The ‘Twenty Tenets’
(‘Brief History of Everything’, Ken Wilber, 2000)

The twenty tenets are some of the tendencies of evolutionary system wherever we find them.  There is nothing sacrosanct about the number “twenty.”  Some are definitions, others are tendencies.  Tenet 2 has four; tenet 12 has five, in the end around twenty.

• Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons (wholes that are parts of other wholes; e.g. whole atoms are parts of whole molecules, which are parts of whole cells, which are parts of whole organisms, and so on).

• Holons display four fundamental capacities: (a) self-preservation (agency), (b) self-adaptation (communion), (c) self-transcendence (eros), (d) self-dissolution (thanatos).

• Holons emerge.

• Holons emerge holarchically.

• Each emergent holon transcends but includes it predecessor(s).

• The lower sets the possibilities of the higher; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.

• The number of levels that a holarchy comprises determines whether it is “shallow” or “deep”; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its “span”.

• Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span.
 Addition 1: The greater the depth of a holon, the greater its degree of consciousness.

• Destroy any holon, and you will destroy all the holons above it and none of the holons below it.

• Holarchies co-evolve.

• The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of its depth.

• Evolution has directionality.
  increasing complexity
  increasing differentiation/integration
  increasing organization/structuration
  increasing relative autonomy
  increasing telos

• Addition 2: Every holon issues an IOU to the Kosmos.

• Addition 3: All IOUs are redeemed in Emptiness.

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