Driver Default, Jung, Wilber, NWIM (Neo-Wilberian Integral Matrix)

    While running today (don't worry, it was in the early stages of the run, and not the result an overload of endorphins!), I had some breakthrough ideas. I saw the potential role of what I would call internal drivers in persons, and how that might interact with Wilber's 4 main perspectives. Most, or all, of us have natural predispositions which tend to dictate the kind of "gifts" we have. These natural predispositions act as "default drivers", and can be, up to a point, over-ridden by new, learned, "drivers", but generally are used to help actualize our human potentials. 

At first, I thought that such default drivers would line up with the 4 main perspectives that Wilber notes from his historical review and analysis of all the recorded thoughts of mankind. But it soon occured to me that there might be a difference between a driver and a perspective, even though the two would significantly interact. When I looked at the default drivers that I imagined people to have (do-ers, dreamers, relaters, and thinkers) and tried to imagine how they would match with Wilber's proposed perspectives, I saw that each driver would give a different twist to each perspective.

  For example, a do-er in the upper left, "I", quadrant would see an active, almost business-like God within who is guiding us and shaping the world in that image. A do-er in the upper right, "it", quadrant, might even be adverse to basic science, and opt instead for only practical research which helps solve immediate problems or overcomes immediate obsticals. The do-er has no time for far-fetch long range possibilites which may or may not be provable. The do-er says "show me the money"! And the do-er offers a valuable gift of efficiency, task-orientation, and project initiation (start-up, "just do it"). 

  In fact, Integral Life thinkers do acknowledge the role of types, along with the role of stages/levels, lines, and the role of transitory "states", but the overall emphasis (the most "weight") seems to be on the perspectives and the knowledge domains they represent - the "four corners of the known universe"-  rather than on personality pre-dispositions as shapers of the manifest world.

  A knowledge perspective can, and often does, alter a person's default driver, but just as often, or even moreso, it works the other way around. The natural predisposition (whether it is caused by neurochemical settings such as seritonin levels, or dopamine levels, or caused by brain structure characteristics), often drives the perspective, rather than the perspective driving the driver. World view is often the result, rather than the effect, of a given innate biological pre-disposition (default driver). These pre-dispositions promote/facilitate certain apptitudes, or "gifts". The gifts, in turn, orient the individual to see the world a certain way. 

  When more weight is given to the default drivers, the map of how the world is "shaped", comes out a bit different than it is when the weight is given to the major knowledge perspectives. To the best of my thinking on this matter at this early stage of developing a neo-Wilberian map (which gives more weight to the "factors" called default drivers), the map would be more in line with Jung's "Psychological Types", than it would be with Wilber's 4 main perspectives.

  When I shot from the hips and guessed what major personality types were at play in shaping the world, I came up with the above-mentioned catagories of dreamers, relaters, do-ers, and thinkers. These guesses seemed to fit Jung's earlier "psychological types" awfully well. Carl Jung's 4 types were Intuiters, Feelers, Sensers, and Thinkers. Each of these types had "introverted" or "extroverted" forms. An introverted thinker was different than an extroverted thinker, etc. Introversion and extroversion interacted with the 4 psychological types.

  But that introversion/extroversion interaction effect is a matter for another occassion of thought. My thoughts had begun at the level of "gifts", and about how those gifts might contribute toward the shape of the world and toward the dynamics of social cooperation (or lack thereof). My interest was in how to get the gifts working together, instead of factioning or polarizing. During this morning's run, I was able to "see" the possible default drivers (which happened to match up with Jung's Psychological Types) behind those gifts.  It was as though I had mentally traced downward, or deeper. 

   Then I asked myself, "Why had Ken Wilber's thought settled in the direction of perspectives, rather than drivers?" The answer I came up with was this: Ken is a thinker. When he reviewed the "known universe" as recorded in a wide array of written works, and he noted patterns, and made a map, he was looking at the content of other thinkers. Thinkers write (at least so far as "knowledge" is concerned) way more than do do-ers, or other types/drivers. Ken's sample may have been biased toward other thinkers like himself.

  This is not to say that Ken Wilber lacks the other drivers, such as intuition (he seems to have quite a bit of that dreaming sense), and feeling (he seems to genuinely care about contributing to a healthier world), but that his default driver - the one which he uses most - is thinking. When looking at "the known universe", he was looking at the works of thinkers who had devoted themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, and who contributed heavily to the "body of knowledge" which Wilber was studying (at the time of his major insight about an integral map) - thinkers who looked at life from the "I" perspective, from the "it" perspective, from the "we" perspective, and from the "its" perspective - but thinkers (predominately), nonetheless. He may have had that particular sample bias. 

  What if his studies had been conducted by interviewing various factory workers (supposedly a higher frequency of my "do-ers", or Jung's "sensers")? Would it look like the four main perspectives shaped the world? Or would other factors or things seemed more explanatory as regards why civilization - the "world"- is the way it is?  

  I propose that we make a neo-Wilberian map that gives more weight to the gifts and to the default drivers behind/beneath those gifts. We could call this the "Neo-Wilberian Integral Map", or NWIM. Perhaps the map might help us better orchestrate the human resources of gifts and default drivers. Perhaps such a map might be more practical, or functional, than a map emphasizing that which is "seen" (perspectives). NWIM would be a map of that which is "done", or about tendencies of enactment - about actions that are predisposed according to natural gifts or default drivers. 

   An emphasis on gifts and default drivers might also help us begin to see why do-ers often tend to cling to political conservativism, and why relaters and dreamers tend to grab onto political liberalism. Perhaps we will see that much of the political/social polarization is from a lack of differentiation of human gifts (and drivers), and our failure to provide an adequate niche menu for those gifts.

  Instead, in our current system, the gifts tend to go left or right, and end up seeing an "us vs. them" view which fails to integrate the various drivers and gifts. Human resourses remain largely untapped, because we have not adequately assessed the default drivers and gifts, and we have not conceptualized the inter-gift dynamics, nor have we made integrated systems according to those dynamics. We have not learned how to optimally orchestrate the gifts and drivers. Can we make a better map? 

                            Darrell