. New York: Vintage Books. Spencer, H. (1862). First principles. London: Williams and Norgate.