Understanding the Struggle between Self Consciousness and Cultural Worldview in the Sense of An Ending: Ken Wilber’s Perspective

Abstract

Integral theory is Ken Wilber's attempt to place a wide diversity of theories and thinkers into one single framework. It is portrayed as a "theory of everything", trying to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching. Wilber’s All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL) model, pronounced “ah-qwul”, is the basic framework of Integral Theory. It suggests that all human knowledge and experience emerges within four primordial perspectives, which can be mapped along the dimensions of “interior vs. exterior” and “individual vs. collective”. This article examines the conflict between two quadrants and how it affects human life. Julian Barnes’ Booker Award-winning novel, The Sense of an Ending very explicitly develops the theme of self-consciousness and world view intertwined with the two drives: life-instinct ‘Eros’ and death-instinct ‘Thanatos’. The analysis of the two instincts with quadrants and their association to Integral Theory is presented and expanded upon in this article.