The primary and the innermost Life Zone in the Salaam Matrix is the Spiritual Zone, which pertains to the “software” and coding of a person or society, including any malware or latent thoughts, routines, notions and memories. These are the beliefs, thought formations, programming, faith systems, codes of conduct, life outlook, perceptions, inner information and internal landscape of a person, group, nation, or a scattered formation that doesn’t define well as a collective.

Note that while the title of the Zone is “Spiritual”, this does not denote any particular religious, spiritual or other leanings or their opposites. It is a condensed term that represents what in the most common denominator language is called the “software” in our analysis. Depending on the audience and context, the interpretative language for this Zone changes to reflect the dominant “software” of the audience. Also, while it was initially assumed in the model that there is a top-down flow from the SPIRITUAL to other life zones, this may in fact not be the case and the SPIRITUAL remains a composite of both celestial insights and lived experience and reality.

This is the intimate family and household zone in which a person operates, and interacts with whatever shape or form of family (and some neighborhood) they have. This pertains to their household tasks, family and personal duties, daily rituals, habits, personal habits, family contracts and negotiations, sharing, space negotiations and allotments and so on. Domestic affairs including violations come under this Life Zone.

This is the zone where the person steps beyond the threshold of household, and steps into the world. This is a more transactional zone. Economic transactions, earning, career, travel, transport, logistics, trade, socialization, friendships, neighborhood and close community work, education, supply and demand, purchasing and selling, labor rights, employer/employee/customer rights, insurance, housing, banking, money systems, construction, resource mining, regeneration – all fall under primarily this zone.

Beyond socioeconomic zone, lies the ideological space that is deemed the Ecological-Political zone, the outward container zone of them all. This is a zone of the collective and of the individual operating in the collective – negotiating, navigating, laying and walking the path. This is the zone of (the design of the) law, national boundaries, and political movements, organization, and the national or tribal executive function. This is also the zone for ecological and environmental design, containers, and contents which are normally called “resources” or “assets” but there has long been an extractive and exploitative connotation associated with those words thansk to extractive human behavior. The new outlook is REGENERATIVE and one based on GUARDIANSHIP of Earth and KINSHIP with the species and all creation. This is the zone of voting, governance, and one’s philosophy and outlook towards the outer world, as put in practice (instead of as processes internally, as in the Spiritual Zone). This is where the proof is found in the pudding, and the collective outcome of all pravious zones is exhibited as national spirit, content, behavior and direction.

All other zones can be seen as the atomization of the Ecological-Political Zone, whereas looking inside-out, all zones are the expansion of the Spiritual Zone. These two zones are each other’s feeders and mirrors, and change can be affected in one through the Other, whereas the individual carries larger authority over the Spiritual Zone, and the governers and the collective operate in the Ecological-Political Zone, which is better their primary focus.

A person occupies many positions within the four zones of life. These positions are not always equally active or fully realized. A useful way to read the Salaam Matrix is to distinguish between Life Roles, Life Concerns and Life Aspirations.

Life Roles are the parts a person actively plays in their present situation. A role represents something the person is currently doing, enacting, managing or participating in.

Life Concerns are areas of life that affect the person but over which they currently have limited or no individual power to act. A concern may represent a necessary role or function that is absent, inaccessible or beyond the person’s present capacity.

Life Aspirations are desired or higher roles that a person wishes to occupy but cannot presently enact because of natural, material, social or imposed limitations.

Roles, concerns and aspirations are not fixed categories. An element may move from one state to another as circumstances change. Today’s aspiration may become tomorrow’s active role. An active role may be lost and become a concern. A concern may be resolved through personal capacity, social support, institutional change or appropriate facilitation.

For simplicity, the Salaam Matrix may use the generic term role when referring to all three states. However, a deeper reading should ask whether a role is realized, constrained, absent or aspirational.

The Salaam Matrix identifies broad human roles and functions. It does not assume that these roles will be expressed in the same way by every person, family, culture or society.

A role is the broad function or position being studied. An expression is the particular way that role appears in a specific life, place, culture or period.

The same role may have radically different expressions across communities. Belief, family membership, learning, communication, citizenship, work and care are widespread human realities, but their forms and practices vary.

The roles of the Salaam Matrix should therefore be treated as questions rather than predetermined answers. The researcher or reader asks: How is this role expressed here?

NOTE: We acknowledge the diversity of human expressions of a certain role, across cultures, groups, and strata within the same. The upcoming /PEOPLE node of The Salaam Matrix makes the model available in various languages. In time, we hope to add culture-specific notes and variations on this node.

When reading a Salaam Matrix, the reader examines how roles and functions are distributed across the four zones.

A role may be missing: a necessary function is absent or inaccessible.

A role may be underplayed: the function exists but is weak, neglected or insufficiently developed.

A role may be exaggerated: a person, household, community or institution is carrying more of a function than is appropriate or sustainable.

These patterns can reveal problems, opportunities and points of intervention. An exaggerated role may indicate that labor has migrated to the wrong person or institution. A missing role may reveal an unmet need. An underplayed role may require support, infrastructure or activation.

The task is not merely to identify what people do. It is to ask who is performing a function, who is unable to perform it, where the burden currently sits, and what conditions are shaping that arrangement.

NOTE: This subject is now being treated under the isolate Matrix, The Ghost Matrix, that specializes in identifying gaps, omissions and absence.