Integrative Complexity: The Psychology of Being Open Minded, and how to Increase it.

Integrative Complexity: The Psychology of Being Open Minded, and how to Increase it.

Brief Summary of this Note

• Integrative Complexity is the Minds Ability to draw from many reservoirs of knowledge to create well rounded and balanced yet loose conclusions

• A lack of integrative complexity makes hasty, quick, and rigid conclusions which draw from a limited reservoir of knowledge

• Integrative complexity has basis in both biology and in consciousness

• Fear Decreases Integrative Complexity

• Because of emotions and feelings on particular topics, people tend to display varying levels of integrative complexity based on given topics.

• Ideas which are Taboo often Decreases integrative complexity

• We can increase our levels of integrative complexity on given topics by balancing our emotions with our thinking and remain open to new ideas and information.

• We can increase our levels of integrative complexity simply by decided to not come to a conclusion on topics we do not yet understand

• We can increase our integrative complexity by learning a topic from many different angles and balancing various knowledge to come up with well rounded and less rigid conclusions.

What is Integrative Complexity?

It seems that our world is quite diverse, diverse with many people who all have differing ideas and persuasions about the nature of reality. People tend to view the world based on how they have seen it, there would be no good reason to say the sky was blue unless it really was, a person who saw the sky as green might be declared as being insane or they might have something wrong with their eyes. But how do we integrate all of our perceived information and come up with ideas about how the world works? This is a complex question, one which cannot be solely answered in this note. Two factors are the minds we are using and the environments we have experienced. By minds “we are using” I pretty much mean the brains we have taken on in this lifetime, every brain is slightly different and acts as both a filter and generator of perceptions. So the interaction of our consciousness with our brain creates our “mind” which creates our view of reality, it is a complex phenomena.

My guess is that all brains are indeed somewhat different and that they can have a dramatic influence on how we think, perceive, behave etc. Some brains have an easy time “open minded” that is have great integrative complexity, while others seem to always see things as black and white. Why? Because some brains might be wired for seeing things as black and white and some may be wired for seeing this as integrated and open, interconnected with each other, which might allow for a person to be open minded and draw from many reservoirs of diverse knowledge to come to a conclusions. In essence this is what we are talking about, the ability for a mind to draw from many areas of knowledge and not make hasty discernment. I like to call this type of mind a “colorful mind” and a mind which sees things as rigid and isolated as a black and white or “monochromatic mind.”

Biology and Integrative Complexity

Let me first point out that if a person’s parents are the monochromatic mind type it does not necessarily mean that their children will be for two reasons, because they may have not inherited it or throughout their life they may choose to facilitate a colorful mind, indeed our own self choices are a big part of what makes us up. At the same time the brain type will be a definite influence a person into being more colorful or more monochromatic minded. Indeed the colorful mind is most likely highly interconnected neurologically. This can be both facilitated by genetics a person’s experiences. On the contrary a “monochromatic mind’s” parts are more like isolated “computers” instead of a highly synergistic integrated network. It is our minds ability to be highly integrated which separates us from our animal friends, they do not have nearly the same level of integrative complexity, this is likely the biggest factor in the difference between an animal’s brain and a human’s brain. In the human brain one single nerve cell, called a neuron, can be connected to up to 25,000 others!

Around 50,000 years ago something drastically changed in brain structure for humans while allowed them to shift from being “man the hunted” to “man the hunter.” This was the topic of discussion between Ralph Abraham, Terrance McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake in their book Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness. So what happened to humans 50,000 years ago? Suddenly the brain changed from isolated segments to being very interconnected. The connection is due to the increased connection of neurons between areas of the brain via the corpus collosum, which is down the center of the brain; this area of the brain is filled with millions of neuronal axons which are connecting wires between neurons. Just why the brain made such an evolutionary quantum leap in develop nobody knows.

McKenna says it was natural and had something to do with the hallucinogenic mushrooms, Rupert Sheldrake says it has to do with morphogenetic fields and Ralph Abraham thinks that it was divine intervention. While nobody is sure how we made this evolutionary leap which seems to defy the slow process of evolution and take such a leap, which seems to happen often in the fossil record, we did make it and it created a dramatic increase in the functionality in humans.

(Please note that neuronal changes do not show up in the fossil recorded, this is speculation based on how humans began to behave differently based on anthropological evidence).

This was also the time when early spirituality arose and evolutionarily speaking, not long (30,000 years) later humans began to grow and herd their own food. In fact I would suggest that this integration allows for consciousness (as in soul, mind, etc) to perceive more of reality while inhabiting a body, otherwise consciousness would be rather veiled and confused, until it was discarnate again of course (this is my perspective at least). To speculate further what if this dramatic increase in interconnection allowed for a new type of consciousness to live on earth…. That is the human consciousness/soul.

Integrative Complexity and how it affects our World

We would not likely have the world we have without integrative complexity, both neurologically, sociality, academically, and in our consciousness. It allows us to see how politics will affect our children in school and how we could nuclear energy as a weapon or a source of energy. This is the real difference between our mind and an animal’s mind, ours is highly interconnected. It was once thought that the wrinkles on our brains cause our intelligence but this is not true, brain wrinkles have more to do with animal size than intelligence. Even intelligence in the sense we normally think about it is not necessarily what integrative complexity (or a colorful mind/open mind) is. Indeed a high IQ score does not merit a high IC score or vice versa. I would even argue that IC is more important than IQ in our society today.

Right now as a society everything seems very divided and scattered. There are many more ideologies in general now than ever. Their seem to be more types of culture and subculture than ever. Complexity seems to be on the increase but it doesn’t seem that integration is. I think that integration might be the key to saving our planet and possibly our race. Every other group seeing every other group as contenders for scarce resources facilitates an isolated view point for both (or all) parties involved. Actually, an analysis done by Porter and Suedfeld in 1981 found that integrative complexity dramatically drops during times of war and strife. Porter suggests that fear and strive restricts the “information flow” and facilitates narrow minded black and white this or that thinking.

It has also been found that extremely liberal or extremely conservative politicians are both low in integrative complexity. It has also been found that of the liberals and conservatives who are have very moderate political views have much higher levels of integrative complexity than extremists, it should also be noted that there is little difference in IC between moderate liberals and conservatives, not just in politics but abroad. This information should warn us that anyone who seems to take an extreme position is probably not integrating all of the facts or information regarding a matter, they’re view is likely created from a limited reservoir of information and they are unable to integrate, (or add color) to their thinking regarding the topic or position which they are extreme about, this could be for many reasons.

It is also shown that people have dramatically varying levels of integrative complexity regarding specific topics. On the topic of abortion a person may display very little integrative complexity, they may not attempt to integrate all possible information regarding this topic but when it comes to writing their history paper they can be display a high level of integrative complexity because it does not illicit strong emotions for them.

Integrative Complexity and Our Lives; Generating a “Colorful Mind”

The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna created a philosophy to facilitate IC. He stated that most things which exist are both what they seem to be, not what they seem to be and both what they seem to be and not what they seem to be. This sounds complex but is quite simple. A lamp is a lamp, but is also not a lamp, but is also both a lamp and not a lamp. We can point at a lamp and say it’s a lamp but it is also all the parts that make up a lamp which none of which are solely a lamp. So we cannot say is a lamp, we cannot say it’s not a lamp either, get the picture? As Buddha put it “it lacks inherit existence. This thinking is also reflected in the famous Yin-Yang. Things are not black, they’re not white, but there not mixed, but they are highly connected and “unrigid.” This is what the Yin-Yang tells us.

IC is indeed throughout eastern philosophy, it is not necessarily throughout western philosophy, this is probably because one of the most influential fathers of western thought, Aristotal, created the “two fold logic;” that something is either this or that, that a statement is either wrong or right. In ultimate reality this is not how things truly are, this are not this rigid. Of course is a bull frog and not a horse but both are transient forms which will eventually disappear, but ultimate reality will always be.

To increase our level of IC we need to remember to keep our emotions calm and look at a topic from many perspectives before making hasty decisions which facilitate stubborn and rigid thinking. If we are to seek enlightenment personally and as a global society than we need to further or IC which facilitates knowledge, wisdom, and compassion, these qualities will lead us to enlightenment and out of fear.