The Perspective of Development

In this article, I would like to investigate the perspective that fits with development. In other words, how does one see the world, how does one consider themselves, and who are other people for someone whose interest is development? We can use these questions to explore how life presents itself to someone in development.

In our times, it is common for people to consider everything to be an activity -- development, for instance -- and want to quickly determine how to do it. That approach conceals the very arena we want to explore in this conversation, that of orientation/ approach/ perspective. How does one comport oneself regarding life when their intention is development?

An orientation or approach must speak to the fundamental issues in life -- who are you? who are others? what is life about? what has value? what has integrity? what is fulfilling? how does time move? The overall image or idea behind an approach includes a basic resolution of these questions. Let's look into the images and orientations behind the three basic notions of development, training, and learning and see what that can reveal about the relationship of the three.

In learning, one is a self that comes to know. Others are sources of information or insight that can either clarify or confuse the issue. Life is about coming to know what life is about and how it works, and that which clarifies life and how it works has value.

Integrity is saying things and doing things in a way that fits with a coherent and sound view. Fulfillment is to be derived from the soundness of one's view.

One of the insidious issues in the learning field these days is given by the "value-free" notion of information ("information is alive", "information wants to be free"). Information is seen to underlie learning, and all information is simply seen as information. There is little concern for the kind of person, or the kind of actions that particular information supports, nor for the timing in someone's development in which it is encountered. Values are hidden in the conversation, and hence, if integrity is related to values, integrity is undermined by the absence of a conversation for the context or intention in which information is held.

The overall images underlying the learning paradigm range from a "big brain" or "big computer" sorting information, to a "nervous system coupling itself with the environment", to recognition or appreciation of a "great chain of ideas". These images pull for knowing more than being, and for understanding more than for effective action. As we have said before, values are shortchanged given the focus on information or understanding.

In the training model, one's self is a capacity for competence, it is the overall identity that allows for the establishment and coordination of operational strategies and skills. Value is placed on effective operational capability. The key is what you can and cannot do and how that meshes with your environment.

What is relevant in the search for capability is people, techniques, and methods that support effective actions, as well as ways of transferring those techniques and methods to others. Integrity is often viewed as being true to the method, but in a deeper sense can be held to be a matter of being true to gaining increased effectiveness. Satisfaction is held to be a matter of effectiveness and performance. It lies in accomplishments.

The basic temporality of training is that of the act of production -- the timing of making something happen or failing to make it happen. It is essentially project timing.

People in a training mode are essentially organized around a project to be able to make something happen. Their world is focused on competence to make life move toward their intended outcome. Learning is centered around effective methods and techniques for achieving the outcome. Progress is measured in competencies gained and outcomes achieved.

The central image is of an effective worker--able to make things happen and constantly "sharpening the saw" -- training themselves in the next technique or method that will add to their skills. The ideal is of "continuous improvement" -- a constantly improving skill set.

A self in development is a self that is related to the evolution and fulfillment of oneself, others and life. It is an opening for the unfoldment of life -- intentionally participating in the establishment of higher-ordered integral wholes. It is a window for the appreciation and fulfillment of others and life.

What is of value to a self in development is the crystallized theme that is up to be fulfilled -- the edge of development -- that points toward what is to be resolved and what is to be created for the fulfillment of that individual and their community in time. The theme can be crystallized in others or in situations or in internal conflicts.

Satisfaction lies in having an integrity in the pace of development, as well as in the appreciation of the unfoldment of life.

The temporality that is appropriate is a multiple-perspective temporality -- a situational temporality for handling the current situation, a thematic and developmental temporality for handling the current situation in a way that evolves the self and its environment, and an eternal perspective that reveals and draws on the connection with the eternal for a basis of satisfaction and fulfillment as well as for the power to develop higher ordered wholes.

The overriding images of development are those of transformation and evolution -- the calling of a self to higher-ordered harmonies that integrate previous polarities. This evolution integrates individual and communal in a new whole that doesn't sacrifice the strengths of either. The evolution proceeds along given themes until fulfilled.

When one is in development, life presents itself as the crystallization of a given issue. This may occur across several circumstances in several domains of life, or through a single strongly focused circumstance. This issue calls simultaneously for a resolution and transcendence of a given identification. There is something to be seen through. There is also a new and deeper source of power available through the transcendence, and consequently a new discipline of development for mining the new source of power.

The flow of life in development seems to be four-phased. First, an issue crystallizes -- it comes more and more to issue. Second, the orientation to oneself, others, and life that underlies the issue comes under intentional attack -- driving to the lie underneath it that has it not work. This movement ends with the destruction of the illusion underneath that identification. The third movement is the investigation of how the area actually works -- the recognition of a new source of power. Finally the fourth movement, mines this source of power and builds a new relation between self, others, and life that is congruent with the new power.

Given the recognizable flow of development, the going down and the going up, people familiar with development and oriented to it are unattached from whether life seems to be going down or up. It is like a breathing out and breathing in. The focus instead is on the intentional participation in bringing forth the evolution of the next higher level whole. The dance of destruction and creation is appreciated in all of its forms as it expresses itself in the evolution of appreciative and causative capacity.

A similar dynamic exists in how life occurs in the individuality/ community dimension. Development constantly test the interface between one's being true to one's given capabilities/talents/strengths (one's connection to life) and the call to fulfill one's relations with others in community. The pull is for higher-ordered integration of one's capabilities with others -- which simultaneously deepens the capacity and broadens its reach. This movement occurs as being oneself in deeper connection with others. This movement and the former one of going down and then up regarding a given source of power, both call for a reevaluation of what a self is normally considered to be. Rather than a self being a fixed identification or view, it comes to be seen to be an intentional unfolding of one's connection with life -- it is more a pattern underlying change than a fixed pattern. As such, one knows oneself as reliable for unfolding in a certain way (rather than as a fixed position).

While we began this article by contrasting the worldviews of development, training and learning, the relation of the three needs to be integrated rather than separated. Our initial contrast was for purposes of making room for the development perspective, which seems to be the least recognized of the three in our current culture. How are these three related?

My proposal for the relationship of the three approaches to life is that development is the context (that of evolution and transformation), and that within that approach training is important to the honing of capabilities opened by tapping new sources of power, and that learning broadens the understanding of the new territory opened by seeing through the old identifications.

When development is the central movement, training and learning are put in service of an evolutionary shift when called for. This prevents the honing of techniques being used in the service of avoiding change when called for, or learning used to deepen the focus and bolstering arguments for an old way of being that has outlived its creative and productive edge.

Against the background of developmental movement, learning and training can push one to the limits of an old view and can assist in the crystallization of an issue that provides the grist for the mill for development. In a sense, development is the spirit, training the muscle, and learning the brains of living. They work best together, coordinated by what one is given to fulfill.