Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory
= the official name of the theory of adult mature development by Clare Graves (ECLET)
Description
Brendan Graham Dempsey:
"Graves developed his theory of eight levels after synthesizing years of empirical research from countless prompts and tests he’d administered to his students. The prompt for essayistic responses was: “What does a psychologically mature adult look like?” After collecting the responses, a group of independent judges reviewed the responses each year and were asked to categorize them without further guidance. Again and again, the judges tended to categorize them according to a specific schema. This schema formed the basis of the eight levels Graves identified from the data.
(See: Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory (ECLET) )
According to Graves’s ECLET model, a stage sequence of specific material life conditions (symbolized by the first 8 letters of the alphabet) were met by the individual with an accompanying set of neurophysiological response systems (symbolized by the 8 letters from N to U). Thus, A conditions engender the individual’s N adaptive response, B conditions engender the O adaptive response, and so forth. Thus we get the 8 “levels of existence”: A-N, B-O, C-P, D-Q, E-R, F-S, G-T, and H-U.
The first two of these levels were not evidenced in Graves’s data, but extrapolated from anthropological data: A-N is a hypothetical “archaic” level of pure survival needs; B-O is the “Animistic” level of tribal societies. The remainder were deduced from empirical responses to Graves’s survey question.
According to Graves, the levels alternate, one to the next, between an instinct to “express the self” or to “sacrifice the self,” to be individualistically assertive or communally submissive. These are the two poles the individual oscillates between as they develop through the levels. Development is conceived as a spiral, wherein the individual returns to self- assertion or submission again and again from higher and higher vantages."
(https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/emergentism-notes)
More information
- Excellent introduction and summary at https://www.tothecosmos.org/meta-psychology/
- details at https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Clare_Graves
- Excerpts and discussion: Clare Graves and His Three Scenarios for the Future of Humanity
- Related theories:
- Constructive Developmental Theory
- Ronald Inglehart's Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map
- Jean Piaget on Genetic Epistemology
- Hanzi Freinacht's Developmental Theory
- Book: Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World. By Adyahanzi, Brendan Graham Dempsey. Metamodern Spirituality Series, Vol. VI. [1] For more, see also: Emergentism as a Religion of Complexity