Dr Clare Graves life's work : Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap.

Human Nature Prepares for a
Momentous Leap

by Clare W. Graves

 [From The Futurist, 1974, pp. 72-87.  Edited with embedded comments by Edward Cornish, World Future Society.] 

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A new psychological theory holds that human beings exist at different ‘levels of existence.’ At any given level, an individual exhibits the behavior and values characteristic of people at that level; a person who is centralized at a lower level cannot even understand people who are at a higher level. In the following article, psychologist Clare Graves outlines his theory and what it suggests regarding man's future. Through history, says Graves, most people have been confined to the lower levels of existence where they were motivated by needs shared with other animals. Now, Western man appears ready to move up to a higher level of existence, a distinctly human level. When this happens there will likely be a dramatic transformation of human institutions.

    For many people the prospect of the future is dimmed by what they see as a moral breakdown of our society at both the public and private level. My research, over more than 20 years as a psychologist interested in human values, indicates that something is indeed happening to human values, but it is not so much a collapse in the fiber of man as a sign of human health and intelligence. My research indicates that man is learning that values and ways of living which were good for him at one period in his development are no longer good because of the changed condition of his existence. He is recognizing that the old values are no longer appropriate, but he has not yet understood the new.

   The error which most people make when they think about human values is that they assume the nature of man is fixed and there is a single set of human values by which he should live. Such an assumption does not fit with my research. My data indicate that man's nature is an open, constantly evolving system, a system which proceeds by quantum jumps from one steady state system to the next through a hierarchy of ordered systems.

   Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man's existential problems change. These systems alternate between focus upon the external world, and attempts to change it, and focus upon the inner world, and attempts to come to peace with it, with the means to each end changing in each alternatively prognostic system. Thus, man tends, normally, to change his psychology as the conditions of his existence change. Each successive state, or level of existence, is a state through which people pass on the way to other states of equilibrium. When a person is centralized in one state of existence, he has a total psychology which is particular to that state. His feelings, motivations, ethics and values, biochemistry, degree of neurological activation, learning systems, belief systems, conception of mental health, ideas as to what mental illness is and how it should be treated, preferences for and conceptions of management, education, economic and political theory and practice, etc., are all appropriate to that state.

   In some cases, a person may not be genetically or constitutionally equipped to change in the normal upward direction when the conditions of his existence change. Instead, he may stabilize and live out his life at any one or a combination of levels in the hierarchy. Again, he may show the behavior of a level in a predominantly positive or negative manner, or he may, under certain circumstances, regress to a behavior system lower in the hierarchy. Thus, an adult lives in a potentially open system of needs, values and aspirations, but he often settles into what appears to be a closed system.

Read more on Dr Glare Graves work, later work out by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan in the Spiral Dymanics system on human values, leadership and transformations in society.

http://www.clarewgraves.com/articles_content/1974_Futurist/1974_Futurist.html

The only critic for this model is that values to much the evolution upward the spiral, without realing enough that sustainable society's are formed by creating better living conditions for everyone at the very bottom. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Aurobindo would say the same, people who climb high on the spiral of consious evolution like Gandhi are necessary, because they recognise the entire system of all all mankind that is interconnected and interdependant, while those people need to work first for better conditions for those at the very bottom, like the poor, the homeless, the sick, the elderly, and so on. If the bottom becomes steady and healthy as a rock, the entire system above the bottom benefits on it, without a solid bottom of the spiral, societies tend to collaps and create social unrest and even revolutions. All levels are equal, all wordviews are important, all truths are partial truths, the challenge to recognise this in eachother. This would be the only solution the end the ongoing wars between the worldviews that don't recognise the integral interdepence of us all. Ken Wilber based a lot of his work on this Spiral System, based on research. His model is not perfect, the work on integral psychiatry can learn a lot from thinkers as Dr Stanislav Grof, but the basis of this model are solid and interesting. People with the ethics of people like the Dalai Lama are examples from people with a high developed consciousness on the spiral, that takes care for the entire spectrum of consciousness, having compassion for all sentient beings, also those at the very bottom, the have-nots, those in difficult situations, living in poverty and so on. The Dalai Lama recognises the need for uniting religions with the needs of modern science as well. As he said once : "If science discovers things that are not compatible with buddhism, then buddhism will have to change". The unification of different worlds, uniting the best of all. Interesting studies for developmental and evolutionary psychologists, and it has been used somewhere in Africa to solve the problems of a civil war by understanding different value systems amongst different tribes, and uniting them through an integral mentor who understands all parties, and can work on diplomatical solutions.

The author, Clare W. Graves, is a professor of psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He previously served as a criminal psychologist at Cuyahoga City Court in Cleveland, Ohio, and as a professor at Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University. He began research in 1952 on what he terms the highlight of his career: his theory of ‘The Levels of Human Existence.’ He found the theory served as a powerful tool for understanding problems in such different fields as business management, education, criminal justice and welfare. Graves began lecturing on the subject as early as 1961 and is now working on a book, Up the Existential Staircase, that will present the theory in a more complete form. 

 [Because of health issues, Dr. Graves was forced to discontinue work on that book shortly after the publication of this article. However, the completed sections of his manuscript, along with additional materials directly from Dr. Graves's own writings and presentations, are available as The Never Ending Quest.]