The "I"," We" and "It" of Life

I've made to many uninformed decisions in my life. The tough thing about life is that you can only make decisions based on the information in your awareness. So, I've made decisions based on less than the all of the information available. Sometimes things workout, and sometimes they don't. Either way I learn, grow, change, evolve. . . But at the time that I made the less than informed decision, it was based on my understanding of what was true.

Just about every language on our earth has a form of the pronouns I, We and It. Those pronouns represent the different ways we look at life, and more importantly, truth. Let me roll through an example to make it clear (at least as clear as my limited intellect is capable).

If I want to describe myself I can do so from a variety of perspectives. Science/Modernity would view me as an "it". I can be reduced to a bag of skin hanging around muscles and bone. I could be reduced to a cellular level. A scientists could pop the brain out of my head and say "See, this is Roger." But it would only be partially true. I am more than the sum of my physical parts, although my physical parts are certainly necessary.

I can also describe myself from a 2nd-Person perspective; the "we". Postmodernity has pointed out that we are inexorably connected and influenced by our culture and language, and our perception of truth is as well. We are limited by our language and our culture in ways that are difficult to grasp if we are not aware of them. Needless to say I am more than my culture and language, though they are needed to fully describe who I am.

Last, I am a 1st-person, "I". This is the realm of phenemonology and religion. This is how I experience life. I could describe to you how I feel, what I think, what I see, how something tastes. But, these experiences are not all there is to me. The pre-modern, pre-rational religions dug deep into the "I" (especially Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but there are some interesting Christian Mystics who were on the same path).

These different understandings of truth unfolded in history in a sequential pattern. The various spiritual traditions were born out of a pre-modern, pre-rational worldview. They had almost no knowledge of science and culture, but they were masters at phenomenology and left lots of information for us to assimilate. They attempted to build an understanding of the universe based on their inner, 1st-person experiences.

The pre-modern, pre-rational world gave way to the Modern/Rational. The Enlightenment gave us scientific methods and for all the great advances in science, medicine and technology it raped the world of religion and phenomenology because it could not be measured or quantified. From it's perspective 3rd-person perspective of truth, spirituality and religion was B.S.

In the last few decades postmodernity has shown that the truth claims of both premodernity and postmodernity were outright influenced by the language and culture of the person. All of truth was reduced to culture and therefore there could be no one, universal truth.

Integral Theory says that all of these truth claims have a place at the table. Each discipline or science is merely looking at reality from a different perspective. Religion/Phenomenology looks at the 1st-person/"I". Hermenuetics looks at the 2nd-person/"we". Science looks at the 3rd-person/"it".

In conclusion, (mainly because I'm tired of typing) these three perspectives of truth must be considered together for us to get an accurate view of reality. It has really helped me to put the "truths" that each of these worldviews and their corresponding disciplines give in an appropriate place. The mystic religious traditions have their place along side modern science. The radical pluralism of postmodernity makes me aware of my cultural influences that help me form the ideas of what is "true". Perhaps, if I take into account all three of these perspectives, I will have a more accurate view of reality.

Now the really interesting stuff comes when you lay all of these truth claims out and attempt to harmonize them. Patterns emerge. Stages and states in each one of the quadrants unfold, and it appears that humans, along with the universe and our earth, are evolving.