A Pinnacle Of Knowing

Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower order behavior systems to newer, higher order systems as an individual’s existential problems change.

Each successive stage, wave, or level of existence is a stage through which people pass on their way to other states of being. When the human is centralized in one state of existence, he or she has a psychology which is particular to that state. His or her feelings, motivations, ethics, and values, biochemistry, degree of neurological activation, learning system, belief system, conception of mental health, ideas as to what mental illness is and how it should be treated, conceptions of and preferences for management, education, economics and political theory and practice are all appropriate to that state.

Clare Graves was a mid-century professor of psychology, and the originator of .a Level Theory of Human Development. Ken Wilbur used some of his work to create his Theory of Spiral Dynamics. We experience this spiraling system of awareness every day, but we don’t use those words to describe it. We live in an emerging open-ended system of reality. What is reality for the tribes that live in the Amazon is certainly as valid as the reality experienced by those living in an advanced society. Each reality system has its own set of challenges, and its own methods for value fulfillment. One system is not better than the other. They are appropriate steps in the process of individual vale fulfillment and self awareness.

The interesting point to remember is while our human consciousness is experiencing one particular system in our mass reality, we are also physically aware of the other systems. We couldn’t say that a hundred years ago. Our awareness has reached one pinnacle of knowing. In this knowing, we should accept other systems as innate individual choices. Those choices will change as the individual progresses through the spiral. We don’t need to force change in other systems using our antiquated forms of conformity. Change happen as the individual consciousness within each system expresses overwhelming value fulfillment, and inner self awareness.