The Spiral of Human Development (Stage Eight)
Order of the Lotus: Holism, Paradox, and Ineffability (Turquoise)
Stage theory… Is BS. Always was. And it is colonial as hell. Sorry, but that has got to go.
—Nora Bateson
(BEIGE) Order of the Naked: Survival, Sensation, and Self-Concept
(GREEN) Order of the Leaf: Environment, Consensus, and Equality
(YELLOW) Order of the Nautilus: Integration, Emergence, and Complexity
(TURQUOISE) Order of the Lotus: Holism, Paradox, and Ineffability <
Suddenly we can see the relationships between wholes and parts, parts and wholes in ever-shifting complex patterns. That does not mean we can design or control such systems any more than we can design or control the dynamic intricacies of Earth’s ecology. Systems affect subsystems, and subsystems affect systems.
Everything is generative, iterative, and regenerative, at least on this pale blue dot.
We begin to see not only how higher-order properties can be reduced to simpler constituents but also how one cannot reduce such properties. Replace linear arrows of causation with probabilities and paradoxical cycling phenomena. We are forced to abandon our crude deterministic outlook and stare straight into the cosmic mystery.
One answer reveals a thousand questions.
On a subatomic scale, familiar rules seem not to apply. When we observe the photon, it appears as though it goes left in virtue of our observation, rather than that we simply watch it go left. Click out many orders of magnitude. When we see the black hole’s behavior, it requires us to revise and relativize. What’s on the other ‘side’ of the black hole? Another dimension? Another universe? Time and space aren’t distinct categories but rather dual aspects of the same underlying phenomenon. Spacetime curves and stretches in the presence of supermassive structures.
Categories of reason break down, particularly when we push the boundaries of science into the theoretical. Yet unobservable entities live in theory, often for decades, until we develop ways to infer their existence in the absence of direct observation. In this Order, philosophy and science make strange bedfellows. Maybe our investigations at the edge reawaken our sense of the mystical, or maybe we have a peak experience.
Diving into the mystery does not require us to abandon rationality but rather to expand our conception of it. Such expansion ought to include holding two or more contradictory ideas in juxtaposition without lapsing into incoherence. Our task is to figure out how to reconcile or synthesize these ideas using lateral or non-linear thinking. This form of cognition is difficult and rare -- impossible for some -- but can give rise to an understanding greater than the sum of parts.
Some explorers of the self, referred to sometimes as psychonauts, will have direct experience of conscious states that prompt us to reconcile strange forms of understanding with the more familiar forms. These include the ineffable and the noetic. Ineffable knowledge means difficult or impossible to put into words, which can cause one to doubt that it is knowledge. Noetic knowledge is directly revealed, which means it is radically subjective. The revelatory nature of such experiences leaves one with a sense of a cosmic source delivering the insights. One such insight is often that all things are fundamentally connected, which can be trivially true and construed as hippie talk. But a deeper sense of connection, gained through meditation or peak experience, confers meaning. Happy residues of such an experience can be patience, wonder, and humility.
Few have dared to wonder whether another Stage is waiting to be born. Such a stage will arise from changing life conditions if it emerges at all. I suspect innovation will begin to dissolve so many of the categories we are used to being fixed. For example, what does it mean to be human? To what extent can we fundamentally alter ourselves, change our genetic source code, or merge our neurophysiology with AI?
In exploring the Stages, we must do so with the utmost humility. Each Order becomes expressed within certain life conditions. Some of those life conditions include individual limits to one’s cognitive abilities or capabilities. Some worry that natural constraints that prevent some people from ascending create an unbearable natural hierarchy.
“Stage theory… Is BS”, writes author Nora Bateson. “Always was. And it is colonial as hell. Sorry, but that has got to go.”
The trouble is, it can’t go.
Whether we view the Stages more as a useful heuristic than as a hyper-accurate description of humanity’s nature—or ignore them altogether—some variation on increased psycho-social complexity will operate in our reality.
Instead of Bateson’s colonialism and unbearable hierarchies, I propose the Stages make up a heterarchy, which means members can be ordered in any number of ways along many different dimensions.
In other respects, differences create a holarchy, meaning there is no absolute base or apex. Relationships relate wholes to parts in different ways according to a given environment. As with a fractal, the patterns evident at one level of description can be similar to those at another. Thus, the values of a superordinate Stage might be somewhat useless in the life conditions of a subordinate Stage.
That is until one makes the quantum leap to the Order of the Nautilus and the Order of the Lotus.
Like others, those who ascend to the Order of the Nautilus do so by their newfound values and views on the world. But their quantum leap involves a newfound ability to jump from Order to Order (system to system) as needed. They are not only able to see where each Order fits into the Whole of Orders, but they become conversant across orders.
Nodding to Jonathan Haidt, they learn to move flexibly among different moral matrices as the situation requires. For example, they might see the value of saying “yessir” or “no, ma’am” to their elders, as would be familiar in the Order of the Pyramid. Or they might see that those steeped in a more toxic version of the Order of the Leaf will no longer be able to appreciate the decentralizing processes established in the Order the Sun. These can be better at solving social problems than deferring to the pieties of social justice, or Green shibboleths.
One might worry that this quantum transition confers special insights that will allow those who have ascended to take advantage of those still on their lower-order journeys. Maybe it does. All bets are off in the absence of the Six Spheres, which run orthogonally to the Eight Stages as soon as moral dealing emerges in humans. Happily, one of the hallmarks of the ascended two orders is a greater sense of humility and wonder. That is, we come to appreciate our human limitations as we operate in the Age of Complexity.
By this point, we have figured out that complexity requires Decentralism. Thus, Decentralism’s time has come.
Dr. Don Beck, with co-author Christopher Cowan, expanded Clare Graves's original vision and applied the insights around the world. Dr. Beck passed away on April 17, 2023. May he rest in peace. This series is meant to honor his efforts.