GHS first edition was 2014. It was written in the context of holistic healing and Energy Medicine. This revision avoids burying the headline: GHS has wide social-cultural implications.
First Order Objectivity acknowledges the value, validity and benefits of subjective perception, experience and intelligence. This objectivity is valid only in the domain of the single individual, one person at a time. This includes the realm of individual choice, "Is X true, beneficial and valuable for me now?" Or, Is X NOT true, nor beneficial, for me now?" This is also the principal Order of Psychology.
Second Order Objectivity is: 2 + 2 = 4. This is the domain of existing rational-materialistic science. Here, facts must be true for everyone, at all times; and, at all places, regardless of individual opinion, race, religion or circumstance. This is the science of practical survival. This is the science of commerce, profit and technology. This includes linear, sequential logic, a main problem solving tool on the physical-material plane. Second Order Science includes symbolic thinking, thinking outside the five-sensory box: language and math. This is the familiar domain of Natural and Hard science.
Third Order Objectivity is the dimension of ethics, morals and values. "What is safe, possible, permitted and allowed now, for the highest good of all concerned?" And, "For the next seven generations, have the needs of all stakeholders been considered?" Values, morals and ethics exist objectively in the consensus of a specific group of people, at a specific time and place. Third Order Science is highly relevant to healthy group process between two or more persons living or working together. This is the domain most neglected, dismissed, suppressed, repressed by the religion of corporate-consumerism.
Natural boundaries-guardrails for technology
In this way, two additional Orders of Science act as boundary guardrails to keep Second Order technology going forward aligned with subjective reality; and, the reality of human ethics, morals and values.
In the language of Best Practices in Healthy Group Process, Third Order Science provides a "container of values-morals-ethics" needed to moderate and modulate the excesses of First Order Science (foolishness, fooling yourself) and Second Order Science (Heinz 57 varieties of Frankenstein monsters crashing SpaceShip Earth).
The validity of Three Orders of Science has been field-tested since 1919 in two areas:
- Waldorf-methods K-12 education; and
- holistic methods of healthcare.
These two fields were already practicing GHS--we simply did not recognize this.
