Theory Engine

Changing the system I set out to observe

Stage 5’s Environment Part Deux

As mentioned back in this post, each of the Kegan stages has something that the person is subject to, it is the water they swim in, their “subjective ground”, and something which was formerly their subjective ground, but has now become an object to work with. In stage 3, the person is subject to emotional […]

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Reflections on Cook-Greuter’s Nine Levels

Back in 2017 when I was 33, I read Susan Cook-Greuter’s paper ‘Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making’ and recorded a short own-words summary of the stages and my personal reflections on them. I thought people interested in Kegan stages would like to see […]

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Protected: Cook-Greuter’s POST-conventional stage descriptions

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Protected: Cook-Greuter’s Conventional Stage Descriptions

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Another opinion u-turn

I realised with a bump the other day that I no longer view a person being both a scientist and religious as a contradiction. This is another example of a u-turn of my opinions in recent years. I was watching TV and two characters were having a discussion. The person was talking about how they […]

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Summary of Kegan Stage 5 Principles

In order to compile my list of possible fluid mode institutions, I relied on a series of distilled principles about what Kegan Stage 5 is, or does. I have distilled this from my own reading, from sources I found particularly useful to me. At the bottom I will link to other bloggers who have found […]

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Crap Criticisms Of Elon Musk

I find criticisms of Elon Musk to be really annoying. They normally lie along two lines: Elon Musk is really mean and pushes workers too hard Elon Musk’s companies are not very profitable/they miss his crazy targets These criticisms are expressed in a sort of triumphant way, as if to say, “Checkmate! You cannot escape […]

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telsa car on star trek set credit to Twitter user:@Kenetor

Get Past This Angst

Consider the following found in a recent email from Adbusters: How can we have spaceships and virtual reality and starving children at the same time? Weighing the almost magical technological advancement of recent years against the regression of our relations with nature and each other, one wonders what kind of life we will propel ourselves […]

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End Of Nations: Stage 5 Geography?

Can we go beyond nations into political fluidity?

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Stage 4 Quote Of The Day

“Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.” – Douglas Adams

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Money, part 2

My emotional return to a world using money

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Existing signs of fluidity

Required Reading Robert Kegan’s personal development framework, summarised here by David Chapman. You might also like to read my earlier thoughts about what Stage 5 or “fluid mode” is, or means, for individuals. This post will be taking huge liberties with material that is intended to describe personal, cognitive and social development of an individual by […]

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What is Stage 5’s environment?

In Robert Kegan’s book, the fifth stage of cognitive, personal and social evolution is called  the Inter-Individual Stage. I find this to be the least useful of all the names for the stages. According to his framework, one moves from “being” one’s current environment to “having” it as a tool. At stage 3, one “is” […]

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Emotional challenges of Stage 5

Required reading This post uses a key framework of personal evolution by Robert Kegan.  It is summarised by David Chapman here. This post is in dialogue with, and an expansion on, Chapman’s recent post about moving through stages 3, 4 and 5 in modern society (and the lack of support for it) here. This post will […]

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Reaching Stage 5 – non STEM

Required reading This post uses a key framework: Chapman’s version of Robert Kegan’s theories of emotional, cognitive and social development, it is summarised here. This post is in dialogue with, and an expansion on, Chapman’s recent post about moving through stages 3, 4 and 5 in modern society (and the lack of support for it) here. […]

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Polyamory as stage 4 bridge

Required reading This post uses a key framework: Chapman’s version of Robert Kegan’s theories of emotional, cognitive and social development, it is summarised here. This post is in dialogue with, and an expansion on, Chapman’s recent post about moving through stages 3, 4 and 5 in modern society (and the lack of support for it) here. […]

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Eternalist problems with bisexuality

Preamble My thoughts in this blog post rely on other frameworks to better understand bisexuality. The first set of frameworks are eternalism/nihilism and  monism/dualism as outlined by David Chapman on his project called meaningness. Very briefly, Eternalism says that everything has a definite, true meaning. Nihilism says that nothing really means anything. I will be […]

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