“Higher” Stages Aren’t Always More Mature
The Limits of Developmental Theory
At some level, everyone intuitively understands development.
It’s like this: As infants, our world is a crib. As toddlers, our world expands to include a house and a yard. As kids, we’re aware of a neighborhood. As teens, we’re more aware of nations and the world. As grownups our world continues to expand, both internally and externally.
That’s a vast oversimplification, and developmental theorists have shined a light on the nuances and complexities of the growing process for hundreds or (if you include ancient Greek thinkers) even thousands of years.
Today the field is abundant with theories that each have a different flavor and level of detail, and while I appreciate aspects of every major theory I’ve encountered, I’ve found the one from former pastor Brian McLaren to be the easiest to explain quickly, so I’ll use it here to flesh out where I’m coming from.
McLaren lists four stages of adult development: simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony. Each “higher” stage represents an increased capacity (more on that in a moment) to see someone else as real — to genuinely articulate their position as they would articulate it.
Here’s how I think of McLaren’s stages:
Simplicity = awareness that people in your tribe (political party, religion, etc.) are real.
Complexity = awareness that people outside of your tribe — but whose views don’t directly discount your tribe — are real.
Perplexity = awareness that people whose views directly discount your tribe are real.
Harmony = awareness that people in each of the stages listed above are real.
Like I said, different theorists use different labels for these stages, such as premodern, modern, postmodern, and metamodern or different person-perspectives. My point is that, whatever the label, stages of adult development describe an expansion of awareness.
But here’s the rub.
A mature life isn’t just one that’s aware of more and more. A mature life is one that actually treats other people as real in practice. And that requires virtue — the capacity and conviction to treat others as they want to be treated.
Developmental Pools
Framed this way, we might think of stages of development as expanding “pools” that have an increased capacity to hold virtue. So stage one (simplicity) would be, say, a kiddie pool and stage four (harmony) would be an Olympic-sized pool.
And yet having a large capacity doesn’t equate to having a great deal of virtue. You could have an Olympic-sized pool that's holding nothing but a thin layer of sludge or a kiddie pool that’s full to the brim with living water. The latter is more mature (wiser, kinder, more compassionate).
To illustrate, a friend in my Latter-day Saint community once told me that when he asks for volunteers to help people in their congregation move to a new house, it’s seldom the most expansively minded members who show up to do it. That notion matches my lived experience — including, by way of confession, my personal experience. As my worldview has expanded, I’ve found it more difficult to volunteer to help others in my immediate vicinity partly because I’m so stressed about international politics, global warming, the collapse of institutions, etc. I fixate on the grand problems so much that I tell myself I don’t have as much time for the small immediate problems. (And yet the small immediate problems are the ones I’m more likely to actually be able to do something about!) The whole situation reminds me of a character named Mrs. Jellyby from Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House who fixates on helping kids in Africa while living in a home that’s in total disarray. Expansive… but not mature.
Given this tendency, I have to remind myself over and over that while having an expansive view of life is potentially helpful (global warming really is a problem! criticisms against institutions really are valid!), it’s not an excuse to neglect life where I live. After all, the only place I ever am is here.
To return to the pool analogy: The point isn’t the size of the pool. The point is the amount of living water it contains. The most mature person therefore embodies an expansive worldview while also being willing to skillfully alleviate the pain of others in their immediate vicinity (including themselves, by avoiding burnout). Such a person has an Olympic-sized pool of pure water — love in theory and love in practice. That’s the goal.
More than anything, my worry is that when developmental theorists give primacy to stages, they risk celebrating a model that results in little more than ego-puffery. It’s what I’ve seen in the rise and fall of Ken Wilber, who’s among the most popular writers in the space. Sure, Wilber makes nods toward “growing down” (i.e., developing virtue), but the focal point of his work, as captivating as it is, seems to be his color-coded form of stages. And what good is being teal, turquoise, or indigo (as Wilber calls the higher stages) if we don’t embody virtue?
I think you are right that increased awareness does not equal increased maturation. Just increasing awareness of others does not necessarily mean you have attained some "higher" stage. In fact, increased awareness alone, without a concomitant increase in maturation, likely leads to increased misery and confusion. Unless you are also increasing awareness of your self, inside, this is a dangerous place to be in, likely leading to nihilism and powerlessness. Even just becoming aware of your internal life and its discontents seems insufficient. That too can lead to a life filled with misery. Maturation, it would seem, does require virtue, something to orient yourself to that is greater than what you are. This begins at home, inside you. We are powerless to change the outside world in very fundamental ways. We are not powerless to change ourselves. If we want to change the world, we have to be able to change ourselves, for we are where the world begins, for us. If we cannot show ourselves the love and acceptance we want to see in the world, if we cannot act towards virtue inside and in our small sphere of influence, then all the other things we are aware of that we see as unjust, will remain so until we find that peace, the justice in our being.
Great point Jon. It's a point I hadn't articulated as I'm figuring out my relationship to Metamodernism but yes. I know this as well — in myself as well. There's a paralysis that comes with complexity and learning more isn't the surest way to action. It reminds me of something Emerson said: "Your love abroad is spite at home"