Integral Advantage

The BRICS countries are heralded for their double digit economic growth rates and while this has indeed been impressive particularly in India and China it is clear that significant social and environmental fault-lines have developed in these regions. Building on the integral heritage of Ronnie Lessem’s previous work through Trans4m’s Centre for Integral Development here he makes the case for ’integral advantage’ a philosophy inclusive of nature and culture technology and economy altogether accommodated by an integral polity. Moreover and as will be illustrated in each of the cases of the five BRICS countries each one is an integral entity in its own particular right and needs to be viewed and duly evolved as such. In the final analysis he argues then that around the world the failure of a society to develop is not due to its economic limitations in isolation but to the failure of nature and culture technology and economy to co-evolve in unison under the rubric of an integral polity altogether aligned with that particular society. Drawing on the approach he has developed towards the release of a society’s genius in each case he demonstrates how the pursuit of integral advantage may actually arise. Most specifically he indicates how a balance between the spiritual and the material on the one hand and the natural and the social on the other needs to be achieved.