Integral Worldview
- Rick Bonetti
- Dec 5, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 5
Charles Taylor argued in his seminal work, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989), that our contemporary cultural landscape is characterized by a profound tension between modern and postmodern worldviews.
In 2016, Nicholas Hedlund and Annick de Witt published research on how four major worldviews (traditional, modern, post-modern, and integral) in the Netherlands and the USA relate to climate change. They found that in both countries, people with postmodern and integrative worldviews displayed significantly more concern about climate change as well as more sustainable behaviors, compared with moderns and traditionals.
Hedlund and de Witt define worldview as “the inescapable, overarching systems of meaning and meaning-making that inform how humans interpret, enact, and co-create reality." They are the fundamental ‘lenses’ through which humans see and filter reality. A worldview is "the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view."
Worldviews interface with people’s perceptions of global issues like climate change in ways that are profound, persistent, and frequently overlooked. Worldviews not only tend to shape how individuals perceive particular issues and their potential solutions, but they also tend to influence their willingness to partake in, or politically support, such solutions.
Since worldviews are a fundamental part of individuals’ identities, people may react defensively, or even with hostility, when their underlying assumptions and beliefs about reality are called into question—reacting as if they themselves were threatened (Brown et al., 2008).
Worldview Journeys identifies four major worldviews and has a 17-question online test to see where you score; this classification is similar to those described by Steve McIntosh in his various writings on Developmental Philophy:
Traditional worldview - Religious/metaphysical monism. Reality as singular, transcendent. The universe is a purposively constructed whole. God created the universe ex nihilo. The transcendent God is separate from the profane world; dualism. Nature as embodiment of meaningful, imposed order (e.g., God’s creation). Naïve realism; emphasis on concrete-literal interpretations of religious doctrine (literalism, dogmatic metaphysics, ontotheology). Religious authority (scripture, divine revelation, tradition).
Modern worldview - An Enlightenment-inspired, instrumental, disengaged, objectified understanding of reality. Secular materialism. Reality as singular, immanent. Mechanistic universe brought about by random mutation and selection.
Material reality devoid of meaning, intentionality, consciousness; dualism, disenchantment. Nature as instrumental, devoid of intrinsic meaning and purpose. Resource for exploitation. (Post-)positivism; reality as objectively knowable (empiricism, reductionism, scientism). Secular authority (science, the state).
Postmodern worldview - a Post-Romantic, expressive cultural current that sees nature as an inner source. Post-materialism. Reality is pluralistic, perspectival, and constructed. Cosmogony as a cultural construct. Reality is discontinuous and fragmented; anti-essentialism. Nature is constructed through a plurality of cultural values, meanings, and interests. Social constructivism; reality as constructed, perspectival (pluralism, relativism). Internalization of authority (e.g. moral, emotional, intuitive, artistic knowing)
Integral worldview - a somewhat hypothetical, emergent, post-postmodern structure characterized by its self-reflexive attempt to bring together and synthesize many of the enduring elements of the earlier worldviews. Typically, older worldviews are dualistic and mutually exclusive, such as spirituality vs. science/rationality; imagination vs. logic; heart vs. mind; humanity vs. nature - perspectives that in the West have been in conflict for centuries. Reality as singular and pluralistic (unity-in-diversity), transcendent and immanent. In the integral worldview, the universe is seen as an evolving and creative manifestation of the pervasive Source/Spirit. Exterior and interior reality are co-arising and interdependent. Reenchantment with nature is constructed and intrinsically real, meaningful, and valuable; Humanity is frequently seen as a part and expression of a divine Source.
In an integral worldview, opposing perspectives are frequently understood to be part of a greater whole or synthesis—on a “deeper level”—resulting in “both-and” rather than “either-or” thinking.
Such a holistic or integral perspective may lead to a profound sense of connection with nature, and other living creatures - an understanding of earthly life itself as imbued with a larger consciousness or “Spirit.” Universal, existential concerns—such as life and death, self-actualization, global awareness, and serving society, humanity, or even “life” at large—are often of central importance.
The November 2024 Presidential election might be seen as a regression to values of a less evolved traditional worldview, but research reminds us that about 50% of U.S. residents and 70% of people worldwide still have a traditional worldview. Thus, those of us with a post-postmodern, integral perspective must realize that cultural values and worldviews change slowly, sometimes over generations.
In 2000, sociologist Paul H Ray and his psychologist wife Sherry Ruth Anderson wrote about The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. In 2002, Ray wrote the New Political Compass: The New Progressives are In-Front, Deep Green, Against Big Business and Globalization, and Beyond Left vs. Right.
"Ray gave the term "Integral Culture" to the growing subculture. He also refers to this as transmodernism, which he refers to as the "Cultural Creatives". They are concerned with ecological sustainability and, in the case of a core group, commit to personal and spiritual development. These are individuals who can meld the best of traditionalism and modernism to create a new synthesis, having a cognitive style based on synthesizing varied information from many sources into a big picture."
An integral worldview is not the last stage, but I believe it is the next step. We should not lose sight of the progress in cultural evolution that has already occurred and continues to unfold at a rapidly accelerated pace, as the noosphere emerges. We might not have much luck persuading traditionalists or even modernists to adopt an integral worldview, but post-moderns are more likely to morph. I believe the key is to celebrate those positive values which we share in all earlier worldviews, while at the same time overcoming their pathologies.
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