07.19.05

Posted this on Jackneck, but thought I'd post it here as well.

My friends are tired of hearing me talk about it, but my big abiding interest, some might say my near obsession, for the last few years has been worldviews, or more specifically, how we can transform our worldviews, and by doing so, transform ourselves and our world. By worldviews I mean our conceptual frameworks, the stages of psychological development that we all pass through, commonly called stages of consciousness. Each stage of consciousness, each successive worldview, provides a wider perspective and a deeper understanding. In general, the focus moves from care only for the self, to care for the other, to care for family, then to tribe, then clan, then nation, then world, then all existence.

The interesting thing is that not only do we pass through these stages individually, but our societies pass through them collectively as well. There are three dominant worldviews in the country commonly labeled Traditional, Modern, Postmodern. Roughly 25% of the country is Traditional, 50% is Modern, and around 20-25% is Postmodern, with less than 1 or 2% at a newly emerging stage that’s often called Integral, and far less than 1% with anything like a spiritual worldview.

So, for instance, the U.S. is not divided between liberals and conservatives, but between Traditionals, Moderns, and Postmoderns. The Republican Party is being torn apart by fighting between Traditionals and Moderns, while the Democratic Party is rocked by fighting between Moderns and Postmoderns.

There is a ton of research on worldviews, but for those interested, the best system describing worldviews these days is Spiral Dynamics, developed by Don Beck and Christopher Cowen. There is a good overview of the system at What is Enlightenment Magazine. There is also a good deal of information at the Integral Institute headed up by Ken Wilber, whose book A Theory of Everything is as good introduction, as is Cultural Creatives, by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson and In Over Our Heads by Robert Kegan.

I’ll probably post a lot about worldviews, so I thought I’d start early.

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