"Metaphorically: a witch or barbarian is someone you cannot subordinate to your system."
This strikes me as a good description of what it was like to have a baby and raise a young child. I wonder whether you've seen others talking about parenting as a catalyst for stage change as well. Seems likely I'm guessing.
I think this happened to me to some extent. My first child has undergone a lot of difficulties in the first few years of school, which forced me to dramatically change my approach to parenting. I have come to recognize that my earlier approach was based on how I should behave as a parent, based on a hodgepodge of rational thoughts and parenting books. The transition happened when I realized something that should have been obvious -- I should react to him as a person, not in the abstract. There's no need for rules because our relationship is unique. The difficulties still exist but everything started to be better after that realization.
yes, the examples in the book are sort of sideways to the issue of parenting. He discusses teaching sex ed and also supporting a teen moving from stage 2 -> 3 (I have an almost 16 year old so both of these resonated for me), but mostly from the vantage point of the teen's transition or the culture at large rather than the parent's. He also discusses a woman wrestling with whether to tell her young daughter the truth about her relationship with a man she is dating. This seems to me the closest example to what I'm thinking of, but still not very direct.
Ke's example feels spot on to me and seems to match your language of preserving the form while no longer being limited by the form. One can relate to their children as people first (or as Ari might say, "friend, model, guide"), but the "form" of being a parent remains and it looks pretty sketchy to me when people try to eliminate the "form" of being a parent and instead focus on being only a friend to their child. Personally, every developmental phase for my children has brought up new "stuff" for me and it feels as if they become new barbarians that cannot be subordinated to my system every year or so. No claims to stage 5 access or stability on that front here!
It's interesting that the whole "medium" column has a footnote
"a. In the construction of this column I am indebted to the thinking of Mauricia Alvarez."
Do we even know who they are? The name doesn't appear in the book except for that one cryptic footnote and Google doesn't really give me much of an answer. But it's the whole column that's basically left as is in the book, without much of an explanation.
Yes, very astute! I do have answers, which are the substance of one of the upcoming tales in the series. If I ever get to it! This is going much more slowly than I expected.
There seems to be an implicit promise that if you ignore some rules, you'll have relationships that are more exciting or more fun? What are some specific examples of these rules?
Not ignore, but relativize. The theory of relationship becomes a collection of items in the space that you can take into consideration, but they are not determinative.
Is doing a committed long term meditation practice a cheat code for reaching stage 5, even in the absence of other triggers, support systems, etc? Or, to put that another way, how could a person that is not particularly attached to anything be attached to systematicity? (Obviously i also recognize than an enlightened person wouldnt care about "reaching stage 5").
> Is doing a committed long term meditation practice a cheat code for reaching stage 5, even in the absence of other triggers, support systems, etc?
Well, this is an empirical question, and I know of no actual research in this area. Anecdotally, I think the answer is that meditation can potentiate the other work involved in the transition, but it’s not adequate by itself.
My intuition is that it would be particularly helpful in stage transitions, but I'd guess that challenging life circumstances are more likely to kick off the transition to begin with.
"Metaphorically: a witch or barbarian is someone you cannot subordinate to your system."
This strikes me as a good description of what it was like to have a baby and raise a young child. I wonder whether you've seen others talking about parenting as a catalyst for stage change as well. Seems likely I'm guessing.
I think this happened to me to some extent. My first child has undergone a lot of difficulties in the first few years of school, which forced me to dramatically change my approach to parenting. I have come to recognize that my earlier approach was based on how I should behave as a parent, based on a hodgepodge of rational thoughts and parenting books. The transition happened when I realized something that should have been obvious -- I should react to him as a person, not in the abstract. There's no need for rules because our relationship is unique. The difficulties still exist but everything started to be better after that realization.
Oddly enough, I can't think of an instance. It does seem like it would happen!
The "Parenting" chapter of In Over Our Heads explains what that transition would have to look like, but doesn't give even a fictitious example.
yes, the examples in the book are sort of sideways to the issue of parenting. He discusses teaching sex ed and also supporting a teen moving from stage 2 -> 3 (I have an almost 16 year old so both of these resonated for me), but mostly from the vantage point of the teen's transition or the culture at large rather than the parent's. He also discusses a woman wrestling with whether to tell her young daughter the truth about her relationship with a man she is dating. This seems to me the closest example to what I'm thinking of, but still not very direct.
Ke's example feels spot on to me and seems to match your language of preserving the form while no longer being limited by the form. One can relate to their children as people first (or as Ari might say, "friend, model, guide"), but the "form" of being a parent remains and it looks pretty sketchy to me when people try to eliminate the "form" of being a parent and instead focus on being only a friend to their child. Personally, every developmental phase for my children has brought up new "stuff" for me and it feels as if they become new barbarians that cannot be subordinated to my system every year or so. No claims to stage 5 access or stability on that front here!
It's interesting that the whole "medium" column has a footnote
"a. In the construction of this column I am indebted to the thinking of Mauricia Alvarez."
Do we even know who they are? The name doesn't appear in the book except for that one cryptic footnote and Google doesn't really give me much of an answer. But it's the whole column that's basically left as is in the book, without much of an explanation.
Yes, very astute! I do have answers, which are the substance of one of the upcoming tales in the series. If I ever get to it! This is going much more slowly than I expected.
I've noticed that number 7 is Mauricia. Maybe it's not a coincidence. Looking forward to it!
Indeed not a coincidence :)
Footnote 1: "[..] How can the meanings of events can change? [..]" <- there's an extra "can" in there.
Thank you very much! Appreciated. I've fixed it now.
Thanks for writing this. I am glad this post exists, and have found it useful in more than one way!
There seems to be an implicit promise that if you ignore some rules, you'll have relationships that are more exciting or more fun? What are some specific examples of these rules?
Not ignore, but relativize. The theory of relationship becomes a collection of items in the space that you can take into consideration, but they are not determinative.
Is doing a committed long term meditation practice a cheat code for reaching stage 5, even in the absence of other triggers, support systems, etc? Or, to put that another way, how could a person that is not particularly attached to anything be attached to systematicity? (Obviously i also recognize than an enlightened person wouldnt care about "reaching stage 5").
> Is doing a committed long term meditation practice a cheat code for reaching stage 5, even in the absence of other triggers, support systems, etc?
Well, this is an empirical question, and I know of no actual research in this area. Anecdotally, I think the answer is that meditation can potentiate the other work involved in the transition, but it’s not adequate by itself.
My intuition is that it would be particularly helpful in stage transitions, but I'd guess that challenging life circumstances are more likely to kick off the transition to begin with.