Is Social Psychology Best Left Unstudied?

Is love fair game for science? Or, is it a sacred mystery that we should not try too hard to understand?

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Is Social Psychology Best Left Unstudied?

The late U.S. Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin criticized the work of two prominent social psychologists when he stated that, "Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right at the top of things we don’t want to know is why a man and a woman fall in love." Are there some things in life best left unstudied?

Proxmire, pork, and passionate prudishness

With all due respect, Senator Proxmire was a windy old curmudgeon who bragged that he was fired from his first job for impertinence and was fondly eulogized as being a maverick. His personal integrity, however, was reflected by a record 10,252 consecutive roll call votes across twenty-two years of public service. Proxmire took pride in lampooning wasteful “pork barrel” government spending and was notorious for giving “Golden Fleece” awards to many pork appropriations (with the notable exception of dairy supports in his home state of Wisconsin). The quotation, above, refers to his very first Golden Fleece, which went for $84,000 given to the National Science Foundation in 1975 for the study of “Why a man and a woman fall in love.” He should be forgiven a little hyperbole.

Under the circumstances,

Essay: When you say “WE,” just who do you mean?

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When you say “WE,” just who do you mean?

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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#fundamentalism #authoritarianism #human #development #integral

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

When you say “WE,” just who do you mean?

Family is always, obviously, “WE.” But stopping there just puts too many limits on the culture that we can achieve. If WE is only family, you need a strict father or tribal chief to enforce order and to lead YOUR cousins on plundering raids against OTHER families or tribes.

If your WE is too small, you have to always arm yourselves and be vigilant to protect your life and property against the next small group that defines “US” as just “OUR family” or “OUR tribe.” 

Without broader cooperation, life just becomes too hard and too dangerous and it often becomes necessary to attack other families or tribes to survive. Our philosophy becomes, “If we do not stand for ourselves, first, foremost, and always, we stand to fall.” If WE is too small, it is moral to take what YOU can from THEM because OUR needs are more important to US because survival is always the highest value.

Or, do you get your values and sense of who you are from a larger association, community of faith, or regional alliance? Do you identify primarily as Scandinavian Lutherans or Southern Baptists? Is YOUR version of God the ONLY TRUE God? My, how comforting that

Essay: Stages of psychosocial consciousness and culture

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Stages of psychosocial consciousness and culture

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Integral

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters





Stages of psychosocial consciousness and culture




The 19^th century German philosopher, Georg Hegel, noted that conflict enables transformation to higher states of organization. This idea was reinforced by research in the 20^th; particularly in Developmental Psychology. These states have developed sequentially through human history as increasingly organized world views—for both individuals and cultures.

As we develop through childhood we experience this transformation and change as our thoughts and feelings become more complex. Developmental psychology demonstrates that this kind of staged development continues through adulthood. Leading researchers have supported this concept of developmental stages: Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Jane Loevinger, Abraham Maslow, and Robert Kegan.

Hierarchical structures seem judgmental to many and too-easily reflect a prejudicial bias toward people like themselves. Kegan concluded, and carefully defended the objectivity of a staged developmental model, which is generally now considered indisputable.




The work of American psychologist Clare W. Graves extended the concept of cross-cultural staged psychological development. He described these stages as part of a

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Poem: Climbing the psychosocial spiral

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Climbing the #psychosocial spiral #DonBeck #SpiralDynamics

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Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Poem: Climbing the psychosocial spiral

The way I am is better than how I have ever been.
I really am more satisfied with now than some past when.
I’m smarter than I used to be; as smart as I know how.
I don’t think one should need to be beyond where I am now.

But if once I have moved beyond the history of my past,
My progress to my here and now just might not be my last.
As I have struggled to transcend the problems I have met,
I must admit I should expect to meet more problems yet.

Although my errors led me to the way that I should go,
I don’t suppose “the hard way” is the only way to know.
Perhaps a search outside myself will shed a better light.
Have others come before me? Could they lead me out of night?

I should have the guessed; the path I tread has been traversed before,
By some who mastered lessons I’d be foolish to ignore.
If I care to examine all the best that they can tell,
I needn’t struggle near as hard in order to do well.

David Satterlee

Essay: The emotions of transformation

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The emotions of transformation

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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#Integral

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

The emotions of transformation

[With appreciation to the research of Susan Cook-Greuter]

The language, concepts, and vocabulary that people use forms the filter through which they see and understand the world. At higher levels of development, you become aware of this process. You are more-able to stand back and observe, not just everything else with dispassion, but your own actions, reactions, emotions and motives as well. You can enter the ego and see that you are playing this game or that game and be a genuine witness to your own struggles.

At first, you feel suspicious of this new perception. You don’t understand it well enough to defend it. It feels threatening and disturbing. Your foundation of assumptions has begun to crumble. You become aware of more of your mental processes such as creating explanatory stories and drawing conclusions. You begin to question all of the stories that you have previously created to explain things. But gradually you become more comfortable with the process of watching your mind at work.

Once you can begin to see yourself reaching the limits of previous understandings, struggling with inadequate ideas, and struggling to sort things out in a new way, there is a joyful satisfaction, an uplifting glow as you feel yourself

Essay: Dis-integrating old beliefs

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Dis-integrating old beliefs

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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#Faith #Integral #Psychosocial 

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Dis-integrating old beliefs

I have recently been challenged that my comments threaten to “dis-integrate” people’s beliefs and that this comes off as “threatening and painful” to them. Thus, I am being rude, inconsiderate, and unsociably aggressive. Talk about a curve ball! I just didn’t see that one coming.

The concept is that most people are already quite satisfied with their sources of authority and their beliefs. They believe things that are similar to what their friends believe and this makes them feel comfortable and secure. They feel that their existing beliefs all make sense together (are integrated). Thus, it is not nice for someone like me to come along and upset their apple cart.

I chewed on this problem for a while before it occurred to me to launch from, “What Would Jesus Do?” Actually, Jesus published a new gospel and admitted that he came to cause division, rather than peace. He warned his disciples that they and their new message would encounter violent resistance. I don’t mean to compare myself to Jesus – only to point out that there come times when one’s ideas have to transcend comfortable and familiar traditions.

While having a similar discussion with my youngest son, he proposed a model of

Essay: Elephant metaphor for developmental levels of worldview

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Elephant metaphor for developmental levels of worldview

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Developmental levels of #worldview. #Integral stages #metaphor

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Elephant metaphor for developmental levels of worldview

I was discussing the concept of “developmental levels of worldview” with a friend. She keep wanting to imagine that my description of a hierarchical, predictable sequence of developmental stages suggested increasing personal “smartness” or “betterness.” I was having trouble getting across the ideas that any worldview stage is perfectly fine so long as it serves the needs of a person’s or culture’s current circumstances (and does not oppress others.)

Eventually, I suggested that developmental levels were like a progressive experience of elephants:

[This does not accurately represent my belief system; it’s just an imaginary hierarchy of experience.]

• What’s an elberphunt? (simply has no clue)
• I have heard of elephants.
• I have read a story about elephants. (unable to independently anticipate the experience of an elephant’s subsonic rumbles)
• I have seen an elephant at the circus.
• I have watched elephants at the zoo. (the most common limit to likely developmental stages)
• I have lived with elephants in the wild. (few people would even imagine that anything more was possible)
• I have memories of being an elephant.
• I have always been an elephant. (few elephants would even imagine that anything more was possible)
• I am the race memory of all elephants.
• I Am that I Am. (God’s description of himself in Exodus)

Each stage is adequate for the needs of certain individuals in certain circumstances.

• At each stage, some greater [effort or] involvement has been achieved to have had a larger understanding.
• At each stage, it is difficult to explain the experience adequately to some who has not been there.
• At each stage, it is difficult to imagine the richness of knowing involved in additional stages.

I’m not suggesting that all of these stages are actually plausible for an individual but, then again, how could you actually be certain of that unless you were I Am?