An Introduction to “Ego Development Theory” by Susanne Cook-Greuter (EDT Summary)

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

No, it describes cognitive complexity, which is way beyond a mere unitive experience. Be careful not to conflate these things.

You would have to spell it out to me with concrete text examples from her 90-page document because I'm not convinced.

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

That's a huge difference.

It is, but I'm saying those are attributable to the stages below Unitive/Ego-Transcendent, not the stage in itself.

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It's way more than just descriptions. It's a totally different kind of mind.

Maybe she should have done more in-depth tests than sentence completions then (jk) 

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Haha, now you sound like one of those lunatic post-modernists who say that objectivity and truth are white male values.

No. It's not about white collar elitism.

That's good, I like swimming in those waters in this situation. And it was just a tongue in cheek way of describing the people who dominate the top of these models.

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Having mystical or unitive experiences does not give you mastery over the mind.

Just distinguish awakening from development. These are not the same thing. I thought we made this point clear long ago. Why are you still lumping these things together?

I'm not lumping them together. I'm saying the people making the models are inadvertently lumping them together with the lack of diversity in their samples. See my above comment or just remember my whole thread on this.

Notice this beautiful juxtaposition which underscores both my points (that Unitive = mysticism, and that the lack of diversity of samples is the probable cause of it being included as a stage at all):

Quote

Third, the whole theory was developed based on a Western cultural premise. It was verbally tested with individuals for whom English is either a first or a very fluent second language. Where feasible, translators who were highly sensitive to nuances in both the first and the second language were employed. Nonetheless, there are forms of meaning making especially in remote areas of the world and in languages that are less linear than English that fall outside this framework and cannot be readily examined by duplicating the sentence completion method.

Finally, I like to restate the conclusion of my dissertation (1999) that the Unitive stage is a catch-all stage for the ego transcendent realm of human development. Further study and using different methods of exploration will likely lead to further differentiations and insights into the nature of unitive understanding. Clearly such subtle distinctions already exist both in Ancient Eastern texts as well as in the eyes of Western observers (Brown and Engler, 1978).

"Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making" (Cook-Greuter, 2013, p. 74).

If only the samples had included rigorous selections of both Eastern and Western peoples at various levels of currently conceived "ego development", I believe this notion of Unitive/Ego-Transcendent as an ego development stage would collapse.

Edited 20 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

@Leo Gura 

We can create a small model like this:

Person 1) low spiritual development - low cognitive development

Person 2) low spiritual development - high cognitive development

Person 3) high spiritual development - low cognitive development

Person 4) high spiritual development - high cognitive development

Can you describe the differences between each person? Like what would be the difference between person 3 and person 4?

Yes, good.

1) Trump, or a criminal gangster. Typical blue-colar American who barely passed high school and cannot point to Iran on a map and goes to fooball games and prays to Jesus for his football team to win the campionship so he can win $1000. Typical MAGA rally-goer. Typical American right-winger who thinks Trump is sent by Jesus to save us from communist Biden.

2) Typical stage Orange materialist scientist at MIT. Autistic atheist type like Stephen Wolfram. Many atheist intellectuals are here. Eric Weinstein.

3) Typical hippie New Ager type. Many spiritual healers, witches, shamans, mystics, etc. These are usually people born with spiritual talents thanks to genetics. They operate on faith and intuition. They love stuff like Law of Attraction and astrology. My last girlfriend. The type of person who thinks RFK Jr is God's gift to politics.

4) Ralston, Ken Wilber, Actualized.org 

What is the difference between Actualized.org and hippie New Ager spirituality?

Edited 19 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

Teleological models of development are the ultimate symptom of a dying modernity. They distill the modern obsession with rational, universal progress narratives into something so abstract and incorporeal that it’s completely severed from any real, embodied culture - little more than intellectual vapor.

Every time I hear someone like Kamala Harris speak, I can’t help but wonder: what fantasyland do these people inhabit? How can they still parrot Enlightenment optimism with absolutely zero self-awareness or irony?

And really, how does anyone in 2024 use the word universal with a straight face? The defining feature of this moment in history is radical multipolarity, yet some cling to these grand Enlightenment fantasies like a child clinging to its mother’s breast.

A universal map of human development? Are you joking? Have you ever met humans? Postmodern late-stage capitalism, supercharged by AI, has made one thing abundantly clear: human nature thrives on runaway self-creation. Call it positive feedback or the death drive - this isn’t natural evolution’s steady march of negative feedback loops and universal equilibria. Darwin and Schopenhauer may be forgiven for such naïve notions, but not a contemporary.

The comforting illusion of the mother’s womb that is the Parmenidean cosmos of unity may offer solace, but to truly make sense of the contemporary world, we must return to the Heraclitean vision of cosmic strife and war. And I mean this as much metaphysically as culturally.

[Leo Gura]

54 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You would have to spell it out to me with concrete text examples from her 90-page document because I'm not convinced.

The difference between you and me is that I don't care what her document says. I am doing my own thinking, not following her.

I don't circumscribe my undestanding of reality with one academic lady.

54 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

If only the samples had included rigorous selections of both Eastern and Western peoples at various levels of currently conceived "ego development", I believe this notion of Unitive/Ego-Transcendent as an ego development stage would collapse.

Why don't you got out and do the research? Since you have such strong views on how to do it right.

Edited 19 hours ago by Leo Gura

[hundreth]

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What is the difference between Actualized.org and hippie New Ager spirituality?

Good question. The New Age movement has different dimensions, aliens, spirits, anything and everything in between. I think the difference is that in this model, everything is real. In your model, everything is a dream. I mean it isn't your model per se.

I would hope the difference is that your teachings are more grounded, but part of me feels like you'd like to say that the new age movement is *too* grounded.

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, hundreth said:

but part of me feels like you'd like to say that the new age movement is *too* grounded.

No. It is not too grounded. It is full of pie-in-the-sky.

Edited 20 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Nemra]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

What is the difference between Actualized.org and hippie New Ager spirituality?

Intelligence, I think.

Edited 19 hours ago by Nemra

[Nivsch]

Until the Strategist stage it all seems good to me, but the Ego/Constuct aware stage sounds like something she might have heard from people in a very specific niche, and doesn't do justice with the richness that such a developmental stage, or any stage, should encompass.

Edited 19 hours ago by Nivsch

[Oeaohoo]

44 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What is the difference between Actualized.org and hippie New Ager spirituality?

Autism.

Also, this needs a joke punchline…

39 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Teleological models of development are the ultimate symptom of a dying modernity. They distill the modern obsession with rational, universal progress narratives into something so abstract and incorporeal that it’s completely severed from any real, embodied culture - little more than intellectual vapor.

The comforting illusion of the mother’s womb that is the Parmenidean cosmos of unity may offer solace, but to truly make sense of the contemporary world, we must return to the Heraclitean vision of cosmic strife and war. And I mean this as much metaphysically as culturally.

Edited 19 hours ago by Oeaohoo

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Autism.

I am not remotely autistic.

[Majed]

@Leo Gura leo can you make a new post where you explain your health issues ?

[Oeaohoo]

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I am not remotely autistic.

The difference is that New-Age Spirituality is intellectually woolly, communal, and passive, whereas your approach is intellectually rigorous, highly individualistic and active (“the work”, “personal development”). This can be jokingly summed up as autism…

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

The difference is that New-Age Spirituality is intellectually woolly, communal, and passive, whereas your approach is intellectually rigorous, highly individualistic and active (“the work”, “personal development”). This can be jokingly summed up as autism…

My approach is cerebral/intellectual.

It is not suitable for everyone.

But cognitive development requires doing lots of thinking. If you bypass that you can still be spiritual but your mind will fall into error. Which is why many of these New Agers end up pro-Trump and RFK anti-vaxxers.

Edited 19 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Majed]

@Leo Gura i think a lot of new age spirituality is based on belief not direct experience and insight. 

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Majed said:

@Leo Gura i think a lot of new age spirituality is based on belief not direct experience and insight. 

But many New Agers do have spiritual experience. So it's not so easy to dismiss them. What they lack is intellectual rigor. And it's not like my rigor is even so high. I only care about rigor so much. There's more to this work than rigor.

Edited 19 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

4 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Autism.

Also, this needs a joke punchline…

The main battleline here, I think, is best drawn between two unlikely adversaries: Gilles Deleuze and Peter Sloterdijk.

I suspect that you, like Sloterdijk, nonetheless harbor a Parmenidean Urinstinkt that inclines you to reject postmodernism, by which I mean the dynamic, self-amplifying chaos of positive feedback loops.

I’m not trying to evoke Nick Land here, but in some ways, he has been a great interpreter of the runaway intensification central to Deleuze’s vision, where repetition destabilizes rather than stabilizes, propelling difference into ever-greater, ever-more-dangerous becomings. This is precisely what Sloterdijk’s instinct for spheres and immunological enclosures resists - a Heraclitean cosmos of flux and strife that ruthlessly denies the comforting illusion of unity, such as that provided by tradition and mythology.

[Majed]

@Leo Gura isn't intellectual rigor just having contemplative insights, which is the same as spiritual experience ?

[Leo Gura]

Just now, Majed said:

@Leo Gura isn't intellectual rigor just having contemplative insights, which is the same as spiritual experience ?

No. Those are 3 different things.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

The difference between you and me is that I don't care what her document says. I am doing my own thinking, not following her.

I don't circumscribe my undestanding of reality with one academic lady.

Well, let me then re-iterate: I'm not the one lumping things together. I'm talking about what I think the model is doing, trying to interpret what it is saying on its own terms (as far as that is possible), and that requires reading what the author said and the methods they used to construct it. And like, if you want to talk about your own understanding of reality, don't call it "Susanne Cook-Greuter's Ego Development Theory", if you see what I'm saying 😆

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Why don't you got out and do the research? Since you have such strong views on how to do it right.

Maybe I will 🤓 (I've actually seriously considered this, for maybe a few minutes 🙂).

Edited 19 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Majed]

@Leo Gura intellectual rigor is studying a lot of stuff. 

however spiritual experience and contemplative insights, how are they different ? 

i mean i do understand that spiritual experience than just an insight. but isn't it different degrees of the same thing? 

Edited 19 hours ago by Majed