In Rober Kegan’s book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, he describes five orders of adult development, one more than the standard developmental model. This fifth order of development emerges only after the age of fifty, and so it rarely existed before people routinely began living past mid-life, about 100 to 150 years ago, and it takes the arc of conscious development one step further, to a place where, Kegan asserts, we develop the wisdom needed to deal with the problems of the modern, globalized, world.
Robert Kegan is an American Developmental Psychologist and author. He is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Additionally he is the Educational Chair for the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education and the Co-director for the Change Leadership Group. He is a licensed psychologist and practicing therapist, lectures widely to professional and lay audiences, and consults in the area of professional development. - Wikipedia
In his post, An Overview of Constructive Developmental Theory, in Developmental Observer, author Peter W. Pruyn notes that the adult mind is not as fixed as was once thought: “A generation ago, developmental psychologists focused on infants, children and adolescents because it was assumed that by the time we reached our early twenties, the mind was fully developed. Several decades of research later, this premise has been proven to be false; the adult mind does continue to develop, albeit in different ways for different people.” This gives us all room for change that offers hope for our troubled world.
This new model is called Constructive Developmental Theory. In this model, there are two adult developmental stages that take us past the Socialized Mind, that emerging in adolescence, through the Self-Authoring Mind, emerging in the thirties, to the Self-Transforming Mind, kicking in around 50 years old.
The Socialized Mind, which adopts and internalizes the values of your society, is the point where a person is generally considered “grown up,” and can function in society. But this mindset can be limiting because it adopts the values of its’ society from the inside, and is subject to them as unquestioned assumptions. This puts limits on the ability of a person to adapt to changing conditions because the way to gain acceptance is by “following the rules” of your group, and questioning those rules is unthinkable. You could consider this the mindset of the political Conservative and climate change denier, who rejects all change on the principle that being different, is being wrong.
The next stage of development is the Self-Authoring Mind, which offers somewhat more flexibility by allowing a person to step back and see their culture from “the outside,” as it were, allowing each person to evaluate, criticize, and perceive ways to improve their society. In this stage the “rules” and mores of the social group are no longer unquestionable a assumptions or “natural law,” as put forward by pro-slavery groups, but can be evaluated and modified. While this mindset allows cultures to evolve and adapt to new conditions, a must in the 20th and 21st centuries, it is still resistant to considering, as equally valid, the values and traditions of different cultures. This mindset could be summed up by this statement “Those foreigners can be all right, as long as they behave like Americans and don’t try and shove their ways down our throats by talking funny or wearing strange clothes.”
Now we come to the 5th order in Kegan’s model, the Self-Transforming Mind. This mindset allows a person to step back from any one culture and see her social group as just one possibility among many. Here is the mindset of the true diplomat and negotiator, able to balance the needs of all the parties in a negotiation, without favoring her own. According to Pruyn, less that 1% of the adult population reaches this stage of development. This is clearly something we desperately need more of, if our world to survive.
As Pruyn points out, things are really not that simple, as it is just a model. However, it should be clear from the increasing disfunction in politics and business that we need more people who can see past the persistent myth that “Our” culture, political and economic systems are the best. If there is one thing common across every conflicts around the world, from LGBT activists in the US to the gridlock in the US Congress, to ISIS in the middle east to Putin in the Ukrine, it’s this: It’s the unquestioned belief all our problems would go away if everybody was just be like us. A very Socialized, or, at best, Self-Authoring point of view. Also, it’s a very naive point of view, since our differences are not going away anytime soon, but, unfortunately, the Socialized mind cannot see any other option. If we are going to survive, we are going to need a great many leaders, at all levels, that will work with, and, if necessary, around, the other mindsets, not just cater to them.
Fortunately, for our sake, and the sake of the planet, those numbers are slowing growing. “Enlightenment,” as it were, is slowly spreading, from historically small enclaves, out into the world at large, reaching people who, in past times, would never have heard of such radical ideas. Every day we see more people drop out of the “american dream” and challenge our Western myths and assumptions that are laying waste to the world. We badly need more people that can honestly see that it takes a Self-Transformed mind to understand that it’s the very concepts that Socialized minds live by are at the root of every social and politics problem we face, that no one society or economic system has all the answers and we badly need to stop punishing people who think differently.
I will close with a final quote from Pruyn that sums up our place in history better than I can, “As I see it, humanity’s greatest challenge in a globalized world can be put very simply: “How can we learn to live in each other’s backyards?” For the first time in the history of our species, a globalized world confronts us with a task for which a collection of Socialized Minds is inadequate. Such a complex challenge is unlikely to be met solely through better leadership, policies, or technology. I believe that it must be met through more complex thinking, and that responsibility is up to all of us.”
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