Reviews for Out of the Labyrinth: Who We Are, How We Go Wrong and What We Can Do About It:

From Resurgence Magazine, November/December 2004
Books in Brief by Marian Van Eyk McCain

Sociological understanding is sturdiest when it is well-grounded in experience, scholarship and practical applicability.

Frankel’s book fulfils these conditions superbly.

His way of understanding the world, at both individual and cultural levels, is through what he calls the “triad” – the objective domain of reasoning, goals and plans, the dimension of relationship, and the ‘depth dimension” where feelings and heart values reside.

Though our consumerist culture is in thrall to the “dark enchantment” of the objective domain, deeper, greener yearnings are everywhere evident. So why have the heart values of the Cultural Creatives not prevailed?

Only, says Frankel, because we are too busy fighting realm wars rather than adopting the inclusive, integral approach.

His work dovetails beautifully with Ken Wilber’s Integral Philosophy and Clare Graves’s Spiral Dynamics and is simpler to read and grasp than either.

From Green@Work, Reviewed by Richard Walthers

The power of words constantly amazes me. I know from my experience in the sustainable design field that the words “love” and “spirituality” can consistently empty a corporate boardroom faster than the phrase “Lunch is served”. These twin concepts of love and spirituality have never been welcome at the corporate table, but they just might have received their first bona fide invitation from Carl Frankel‘s exceptional new book, Out of the Labyrinth.

Frankel’s plea for the inclusion of such concepts as love and spirituality in the corporate decision making process comes in a multi-layered work that never falls off any of the tracks it follows. The concepts he explores are encapsulated in the context of an extremely personal story. The author bravely bares his soul in the telling of the familiar tale of father/son alienation and misunderstanding that was part of almost every baby boomer’s generation gap experience.

Out of the Labyrinth is written with humor and insight, and is filled with political and cultural commentary. Frankel writes from deep within his own self-defined inner being and draws on numerous sources to describe our current environmental and cultural depravity while philosophically tackling a wide array of topics. Most importantly he delves into the nature of identity and the nature of sustainability and how they relate to each other. The book has an accessible style that makes you feel like you are engaged in a wonderful conversation with a great raconteur.

Stories give meaning and purpose to our lives, and in the process of writing this book and telling his story, Frankel has a belated reconciliation with his long ago murdered father. He goes prospecting in his inner self and comes back with gold in the form of not only a good story, but also a structure of the self that he calls the Triad. Frankel’s vision of the Triad consists of three components. They are the Strategist who pursues goals in the objective domain, the Citizen who participates in society in the social domain, and the Seeker who quests for meaning in the depth dimension. Inherent in the psyches of each of us are all three of these components or sub-personalities.

Each of these components has its own worldview and the one we most identify with shapes our values and our belief systems and dominates how we interact with the world at large. In addition, Frankel develops a framework for integrating these three disparate, often warring elements, into a process that can work at many levels from the purely personal to the political and cultural arenas.

This second part of Frankel’s vision is what he calls the Integral Way. He proposes a new way to respond to information by including the voices of all the domains and not playing favorites with any single one. By being inclusive and balancing the inputs from each domain, the creative tension between domains will provide solutions to problems that far exceed any solution derived from single domain thinking.

With this process in mind Frankel clearly wants to engage in a referendum on modernism, which he calls the tyranny of the objective domain that has held sway over all of our institutions, particularly business and technology, for the last 400 years. He believes it is time for another voice to be heard and it may be the only way we can get beyond the presently stalled debate on sustainable development. The discussion has been stalled by the business community because most companies, even those that would consider themselves environmentally enlightened, are very uncomfortable with such depth dimension concepts as meaning, love and spirituality.

Frankel suggests that the concept of sustainable development stopped evolving right after it acknowledged the social domain by adopting Corporate Social Responsibility principles. It has been stopped precisely because, in order to flower into its next stage, sustainable development has to address and integrate an awareness of depth dimension characteristics, and the tyranny of the objective refuses to consider any aspect of the inner realm as relevant to business. This is an essential reason why Out of the Labyrinth is such an important book that should be read by both business managers and political leaders.

As I have found on those occasions when I have been either bold enough or foolish enough to utter the magic words that drive businessmen from the conference room, the tyranny of the objective is neither flexible nor respectful. If Out of the Labyrinth does nothing more than jumpstart the debate on sustainable development and eventually make it respectable for love and spirituality to be seriously considered in corporate organization and strategy, it will have achieved a major coup. However, I suspect it will become recognized as a significant contribution to the overall sustainability debate and a work that the author’s father would have been truly proud to acknowledge.

From Curled Up With a Good Book, 2004, by Marie D. Jones

"Carl Frankel begins his book with a deeply personal tragedy: the brutal murder of his parents during a robbery. He then takes us on a journey of illumination that shines a light not just on our own personal suffering and striving, but on that of the entire planet.

Out of the Labyrinth is both personal quest for understanding and general commentary on the state of humanity in the current culture of chaos and confusion. The subtitle sums up both the direction and intention of this profound book – “Who We Are, How We Go Wrong and What We Can Do About It.” How did we, as a species, become so lost and out of touch with the deepest part of who we are? And how do we get back that lost connection?

Describing in detail both a materialistic and spiritual system out of balance, Frankel, a journalist and nationally-known speaker and consultant specializing in sustainable living, offers up some paradigm-shifting concepts about how that imbalance is occurring. Using a system he calls Triad Dynamics, he describes how we as humans basically live in three worlds, and how we tend to favor and ignore one or more of the three. These three worlds - the objective domain, the social domain, and the least understood and most ignored depth dimension - make up the foundation of our humanity.

The author shows through various examples how we live in a culture that tends to favor either the objective, the social, or both, while mostly ignoring, denying or vilifying the depth dimension, where Frankel sees the most potential for true healing and empowerment. Because of our focus on the material world and our social interactions, we often forget we have a deeper life, one filled with light and shadows, that tends to be set aside entirely as we race to keep our conscious (and materialistic) outer-focused mind filled and satisfied (or at least numbed and dumbed into thinking it is satisfied).

Until we break out of, as Frankel puts it, our “dark enchantment” and confront the depth dimension individually and collectively, we will see the world around us continue to thrive on violence, destruction of the planet, hatred, division and turmoil. This book is a powerful wake-up call to pay closer attention to the imbalances within as well as without.

But all is not hopeless, for we are given plenty of useful information on how to live with more integrity and how to demand that our government and corporate leaders become equally responsible to this integral way of life, so that balance can be restored and we can find our way out of the labyrinth and into the clear light of day. My favorite chapter discusses the personal and political aspects of living with a deep integrity, and how many companies are striving to do just that.

Both social commentary and inspiring visionary guide for those who give a damn, Out of the Labyrinth is a thoughtful and moving book that will stay in your mind long after you finish, mainly because you begin to see evidence of your own dark enchantment, and your own longing for a more intergral life. This new perception, this paradigm shift, is proof that the author has done his job well. I highly recommend this enlightening book."

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From New Connexion, January 2005, by Miriam Knight

"Out of the Labyrinth is the personal journey of Carl Frankel, a writer, journalist, consultant and entrepreneur specializing in sustainable development. Author of In Earth's Company: Business, Environment and the Challenge of Sustainability, in this book he attempts to make sense for himself, and for us, of who we are as human beings, with all our programming, desires and vulnerabilities; how we go wrong, when we all really want the same thing; and finally what we can do about it. This book is dedicated to Carl's parents, who were murdered in their home in 1979. It is also, in a sense a tribute to the work of Carl's father, Charles Frankel, an eminent philosophy professor from Columbia University, yet goes beyond it with insights and messages that are vitally needed today.

A bit like the Ayurvedic system of doshas, Frankel posits a triad of domains or dimensions to which all the themes of human tendencies and aptitudes can be traced. "The Objective domain, houses our cognitive abilities, the social domain is where our interpersonal skills reside, and the depth dimension is home to our artistic and spiritual capacities." These domains are reflected in the sub-personalities of the strategist, the citizen and the seeker.

As Frankel leads us through the labyrinth of our creation, the relationships among the pieces of the puzzle emerge - pieces that include people, social structures, the ecosystem and spiritual beliefs. Like a puzzle too, they begin to make more sense as they are fitted together.

The model he crafts so persuasively is far more complex and deeply-founded than I am able to convey here. But what I loved about the book is that Frankel doesn't, stop at the model, but goes on to the solution. Alas, for our society, it is not a quick fix - it is what he calls the Integral Way. It is a practice of seeking harmony by looking for higher order solutions - ones that can encompass divergent views because they are reframed in a greater context. It is at the end of the day, the only path to personal and global harmony.

Though fluidly written and engaging, this challenging book demands reflection. It is not a casual read, but ultimately a profoundly mind-expanding one."

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From Chronogram, 2005, by Susan Piperato

"Carl Frankel is a writer, entrepreneur, and strategist specializing in sustainable development. A longtime resident of uptown Kingston, he is known locally for holding regular community parties and discussions. A former Princeton and Columbia universities-educated lawyer, Frankel founded Entelechy Corporation, a business research company specializing in emerging information technologies. He continues to consult for a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit organizations in activist and corporate settings. He has been published in Green Market Alert, which he founded and published; Tomorrow, Yes! The Journal of Positive Futures, and Green@work, and is the author of In Earth's Company: Business, Environment and the Challenge of Sustainability (New Society, 1998). Frankel's latest book, Out of the Labyrinth: Who We Are, Where We Go Wrong, and What We Can Do About It (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2004), has been acclaimed by ecological economist Hazel Henderson as a book that "raises the literature on sustainability to a new level and is destined to be a classic." Out of the Labyrinth is also, in Frankel's own words, "a meditation on the subtle and complex relationship between self and society, on the conflicts that are tearing apart our institutions and our culture, and on how to go about addressing these challenges, both personally and collectively," providing a triad of personalities - the Strategist, the Seeker, and the Civilian - as a framework for cultural criticism. The book is also autobiographical: Frankel tells the story of his embracing of sustainability, and considers his progressive values and theories alongside those of his late, liberal father, a Columbia University philosophy professor, who was murdered, along with Frankel's mother, in 1979."

SP: Why did you write Out of the Labyrinth?

CF: I decided I needed to write the book when the sheer volume of insights started to overwhelm me. But it was an intellectual book at first, sort of the theory of the triad. The story of my parents murder was in there, but it was buried on page 378 or thereabouts. I sent a muddy first draft out to readers, and one of them came back with: "You've buried the story about your father. That's what this is really all about. With that, I realized that I had to "show up" with my own personal story and not try to fob this off as a purely intellectual analysis. This was an important step in the evolution of the book; what I have tried to do is create a book that is truly integral, that models the content in the form. I have tried to write a book that is analytical and philosophical, and about our social responsibilities - our civic identity - and is personal and autobiographical as well. "Ya gotta be the thing," as my friend Eric Booth says; otherwise, your credibility is cast in doubt.

SP: What does sustainability mean to you?

CF: The conventional view of sustainability is that it harmonizes the so-called "three E's" of environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity. This is useful but limited. It overlooks the interior dimension of sustainability. By this I mean two things: First, we create the structures that we then blame for "causing" the crisis of unsustainability. These structures are art forms reflecting intuitions about self that are projected out onto the world. Second, we must wake up to the challenge of the current crisis and become engaged citizens in a manner appropriate to our time. What do we have to learn? How does our mental model or reality tunnel have to change? What do we have to become? This is another, interior dimension of sustainability.

SP: How does the cultural model you call "the triad" work?

CF: Each of us engages in three activities in life. We try to solve problems, we participate in society and the natural world, and we look for meaning. Certain subgroups of personalities with their own value systems coalesce around these activities. I call these three value systems or personalities the Strategist, who is the problem solver; the Citizen, who is in relation with other people and the natural world; and the Seeker, who is looking for meaning. We tend to identify to a greater or lesser degree with one of these personalities, so we kind of take sides and have these little culture wars - inside our bodies, inside our psyches, and within our interpersonal relationships. This three-part model also extends out into our broader culture. What happens is, to the extent that we're imbalanced, when the three subpersonalities aren't in harmony with each other, a neurosis and a dysfunctionality results at all levels, whether personal, interpersonal, organizational, or within the broader culture. People are at their most positive and powerful when those three forces of civic commitment, spiritual seeking, and strategic cognitive processes - the Citizen, the Seeker and the Strategist - are integrated.

When there's a misalignment between commitment and behavior, it undermines commitment. One of the things I see in the Green Movement is people who haven't worked out their inner issues. Their behavior is actually counterproductive. They get into competitions, they get fundamentalist in their values, and they don't stay open-minded or open-hearted. That's one of my big concerns - people in the sustainability movement spend an awful lot of time eating their young. That's one of the reasons I wrote this book. One of the chapters I was going to call "Why I Am No Longer a Progressive." And then I thought, okay, don't get too obnoxious about it, don't get too confrontational. I am a progressive, but we've got to move beyond that whole way of thinking.

SP: How do you define progressive?

CF: I use the term somewhat differently from the old notion of a liberal. In the context of the triad, liberals have objective-domain values, while progressives embrace depth-dimension values. I see progressives as the species on the leftwing that subscribes not only to the notion that governmental policies and practices shift toward the left, but that a fundamentally new set of values, a fundamentally new reality tunnel, needs to take hold in the world.

Broadly speaking, I also see two categories of progressives. There are the grounded ones, and then there are those who are stuck in their anger, who get fundamentalist in their biases. The challenge these days is to be a progressive who's open-minded and humble about one's own views. That's not easy when progressives are under such assault by people on the right who seem pathologically incapable of being emotionally or intellectually honest.

SP: Which of the triad's personalities dominates our culture?

CF: I think we're living in the Age of the Strategist. Corporations are the ultimate in strategic, get-there-fast, end-oriented organizations. If you look at popular cinema, which reflects the underbelly of the culture, there are endless movies about people turned into automatons, machines taking over, whether it's The Matrix or The Stepford Wives.

SP: What do you want readers to take from your book?

CF: For me, the model was an insight engine - it really got my neurons firing. I hope some readers will react in the same way. Some will be more interested in the insights it provides into the world around them. For others, it will be a tool for introspection and self-learning. Some might find that it engages their "civic muscle," so to speak.I guess I really just want the book to just energize people - get them thinking, get them engaged, and also get them hopeful. As much as anything, this book is about a light at the end of the tunnel. This light is what I call the "integral way." These are dark and difficult times, and it's easy to feel hopeless. This book says, "We have reason to hope. But we have to understand what we must do. We've got to set out on the way."

SP: Do you feel hopeful?

CF: A while back I wrote an essay called "The Despair Question." If I were a pure rationalist, I would not be hopeful about the future. There are too many negatives - we seem to be headed toward a perfect storm. But I am not a pure rationalist - or rather, as a person who is committed to true rationalism, I have to acknowledge how much there is I don't know. There are so many wild cards out there, so many variables! We have moved into an era when the rate of change is such that our usual assumptions about cultural and political trajectories have no real meaning; the rate of change is a wild card. There are technological wildcards as well - we might see pollution-free energy within a few decades, for example. And then there is the wild card of massively networked communications. It sounds corny, but global consciousness can change overnight - consider 9/11! So I think we are moving into a time of extraordinary uncertainty and high risk, but I choose to view this as a high adventure, not that we are doomed.

And if we are doomed...well, about the profoundest comment I've heard on that subject comes from my friend Vicki Robin, who said to me: "I don't know if hope is the issue any longer; it's really more about faith." In other words, if we are moving into apocalyptically bad times, our challenge is to be OK with that, to be grateful for all the wondrousness that has been.

Carl Frankel's website: www.carlfrankel.squarespace.com

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