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== Study Collective Identity ==

=== Concept: The Journey to Wholeness ===

==== Wholeness = seeing all the parts in place ====

[https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/internal-family-systems-model-outline Internal Family Systems] is a therapeutic system that sees human identity as composed of parts that compete or collaborate. It provides a framework for identifying, creating space for and or healing those parts. Success is described as the discovery of the core ‘self’ and its coming into leadership of the whole.

Before a person can instruct, shape, fix themself, they must see their self.

==== Wholeness = collective progress ====

As all the parts of a person have a kind of evolutionary urge, so do the individuals and collectives within a society. As we can see by the ideological conflict that afflicts our relatively prosperous society, it is not enough to have nominal, ‘objective’ progress, the evolutionary urges of all parties must be seen and integrated to achieve a sense of wholeness.

This is near unthinkable at the scale of society but there are scales and domains for which this can and does occur. This project is aimed at (1) making this particular brand of wholeness visible and (2) reproducible.

==== Collectives ‘see’ through ideas ====

Individuals see individuals.

We can each can witness the events that make up another individual’s life and come to ‘know’ them to a degree, through direct experience.

Collectives see archetypes.

The number of people for whom we can store and process direct experience is limited. To understand the collective we tell stories. To create meaning we position ourselves and others in relationship to those stories.

These could be ancient stories like those in religious texts, prompting us to maintain some crucial but fleeting knowledge.

These could be modern anecdotes that redefine our relationship with change. For example, the founding of scientific laws are always paired with stories. “We thought X but we couldn't explain Y, then we tried Z and discovered…”

These stories and associated values are given names and become leverage points for our collective discussions.

==== Whole Seeing ⇒ Collective Power ====

Like those that speak a common language, a group whose members all believe the same core stories is able to coordinate far more easily than those that don't because they don’t have the time delay or errors involved in translating.

On the other hand a homogeneous group is more fragile when entering unfamiliar territory because they must develop a new knowledge from scratch. This is very difficult when it conflicts with core beliefs.

Archetypal stories do not convey the full complexity of a human life and yet they allow us to know something about all who share them. In the same way we can design ideas that allow us to see and translate diverse ways of understanding the world.

Holoscopic imagines this as a process not of compressing diverse systems into one monolithic concept, but using tools to create shared maps of meaning.

In the same way that the individual becomes more effective when they see and align the various parts of their self, so too does any group become powerful when it is able to witness and channel its many expression. As individuals and groups harness this skill the greater human collective increases its ability to harmoniously co-operate.

=== Activity: Collective Introspection ===

This is a description of how social maps can be used by a cohort to observe and extract knowledge from a shared process of self exploration.

==== Pick a topic ====

An individual in the group observes some pattern in self or group. In order to 'sense' the groups relationship on the topic they create a map and invite everyone to join in a mapping exercise.

==== Create a feedback loop ====

Introspection involves more than categorization. There must be input and output and cycles that allow for refinement.

For instance 2 questions:

* Q1: "Who are we?" (Observe the distribution of ideas relating to a topic.)
* Q2: "What do ‘we’ do?" (Map the ways the various identities enact their ideas.)

Every time the loop repeats there is an opportunity to observe the evolution of both aspects.

==== Observe Change and Reframe ====

Change happens in certain ways.

For individuals:

* intended or unintended outcomes
* harmonious or turbulent relating

* moving toward simplification or complexity

For the group: either converging on or diverging from ideals and strategies.

When things go wrong we are forced to reassess, redefine our way of thinking or looking at a situation.

As a group finds itself coming into resonance around new ideas, the sequence of social maps provide a documented journey, stories that span from the individual to the collective, and a well-defined conceptual process that others can follow in order to validate or differentiate from.

Conceptual frames that allow us to see wholes at greater scales with less effort are like a social technology and like all powerful technologies, they spread.