The Spiral of Political Maturation
An Option: Look at the end result of this analysis as applied to Western societies, past and future. Then return here and discover in a stage-by-stage way how that story was developed.
How can it be possible to predict changes in a society?
Based on inquiries over many years, we can have a good idea of what the trajectory of political maturation is likely to be.
The background work for political maturation includes:
- The discovery and validation of Spirals of Growth in other areas of psychosocial reality. These have led to powerful practical applications. The pioneer study derived from dealt with strengthening the management culture of an organization. As well as being relevant to the development of any particular organization, this Spiral generated successful societal predictions about the past and future.
- Appreciating the nature of depends on accurately naming and precisely formulating the ethical choice approaches. This inquiry commenced around 1987, was completed around 1990, and published as Ch.6 in Working with Values: Software of the Mind (1995).
- As part of this inquiry, the Typology-Essentials Table for the has been specified in order to provide clarity about its dualities and properties.
Only if everything so far has been named and formulated reasonably correctly can we be confident that the trajectory will be a Spiral. The heart of this inquiry is to determine the features of each Stage in the Spiral.
Political life in a society can and does mature through discrete Stages of Development. The THEE-form of the maturational path is now known from other taxonomic studies. It is shown in this diagram.
To clarify details, we need to distinguish certain things:
- the different ways to —completed;
- the different that emerge from them—to be formulated in this section;
- the changes in that result from a maturational process in society—these flow from clarity about .
The «» refers to those values and institutions intrinsic to political life that are widely viewed as «unchangeable» without a considerable, and usually undesired, effort. The at any point is dominated by the current Mode of in the society while cumulatively incorporating values of previous Modes.
We must never lose sight of the two main forces affecting any political choice or governmental solution: «» and «». There lies the key to outcomes, irrespective of the particular stage of political development.
Societal maturation is a slow process, so you may wish to skip the rest of this section and jump ahead to
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To determinants of political choice irrespective of the state of maturity of a society.
This section assumes some familiarity with the ethical choice approaches and the trajectory of maturation.
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To participation in political life (again irrespective of the state of maturity of a society).
This section assumes some familiarity with the determinants of political choice.
Proceed:
- Remember the unit in society that counts in politics,
- Check the schema to be used for analysis, and then
- Start where politics starts.
Originally posted: July 2009; Last updated: 30-Nov-2011