4 hidden orders
The four ways of knowing are also essential skills if we want to learn to work with the four hidden orders, and learn to see and engage with life as a creative web of interconnected events and phenomena.
By attending to these 'orders', we can come to know some of the hidden forces that influence our lives and thereby create better conditions for learning and growth.
To understand more about how these orders work please explore the links below:
Seeing the whole
Everything derives meaning from its context. For example, we come to know other people mainly in social contexts. These surrounding factors are always important. The skill of seeing the whole is extremely valuable since so much of life's distress is built from not understanding and working with the wider, dynamic context.
We are all members of many human systems, which overlap and affect our attitudes and behaviour. The family is the most powerful system of all because we are always a part of our family, whereas our participation in other systems may be less permanent and subject to fluctuations and changes in focus. Appreciating the power of how the invisible forces and events within systems shape a person's outlook enriches our understanding. It helps us discover how best to relate to each other, and to support each other's learning and growth.
Try it
Think of someone who you find problematic, and then 'see' their context around them - their family situation, their belief systems, important events that have touched their lives, other systems that they must also attend to. Do you feel differently about them now?
Ordering forces that govern the success or failure of social life
Systemic philosophy identifies four hidden orders, or lawful forces, that influence social systems, relationships and interactions - four ways in which we are less free than we might think. Understanding the power of these ordering forces enables us to travel more successfully towards what matters, and they seem to have universal applicability.
These four orders may sound obvious, but using them as a guide to intervene with life and to get the most out of situations and relationships, requires a more rounded set of skills and ways of knowing. When used as diagnostic lenses through which to explore critical challenges and intractable issues, we gain new insights from and about the wider context that help us break free of our limiting patterns and break through into more creative, meaningful and sustainable futures.
Belonging
The first order is belonging. We are instinctively wired to support our sense of belonging in every action and thought. But as we belong to many different and conflicting systems our behaviour can sometimes seem irrational. No one, especially a child, will want to act in a way that endangers his or her keen sense of belonging. If we want to affect behaviour we have to take this primary force into account.
Try it
Imagine arriving in a new situation, or think of a child arriving in a new school, or a new class. What must happen in order to find or restore a sense that it is fine to belong there? Notice what other sense of belonging this grouping seems to threaten.
Place
People feel right in themselves when they are in their right place. It is something felt in the body. When teachers behave like teachers, and parents as parents, then children are freer to be children. This order helps us see and work towards a sense of true appropriateness in any situation. Many difficulties arise when people are misplaced by their actions or how others have placed them.
Try it
Think of a situation where you have been under- or over- qualified, or where boundaries have become blurred. Now imagine these lines being tidied up so that you are in the right place to be and do your best. How different does that feel?
Exchange
The third order relates to exchange and balance. All actions either support or disrupt balance. This order is always seeking to restore the natural and equitable balance of give and take, between people, between human and non-human systems, and between the past and the future. Learning about this complex process makes all social interaction seem less capricious.
Try it
Imagine how you feel when you have given more than you have received - to a partner, to an employer, to a child...? Or how you feel when the balance goes the other way, and you receive more than can ever be returned...? What feelings are set off...? How do you experience a situation where give and take are evenly matched...?
Time
Time is the fourth order. We are always impacted on by what has gone before, and are often trapped by entanglements in the past that we have missed or ignored and therefore not acknowledged. We flow forward with our creative life force when we honour and respect this order and can draw powerfully on our past as a creative and empowering resource. Our capacity to respect and appreciate this ordering force gives us our true strength.
Try it
Think of any group you know where troubles keep recurring. Is there an event in the past, which even if never talked about, may be contributing? Or imagine yourself feeling able to receive from those who came before you at work or in your family and able to pass on what you have received to others, even if the taking is difficult or the giving costly. What is that like?
Social groups and loyalties
Central to an understanding of human beings and their systems is the idea of conscience. In this context, conscience has little to do with moral principles or ideals - instead the word is used to describe an inner compass that guides our fundamental belonging to groups. Conscience simply tells us whether our membership of different groups is endangered, valuable, necessary... It sensitises us to feel when things are out of balance, and drives our attitudes and behaviour, so that we remain loyal to what supports us. Each system can also demand loyalty in different ways. Therefore, as we traverse the complexities of modern life, we can also feel disloyal or 'guilty' as we struggle to reconcile the tensions of being a member of many conscience groups.
Viewing conscience in this way makes many of our moral viewpoints seem too simplistic. Even terrible acts are committed in good conscience. We have to understand the power of these loyalties and to help people, including ourselves, step outside of our conscience groups in search and in service of a greater set of shared values.
Try it
Imagine you are in your family and you want to reach out towards something that your family values do not sanction. Now shift to seeing yourself in another grouping and look at your family values. See yourself traveling between one group and the other and watch your outlook shift. Many children experience this phenomenon every day as they travel from home to school and back again.