(no subject)
This started out as a comment in a friends-only post elsewhere on lj. I realized I actually liked it well enough to consider it worthy of posting in my own livejournal.
This person asked friends if they found the process of self-discovery and personal growth to get any easier with time, and I responded:
My sense is that it does get easier, as long as people continue to keep working on themselves, their world, and their relationship to it. I think onceptualizing the process in terms of cycles is very astute of you. I've enjoyed recognizing that in my own life's growth, as well as the larger cycles in the universe. Beyond personal growth, I am fascinated by "spiral dynamics" in human social evolution, which conceptualizes growth cycles rather as spirals.
Every cycle in a growth process brings you back to a similar-but-different place compared to an earlier cycle. Something's been added to your understanding: it's deeper, more complex, more integrated with the bigger picture in your life and the world.
Visualize it as adding layers, so the spiral grows over time. Whether it's as an individual or a whole species, we are evolving socially and in our relationship to the planet: it's just that the inertia is so huge from all that we've already learned to think and do as a social species, from the "lizard" (limbic) brain on up, and change seems glacial and inconsistent when we look around at what the rest of our society is up to.
At any given time in history, every person is at their own unique point of personal evolution-some people literally stuck in the past, others with their heads in the clouds and dismissed as idealists, and most somewhere in the median, possessing elements of both in varying ratios. But egos fear and resist change. Traditions resist change, too; they also happen to provide society with common reference points for the median group. It's easy to be lazy and just strive to be average; no self-awareness required or even desirable if you want to maintain the status quo.
People struggling with personal growth issues are mostly on their own, and they need encouragement to keep stepping into the unknown, trusting that it's the right thing to do for their own evolution. It also just happens to be an incremental step in the evolution of humanity. By the way. You GO!
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Spiral Dynamics is just a descriptive name (and book title) for a philosophy that has helped me to frame value differences and conflicts within myself (in terms of personal growth), in our society, (such as conservatism vs. progressivism in modern American politics), as well as among ancient and modern cultures all over the world. It also recontextualizes the word "meme", as it is commonly applied in the lj community. :)
A link: http://www.spiraldynamics.com/
This person asked friends if they found the process of self-discovery and personal growth to get any easier with time, and I responded:
My sense is that it does get easier, as long as people continue to keep working on themselves, their world, and their relationship to it. I think onceptualizing the process in terms of cycles is very astute of you. I've enjoyed recognizing that in my own life's growth, as well as the larger cycles in the universe. Beyond personal growth, I am fascinated by "spiral dynamics" in human social evolution, which conceptualizes growth cycles rather as spirals.
Every cycle in a growth process brings you back to a similar-but-different place compared to an earlier cycle. Something's been added to your understanding: it's deeper, more complex, more integrated with the bigger picture in your life and the world.
Visualize it as adding layers, so the spiral grows over time. Whether it's as an individual or a whole species, we are evolving socially and in our relationship to the planet: it's just that the inertia is so huge from all that we've already learned to think and do as a social species, from the "lizard" (limbic) brain on up, and change seems glacial and inconsistent when we look around at what the rest of our society is up to.
At any given time in history, every person is at their own unique point of personal evolution-some people literally stuck in the past, others with their heads in the clouds and dismissed as idealists, and most somewhere in the median, possessing elements of both in varying ratios. But egos fear and resist change. Traditions resist change, too; they also happen to provide society with common reference points for the median group. It's easy to be lazy and just strive to be average; no self-awareness required or even desirable if you want to maintain the status quo.
People struggling with personal growth issues are mostly on their own, and they need encouragement to keep stepping into the unknown, trusting that it's the right thing to do for their own evolution. It also just happens to be an incremental step in the evolution of humanity. By the way. You GO!
--------
Spiral Dynamics is just a descriptive name (and book title) for a philosophy that has helped me to frame value differences and conflicts within myself (in terms of personal growth), in our society, (such as conservatism vs. progressivism in modern American politics), as well as among ancient and modern cultures all over the world. It also recontextualizes the word "meme", as it is commonly applied in the lj community. :)
A link: http://www.spiraldynamics.com/