Stage Theories - A Dialogue
Are developmental stage theories really colonial as hell?
By Moses Cirulis
Presented by Modest Metamodernist
“Stage theory...
Is BS.
Always was.
And it is colonial as hell.
Sorry, but that has got to go.”
-Nora Bateson
Well, considering I just expounded on stages of Metamemes for much of this blog, it would seem I’m in a pickle here.
On the one hand, on the surface this seems like a pretty typical postmodern justice oriented Internet hot take, ideally suited to make the comfortable people in the audience shift uncomfortably in their seats. Take that Michael Lamport Commons! And you, Jean Gebser! And especially you, Abraham Maslow, you zealous believer in eugenics! [1]
The phrase “colonial as hell” naturally and quite easily invokes the horrors of European colonialism, the invention of race and its reification into a hierarchy that was used to justify the extermination of “primitive” peoples, and the enslavement of “impure” ones. And as Metamodernists, we are called to re-examine our usage of such Modern tropes. After all, reification of so called rationality, perspective, the Cartesian notion of “I”, hasn’t that been used to objectify and subjugate so many people that don’t neatly follow such notions? And anyway, if we really follow the Metamodern notion that we ought to solidly synthesize multiple perspectives into our own, an ongoing epistemological practice which I currently call Diunitalism, shouldn’t we be taking seriously the perspectives of those who are trying to throw off the shackles of colonial European thought, instead of neatly ranking their thoughts in some hierarchical order?
Hmmm. These are actually valid points. Seems I could use an interlocutor here.
I will call them-Professor Decolonizer. They are quite new to Metamodern thought, but they are a deeply kind and open thinker. They also have a good grasp of postmodern and post colonial theory, which will be important as we navigate this. Also, in case you haven’t noticed by my pronoun usage, they’re nonbinary.
So Prof, I suppose we need to address this. Suppose I want to defend stage theories, as they’re used by Metamodernists. What questions should I attempt to answer, professor?
Professor Decolonizer (PD): First question-are stage theories purely a European invention, or can they be found among non-European thinkers?
Moses Cirulis (MC): That’s good, what else?
PD: Secondly, can stage theories be applied to decolonial and anti-racist thought? That is, can they be used to help free formerly subjugated peoples?
MC: I sense that will be harder to answer.
PD: Yes, that question most interests me, my dear.
MC: Okay, I suppose I should tackle these one at a time. In order to prove that stage theories aren’t a purely colonial idea, I think it’s first necessary to determine in what contexts and cultures stage theories tend to develop.
MC: In Metamodern terms, there is often a point, when civilizations reach Agricult level tech and culture, where they begin to ponder the development of people and civilizations in of themselves. My friend Naomi Most calls this “the stage theory stage”, or the stage at which people begin to develop stage theories.
PD: Can you give examples?
MC: I can give at least a couple of good ones.
MC: In North America, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs derived from an earlier, Native American model, specifically created by the Blackfoot Nation. It expounded on the nation’s duty to feed, clothe, shelter and provide a community for their citizens, so that they could self-actualize into their true purpose. [2] Maslow’s model borrows heavily from this one-and my mentor, Hanzi Freinacht, in turn, used it as a way to demonstrate the emotional forms of regulation a society goes through as it develops in his Nordic Ideology. [3]
PD: So Europeans have essentially pilfered the model.
MC: Yes, but not in its entirety. There's an additional stage of the original Blackfoot stage system that Maslow left out-community perpetuation. Essentially, the Blackfoot nation provided everything a human needed to not only support himself, but also to support his fellow community members-something that Maslow, with his Modern and European emphasis on individualism, couldn’t account for. [4]
PD: I see. So that stage theory model, in its entirety, really belongs to native Americans. What’s your second example?
MC: Well, there’s the Cree Medicine Wheel.
There are apparently multiple takes on the medicine wheel throughout the continent, but the Cree one in particular models human development along the cardinal directions, with each colour roughly corresponding to a stage of life, and the needs of a human being at that stage.
PD: Can you elaborate on these stages?
MC: In the Cree medicine wheel, development is represented by four doors, each found at a specific direction. It starts with childhood at the East Door, then moves to adolescence at the South Door, adulthood in the West Door, and finally old age at the North Door. [5]
The east, in red, is represented by feelings. In the good center, there is good food, laughter, purpose, vision, and direction. Outside of the wheel, where negative feelings reside, feelings of shame and inferiority reside.
Does that follow so far?
PD: It does. What’s the next quadrant?
MC: The south quadrant, yellow, deals in relationships, specifically the relation of the dividual to their nation, such as exploring their cultural heritage, learning their identity, et cetra. The dark side of this is envy, and the desire to gain things which are not yet earned at this stage.
The west door, black, is associated with adulthood, and also death. It is said that when a person departs from this world, they are going through the west door. It is also, however, associated with respect, both for oneself and others. The negative side of this direction deals with resentment, which causes disrespect to both oneself and others.
Finally, we have the North door, which is white. It’s associated with old age, caring, change and movement. It’s associated with the element of air, and its negative side is associated with apathy.
Finally, in the very center of it all is a green circle, representing the soul, and Mother Earth. Its light side is associated with healing-its dark side, jealousy.
PD: What do you observe about that model?
MC: It’s not really a hierarchy per se. It’s more like a circling metaphor for human growth. But it does demonstrate that non-Europeans are nevertheless interested in growth, even if they can’t always see the value in a more hierarchical or subdivided structure.
With your permission, I’d like to briefly describe one more model.
PD: Which is?
MC: I found this brief piece on African Ontogenesis. It’s a holistic development theory that posits that the human being develops in concert with their society and environment. It seems to suggest that a person be given developmentally appropriate chores and tasks to do for their family and community rather than study individual subjects in a classroom. [6]
Have you heard more about this?
PD: I have. It’s a holistic model that involves three main stages of self-hood. There’s a spiritual selfhood, which starts at conception, and ends with the naming of a newborn child. There’s the social or experiential selfhood, which spans the life of the individual, which begins after the naming ceremony, and ends only when the person dies. There are distinct sub stages in this selfhood, but we’re mainly focused on first principles here. Finally, there’s the ancestral selfhood, which begins with the death of the person, which is preferable in old age.
MC: Yeah. For the social self, the developmental tree is marked with developmentally appropriate tasks and errands, and intelligence is marked with their skill at these tasks. I feel like this is very survival oriented and kids with a strong advantage in some skills, like reading, but not in survival tasks, like fetching water, would be left behind.
PD: You feel they’d be better off with a more focused development system?
MC: Maybe just something more specific. A friend of mine, Scout, once remarked that they felt that a community oriented system smothered them too much. And I kinda feel similarly. If I were stuck trying to work on survival tasks I was unskilled at everyday, I would have a hard time cultivating my ability to think.
PD: Just because privileged Europeans like you benefit from the classroom doesn’t mean that everyone does, Moses.
MC: That really wasn’t my point. My point is, being able to separate out the different threads of development and zoom in on each would seem to have clear benefits for the differently abled. I don’t think that’s particularly Eurocentric to say, though the fact that it has mostly been European children studied by Piagetan and other European systems of development is a clear epistemological blind spot.
PD: So you admit that the so-called “mainstream” developmental schemas are Eurocentric?
MC: A bit, but I believe they may still be useful for differently abled children in other contexts. Also, before you go on about my privilege again, I’d like to point out that I am, among other things, autistic.
PD: You’re also white and cis-het, though, at least to my knowledge. You benefit from wide ranging systems of exploitation.
MC: Which ironically serve to keep these perspectives artificially apart. You really think that people in other countries can’t benefit from European thought, or vice versa?
PD: Not until they are free from colonial oppression. Now, how do you plan to answer my second question?
MC: Which, for clarity for our listeners, is the question of how stage theories can be applied to decolonial and anti-racist thought?
PD: That’s the question, yes.
MC: Okay. Simply put, any time someone develops towards a higher stage in terms of a Metameme, their perspective is widened. This is beneficial to anyone, regardless of their origin-but having a way to quantify this widening of perspective is a relatively minor benefit. Good stage theory is thus holarchic.
The big benefit to stage theories is that if a culture takes a relatively unbiased take on developmental theory-adds a dash of Two Cradle theory, and then applies it to their own culture, one can see their developmental path as well as their potential.
Before we apply such a meta theory to any area, let me first begin with a statement. African and North American thought is by no means inferior to European thought!
In fact, the whole idea of European culture being superior at the time of contact is a fallacy born of centuries of racism and oppression, which was only made possible by Europe’s technological advantage. It will take a while to get to that part of the Metastory, but in a number of cases, North American and African cultures were actually better able to handle political differences, which became a vital influence on the development of modern democracy.
PD: Sorry, Metastory?
MC: A story about stories, and a history about histories. I will attempt to piece together various strains of humanity’s development. I will do so with ideas from The Dawn of Everything as well as The Listening Society, with some revisions from yours truly. During this developmental tale, I will bring in an explanation of the Metamemes, and how they manifest in the development of people, cultures and technological systems.
PD: Okay. I’m willing to listen for a spell.
MC: Glad to hear it!
It starts in the earliest days of humanity, back when we’re still our nearest ancestors, Australopithecus. It starts with the first act of naming.
PD: What did they name?
MC: It’s impossible to know what a primate millions of years ago named first. The point is that they, like many great apes found in nature, could name something. The act of naming something is the very first stage of the first Metameme-the Archaic. The stage of naming is called the Nominal stage on Michael Lamport Commons’ Model of Hierarchical Complexity, or MHC. The MHC is a neo-Piagetan system of measuring intelligence by way of showing a being’s problem solving capabilities. [7] The nominal stage, and the Archaic Metameme, is the very first sign of culture.
PD: But not quite culture in of itself, given that most creatures don’t show signs of a complex civilization?
MC: Correct. The ancestors of humanity had to learn more complex operations in order to truly develop culture, thus attaining the Animistic Metameme. Before that, they learned to use multiple names to form a sentence, thus attaining the Sentential stage on the MHC. [8]
The last MHC stage during this long development through the Archaic Metameme was the Preoperational stage, wherein the ancestors started to coordinate sentences together. But they were still not yet at the stage of forming narrative, of forming culture. The signs of that development weren’t present until well into the age of Homo Sapiens.
In other words, the stage that comes next is uniquely human.
PD: What stage is that?
MC: In Nordic Metamodernism, we typically call it the Animistic stage. It’s associated on the MHC with primary operations, and thus the beginning of mathematics and coherent, albeit short, narratives. In the caves where some of the first hunter gatherers left drawings of the great hunts, likely the very first myths and philosophies were spoken.
PD: Was this like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s state of nature? A state of blissful ignorance of human inequality?
MC: Probably not. David Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything bears evidence that humans in the animistic stage were often unequal, with superior hunters, chieftains, wise men and women, and all manner of leaders. However, the technology for agriculture and complex architecture was not up to producing large kingdoms, even if local tribes defined themselves in opposition to each others’ values in a process that Graeber and Wengrow call schismogenesis. [9]
But nevertheless, there were signs of beautiful and sumptuous burials for unique members of society, even back then. Culture, as simple as it was, flourished.
Around 10,000 years ago, however, humanity began getting better at more complex mathematics and narrative building, Concrete level complexity on the MHC. Some groups also began playing with agriculture; others, serious warfare. Cultures become larger, growing from tribes to villages to cities to nations. With this advancement came an inflection point-a new Metameme developed that would differ wildly for different cultures depending on what sort of “cradle” they developed in.
PD: Cradle?
MC: Yes, this comes from Cheikh Anta Diop’s Two Cradles Theory, a notion I learned via Germane Marvel’s Black Metamodernism. [10]
The first cradle developed agriculture, and thus found themselves in a land of abundance. This abundance mindset lent itself to a peaceful expression of the first Metameme of civilization, which I call the Agricult Metameme.
The second cradle lived in lands of relative scarcity, and thereby developed their warfare-and took food and slaves from their neighbours. This Metameme is called the Faustian Metameme by Hanzi Freinacht. [11]
These two cradles show up in varying manifestations and mixes throughout the world, but the first shows up especially strongly in Africa, while the second shows up especially often in Europe.
But they’re two expressions of a similar level of technology, as handled by different cultures.
Unfortunately, before the different cultures could effectively coalesce, something else happened.
PD: My guess is that the war-faring Faustians waged war against the Agricult folk for resources.
MC: In a lot of cases, yeah. The Minoan civilization was arguably an Agricult type for instance-they were wiped out by the Greeks.
But as usual, history is complicated. Sometimes Faustian literature simply influenced Agricult civilizations, as the Agricult civilizations were able to defend themselves. This arguably bears out in places like pre-contact California and numerous groups in Africa.
PD: This is an interesting telling, but I didn’t come here to listen to a history lecture. What’s the point of all this?
MC: Right! Sorry, I tend to get a little lost in these details.
In Hanzi Freinacht’s estimation, different cultures have different expressions of each Metameme. Buddhism is not the same as Christianity, for instance. Yet both arrive in the same Metameme, the Postfaustian/Postagricult, and similarly defeat the previous Metameme’s logic.
Despite accusations that attempts to Modernize the world are colonialist, most places in the world have modernized on their own terms. Modern day Japan looks very different from modern day New York which looks very different from modern day Paris or Shanghai. Yet all of these are different and valid possible expressions of the Modern Metameme!
PD: But the Modern legacy is inextricably woven with the painful legacies of colonialism and transatlantic slavery.
MC: Yes, the legacies of early Capitalism and its extractive logics. To this day, several countries of Africa pay thousands to France, a cruel exploitation of its people. Notice however that these monies are preventing Africa’s further development in those regions. Other places in Africa are developing their own technologies and enriching their land apace.
Western involvement can sometimes help it along, but only if such aid is accepted voluntarily, and not forced upon indigenous peoples. The main distinctions between consensual development and colonialism are the ethics of consent recognized in the former and the extractive and exploitative logic present in the latter.
PD: In other words, a culture that sees the possibilities presented by future Metamemes is not obligated to follow a particular model of that Metameme, but rather they could follow their own culture’s version of it.
MC: Exactly!
Movements such as Afrofuturism bear this out. Did you know that Moyo Okedji, one such Afrofuturist, also used the term Metamodernism in his academic work? Fascinating, huh?
PD: How did he use it exactly?
MC: Well, in his chapter of a book he appeared in, he wrote of the Metamodern affect as a response to the postmodern condition; both a multiperspectival egregore one could be possessed by and an offering for the preservation of one’s culture through the use of Metamodern culture and technique. When he talks about portraiture, Moyo mentions the Metamodern diasporation of the body into images that represent the authenticity of one’s identity, authority (such as images of Queen Elizabeth on coins), and a challenge against cultural death.
The last part is probably the most important. When dealing with an omnipresent, oppressive postmodern condition brought about by late capitalism and Eurocentrism, one needs to diasporize oneself in order to escape or challenge it, through acts of gender mimesis, tasteful cultural exploration, or even exaggeration of one’s own form. In this way, Metamodern art is an action that helps ensure one’s cultural survival. [12]
Though I should note that Okediji’s use of the term is very different from the other scholars I’ve listed here, I hope I’ve at least sufficiently proven that this development has the potential to be empowering to non-white cultures as well, however they see fit to use it.
PD: Yes, I think I agree with that. Are there any questions you have for me?
MC: Yes. Are you sure that decolonization is always good?
PD: Beg your pardon?
MC: I mean that Europeans weren’t the only ones to colonize large portions of the world. We just did it most recently and most widely and destructively, due to our early modern tech and fundamentalist ideology.
But we weren’t the only ones to colonize other portions of the world. Did you know that the Uighur Muslims that were herded into camps in China recently were the last vestiges of the great Muslim empire? [13] Did you know that the Spanish Inquisition specifically in Spain was also a bid to rid the area of Muslim influence, and kill or convert its Jewish population? [14] What about in Africa? Muslims colonized most of the continent long before Europeans arrived, were they so evil?
Are you sure the pursuit in your name is a universal good?
PD: I know…. I know that too much power in one ethnicity’s hands is a very dangerous thing. And I know that decolonization means decolonizing myself. I have to decenter my whiteness, and privilege as a male-appearing person. That is why I’m using this name. It’s only one of many perspectives, but hopefully it’s a useful one.
MC: Yeah, it’s very important actually. Sorry about that. I was sorta testing you there. Think we can talk again?
PD: Sure!
Notes:
[1] An article on Abraham Maslow and his unfortunate dalliance with eugenics: https://julesevans.medium.com/abraham-maslow-empirical-spirituality-and-the-crisis-of-values-34148b775f1a
[2] The Blackfoot model of needs: https://gatherfor.medium.com/maslow-got-it-wrong-ae45d6217a8c
[3] Nordic Ideology by Hanzi Freinacht. Chapter 4: Another Kind of Freedom, mostly focuses on emotional regimes using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as its underlying model.
[4] The first two articles I cited for Abraham Maslow and the Blackfoot model I think mostly account for this.
[5] The Cree Medicine Wheel is also described in detail here. https://zone.biblio.laurentian.ca/bitstream/10219/387/1/NSWJ-V7-art6-p139-161.pdf
[6] The African Model of human ontogenesis: https://www.unige.ch/fapse/SSE/teachers/dasen/Nsamenang2006.pdf
[7] The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht. Chapter 8: Cognitive Development covers the entirety of the Model of Hierarchical Complexity in brief.
[8] The same chapter talks about how the nominal and sentential stages work.
[9] The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Schismogenesis is covered in chapter 2: Wicked Liberty (specifically page 56)
[10] Germane Marvel’s “The Third Cradle” covers Two Cradle theory in detail: https://medium.com/@germanemarvel/the-third-cradle-d5737b36bd2d
[11] The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht. Chapter 10: Symbolic Development talks about the Metamemes, including the Faustian stage.
[12] Black Skin, White Kins: Metamodern Masks, Multiple Mimesis by Moyo Okediji.
[13] The Umayyad Caliphate in particular had a reach from modern day Spain all the way across to modern day China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate
[14] A Britannica article on the Spanish Inquisition: https://www.britannica.com/summary/Spanish-Inquisition-Key-Facts#:~:text=The%20Spanish%20Inquisition%20was%20a,to%20widespread%20death%20and%20suffering.
Interesting piece!