We evaluate a contribution in terms of the kind of story it tells. The evolution from Modern Age belief to culturally mature understanding takes through a predictable sequence of stories. Modern Age beliefs juxtapose heroic or romantic narratives. Heroic narratives describe overcoming obstacles to realize some ultimate achievement. Romantic narratives describe some meeting—either personal or more encompassing—that results in emotional or spiritual completion. They can work alone or together. Both heroic and romantic narratives are in the end ideological. Each involves projection, mythologizing, and a promise of final fulfillment and last-word truth. Each of our more conventional narratives—the American Dream, opposing political worldviews, the traditional beliefs of our various religions, progress’s promise of ever onward-and-upward scientific discovery and technological advancement—are of this heroic/romantic sort.
Following this we find transitional narratives, narratives that straddle Cultural Maturity’s threshold. Such stories recognize the limitations of ideological absolutes, but are capable of only a beginning grasp of what—if anything—may lie beyond such belief. I use postmodern as a catch-all term of this kind of story. Postmodern narrative at its best alerts us to how once-and-for-all truths now fail us, the fact of multiple viewpoints, and the importance of taking final responsibility in our choices. At its worst, it reduces to a different-strokes-for-different-folks arbitrariness and a confusion of irony and contradiction with significance that becomes, in effect, but another kind of ideology (and, as we shall see, ideology of a particularly tedious and difficult to counter sort). Such is the expected dual fate of such “straddling” belief.
Cultural Maturity’s new narrative offers that we might proceed more fully beyond ideology by leaving behind both absolutist belief and also more tendencies to elevate the absence of belief. It takes the best of postmodern insight and then moves beyond it. It describes the possibility of engaging experience more consciously and fully from the complex whole of who we are as systems, and in the process more fully and deeply engaging the complexities of the world around us.
We can use the concept of Cultural Maturity as a basis for discernment in a couple of ways, each of which follows from its developmental nature. First we can apply it as a “threshold concept,” as a minimum requirement for addressing, or really understanding, our time’s new questions. Developmental stages involve distinct breaks. They define new worlds not just with regard to what we experience, but how we experience. Our question: Does this idea or approach at least get is toe over cultural maturity’s threshold? We can also think of Cultural Maturity as “territory” of experience. We can talk in terms of the number of “steps” an idea or approach succeeds at progressing into the world of cultural mature perspective and experience.
The larger portion of thinking today falls short of Cultural Maturity’s threshold. The best makes it two, three, or four sold steps beyond. By twenty years from now, thinking from beyond that threshold must have major influence in leadership of all kinds and the leading edge of understanding must make it eight of ten good steps. (Note: what comprises a “step” is an arbitrary measure. But it is useful for conversation to have a shared sense to refer to.)
We can draw on other specific CST concepts to help fill out such description. For example, we might say “that is a pretty high Capacitance notion but it remains basically Late-Axis in its formulation.” Or, “That is interesting—most of the people in that organization are not of terribly high Capacitance and neither is the organization’s thinking, but the organization’s actions are important seen from the perspective of Culturally Maturity.”
We can also draw on notions from other sources for which CST perspective provides insight. For example, philosophical terminology is useful for helping articulate how a notion stops short. We can speak of a perspective as reducing to particular philosophical perspective that by definition is not integrative—for example, idealism, romanticism, positivism, humanism, theism, or scientism. Where the particular perspective can be found at multiple cultural stages we might want to draw on Patterning in Time language to be more specific: “That notion is ultimately just a Late-Axis version of idealism” (Plato and Hegel were both idealists.) We might also want to draw on Patterning in Space notions to help distinguish forms that have their origins in different here-and-now energetics: “That seems just a spiritual—specifically Early-Axis (in Space)—version of idealism.” (Teilhard de Chardin was also an idealist.)
We can draw in a similar way on political language. For example, Cultural Maturity describes how the assumptions of traditional liberalism and traditional conservatism each fall short equally short when it comes to the tasks of mature systemic policy. Add Patterning in Space notions and we might distinguish the more religion-based conservatism we might find with Middle/Inners and Middle/Lowers, the more national power-based conservatism more common with Middle/Upper/Outers, and the corporate/business-oriented conservatism more frequently seen with Late/Upper/Outers.
Language that relates specifically to scenarios for the future also helps make needed distinctions. We might say: “That is a very sophisticated sounding Post-Industrial/Information Age interpretation, but in the end it is pretty narrowly conceived (low Capacitance, lacking in mature systemic perspective) and could lead to dangerously simplistic choices.” “That is a pretty traditional Middle-Axis (in Space), We’ve Arrived kind of interpretation, but with regard to that particular question, it is pretty high Capacitance and includes some important culturally mature elements.”
Other Narrative-related Topics
1. Ideology and the Dilemma of Trajectory:
The Dilemma of Trajectory alerts us not just to the fact the onward-and-upward images of progress cannot continue to suffice, but no conventionally visualizable image of trajectory will suffice. We necessarily confront the Dilemma of Representation.
A good way sport Ideology is to note the implied cultural trajectory—with regard both to the past and to the future. We’ve Arrived Scenarios suggest an gradually ascending arrow that reaches a plateau. We’ve Gone Astray Scenarios might imply either ascent then decent (with the exact point of failure differing depending on the Ideology) or prolonged descent from some long-ago perfect past (with extreme forms of romanticism). Post-Industrial/Information Age Scenarios imply the onward-and-upward imagery continuing ever onward and upward (ascent defined by technological innovation). Post-Modern/Constructivist Scenarios tend to suggest no trajectory at all—cultural realities become simply alternation constructs. Transformational/ New Paradigm Scenarios describe their own kind of onward-and-upward imagery, thought now defined in terms of consciousness or spiritual realization. (The hierarchical images implied may be sequential, each stage replacing the one before; additive, succeeding stages transcending but continuing to embrace the sensibilities of the rungs below; or emphasize a repeating but ascending pattern, an evolutionary spiral.)
The images we are drawn to—which includes our view of the trajectory of civilization—reflect the balance between right and left hands inherent to cultural stage and personality style. Without any tempering right hand, creativity’s left hand experiences change as circular, an ever-returning wheel. Add a bit of truth’s right hand and we get spirals (first unbroken, then, with a little more of the right hand, spirals with discontinuities) and spiritually-defined hierarchies. Such are common with both classical Eastern thought and modern Western New Age views. The more archetypally masculine right hand biases images toward the linear aspects of change and change defined in more technological terms. Onward and upward and simple, one step after the other hierarchical images are most common when right-hand sensibilities predominate.
2. “Eternal Wisdom” and Cultural Maturity:
An extremely common conceptual trap confuses the “wisdom” of Cultural Maturity with the “eternal wisdom” of spiritual teachings (most often Eastern, but also Western mystical teachings). There are things we can learn from such teachings pertinent to Cultural Maturity’s task. But confuse the two and we get simplistic Transformational/New Paradigm Ideologies and great vulnerability to Unity Fallacies.
3. Patterning in Time and Conceptual Traps:
While Ideology is most readily mapped and identified with regard to Patterning in Space, associations we may have with Patterning in Time variables, particularly identification with particular cultural stages, can also serve to alert to traps in our thinking. The previous topic illustrates with regard to Early-Axis identification. But we can find related identification with regard to any Patterning in Time Axis.