I made a reply to that (knowing it might not be that well received) essentially trying to steelman Kegan 3 from a Kegan 4 perspective—that is, is there a valid systemic reason based on long term goals to act as if all you care about is how you make yourself and others feel.
Here’s my slightly edited attempt:
The thing we actually care about… Is it how everyone feels? People being happy and content and getting along, love and meaning—it seems to be based in large part on the fundamental question of how people feel about other people, how we get along—the questions that are asked in Kegan 3.
It might be understandable if you’re a person that cares about a world where people love and cherish each other, and are able to pursue meaning—you might think that the near term effects of how people think and feel relate to what happens effect the long term of how people think and feel and relate as well. If you don’t have a lot of power, you might even subconsciously think that the flowthrough effects from your ability to effect how people around you feel is your best chance at affecting the “ultimate goal” of everyone getting along.
And when you run into someone who (in your mind) doesn’t care about that reality of how their actions effect the harmony of the group, and instead is focused on weird rules that discard those obvious effects, you might think them cold and calculating and importantly in opposition to that ultimate goal.
Then you might write up a post about how sure, rules and Kegan 4 and principles of action are important sometimes, but the important thing is just being good and kind to other people, and things will work themselves out—That Kegan 3 actions are actually the best way to achieve Kegan 4 goals.
You strike me as someone very heaven focused, so I am surprised you got off the train at about here.
I wonder, if you expand the concept of “how everyone feels” to include Eudomonic happiness—that is, its’ not just about how they feel, but second order ideas of how they would feel about the meaningfullness/rightness of their own feelings (and how you feel about the meaningfullness/rightfullness of their actions), do you still get off the train?
Yeah, it seems pretty plausible that I care about things that don’t have any experience. It seems likely that I prefer a universe tiled with amazing beautiful paintings but no conscious observers to a universe filled with literal mountains of feces but no conscious observers. I don’t really know how much I prefer one over the other, but if you give me the choice between the two I would definitely choose the first one.
There’s a lot of underlying models here around the “Heaven and Enlightenment” dichotomy that I’ve been playing with. That is, it seems like when introspecting people either same to want to get to a point where everyone feels great, or get to a point where they can feel great/ok/at peace with everyone not feeling great. (Some people are in the middle, and for instance want to create heaven with their proximate tribe or family, and enlightenment around the suffering of the broader world).
One of the things I found out recently that makes me put more weight into the heaven and enlightenment dichotomy is that research into Kegan stage 5 has found there are two types of Kegan stage 5 - people who get really interested in other people and how they feel and how to make them do better (Heaven), and people who get really interested in their own experience and their own body and what’s going on internally (enlightenment). That is, when you’ve discarded all your instrumental values and ontologies as fluid and contextual and open to change and growth, whats’ left is your terminal values—Either heaven, or enlightenment.
I responded to your original comment here. I don’t know the Kegan types well enough (perhaps I should) to say whether that’s a framing I agree with or not.
STEELMANNING KEGAN 3 (OR, KEGAN 3, TO THE TUNE OF KEGAN 4)
Ruby recently made an excellent post called Causal Reality vs. Social Reality. One way to frame what he was writing was he was trying to point at that 58% of the population is on Kegan’s stage 3, and a lot of what rationality is doing is trying to move people to stage 4.
I made a reply to that (knowing it might not be that well received) essentially trying to steelman Kegan 3 from a Kegan 4 perspective—that is, is there a valid systemic reason based on long term goals to act as if all you care about is how you make yourself and others feel.
Here’s my slightly edited attempt:
The thing we actually care about… Is it how everyone feels? People being happy and content and getting along, love and meaning—it seems to be based in large part on the fundamental question of how people feel about other people, how we get along—the questions that are asked in Kegan 3.
It might be understandable if you’re a person that cares about a world where people love and cherish each other, and are able to pursue meaning—you might think that the near term effects of how people think and feel relate to what happens effect the long term of how people think and feel and relate as well. If you don’t have a lot of power, you might even subconsciously think that the flowthrough effects from your ability to effect how people around you feel is your best chance at affecting the “ultimate goal” of everyone getting along.
And when you run into someone who (in your mind) doesn’t care about that reality of how their actions effect the harmony of the group, and instead is focused on weird rules that discard those obvious effects, you might think them cold and calculating and importantly in opposition to that ultimate goal.
Then you might write up a post about how sure, rules and Kegan 4 and principles of action are important sometimes, but the important thing is just being good and kind to other people, and things will work themselves out—That Kegan 3 actions are actually the best way to achieve Kegan 4 goals.
I happen to roughly agree with this but be warned that there are people who get off this train right about here.
*raises hand and gets off the train*
You strike me as someone very heaven focused, so I am surprised you got off the train at about here.
I wonder, if you expand the concept of “how everyone feels” to include Eudomonic happiness—that is, its’ not just about how they feel, but second order ideas of how they would feel about the meaningfullness/rightness of their own feelings (and how you feel about the meaningfullness/rightfullness of their actions), do you still get off the train?
Yeah, it seems pretty plausible that I care about things that don’t have any experience. It seems likely that I prefer a universe tiled with amazing beautiful paintings but no conscious observers to a universe filled with literal mountains of feces but no conscious observers. I don’t really know how much I prefer one over the other, but if you give me the choice between the two I would definitely choose the first one.
There’s a lot of underlying models here around the “Heaven and Enlightenment” dichotomy that I’ve been playing with. That is, it seems like when introspecting people either same to want to get to a point where everyone feels great, or get to a point where they can feel great/ok/at peace with everyone not feeling great. (Some people are in the middle, and for instance want to create heaven with their proximate tribe or family, and enlightenment around the suffering of the broader world).
One of the things I found out recently that makes me put more weight into the heaven and enlightenment dichotomy is that research into Kegan stage 5 has found there are two types of Kegan stage 5 - people who get really interested in other people and how they feel and how to make them do better (Heaven), and people who get really interested in their own experience and their own body and what’s going on internally (enlightenment). That is, when you’ve discarded all your instrumental values and ontologies as fluid and contextual and open to change and growth, whats’ left is your terminal values—Either heaven, or enlightenment.
I responded to your original comment here. I don’t know the Kegan types well enough (perhaps I should) to say whether that’s a framing I agree with or not.