In his final chapter, "Interfacing," Taylor proposes to solve the impasse of post-modern and post-structuralist cultural criticism: how to avoid insularity while developing "a sustained critique of the totalizing and repressive propensities of comprehensive systems and all-inclusive structures."

Sociologist James A. Beckford, in his 1975 study of Jehovah's Witnesses, classified the religion's organizational structure as Totalizing, characterized by an assertive leadership, specific and narrow objectives, control over competing demands on members' time and energy, and control over the quality of new members.

Crucially, no one way of dividing a heterarchical system can ever be a totalizing or all-encompassing view of the system, each division is clearly partial, and in many cases, a partial division leads us, as perceivers, to a feeling of contradiction that invites a new way of dividing things.