2.6 Life Conditions Drive Development
“Different Times Produce Different Minds”1
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“While2 these are chaotic and turbulent times, they are hardly crazy ones. There is rhyme to both the reason and unreason. Order lurks in the chaos; a deeper chaos still lurks in the order. Those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and spirals in their minds to understand, will rest easier knowing the sky is not falling, after all.”
External conditions of our existence, that is, the times, places, people, problems, and circumstances that interact with our body and its nervous system activate our development. In the history of humans on earth, we have had very little change in these external conditions in that, out of hundreds of thousands of years, only about the last 1% of human existence accounts for the the fastest and most consequential external change. Our body and nervous system are the evolutionary products of our existence on the savannah, not living in cities and suburbs. We have not evolved any genetic tools to deal with overpopulation, climate change, and pollution. We will not physically evolve in time to make a difference for those conditions. We only have our innovative powers to compensate for the havoc fast approaching. It is possible that cultural evolution, while still slow, can form the foundation for species-saving behavior change3. There is hope for our ability as a species to solve existential problems.
Hey, we don’t even agree there is a crisis. Before the last few years, the only “data” we had was what scientists were reporting and lots of people distrusted that. I’m not sure why, but they did.
Now, the public attitude seems to recognize climate change because so many of us are being exposed to wildfire smoke that’s ruining our vacations. But they still aren’t sure we humans are responsible, and if we’re not, we can’t do anything about it!
Right. The primary part of our nervous system to protect us, the fight or flight response, is built for on-the-spot danger that comes on fast, peaks, and recedes in minutes or hours. Steven Johnson4 writes about “longtermism,” and describes 2 inventions of a chemist that took 50 years to display their catastrophic impact on human health. Thomas Midgely invented leaded gasoline to eliminate engine knock and improve mileage, and chlorofluorocarbons for use in refrigeration, especially air conditioning. Johnson’s article addresses the dilemma humans face in deciding what we should take into account as we invent new solutions. Maybe we can learn to better troubleshoot new solutions to mitigate future problems?
What does this have to do with developmental theories?
A lot! Simply put, in the early stages of human maturity, we have lots of energy, we have lots of drive to make our own way in the world. So we aren’t thinking so much about what others need. That means we have little patience with looking 50 years down the road to see if there are any potential downsides to today’s exciting discoveries. As the Thomas Midgely story demonstrates, it takes time to discover the long term and unintended consequences of inventions developed with good intentions. Now we have many more examples of industrial processes and products that cause substantial but hard to trace harm to humans and the environment. But, developmentally, it takes time to develop the patience and wisdom that might prevent disastrous decisions.
Lacking the patience and wisdom of so many in our population, how can we teach people the lessons of development theories and the consequences of potentially harmful downstream outcomes when they are so strongly driven in the opposite direction to make a buck today? As we learn about the Spiral Dynamics stages in more detail in upcoming newsletters, you will see that the first 4 Tier 1 stages are myopic and self centered. When we’re honest with ourselves, many Americans see this in ourselves. Even so, each of the Tier 1 stages is a little less self centered than it’s predecessor, and Tier 2 opens us to an appreciative and compassionate embrace of all stages to help enhance the positives and mitigate the negatives.
Let’s not discount what anyone brings to the table. It is not a question of either/or. We must include both the energy of youth and the wisdom of experience. Everyone has a role in solving the Big Problems.
Here’s a thought experiment:
Our genetic evolution is extremely slow. We cannot depend on evolving out of our current meta-crisis. Speed: 1 yard/hour5
The environmental degradation is fast. Speed: 100 miles/hour
The evolution of exceptional individuals if optimal conditions are present. Speed: 100 miles/hour
The evolution of culture is speeding up. Speed: 30 miles/hour
I believe our cultural balance of gravity is at about Blue/Orange (see newsletter 2.1). The effects of the various strands in our meta-crisis will be the overarching “rhyme to the reason and unreason” of our near future. That is, these will be the Life Conditions that drive the individual and cultural evolution of our near future. Can we evolve enough individuals (Wilber says we need 10% at the Yellow, Integral stage to tip the trend in the right direction) to increase the velocity of cultural evolution to catch up to the environmental crisis? It is a multifactorial problem. Stay tuned!
1 This is the title of Chapter 1, Beck and Cowan, Sprial Dynamics: Mastering values, leadership and change.p.17, 2006
2 ibid.
3 The podcast Deep Transformation, often refers to the “meta-crisis” of population, climate change, income inequity, social justice, etc. I recommend it for intelligent discussion and interviews based on Integral thinking for addressing these problems.
5 These are MUNs, Made Up Numbers. What is important is the relative, not the absolute speeds. It’s only a thought experiment.