Fication

We are at the end of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy where we also find a reconnection with the beginning. In typical superhero stories the superpowers of the heroes and of the villains can be seen as allegories for mental and psychological strengths. Batman and his opponents on the other hand have no superpowers and therefore Nolan can be more explicit that the battles, although they do fight with their guns and fists, are really battles of their psyches. Batman’s greatest strength lies in he his understanding and mastering of his own fears, which he learned at his training with The league of shadows in the first movie.

“To conquer fear, you must become fear. You must bask in the fear of other men, and men fear most what they cannot see.””

With these insights he can fight the criminals with psychological warfare, he knows his own shadow and can thus embody the criminal’s worst fears – when you enter the darkness you enter the home of the Dark knight and you will lose.

The villains of the three movies, Ra’s Al Ghul, The Joker and Bain, however, all master these aspects. Ra’s Al Ghul was the one who trained Batman, the Joker was unpredictable with his fearlessness and total irrationality, and Bain has a background of his own, so let’s take a closer look at him. While Bruce Wayne was born in a loving and wealthy home and started his journey into the dark after losing his parents, Bain has been molded by darkness. He is nothing other than darkness and has the edge of Batman who also seems to enter the fight for his own ego’s sake.

Bain is Gotham’s shadow, he literarily rules from the underworld, Gotham’s sewers. Anyone who tries to enter and hunt him down finds himself in hell, which is by the way not the place of ultimate pain but rather the place of no hope, and of course Bane’s home. And at a certain point hell gets unleashed and with that all that has been swept under the rug during the last years of successful ridding the streets from criminal elements.

When taking control over Gotham city Bain argues that he is really starting a “people’s” revolution against a corrupt system governed by the rich elite which he is bringing into a people’s court. Nolan touches on many issues of concern in today’s debate, such as the Occupy movement protesting against the one percent but not really knowing what to replace the current system with or sometimes naively thinking that just overthrowing it will solve everything and all will live in harmony. But there will always be someone with power in charge, which is a lesson from e.g. the Russian, Cuban or even the French revolution.

Bain claims to be one of the people, one of the 99 percent, and uses this green (or Kohlberg stage 4/5) rhetoric, but in reality he is just another red warlord using the rigged court and unrest as a demonstration that Gotham really is rotten from within and deserves abolition.

Amongst other themes in the Dark knight rises we also find the theme of meaning and self-sacrifice, and here is a useful lesson to be learned. A meaningful act, in contrast to an egoistic, is when you do something or fill a role not for your own sake but for the sole benefit of others. Meaningfulness in this sense is giving everything without expecting anything back. And sometimes this act can require breaking the law and becoming a vigilante, which would be the post-conventional move if there is a greater good (But what does this say about The league of shadows?).

It is, however, easy to confuse this meaningfulness with self-importance, when you have defined yourself and identified with the role of the hero or savior and find that more important than to actually do good. That’s when the role has become your ego. A useful question is if you could imagine giving the role of the savior for someone else that might do a better job.

And not being afraid to die can mean that you really have conquered all your shadows and fears. But it can also mean that you actually don’t care about and choose not to get attached to anything, perhaps in fear of losing it. Freedom from fear and attachments is not the answer to everything. In order to fight pure darkness and fight for your life, perhaps you need both. And getting them might require to unconditionally loving what you fight for.

Finally, it is interesting to note is that clean energy, and with that a sustainable fossil free future, used as a weapon certainly has made its way into American mainstream popular culture, here ­in The dark knight rises but also previously in The Avengers and even in Disney/Pixar’s Cars II.

Since this is quite an ambitious question, let’s try to narrow it down. Firstly, the ”why” in the question here implies a reason, a backward-looking analysis of what made it possible to reach the point we’re at. And what it would take to move on. (For the record, I don’t believe in any purpose, predestined goal or omega point in the future that we are heading to, other than to die. Sorry.)

Let’s also leave out bigger aspects such as Why big bang? Why matter? Why life? Why intelligence? as in How did it all happen?

I would also like to leave out the biological evolution, which is a pretty well researched area, and focus on the psychological evolution and further aim at the individual that we study in the field of adult development. Let’s thus disregard from any form of cultural support and scaffold and consider it an individual endevour. Then we can formulate the question as follows: What makes a person move from one stage to the next? And making a stage transition is what we regard as vertical development, evolving in the horizontal direction is development that takes place without a stage change.

Before we continue it’s useful to further illustratate the difference. Imagine your own development in a best-case scenario, where everything goes your way, you get the optimal challenges in life, optimal support and no unpleasent surprises. Where would you be in say one, three or five years? What would you do? Who would you be?

What you’re imagining right now is your horizontal development. You take your current experienced trajectory and extrapolate it forward. It’s simply more of the same.

Your own vertical development you can’t imagine. You cannot possibly imagine what it will be like at the next stage of development. It will be a complely new ballgame, a new qualitatively different dimension and it will per definition blow your mind. Now, think back on all the narrowing down of the question to the single stage transition of the individual and expand it to include the understanding of all aspects of the evolution and of our role in it. Now peoples minds tend to blow even more. That’s one reason that some people are hyping vertical development nowadays and saying evolution is da shit.

However, we do know some things and we can see some patterns. One is this: That which is your current meaning-making, your current developmental trajectory, your current worldview and life’s purpose, will be one of several parts of the puzzle at your new stage. But it will no longer be a holy unquestionable truth that is taken for granted. It will be negotiable and it will be an object that you no longer are attached to, a pawn that you can sacrifice for a better position.

With this in mind we can turn back to the Why-question. Why do we move from one stage to the next? What makes this shift happen? Well, we can draw some conclusions from the pattern described in the above.

As Einstein supposedly said, ”No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” and leave the creation part out for a few seconds. One trigger to vertical development is the realization that my current way of thinking just doesn’t suffice to adress the problems that I’m experiencing. Not even in a best case scenario will my current plan work. It might solve a small part of it, but no more than scratch the surface of the real issue. I might find that the game is rigged and that there is no point in playing, or not being satisfied with playing what I just discovered was a zero-sum game. With a completely new and more complex understanding of the problem and corresponding abilities it might be solved, perhaps creating new problems as a consequence. And we’re off to the next stage…

Or I could find that my problem is already being adressed by others that do it better than I do. I could discover that the frontline doesn’t collaps should I leave the trench to get a new perspective on things.

Another possibility, perhaps more positively stated, is that I with practice and experience get so good at what I do that I now can do with my left hand what used to require my full attention and soul, such as playing the piano and now also being able to sing at the same time. That could be triggered by curiosity or why not boredom: Done it, been there, seen it…let’s take it to the next level!

Finally, and there are most certainly more worth mentioning, I think another important reason is the discovery of new domains of perception, the ability to make new distinctions and failing to fit these into the current worldview. Look, abstract variables. Let’s do something with them!

As previously stated, this is under the assumption that we are sole heroes on our journeys. And sometimes we are. But our psychological development is most often due to a cultural support. Every human doesn’t need to invent the wheel on our own. We take advantage of each other’s inventions and other’s thoughts and we use ropes and maps that others have left behind on their journey upwards. And we give each other pushes and encouragements on the way up. We also find ourselves embedded in a society that places on us a curriculum of a certain complexity which puts us under some pressure to evolve.

While it is important to keep in mind that stage transitions hardly ever come without pain, there are lot’s of reasons to why we evolve.

And sometimes, shit just happens.

As you may notice I have switched language to English, so this blog can be said to have made the transition from an ethnocentric focus to a (western) world centric. I think it’s time for the rest of the world to catch up in the development… My aim is to introduce theories within the field of adult development as simplified as possible to get a fundamental understanding. I hope to also start translating my introductory texts on Piaget, Kohlberg, Kegan, Loevinger, Commons, Wilber, Graves etc that I have in Swedish, unless I find someone to do it for me (and money to pay that someone). English is not my mother tongue so please excuse my rather rudimentary skills. My motto is: Don’t get it right, get it written!

Within the field of Adult development there seems to be two main directions, one that focuses on the cognitive development which could be seen as the ability to handle complex information and problem solving. The best example is MHC or the Model of Hierarchical Complexity by Commons et al, which defines a scale of 0-15 orders of hierarchical complexity. Using this we can define tasks at a certain order and at certain domains and assess persons, or other organisms, according to this scale.

The other direction or branch is ego development or development of meaning-making. This is, at least to me, a bit harder to understand and explain, but it’s worth a try since I think it tells us a bit of how we function as meaning-making creatures according to what Robert Kegan refers to as developmental constructivism. And let’s do it by comparing with how scientific research works.

Most of us have probably done some experiment in physics class such as examining the elasticity of a spring. You take a spring and load it with various weights and observe the spring’s elongation (increase in length). Let’s assume that we do five measurements like this and we might end up with the following diagram:

Here we have five data points where each point tells us that for a certain weight (e.g. 1 N) you get a certain elongation (0,11 m). There seems to be some sort of pattern here and what we typically do next is to draw a straight line which is the best fit we can make. From this line we can make a prediction of what elongation we should expect to get for any arbitrary load. The scientist’s task here is firstly to gather data (blue dots), the method of this is to measure the weight and measure the spring’s corresponding elongation, and secondly from that data draw a conclusion (red line). The scientist should also have some discussion about whether the errors are small enough to be regarded as measurement errors, but let’s not dig into that.

From a constructivist perspective some might say that we construct reality, but that is not an accurate description. Rather, we construct patterns from the gathered measurement data. The pattern, or the line in the case of our spring’s elongation, does not exist in reality “out there”. All we can find out there are various events – stuff that happens. And then we construct patterns the same way we look at stars and construct the constallations. There are no giants, serpents or lions in space, that is only our projection of the images and associations in our mind from the cues we get from the stars. The patterns, or meaning, are how we organize our experience in our mind.

So scientific theories, such as Hooke’s law (that describes weight vs elongation) or the standard model for particle physics, are only constructs, although the best constructs or patterns that we have come up with up to this date. They are not true, they are stories, but they are good and useful stories if they help us understand events and can predict the future accurately. The same way the wolf constructs patterns from the observations of where his pray usually can be found, how to successfully track it and hunt it down. Constructing these patterns is a learning process.

In a similar way that the scientist gathers data, although not as thoroughly and systematically, we gather sensory data from our daily life. And from these observations we construct patterns which are generalizations such as “when I drop things they fall” or “when I hit people they get mad”. We see things happen and construct concepts and traits such as good and evil, hot and cold, suffering and bliss, blonds and redheads. From a developmental perspective our ability to construct these patterns evolves as we gather more information, can differentiate and access new domains of experience, and even further as we start to find patterns from the constructs we have made from observations etc. The constructs we make becomes increasingly complex.

So far we have only touched on single phenomena. But how do all fit together? Let’s go back to the scientific world and exemplify with Higgs boson. Why are the scientists at Cern so happy right now? According to the latest results from the LHC experiments a new particle called Higgs boson has been detected. The existence of the particle was postulated by (among others) Peter Higgs as a consequence if the standard model of particle physics were to be accurate and coherent. Scientists don’t only want different models for different phenomena, they also want all models to cohere with each other.

Why? Well, if we have a situation where two possible things can happen depending on which theory we use, only one of them can be correct. This was the case for small particles close to black holes where the standard model gave one result and Einstein’s general theory of relativity gave another. In order to close this gap string theory was developed. The theorists wanted coherence and paid the price in higher complexity

Therefore a “Theory of everything” has been the Holy Grail that the scientific community has been striving for for a long time. We want our models to be as simple as possible (Occham’s razor), they should accurately describe reality and we also want them to be coherent with other models – when they are compatible with each other and fit together seamlessly. Showing the existence of Higgs boson was a huge step in that direction, therefore the cheering at Cern. We want coherence rather than fragmentation.

This search for coherence was also an expression Jane Loevinger used to describe what meaning-making or ego was (or did) for individuals. Not only do we make generalizations and construct patterns to organize our experiences. We also want these various constructs to fit together into a coherent worldview which can be seen as our frame of interpreting reality and our place in it, or at least we seem to strive for it. In her dissertation Susanne Cook-Greuter described it as a fundamental trait and characteristic of a human being of being a meaning-maker.

Thus, meaning-making can be said to be the activity of finding patterns and meaning in our experiences by relating them to other experiences and to ourselves. Meaning-making is the construction of the stories of the world and our place in it. They tell us who we are, what we know and how we should live. They can evolve to increasingly complex forms and they can also be acknowledged as – just stories.

Först och främst vill jag påpeka att jag inte är deprimerad eller bipolär i klinisk mening, jag ligger definitivt i den lindrigare änden av spektrumet. Men jag vill ändå ge några högst ovetenskapliga beskrivningar och reflektioner.

En depression är inte en specifik negativ känsla, smärta eller olycka. Det är motsatsen, ett oändligt stort svart tomt hål. Ett energislukande hål som drar ner all livsgnista, även omgivningens. Känslan är ungefär som att se budgettavlan i lyxfällan och det enorma glappet mellan utgifter och intäkter, fast i mental energi. Man gör en budget över hur mycket man absolut måste göra och energin man kan uppbåda och inser att det inte går ihop, att det inte är värt att ens försöka ta sig ur sängen.

Det finns en annan pol och det är förstås högenergifasen. Jag betraktar mig som extremt kreativ och det går förstås bra när man har mycket energi. Ett vanligt misstag man gör är att man förutsätter att man ska kunna hålla samma tempo för all framtid. Man drar igång en massa projekt och gör också grymma saker i högenergifasen, man är engagerad, inspirerad, man har energi i överflöd och sprider också en massa omkring sig. Det är då man är den där personen som man kan läsa om i de där självhjälpsböckerna och på de inspirerande hemsidorna. Det är lätt att förälska sig i honom, hitta strategier för att vara honom och bygga självbilden på den personen, vilket är farligt.

För det som händer där i mörkret är att den där självbilden ryker, identiteten vittrar och upplöses. Det finns inget i mörkret att stå på. Allt hänger i luften, i fritt fall. Och att inte veta vem man är är nog det mest skrämmande som finns. Det är inte som i de där böckerna om andlighet där egot (självbilden) ska bekämpas till förmån för något stort och upplyst. Det här är något helt annat. Det här är inte att vakna upp, det här är att dö.

Vi måste också ta med den kulturella aspekten i diskussionen. Depressioner har alltid varit tabu, gissningsvis av flera anledningar; Först och främst har vi ju traditionellt haft en kultur där det varit viktigt att alla drar sitt strå till stacken och biter ihop när det tar emot, därav det klassiska ”ryck upp dig” med undertonen ”vi andra kämpar minsann på utan att gnälla och tycka synd om oss själva”. Sedan är psykologin en ung vetenskap och man har helt enkelt inte förstått hur den inre verkligheten är beskaffad. Det man inte förstår fruktar man, tex att depressioner eller psykiska sjukdomar ska vara smittsamma i sig, vilket jag har en viss förståelse för – man kan dra med sig folk ner i djupet och man suger energi ur sin omgivning. En relation kostar (men brukar också ge) energi, och är ingen hemma så känner omgivningen det som ett svart hål som suger energi, man blir en energitjuv.

Dock tror jag att tabut och stigmatiseringen minskar allteftersom. Flera kändisar har outat sig, tex Anna Odell, Stephen Fry och Ann Heberlein, vilket är jättebra, det diskuteras och vi har mer kunskap idag. Men vi bör ändå beakta att vi lever i ett samhälle där de flesta skulle säga att det viktigaste är att vara lycklig. Kraven på att vara lyckad har bytts till krav att vara lycklig. Kraven eller förväntningarna har flyttats från prestation och resultat till det inre planet. Vad händer då när man, trots att vi har det så bra, inte ens lyckas med denna till synes enkla uppgift att vara lycklig? Något som också kan ge en extra börda i skuldkänslor och sk dubbelångest. Att klamra sig fast vid föreställningen att vi ska vara lyckliga är nog ett säkert recept på olycka.

Hur ska man då hantera en som har en depression? Det finns nog många svar, men jag tycker det finns en lärorik episod med Nalle Puh där Ior är nere. Iors vänner är bekymrade och gör allt för att muntra upp honom utan att lyckas. Till slut säger Ior att han inte vill att de ska försöka göra honom glad. Det är så här han är och han vill att de accepterar honom så. De får gärna hålla honom sällskap, men utan att försöka ändra på eller bota honom.

Kanske kommer vi se det så i framtiden, som något naturligt när energin växlar mellan ebb och flod, mer för vissa och mindre för andra. Samtidigt som vi inte får glömma de som lever ett helt liv i ebb  och som också kan behöva betydligt mer hjälp och tyngre behandling än lite sällskap.

Färdigrätter i frysen är också en tillgång…