Spring, I'm actually part Metis. I recently read an amazing book called Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education and within it, I found a lot of what it was communicating aligned quite closely with my understanding of the latter stages of development.
Spring, I'm actually part Metis. I recently read an amazing book called Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education and within it, I found a lot of what it was communicating aligned quite closely with my understanding of the latter stages of development.
But I think you have some valid points though, especially when you said the following in your one post.
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A healer and tribal leader from an Amazonian village may not pass the test to type anywhere beyond “Conformer” stage in a language-based adult development test, yet he carries somatic intelligence to engage with a complex system no less sophisticated than an “Alchemist” of a late stage.
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I completely agree. In other words, the reason there is probably such a small percentage of people rated as "late stage" is because they're probably not living within the fractured, unnatural "civilized" world (or even working in a corporation, if they were) but within the natural, indigenous, whole world.
Even more so, how can you give such a test to an indigenous leader when you don't even understand the culture you're testing (i.e. sentence completion may not make any sense because you don't understand the meaning of it)? You'd have to experience their culture first to fully understand them.
This relates to one quote (see below) from the book I mentioned above and it gets to the very heart of what late stage development is about, at least to me, from my perspective, understanding, and meaning. It's understanding that what a human being is isn't read in books (or "expert" knowledge accumulated) but more lived and experienced. And you really have to experience life as a whole, the full breadth and depth of it, to really understand what it means to be a human being as a whole.
For myself, I know there is still a whole undiscovered country and ocean within me yet to explore.
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But herein lies a danger. It’s the same danger we faced every day as we tried to translate the highly experiential, non-verbal work of our intensive into a book of words. Charts and books and words appeal to the Western mind. When we get them, we may think we’ve gotten it.
But it’s likely we haven’t, at least not on a very deep level. We have not learned the most important lessons until we’ve experienced them for ourselves. And Native cultures are all about experience over concept. The danger in trying to describe this work is that participants and readers may content themselves with learning about indigenous pedagogies without ever feeling their wisdom, laughing at their jokes, or experiencing traditional learning from the inside. All too often, Western learners content themselves with information rather than experience, confusing the map (the lines on the page) with the experience of the place itself.
— Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education
Spring, I'm actually part Metis. I recently read an amazing book called Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education and within it, I found a lot of what it was communicating aligned quite closely with my understanding of the latter stages of development.
But I think you have some valid points though, especially when you said the following in your one post.
---
A healer and tribal leader from an Amazonian village may not pass the test to type anywhere beyond “Conformer” stage in a language-based adult development test, yet he carries somatic intelligence to engage with a complex system no less sophisticated than an “Alchemist” of a late stage.
---
I completely agree. In other words, the reason there is probably such a small percentage of people rated as "late stage" is because they're probably not living within the fractured, unnatural "civilized" world (or even working in a corporation, if they were) but within the natural, indigenous, whole world.
Even more so, how can you give such a test to an indigenous leader when you don't even understand the culture you're testing (i.e. sentence completion may not make any sense because you don't understand the meaning of it)? You'd have to experience their culture first to fully understand them.
This relates to one quote (see below) from the book I mentioned above and it gets to the very heart of what late stage development is about, at least to me, from my perspective, understanding, and meaning. It's understanding that what a human being is isn't read in books (or "expert" knowledge accumulated) but more lived and experienced. And you really have to experience life as a whole, the full breadth and depth of it, to really understand what it means to be a human being as a whole.
For myself, I know there is still a whole undiscovered country and ocean within me yet to explore.
---
But herein lies a danger. It’s the same danger we faced every day as we tried to translate the highly experiential, non-verbal work of our intensive into a book of words. Charts and books and words appeal to the Western mind. When we get them, we may think we’ve gotten it.
But it’s likely we haven’t, at least not on a very deep level. We have not learned the most important lessons until we’ve experienced them for ourselves. And Native cultures are all about experience over concept. The danger in trying to describe this work is that participants and readers may content themselves with learning about indigenous pedagogies without ever feeling their wisdom, laughing at their jokes, or experiencing traditional learning from the inside. All too often, Western learners content themselves with information rather than experience, confusing the map (the lines on the page) with the experience of the place itself.
— Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education