The Three Contexts of Reality

Reality is not a Social Construct. It is existence that we perceive in part.

Circle of Impact Guiding Principle #2

“We are ALL in transition. Everyone of us. All the time.”

Two Transitions

A couple of decades ago, in the early years of my consulting work, I participated in a redevelopment project for a 60-year-old family textile business. The story of this project is the story of two transitions. One of the transitions was within the organizational structure of the company. The other transition was between the company of the past, created in a different era, and the company that it needed to be in the future.

It was easier to see the transition within because, as the old saying goes, “It is plain as the nose of his face.” While it had taken almost a decade for the family to see their nose, once they did, the transition to a redesigned production process was possible and, ultimately, successful.

The transition between the company’s past and its future was not plain for them to see. Their identity as a company was captured by the founder’s perception of their business six decades before. They did not see the effect the IT revolution had had on their industry and their customer’s businesses. As a result, they could not understand the context of reality, which ultimately led to the closing of the company.

Michael Polanyi’s Principle

This experience helped me to see the broader context of organizational problems. I applied a framework that I learned from reading Michael Polanyi two decades before. In Polanyi’s McEnerney Lectures, he discusses a principle that made sense in what I have observed.

Polanyi makes a distinction between the Comprehensive Whole of something and the Particulars that make up that Comprehensive Whole. From his perspective, the Particulars of a Comprehensive Whole cannot define what the Whole is.

The production process of the company is a particular part of the whole of the company. Improving that process affects the whole, but cannot identify the whole of the company because it cannot identify the context in which the company operates.

The Polanyi principle is that the particulars of a thing cannot describe the comprehensive whole of a thing.

The chair that I am sitting in does not describe my house. The cushion does not define the chair. My house, on the other hand, doesn’t define my life. I take the particulars of furniture, technology, books, and art to create an environment where my house becomes a home.

But in order for the comprehensive whole of my house to become a home, I need to envison how a home is different than a collection of objects arranged under roof. For a home is not a thing, but an abstraction that captures the Spiritual relationship of the people and the things that they look to as the components of a home. My home is the environment where I live. I have a relationship with this house and my community that connects my physical surroundings with my being as a person. It is a real home, not a perfect house, and therefore a place where my life may unfold.

Reality exists, and there can be no absolute, complete, or final understanding of it. It exists to be discovered in part while pointing toward a Comprehensive Whole that expands our perception of life beyond that which is Concrete and Abstract. It is something whole that I can access in part through its relational character.

Polanyi’s idea is an organizing principle for an order of nature. In his scheme, the order of nature is hierarchical. The higher levels of order inform the lower ones of their meaning. Just as the idea of a home informs the meaning of my house and by extension the chair that I sit in.

Polanyi provides a picture of the orderliness of the biophysical relationship of material reality.

I take his perspective as a starting point for understanding the nature of reality. From that perspective, I identified an order to reality that can provide an understanding for how we can recover our relationship to the world that is beyond our perception.

The Whole Context of Reality

Just as the family business described above was in transition, it is relatively easy to identify how our personal transitions take place within a certain context. It is more difficult when our transition is between two contexts. The reason is the difference between the Particular and the Comprehensive Whole, as defined by Polanyi.

The production process of the textile factory was a Concrete reality. The stages of production produce a real product that was sold and delivered to their customers. Each stage had metrics that defined the quality of the work product.

The company as a Comprehensive Whole was not a Concrete reality for the owners. It was a fragmented Abstraction. It was still the idea, designed, and implemented by the founder as a set of Particular Actions, within the Context of mid-Twentieth Century textile industry. The Particulars at that point in time changed dramatically over the next 60 years of the company’s existence. In this sense, they had lost touch with Reality.

Their story illustrates why it is difficult to identify structural problems in organizations. When Abstractions become harden and fixed in time, perception narrows, and Reality becomes difficult to access.

The Complexity of the interactions of the Particulars is not simple or fixed. To map out those interactions is to create an Abstract picture of a Perception of Reality. No matter how intricate the perspective is, it is never whole.

The Identity of the company expressed as a purpose, values, and a business plan is an Abstraction that provides the basis for the Concrete Actions of the company. It means that there is a constant dynamic interplay between the Abstract and the Concrete, the Comprehensive Whole and the Particulars, in the Context of Transition. This is the complexity and dynamism of Reality.

Reality is Perception and Effect, Abstract and Concrete, and Whole and Particular. It is the Context of Transition, both Within and Between all that encompasses our lives.

I believe that Reality should be understood as a Comprehensive Whole. As Michael Polanyi spoke, “We know more than we can tell.” We know things that we cannot articulate. We know by intuition yet we don’t know how we know. I believe that this means we live in a Context that is more expansive than our Perception allows us to see at any one time. We understand by drawing Contrasts and Comparisons between the Particulars. This is how we access the full scope of Reality.

The Order of Reality

The Order of Reality consists of three Contexts.

The three contexts or orders are the Spiritual, the Intellectual, and the Cultural.

Each has a prescribed order that is represented by an understanding of how relationships function in a Spiritual context, in an Abstract context, and in a Concrete context. I call them Orders because it implies that there is a unifying or connecting component that follows a specific order of relationship between the contexts.

The Order of Reality is a discovery process.

I seek to understand what I observe (Abstraction) and what I experience (Concrete) so that I better understand how my relationship to reality (Spiritual) can function as a whole.

The Spiritual is the highest order because it represents the whole of reality. The Intellectual and the Cultural, also called the Abstract and Concrete, represent the Orders of Reality that are within our capacity to access.

All Reality exists in the Spiritual. To understand reality is to understand how all things are connected to one another in a relationship of existence. The Spiritual Order is the Order of Relationships.

The middle order is Intellectual because it represents the place of abstractions in human agency. If we believe that we think and therefore have existence, then our thinking must be done in a specific context of thought. The Intellectual Order is the Order of Ideas, Plans, and Communication.

The lower order is Cultural because it represents the creative output of human beings. I am referring here to the built culture. Cities, machines, institutions, and our tools are some of this built culture. A book, for example, begins as a set of ideas, a set of abstractions, then it conforms to the cultural parameters of writing and design. The work of art represents the artists expression of an idea in a tangible form. The Cultural Order is the Order of Objects.

The three orders are linked together. The Spiritual Order is largely ignored or dismissed as nonexistent. The Intellectual and Cultural Orders exist in a tension of influence. Intellectuals and Activists of all sorts seek to claim the status of interpreting what is real, true, and right.

Is this perception an abstraction? Or is it a cultural form? Or do we really not know?

The three orders represent a hierarchy of awareness. The higher the order the more difficult to access. The lower the order the easier to define and utilize. The higher orders define the lower orders. The physical representation of an idea, like a table, cannot describe the full reality of the table. The reason is that the table in the moment of observation represents a particular moment of reality. It doesn’t tell the story of the meals served, the conversations had, or the agreements made. It is just wood and metal fashioned out of what the maker of the table believes it should be.

When the order is limited to the Abstract and the Concrete, the outcome often represents a utilitarian understanding of the table. Add a Spiritual context to the imagination of the designer, and the table can become more that just an object to do things around. Its beauty may over shadow its utility because the creator saw something more than just the table’s usefulness.

The Three Orders of Reality

Spiritual - “the world where all is connected and in a relationship will all.” It is the context of all existence or reality beyond our knowing and experience. It is a transcendent realm where consciousness exists as more than a biological function in human beings. It is the realm of all that has been created.

Intellectual/Philosophical - “the world of human thought.” This is the world of abstraction, ideas, and communication. This is where sensemaking begins. We articulate what we see and experience.

Culture - “the world of human-built culture.” This is the world of concrete action where ideas have been turned into physical representations of the ideas of people. Here we find institutions, cities, art, literature, and every consumer product. This is the realm of personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.

A Final Word

All the highlighted words throughout this essay represent aspects of the Relationship Context of the Spiritual Order of Reality.

They show us what exists with all the Particulars of Reality.

We know them as Abstract descriptions of Reality.

They are not simply Abstract concepts.

They are ideas that Communicate and Connect us Concretely to the world.

We Act, Create and Build Concretely because of these Abstract ideas.

This is why Reality is more than an Idea, more than a Perception, and more than an Effect.

It is the Environment of all things in relationship with all things.

I believe that reality is the same thing as existence, or being. I am not trying to be overly philosophical or reference any particular philosopher on the nature of being. I am describing what I observe in the world.

Everything that exists does so in relationship with the rest of existence.

If I am correct, then we approach reality with respect and humility. Through this approach, we discover the relational character of the world beyond our present understanding.

For these reasons, the transition that we are in as a society, is not within our current understanding of the world, but between what is known and what is to be discovered in the future.

We may understand it through Abstract thought Rationalize what we experience so we can do anything and everything that we want. There are no restrictions on our desiring things because our desires are articulated abstractions.