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ARCHITECTURE OF GROWTH APPLIED AS A FRAMEWORK FOR LIVING

This paper invites all who are involved with coaching or developing people to consider
the importance of the emerging area of study into stages of development, to appreciate
that organizationally we are sharing perspective, and that the perspective is the point of
view which itself is being shaped by the significance of what we’re doing and what we
need to include in an Integral Approach

Developmentally, perspective increases in inclusivity, which allows an expansion in


perspective. It is interesting when one deeply contemplates what is being asked in one’s
life situation and accepts the changes inherent in the investigation.

“Falling down is part of the perfection.” Sharon Stone

The important realization is that these communicative aspects reflect the whole and are
not in any way separate, unless we attitudinally approach our operation this way. In
sharing my perspective, there is not an expectation that you take it on as a ‘belief system’,
it is shared for the purposes of consideration and contrast. When you feed back to the
perspective you create a ripple effect in the consciousness that is the perspective. This is
the essence of feed-forward/feed-back, efferent/afferent, top-down/bottom-up functioning
as a unified whole.

The paper draws on the known evidence relating to the unfolding of the ‘human
condition’, as it is understood, in relation to stages of development, and I offer this
understanding as something to be worked with, to allow interior growth to be balanced
with strategy and direction.

What are the research and empirical findings in relation to growth and
development?

“The phenomenology of stages has been proven cross-culturally.” Jean Piaget

I will now outline the cross-cultural evidence on the ‘architecture of growth’, as a


framework to be considered, and ideally to be practiced so that it becomes familiar in a
daily context.

What’s needed really, is a higher level of consciousness, and It’s hard to create, but its
coming. As the Africans say; if you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far,
go together. We have to go far, quickly.
Al Gore speaking about sustainable living in the 21st century, at the 2008 Technology,
Entertainment and Design Conference.

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Being an agent of change in addressing an issue as enormously complex as human
growth and development, and the resistance that is inherent in this, the following
suppositions are essential to be mindful of;
• Human growth exists and is comprised of multiple levels of consciousness.
• Our current levels of consciousness are not able to deal with our current problems.
• Growth is difficult.
• Growth is inevitable.
• We need to grow individually.
• We need to grow collectively.
• Evolve or die.
From Wilber interview ‘The Architecture of Growth’ Integral Naked, April 2008.

It is important to register that an integral framework, is itself not another partial offering
that is relative, culturally bound and interpretive, but truly a new paradigm approach
which functions to include all known elements. An Integral Model is by its nature
Interdependent, in that it explicitly acknowledges;
• Increasing integration
• Self/other constructed
• Understanding more deeply via ontogenesis
• Recognition of assumptions
• Seeing whole dynamic system
• Awareness of resistance or identification with barriers as impediment to growth.

What is essentially asking via our Mission is to be able to notice the forces of Social
Programming and conformity and to transcend but include this, to be able to take
responsibility for self and in doing so, involve others. This is what is meant by self/other
constructed, and this is actually what our mapping process is designed to ignite. This
creates the causes and conditions for self-awareness and the realization that the position I
can take in relation to my experience, is indeed, a perspective, and that working with a
significant other, creates the causes and conditions for introspection, feedback and
expansion.

In order to communicate effectively across the spectrum of consciousness, it is helpful to


outline the 3 broad levels that have been mapped, in which information is interpreted to
create a perspective. Importantly these perspectival views are not separate, but operate
on the basis of growth hierarchies which follow the transcend, but include principle,
where the lower is enveloped by the higher. These levels are not types of people, but
systems dominant in people at a particular stage in unfolding. We are all born at the
archaic stage of development, where we progress instinctively and reflexively toward self
sufficiency and autonomous functioning.

Characteristics of Mythic Traditional Stage


Solid principles and foundations. Certainty and Absolutistic Realities. Unilateral mode
of operation, we’re going to do it this way. Take it or leave it.

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Characteristics of Rational Modern Stage
Logic and evidence, Material proof., facts, logical arguments

Characteristics of Post-rational, Post-Modern Stage


Includes interiors, subjectivity is the primary focus of reality. NB. Interiors used in this
context is what you find when you directly investigate what is arising in awareness.

The journey from a reliance on external authority (being told what to do) to internal
authority (taking responsibility for self) is also implicit in this journey from mythic
traditional (there is an absolute authority who knows, doing what’s right) to rational
(show me the evidence, progress and competitive advantage) to pluralistic (participation
and equality for all, consensus seeking, relative and situational) to integral (systemic,
integrative, freedom to be as one chooses, the space to learn and feel many things), where
you are able to include more phenomena and rely on subjective and intersubjective
evidence as a means of knowing. In fact this evidence is direct, but does not exclude
third-person data.

None of these systems is better or worse than any other. Each arises in response to
specific problems of existence. These Value Systems describe how people think and
decide about their values, not the things, ideas or beliefs they value. Spiral Dynamics
Profiling Value Systems (2007).

Developmental Lines

Howard Gardiner’s (1985) work on Multiple Intelligences/Different


Capacities/Developmental Lines highlighted 2 important lines and the distinction
between them is important here.

Cognitive-line is my view or perspective, and reflects my capacity for thinking about


content. This is my TALK line.

Self-line is my actual Centre of Gravity, where I act from. This is my WALK line.

The cognitive line is usually a stage or 2 ahead of my Self line. This points to the need
for support around the causes and conditions relating to educating the ‘thinking’ around
health and activity, and the realization that turning that into action will require at least a
commensurate amount of effort. The effort required to go from cognitively
acknowledging it, to embodying it, is something which is still not grasped in those who
function in ‘outcomes based’ thinking, because what is tested is cognitive understanding
(my talk line), not whether it is being embodied (my walk line).

The Lower Right quadrant reflects the Techno-Economic mode of the Social System in
which we are operating, I believe we are at the tipping point of this mode beginning to
seek an intervention that can deal with the complexity of the current situation in its
fullness. We are that Organisation because we are the only Organisation with an
Interdependent Framework that can contain all the variables. What is still being evolved

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interiorly is an embrace of this complexity and the educative awareness required to
communicate it, as well as receptivity in the audience around being familiar with the new
paradigm.

Types of Development

As development increases you attain the capacity to inhabit the view-point of the other
person, or you have an ability to take on board their perspective. Males and Females
develop through different means, but we all have access to the whole. Integral
development is the stage where the male and female qualities become integrated, so that
the pathways unify.

Gilligan’s (1982) research shows that males develop through;

Autonomy, Rights and Justice,

And females develop through;

Relationship, Care, and Responsibility.

Males will enforce rules, and hurt feelings in the process. Females will break rules to
save feelings.
You can see from the above lists that autonomy and relatedness are two of the three
aspects of SDT (the theoretical framework we have adopted supportive of Intrinsic
Motivation as the substratum for activity through ontogenesis), and that one is from the
male stereotype, and one is from the female stereotype. Once again we find ourselves
being asked to view these seemingly contradictory aspects as complementary and
inclusive in a holistic or integral paradigm. What is highlighted is the tendency for
picking and choosing in relation to one’s preference band-width. Autonomy and
Relatedness are not separate entities, they are complementary aspects of the whole, the
same with Justice and Responsibility, when Responsibility is dominant, the need for
Justice recedes, because Responsibility is self-evident and therefore appreciation arises.

The directionality for both types from Gilligan’s research is;


Selfish to Care, to Universal Care, or viewed using different language; Ego-centric
(what’s right is right for me) to Ethnocentric (what’s right is right for me and mine) to
World-centric awareness (what’s right, is interdependent with the context in which it is
arising). Universal Care or World-Centric awareness functions as; a synergistic blend of
insights that can be brought to bear contextually, because the agent is living them in an
open practice..

In becoming familiar with this view, would you say it is important for Bluearth to
function from the perspective of Universal Care, or World-centric awareness?

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Holism, or the whole or totality as it really is, is paradoxical, complementary, the
between, comfortable with probability, and non-linear. This does not mean that one
cannot act with intention, rather that one realises that it is not possible to ‘fix’ things, but
that ‘clear seeing’ is to act in concert with the information and evidence from the whole
with directionality, intent and energy.

Mark McGrath, April 2008

References

Gardiner, H (1985). Frames of Mind.


Gilligan, C (1982). In a different voice.
Spiral Dynamics. Certification and Training September 2007

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