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The Practical Side of Heaven: Chapter Three, Part Two: Familiar Five Stage Models
The use of a stage model is widespread among Western psychologists and other writers on human development. A stage model analyzes growth in terms of “an invariant sequence of discrete and increasingly complex developmental stages, whereby no stage can be passed over and each higher stage implies or presupposes the previous stages. This does not exclude regressions, overlaps, arrested developments and the like.” This suggests that higher stages cannot be understood in terms of the lower ones, but the lower stages can be clarified in terms of higher ones. It is possible for someone, under economic and political pressures, and certainly under conditions of war and similar stress, to slip back into an earlier stage.
Some writers have analyzed the stages of human development in terms of history, morality, spirituality, and a hierarchy of needs. Our system is different. We will characterize human growth in terms of five stages of rational development. Virtually absent in the infant, the capacity to reason reaches only rudimentary levels in the earliest period of life. An early expression of reason may be found in our ability to make rational but conscienceless choices. A further development is when conscience is added to our reasoning. In a still later stage, reason will develop the capacity to completely transcend judgmental either/or thinking and attain the capacity for non-judgment, acceptance, love, peace, wisdom. In the final stage of reason, we might be called “fully human” or “enlightened.”