Dr. Ichak Adizes asks if we are falling apart faster? He charts the dissonance that exists in our individual physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual sub-systems.

Adizes Logo

Dr. Adizes observes that our physical maturity is way ahead of our emotional and spiritual maturity. And while we can learn all the way into old age, that choice is not often enough exercised. This leaves the human being looking like it is in a very misaligned condition (dis-integrated even) at the moment. And because the individual is so unintegrated across these sub-systems, it impacts all the scales of human systems – our families, our organizations and our communities. Perhaps it is also the root of why we feel our cities are so turbulent and misaligned?

We asked recently in the Integral City 2.0 Online Conference: How can we wake up? grow up? and take responsibility? Several of our visionary teachers (Buzz Holling and Elisabet Sahtouris) told us that living systems go through a resilience cycle where the alignment stage is followed by breakdown and re-distribution of resources, before integrating into a new resourceful stage.  So, it may be that the dissonances, noticed by Dr. Adizes are actually signs of the next stage of resilience.  Perhaps in order to wake up our whole system (both individually and collectively), must pass through two very messy misaligned stages before a new alignment of all our systems can emerge? Perhaps the fact that our sub-systems are  not maturing at the same rate as one another is a perfectly natural phenomenon?

Just as a foetus in the womb grows its sub-systems at different rates and different stages – and indeed the same pattern repeats itself as the human matures into adulthood. When we look at the scale of the human species (and not just the individual or family) when we find ourselves on the cusp of being in a new relationship with the world , this kind of developmental dissonance is our natural next step of evoluton?

With all our emphasis on the importance of the physical, maybe it is natural that it should be the first system that “jumps the maturation queue”? Now it is the season to start waking up the emotional, mental and spiritual systems too.

Maybe December 21, 2012 is the signal for us to birth a more integrated system?