Stages of Development - Victim consiousness

[nigel99 616]

Here is an interesting extract from a book I read a while ago. This has very little to do with IQ or education. I've got a team of highly qualified people including a few PhD's and some of them are most certainly in Stage 1 or 2...

Stage One: Magical Thinking. The person lacks good-cause and effect things, and often attributes the that happen to them as ‘magical’. They typically blame conflicts on coincidence or something about the other person or situation that actually has little to do with the source of the conflict

Stage Two: Concrete Thinking. In this stage, the person bases his or her reality on what is visible and concrete. Everything must be presented to them in concrete, quantifiable ways. In conflicts they want to address only the most visible and obvious aspects of it, as the rest will seem unimportant to them.

Stage Three: Cross-Relational Thinking. People in this stage are able to think abstractly. They can see relationships between categories of information but still tend to see the world as acting upon them. Because of this, they often think, act, sound and feel like victims.

Stage Four: Systemic Thinking. These people are able to think holistically and recognise underlying patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that repeat in their lives and control them in some way. In conflict situations, they are able to relate a current conflict to similar ones from the past.

Stage Five: Trans-Systemic Thinking. People in this stage recognise the correlations between their current conflicts and unresolved conflicts from the past. They have the ability to recognise windows of opportunity that allow them to make different choices – choices that will change patterns that might be restricting them in some way.

Robert Kegan estimates that about 70% of the adult population is operating at Stage Three or below. Approximately 30% are entering or are at Stage Four and less than 1% are entering or are at Stage Five.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[kallend 2,146]

nigel99

Here is an interesting extract from a book I read a while ago. This has very little to do with IQ or education. I've got a team of highly qualified people including a few PhD's and some of them are most certainly in Stage 1 or 2...

Stage One: Magical Thinking. The person lacks good-cause and effect things, and often attributes the that happen to them as ‘magical’.

Thank you Jesus.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[nigel99 616]

kallend

***Here is an interesting extract from a book I read a while ago. This has very little to do with IQ or education. I've got a team of highly qualified people including a few PhD's and some of them are most certainly in Stage 1 or 2...

Stage One: Magical Thinking. The person lacks good-cause and effect things, and often attributes the that happen to them as ‘magical’.

Thank you Jesus.

how true

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[Coreeece 2]

nigel99

******Here is an interesting extract from a book I read a while ago. This has very little to do with IQ or education. I've got a team of highly qualified people including a few PhD's and some of them are most certainly in Stage 1 or 2...

Stage One: Magical Thinking. The person lacks good-cause and effect things, and often attributes the that happen to them as ‘magical’.

Thank you Jesus.

how true.

So let me guess - having mastered all 5 stages at a very young age, you guys have since graduated to stage 6 - a hyper figmental state of development - where you arbitrarily assign subjacent stages to your annoying coworkers and the more contemptible protected social classes among us?

Never was there an answer....not without listening, without seeing - Gilmour

[nigel99 616]

Coreeece

*********Here is an interesting extract from a book I read a while ago. This has very little to do with IQ or education. I've got a team of highly qualified people including a few PhD's and some of them are most certainly in Stage 1 or 2...

Stage One: Magical Thinking. The person lacks good-cause and effect things, and often attributes the that happen to them as ‘magical’.

Thank you Jesus.

how true.

So let me guess - having mastered all 5 stages at a very young age, you guys have since graduated to stage 6 - a hyper figmental state of development - where you arbitrarily assign subjacent stages to your annoying coworkers and the more contemptible protected social classes among us?

Actually I believe in self assessment and critical analysis. No matter where you are in life there is always room for improvement.

To me the sad part is that while people blame circumstances or a higher being for what happens they lose the opportunity for personal challenge and growth. Anybody that believes they haven't got considerable room for personal improvement is delusional.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[aphid 0]

nigel99

Anybody that believes they haven't got considerable room for personal improvement is delusional.

Or a presidential candidate?

[pchapman 279]

Interesting ideas even if the titles are a little high-falutin'. It splits up the concept of "abstract thinking" into more divisions.

Some interesting thinking about causes and effects, the attribution of causes, and ones relationship relative to the universe, people, and objects.

But stage 4 (Systemic) and stage 5 (Trans-Systemic) seem too similar -- It's more like he says stage 5 is if you can appreciate stage 4 enough to actually take action to change one's ways. I don't think that's a separate stage of THINKING, but the degree to which one takes action based on that. Plenty of people say "I should..." but don't always get around to whatever that is.

nigel99

Robert Kegan estimates that about 70% of the adult population is operating at Stage Three or below. Approximately 30% are entering or are at Stage Four and less than 1% are entering or are at Stage Five.

I don't like that pigeonholing of people. I think we all operate at different stages at different times. It's a matter of to what degree one can switch when necessary.

It's almost like those 'stages of grief' that one can cycle through:

For example, if your printer fails to work, you simply may not know what the actual reason is internally, it might as well be magic.

Stage 1: "Jesus Christ! Stupid printer! My bad luck! Inshallah!"

Stage 2: "The paper is halfway out. Well, dammit, I might as well just try to wrench it out. Take that, printer! You'd better work now!"

Stage 3: "I know the printer is old and has had problems before, but why is it out to get me today of all days?"

Stages 4 or 5:
But one might at the same time realize at a higher level of thinking, that it is an old printer that has been buggy, and that this is what one will expect if one keeps putting off either solving the issue or spending money on a new one.

Bigger issues involving interpersonal relationships won't be as simple as my example, so there it can be harder to 'step back a little' and think in a more reasoned manner about the situation, its causes, and how others would perceive the issue too.

[quade 4]

I wish we had a better understanding of the human mind.

The way it is right now, I feel like current psychology is to the human mind what ancient astrology is to modern astronomy. That is to say, yeah, it's sort of a way of looking at the stars, but in no way really has any idea what it's looking at.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[RonD1120 62]

Eckankar:

Physical
Astral
Causal
Mental
Etheric
First of the God realization planes

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[Coreeece 2]

nigel99

Actually I believe in self assessment and critical analysis. No matter where you are in life there is always room for improvement.

Right - that's what all of this is really about, so excuse me for recognizing the irony in singling out a group of people and taking a jab at them by using information designed to resolve conflict and help us "learn to live in each other’s backyards."

Kegan said that it's unlikely that a person can be helped by someone that merely assumes they are engaged in a certain order of consciousness when they are not.

nigel99

To me the sad part is that while people blame circumstances or a higher being for what happens they lose the opportunity for personal challenge and growth.

That doesn't mean that they don't reflect on those circumstances and assess measures to prevent it from happening again.

Second, "magical thinking" isn't even the way Kegan described stage one - that's just an adaptation that some couple in Colorado made up - In his books, Kegan described it as an order of consciousness more related to impulsiveness.

A more accurate adaptation to his theory is illustrated in this chart here.

Also, stages 1-2 are used to describe how young children and adolescents may exclusively handle conflict, while stages 3-4 are reserved for adults - but I think we could say that in general, people may entertain anyone of these stages to address conflict throughout their adult life depending on the scope of the conflict and the type/number of individuals involved.

For example, if a person operating at stage 4 the majority of the time is faced with an unfamiliar conflict that catches them by surprise, they may react impulsively given that the circumstances are new to them.

I think another example might be with professional baseball players - they are operating on superstition while aggressively evaluating themselves simultaneously.

Never was there an answer....not without listening, without seeing - Gilmour