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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

4Q/8L’

Islamification: Europe’s Challenge #2

PART 2 Preparing for change British Home Secretary Theresa May was vilified by much of the media for her 6 October speech at the Conservative Party conference for saying (amongst other things):  “… when immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society.” (The Guardian’s Alan Travis called it a “new low in politics of migration”.) However, May was merely echoing the Functionalist argument of Talcott Parsons (1966) that sudden large-scale change disrupts the equilibrium of society and leads to dysfunction. Parsons postulates that social change is necessary for a society to renew and refresh itself but at a gradual pace which the institutions of society can adjust to and cope with. The disruption of equilibrium brought on by significant sudden large-scale change can bring about conflict. Over the past half-century Western Europe has been flooded with migrants. Their cultures were initially marginalised and disregarded – and then, through Multiculturalism, given nominal equal status with the host majority and a degree of positive discrimination to help foster that equality. A half-century is a relatively short amount of time to assimilate such large-scale changes. In retrospect, it’s surprising that there hasn’t been more overt conflict… Read More

Social Change

Updated: 25 August 2020   Social change means some aspect of society, culture or sub-culture changes. The changes may be overt and dramatic and obvious to everyone or they may be more discreet and less obvious…until people come to a realisation society around them has already changed. An example of this is the attitude of the general public in the UK towards welfare and benefits. As Elizabeth Clery shows in the results of the 2012 British Social Attitudes survey (BSA)– see graphic left – there has been an increased perception that people on welfare are over-reliant on their benefits and that cutting benefits won’t harm too many people too badly. The following 2 years’ surveys  showed only the most marginal reversal (3%) of this trend (Sarah Alcock, 2015) and the election in 2015  of a Tory government determined to cut even more could be seen as voter approval of these strategies. This was actually a major attitudinal shift in a country that, for many years, had largely prided itself on a generous attitude to welfare. Yet these more subtle changes in public perception often only become news when surveys like the British Social Attitudes annual survey pick them up. How complex… Read More

The Parks Primary School

The Meshing of Two Primary Schools written with Cathy Byrne Updated: 11 September 2004 The Parks is one of the most complete project reports on the use of the Gravesian approach anywhere in the world and many people have suggested that I must have been much more involved than the report suggests. Well, I wasn’t! This is Cathy Byrne’s story, not mine.  My RED would love to report that Cathy was on the phone to me every night asking how to do *this* and how to handle such-and-such a person. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like that. My influence, as Cathy has acknowledged widely, came through the training programme and then as an occasional adviser in the background. I like to think of the remarkable story of The Parks as being a first class example of just how much you can accomplish when you really grasp these concepts at an intuitive level. Most afternoons Cathy Byrne, Headteacher of The Parks Primary School on Hull’s Orchard Park Estate, sees her pupils off the premises with something of the pastorly air of a vicar bidding farewell to the congregation as they exit a church service. However, most mornings Cathy is also in the playground, welcoming… Read More

Aligning Neurological Levels – a Reassessment

Some Thoughts on Moving Towards an Integral NLP by Peter McNab 1999 The founder and leading light of excellence for all Ltd and one of the world’s foremost trainers in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Peter McNab has been looking at how models, theories and techniques can be integrated for a number of years. He has increasingly proposed and promoted the concept of ‘Integral NLP’. This article on Neurological Levels was written originally for the Association for Neuro-Linguistic Programming (ANLP) magazine, Rapport (issue no 43), in 1999. A year before Don Beck & Ken Wilber revealed 4Q/8L to the world, Peter was using Wilber’s 4 Quadrants very potently to provide greater insight into Robert Dilts’ model. The article is republished here with Peter’s full involvement. E-mail Peter or visit www.excellenceforall.co.uk to learn more about his work. I cannot remember the last issue of Rapport that did not contain an article or 2 mentioning Robert Dilts’ ‘Neurological Levels or ‘Logical Levels’. The concept has been taken up within the NLP world with such zeal that it sometimes feels like heresy to challenge it. But that is what I would like to do in this short article. I can still remember the first time that I… Read More

Society FAQs

Click the question to go to its answer… 1. How is the MeshWORK approach superior? 1. How is the MeshWORK approach superior? Updated: 17/05/2015 Most partnerships (in whatever sector) are built on aligning the ‘partners’ around power plays, answering questions such as:- Who’s got the power  Who wants to do what? Who will back me/us doing what I/we want to do and what will I/we give in return? These kinds of partnerships are usually characterised by sub-alliances, back-biting and horse-trading. Partnerships built on genuine consensus are usually considerably more sophisticated but can be slow in the extreme to build. They are then often characterised by some form of consensual dogma to which all the ‘partners’ are locked in, whether the dogma is effective or not. What distinguishes the MeshWORK approach is that the partnership is built on what might be described as ‘meta-principles’ which are universal. The point of a MeshWORK is to address the needs/wants of all levels of the Spiral in all ways for the good of the Spiral as a whole. At a partnership level, this produces two key questions:- What needs to be done? Who is most suited to do it? Using the vMEMES of the Gravesian… Read More

Theory FAQs

Click the question to go to its answer… 1. What is the relationship between the Gravesian approach, Spiral Dynamics and Spiral Dynamics integral? 2. What’s the difference between 1st Tier and 2nd Tier in the Gravesian approach? 3. What’s the difference between Integrated SocioPsychology and Integral Psychology and where does Integrated SocioPsychology fit in with the concepts of Integrated Spirituality? 1. What is the relationship between the Gravesian approach, Spiral Dynamics and Spiral Dynamics integral? Updated: 16/05/16 Just as the ‘Freudian approach’ is to do with the work of Sigmund Freud himself and/or developments of Freud’s work which adhere very closely to the principles of his theories, so the ‘Gravesian approach’ is to do with Clare W Graves’ research and/or developments of it. Spiral Dynamics was developed by Don Beck & Chris Cowan (1996) from Graves’ work by linking it with the new science of Memetics developed by the likes of Richard Dawkins (1976) and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1993). They coined the term ‘vMEME’ for the Gravesian systems of thinking and saw them as attracting memes pertinent to the vMEME’s motivation. Thus, they extended Graves’ concept of his systems (themas) having preferred schemas. Beck & Cowan also colour-coded the levels to make them easier… Read More

Selfplex

Updated: 19 December 2016 ‘Selfplex’ is the term used by Susan Blackmore (1999) to depict ‘self’ effectively as the key confluence of schemas – ‘the ultimate memeplex‘ – which provides the concept of ‘I’, the cognitive awareness of who I am, how I think, what I feel, what I believe…why I am the way I am. Someone’s sense of identity or identities. The term ‘ego’ is widely used in Psychology and the other behavioural sciences as a cipher for ‘self’. It has even entered mainstream popular language in usages such as: “That’s egocentric” or “He’s got a lot of ego”. The very diversity of usages makes it too vague to use as a term for ‘self-concept’ – though it is often used in that context – which is why ‘selfplex’ is preferable. Sigmund Freud (1923b) used ‘Ego’ in a very specific yet cohesive sense. It is a force which attempts to balance the motivations of the Id and the Superego where they compete for dominance and restrains the more socially-unacceptable demands of the Id. This latter function can be seen in the way the PURPLE vMEME submits to the family or group to gain acceptance. Yet Freud also perceived the Ego as… Read More

Symbolic Interactionism

Updated:  19 May 2017 Symbolic Interactionism is an Interactionist approach in Sociology – although it also has a strong influence in Social Psychology, particularly in the use of phenomenonology to exolore the unique experience of the individual. It contrasts with approaches like Marxism and Functionalism which seem to suggest that people are like puppets controlled by the relations of  production or the pattern variables,  Rather than people slotting into their respective slots in the structure of society, Interactionism sees ‘society’ as being created by people actively working at relationships and thus morphing and changing as the dynamics of those relationships morph and change. Symbolic Interactionism is about creating and responding to symbols and ideas (memes). It is this dynamic that forms the basis of Interactionists’ studies. Sociological areas that have been particularly influenced by Symbolic Interactionism include the sociology of emotions, the sociology of health and illness, deviance and crime, collective behaviour/social movements, and the sociology of sex. Interactionist concepts that have gained widespread usage include definition of the situation, emotion work, impression management, looking glass self and total institution. Symbolic Interactionism derived initially from the writings of George Herbert Mead (1934). He argued that people’s selves are social products –… Read More

Functionalism

Updated: 18 May 2017 Functionalism is a Structuralist theory – hence it is sometimes known as Structural Functionalism. It is a ‘top-down’ theory that focuses on society rather than the individuals within it. As such, it is a powerful concept for exploring the Lower Right in 4Q/8L and how it influences and is influenced by the Lower Left – structuration, in Anthony Giddens’ (1984) terms. In Functionalism society is the focus because the individual is produced by society – ‘social products’, as George Herbert Mead (1913) termed them. People are the product of all the social influences on them: their family, friends, educational and religious background, their experiences at work, in leisure, and their exposure to the media. All of these influences make them who and what they are and how they perceive themselves: the confluence of schemas in their selfplexes. In this view, people are born into society, play their role in it – like cogs on a wheel – and then die. However, the deaths of individuals do not mean the end of society. Society continues long after they are gone. According to Émile Durkheim (1893), beliefs and moral codes are passed on (memetically) from one generation to the next.… Read More