The evolving self

What Hacker News says

1. ssivarkMay 2024
   Off the top of my head: (less career and more personal development)

   1. Finite & Infinite Games, by James Carse

   2. Flow, by Czikszentmihalyi

   3. The evolving self, by Robert Kegan

   4. Man's search for meaning, by Victor Frankl

   5. A fine balance, by Rohinton Mistry (fiction)

   6. Lila, by Robert Pirsig (fiction)

   Show morethread
2. csaOct 2017
   First let me say that if you read between the likes of my original post and some of my follow up posts, you will see that you and I agree on the idea of teaching people how to think (I call this disciplinary approaches to learning). The issues is the path. As such....

   > but the worst attitude you can come across from a student or a person in general is the question "When am I ever going to need this?"

   If you can't answer this question convincingly, you will get low learner engagement and virually no learning. It's not an attitude, it's a reality for many parents and educators.

   > The most important point of school isn't accumulating facts or skills but teaching students _how to think_.

   Actually, I largely agree with this.

   > How to reason, how to solve problems, the absorption of a diversity of ideas and topics.

   This is largely deferred to the community's beliefs on these topics. Most people actively avoid seeking out diverse viewpoints.

   > [you go on to say a lot of things that are relevant for people who exist in educated communities]

   I agree that these things are great for people who exist in educated communities. For most communities, challenging the standard ideas is a good way to get ostracized from that community.

   > and what YOU want to do is optimize for an even worse metric, myopic utility.

   Hmmm... I think you're putting words into my mouth here.

   First, we largely fail at fundamentals of literacy and numeracy in the US for large swathes of the population. You might call this "myopic utility", but I call it mastering the fundamentals.

   Second, I totally agree that we need to teach people how to think (i.e., disciplinary approaches to learning), but the question is in what context. Right now, we largely do not tailor education to the learners' contexts -- I think this would be a move in the right direction, but standardized tests get in the way. We currently teach people what to think (e.g., evolution over creationism, this art versus that art, this interpretation of history versus that interpretation of history, etc.), and this just doesn't go over well with people who don't already believe it.

   We also try to force the high-brow canon of art and literature down people's throats, while at the same time denigrating contemporary forms of art (e.g., the small-minded English lit teacher saying that rap isn't poetry/art/music -- it happens).

   Third, you seem to believe that utility in education is a bad thing. Why is that? I mean, it's great if a learner is open to being exposed to new and challenging ideas, but that does not describe most learners. That said, teaching utilitarian skills like literacy, numeracy, and communication have a high value for both the learner and society. Add fundamental ways of thinking about science, history, and art through the exploration of one's environment makes that person a massive winner in my book -- we just don't get there with many people these days.

   Check out Robert Kegan's model of adult development The Evolving Self -- his Wikipedia page has a decent summary. Most people are in the imperial or interpersonal stage, while few are in the institutional or interindividual stages (fwiw, I like Loevinger's labels better). This is especially true when people are younger. Thinking about learners and learner contexts in terms of these stages presents some interesting perspectives/challenges.

   Show morethread
3. roenxiApr 2025
   An interesting blog post that would probably do well to look into something like Rob Kegan's theories of adult development [0] and looking up some stats on how many people fit into each category. People actually categorise fairly well into a model where ~66% of the population simply don't understand the concept of independent thought and rely heavily on social signalling to work out what is true.

   That model explains an absurd number of social dynamics and a big chunk of politics - which is mostly people with a high level of adult development socially signalling to the masses what they are meant to be doing.

   The important observation is that it isn't intellectual honesty that is the problem or truth-seeking the solution. It is actually whether someone is capable of identifying that truth != popular opinion. People who form their opinions by social osmosis can still be intellectually honest if they land in the right sort of community, but they fall apart under social pressure.

   [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self

   Show morethread
4. orduFeb 2024
   > I know there are some fancy arguments around stretching limits of language, but none of them seemed all that sensible to me.

   Did you read Robert Kegan "The Evolving Self"? It was pretty popular at HN some time ago. Robert Kegan stretching limits of language and he's got a reason: he introduces some notions like "culture of embeddedness" that you just can't define in a way like dictionaries do, one cannot simply get to a point. Kegan uses another approach, he gives his reader an experience that makes her to understand "culture of embeddedness".

   Philosophy by definition deals with uncategorised (or poorly categorised) aspects of our world, with aspects that have no good language to talk about them. Anything that was categorised to a point when there is an accepted language to talk about it is not a philosophy, it is a science or something. Philosophy makes first attempts to categorise and when philosophers found a way then a new branch of science emerges.

   When you try to talk about uncategorised things, you just can't talk about it. For example, lets assume that there are no widely accepted categorisation of colors, but you've developed one including names for colors like "blue", "red", "magenta" and so on. How you could communicate your ideas to others? The only way I know is to point to different examples of blue and say "blue", point to red and say "red". You need to lead your audience through experiences of blue/red/magenta while they train their neurons to classify them and only then you can refer to their experiences with words "blue", "red", "magenta" to convey the idea that they always appear in a rainbow in the same sequence. While you keep pointing at different colors saying their names, your audience will probably think, that it takes too long for you to get to a point.

   I didn't read GEB, so I cannot say how this reason to "stretch limits of language" relates to it, but you've sad that you know no good reason for such stretching, and I hope that now you know at least one reason for it.

   Show morethread
5. bsedlmApr 2021
   It's not very easy to explain like you're five (it's like he says, to understand this requries more "up-front investment").

   Maybe look in Kegan's wikipedia to have a better overview of what they mean by self-authoring mind (stage four in the big table)

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self

   thread
6. gexlaAug 2019
   David Chapman quotes Kegan a lot in his "Meaningness" blog. I included one link, but you should find more of his writing linked from there. Check out the rest of the site as well.

   https://meaningness.com/metablog/stem-fluidity-bridge

   ETA: From the (Stanford) article this thread is attached to...

   > Kegan (Robert) introduced his theory of self-evolution in 1982 in his book, The Evolving Self. In his later book, In over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (1994), he presented a revised version of his theory and further discussion of the implications of his work for society.

   Of those two books, The Evolving Self is the easier read. I would start with that one.

   Show morethread