Your Evolution, Your Responsibility
Here's how we can hold the complexity of the dance between self and other
Last week, I discussed how our own individual development helps us along our journey towards omnipartiality. We go through phases where we’re selfish and don’t care much about others. Thankfully, we develop the ability to care about others outside our inner circle over time.
Today we’re looking at adult development theories, and there are a lot of them out there. Here are three that I'll briefly unpack.
One of the most popular theories comes from a guy named Robert Kegan.
Another idea comes from Bill Torbert.
Integral theory or spiral dynamics introduce another approach.
We’ll dive into them all today and discover how they impact our evolution.
Robert Kegan’s theory
Robert’s model has five stages of development. When we’re children, we generally pass through the first two stages: the impulsive and instrumental minds. In childhood, we focus on our own needs, interests, and agendas and act with little concern about how our actions impact others. In our teens and beyond, we develop into socialized minds, and this category includes most adults.
Socialized minds understand that they are part of a web of relationships. Consequently, they follow society’s rules and seek external validation and guidance on their identity, beliefs, and morals. That guidance may come from the people we surround ourselves with, our nation, political party, or religion.
We heavily rely on others at this point. It’s hard to go our own way, and there's comfort in having others make choices for us, so it makes sense that many of us stay here. This is the “serious man” in Simone de Beauvoir's ethical hierarchy.
The next layer is the self-authoring mind, where we start taking responsibility for defining our emotions and beliefs. We stop looking to others for confirmation that we’re doing things right. As self-authoring minds, we question the expectations and values of those around us, stand up for what we believe is right, and set our own limits, all while figuring out solutions with our own frame of mind.
There’s an even smaller group: The self-transforming mind usually only develops later in life, and it’s where someone can combine the agency and independence of the self-authoring approach with a capacity to open the reality that the world is full of diverse perspectives and lived experiences. If you’re a self-transforming mind, you can see the complexities of our world, embrace paradox, be open to the possibility of contradictory perspectives, and hold multiple ideologies.
With this powerful understanding, the self-transforming mind operates with humility. They desire continuous knowledge because they understand that they don’t have all the answers, and they’re willing to change their perspective as they learn more. It’s an important stage of self-evolution because this allows us to fully engage with the complex problems that our society faces.
Bill Torbert’s model
Bill talks about pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional approaches to seeing things.
Pre-conventional is when we don’t yet understand the “conventions” of society. We focus on our own needs and experiences and assume that others do the same, so we have a lot of mistrust. In this state, it’s easy to exploit others or be exploited because our worldview doesn’t include society’s rules and structures. We also don’t care about the impact our actions have on others.
Conventional is where we follow the way society says we should do things: The rules, the norms, and the power structures. We typically develop a conventional perspective by the time we’re teenagers, and this means that we also care a lot about what other people think. As we learn the rules of society, we are able to develop a stable reality that holds everything together. This stage is similar to the socialized mind of Robert Kegan’s model.
Post-conventional is when we discover that society’s rules aren’t pre-established or fixed, and we realize that everyone has their own experience. We break free and start thinking independently. We create our own meaning-making system and start weighing relative value structures around various things.
At this point, we can see that sometimes breaking the rules is okay if it serves a greater value. It’s about having the courage to create our own reality. Now we know what the rules are, we can break them.
We can be free agents in the world while knowing we are bound up with everyone. We can handle the complexity of being in that dance of self and other and hold the paradox that inherently comes with that. That gives us an enormous capacity to interact with the world and change without losing our sense of self.
Integral theory and spiral dynamics model
There is an immense amount of literature and thinking about the levels of integral theory and the stages of spiral dynamics. Both models attempt to make a synthesis of developmental theory as it applies to individuals and to culture.
For the purposes of this essay, I'll focus on the relevant stages of adult development as described by Steve McIntosh (author of Developmental Politics and Co-Founder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution) in the synthesis project, The Developmentalist.
Pre-traditional (ego-centric)
Traditional (nationalist/religious)
Modern (secular)
Post-modern or progressive (focus on inequality and multiculturalism)
Post-progressive, developmentalist, or integral (seeing value in all worldviews)
Pre-traditional is where we’re acting solely for our own needs. This perspective reminds us of the value of our sovereignty and the honesty of caring for our own. Nonetheless, an emphasis on what's good for myself and family often comes at the expense of what’s good for everyone else.
Traditional is the ethnocentric, nation-centric stage. We’re looking out for our kind. This is a great expansion from the pre-traditional approach because it includes people who look and think like me, even if they are strangers. There’s a commitment to rules and the idea of a “right way.” That right way might be defined by a constitution or by God and is perceived as a “universal truth.”
The strength of traditionalism is strong moral guidance. The risk lies in the potential rise of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia.
Modern is where most of the population is today. Here, science leads the way. Rationality and practicality overcome ethics and morality as we move away from religion as the guiding principle. With rational thinking comes individualism, democracy, and capitalism. Material success becomes more important here, too.
Unfortunately, a purely rational approach means that many things can be justified through logic. This worldview easily gives way to the exploitation and commodification of humans and the environment. The modern view attempts to erase race and devalue religion as they are outside objective reality.
Post-modern thinking focuses on the importance including of all perspectives and strives for equality and equity. It emphasizes that things are relative, and it’s very sensitive to the world's suffering. It’s the group that really cares about the environment. We can consider this a progressive or social justice worldview.
As the post-modern group knows well, race and religion still matter. Distinguishing them is crucial because not everyone has the same experience. This stage reminds modernity that it forgot about some of our challenges and that we’re going to destroy the world without taking immediate action.
The shadow side of the post-modern/progressive approach is complex but important to understand. In a drive for inclusion, progressives can easily exclude people who don't want to be inclusive. This is sometimes called the “mean green meme” (humorous example here). In the natural rejection of the previous stages, progressives can easily become anti-patriotic and anti-modernist. This undermines their capacity for moral, social, and political leadership and chips away at the institutions that are the very foundations that they stand upon.
The integral/post-progressive/developmentalist worldview is relatively new and rare, so it is not well-named or defined. This developmental stage is different from the previous as it is not born out of a rejection of the previous stage. Instead, the integral approach embraces the previous stages as necessary and inevitable features of the socio-political landscape. They all have a shadow, a gift, and a role to play in the whole, just like we do.
This worldview forces us to recognize and hold the nuance and complexity of our current situation. It also gives us the desire to learn more and complicate the narrative. To grow individually and collectively, we need to integrate each of these stages and their lessons. Once we’ve incorporated them all, we can better handle the complex and wicked problems we face today with the requisite humility and complexity.
What does all this mean?
There’s a pattern here, and we oscillate from being independent and caring about ourselves to caring about our relationships. This process is a profound part of being human in our culture.
Steve McIntosh’s idea of cultural intelligence is fundamental as we try to create an omni-win political culture and democracy. You can learn a lot more about this here.
Cultural intelligence is the ability to recognize the structural development of culture over time. If something happens on a structural level, it’s happening on a cultural and individual level.
It allows us to step outside all the political worldviews and see the patterns. When we start looking at all the patterns, we can spot the different approaches, stages of development, and worldviews. They are all vital parts of a greater ecosystem.
Each way of thinking has something to offer, including positives and negatives. Once we see that everything has a positive element or something important for us to understand, we can also see the shadow side.
This allows us to interact with people with different ways of seeing the world. When we’re not constantly pointing out their flaws, we can acknowledge the positives and get them out of their defensive position. Steve McIntosh has a nice way of saying this—it’s about trusting that there are people of good sense and good faith in all the cultural ways of being.
We can lift the good and mitigate the dark side of all the different world views. That creates awareness of our worldview and its dignities and disasters, too.
We can take responsibility for our evolution and the growth of our group or subculture. By recognizing that we all have a shadow side, we can hold ourselves accountable. Only then can we bring forward our best selves and help others do the same. That’s what my next essay is about—don’t miss it.
Check out these extra links for more information:
How can leaders grow as adults?
Forbes: Seven stages of adult development
Do you like quizzes? Check these out!
The Developmentalist’s Worldview Questionnaire
The Developmentalist’s “Are You a Developmentalist?” Quiz
Spiral Dynamics Self-Assessment
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