The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

by Hanzi Freinacht

We will also explore how these four dimensions tend to work together to generate overall patterns that we call effective value memes—which is a more stringent version of the Spiral Dynamics model, solving its main problems and clearing some of the confusions around it, but still keeping its bird’s eye view.

zoomed in on cognitive development, and on the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC) especially, as one out of four fundamental facets of a person’s overall stage (their effective value meme).

What you get here is a model of cognitive complexity that places humans and other animals on the same scale. This kind of thinking leads us towards questioning some of the “speciesist” assumptions of our day and age: that there would be anything “special” about humans.

This should insulate us against linguistically based speciesism, where humanity’s “specialness” is legitimized by the fact that we have language use.

where it could get a ball (out of several options, with cubes, rings, etc.) in order to claim a reward—to 6 Sentential, where it could get “two yellow balls”, etc. The parrot just had to think for a very long time to figure it out, its brain being much smaller than a human one. This means that a human at the same stage, but having a far “higher IQ”, would reach the same conclusion as the parrot, just at a much faster pace.

So first of all, intelligence is not the same as consciousness.

What we are comparing now is horizontal complexity and vertical complexity. Horizontal complexity is simply a measure of how many calculations you have to make (how many yes-no questions you manage to answer). So this is basically how quick and efficient your brain is.

IQ-tests will primarily measure horizontal complexity, given that the test taker is at a certain minimum stage so that they can actually take the test. The more difficult of these tests can include questions at stage 12 Systematic, but not really above that.

It’s that high IQ, in humans, seems to only be loosely correlated with MHC stage. Mensa folks are seldom at the lower adult stages, but they tend to be at stage 11 Formal or stage 12 Systematic. So you have people whose brains are very quick and efficient—but without necessarily climbing to the more abstract forms of thought and behavior of higher vertical complexity.

So, what is vertical complexity? The MHC stages measure orders of vertical complexity. This means that each stage coordinates the actions at the preceding stage.

Higher-order actions are defined in terms of lower-order actions.

Higher order of complexity actions organize lower-order actions. This makes them more powerful.

Higher order of complexity actions organize those lower-order actions in a non-arbitrary way.[93]

The super-intelligent folks of world history are the ones who happen to have both exceptionally high IQ and MHC stage—the clearest example being John von Neumann,

It’s safe to say, that when it comes to spiritual or existential development, von Neumann was about average, like the most of us. He was exceptionally intelligent, but probably not exceptionally “wise”. Either way, we can’t all be like von Neumann in terms of smarts: It appears to necessitate a fluke of nature. Both IQ and MHC appear to have rather large genetic components. In a human population, both seem to be about 70% heredity, meaning that the IQ and stage of your parents explain a lot, but far from all of your own intelligence (but of course, the discussion is more complicated than that).

What we indisputably can do, however, is to affect the development of the other three dimensions: code, state and depth. These three are more volatile and subject to change. And that makes all the difference when it comes to politics and a deeper welfare system.

This is not just mimicking words like “furniture” used by others, but actually creating novel abstract concepts or variables themselves. The stage 10 Abstract thinker can then use quantification of these variables: some of the furniture, some of the time. This can refine the variables, make new distinctions and let the abstract concepts acquire new meanings.

The mountain slope was steep and smooth. So we make a distinction between “blefuscity” and “steepness”. We have thus refined the meaning of “blefuscity”, but it can always be further refined or challenged.

We can still, however, by means of a shared language, take part of the ideas that other people produce at higher orders of complexity. (We can also, if guided through the sequences of actions, perform tasks that are up to two stages above; we’ll get back to that).

We fail to see the formal relationship between the different abstract variables.

This means that, as stage 10 Abstract thinkers, we will very often respond to the world around us in simplified manners: in black-and-white, either-or ways.

The order of complexity is not the same as “difficulty”, which is much more context bound.

Inventing new words for things that are not concretely present. Driving a bus (following traffic rules and keeping in mind the length of the bus and other factors that are out of your sight).

Let’s look at some stage 10 Abstract arguments of different political hues. Anti-racist argument: Racism is bad: It is a self-contained and self-explanatory essence that spreads by itself unless you stop it, causing discrimination and possibly tyranny and war. Conservative argument: The Arabicness inherent to Arabs gives them traits that are irreconcilable with Western civilization. Feminist argument: Feminism means to stand up for women and crush patriarchy.

This means that we will tend to focus on one single variable and want to either increase or decrease its quantitative value: less immigration, lower taxes, more love, more dialogue, less greed etc.

This is the less complex form of both-and thinking: not accounting for a productive tension between both sides, but simply denying that one’s argument has trade-offs or downsides.

In this case (which is taken from real life) the management uses the singular variable (“saving costs”) but fails to coordinate it with other variables (“cost per effective hour of work”) and in effect make budget cuts that are directly wasteful.

And if you point out that there may be a trade-off, the stage 10 Abstract thinker will think that you are being vague and just playing with words. Thinkers of each stage have this kind of complexity bias. Complexity bias means that we intuitively prefer forms of reasoning that correspond to our own stage of complexity. Explanations of lower complexity seem crude and simplistic to us, whereas higher stage explanations seem vague or counter-intuitive.

Of course, outside of science, a lot of people were performing stage 11 Formal tasks: coordinating prices with demand, investments with risks and rewards, setting up rules and legal systems, building advanced structures, handling relationships between people with different interests by means of fair rules, creating ways to compare different measure units and currencies, and so forth.

This means that our thinking and our actions become guided by such rules or principles: if this, under these circumstances, then that.

So what we assumed was a property, an essence, inherent to the variable, was in fact only true under some circumstances. We have gone from a thinking with “blefuscity and steepness” to one where we relate to “blefuscity and/or/if steepness”. And our whole view of the situation changes.

The simplest systems are such things as a “catch-22” or a feedback cycle, or a balance of two simultaneous processes.

create original thoughts and behaviors of that stage. This means that, in a civilization that is global and has many, many millions of people inventing behaviors and concepts above stage 11 Formal, there will simply be so many higher stage actions and concepts around, which can be taught and performed with help, or simply misunderstood. So we tend to not notice that a minority of people are actually doing most of the more complex inventing.

But then again, most tasks in everyday life can be successfully managed with stage 10 Abstract and stage 11 Formal behaviors or below.

Inventing new words or expressions for processes, rules or general principles. Driving a large truck with multiple trailers (meaning, you have to consider how the trailers affect one another when you drive backwards out of a garage, etc.).

Teaching kids to read and write, using different methods for depending on the characteristics of the children.

Anti-racist argument: Racism results from economic and social inequalities in society and causes further inequality and discrimination. Conservative argument: Some cultural norms followed by Arabs may be irreconcilable with Western civilization.

But if people like to stick with rules and principles not invented by themselves and they tend to make linear plans about the future and tend to focus on single if-this-then-that principles, you are probably dealing with stage 11 Formal thinking. In politics, stage 11 Formal thinkers generally have a penchant for clear ideologies or doctrines: socialism, libertarianism and the like.

This is a simple form of system, where we relate two linear equations to one another and thereby solve them (or determine that they cannot be solved or have different possible solutions). But most people can pass these tests? Yes, of course: under the circumstances where someone is walking us through the steps. But does our brain spontaneously and repeatedly create thoughts that relate to such systems? In about 20% of us, it does. In most of us, it doesn’t.

Let’s say that the climber generally is better at climbing if she’s taller. But then it turns out that this only holds true under some circumstances: Sometimes shorter arms and legs are better. Shorter legs are better when there is very small distance between each crack and protrusion in the cliff.

Also, the better the climber, the more she can use blefuscity to her advantage. In fact, the best climbers actually are demotivated by long, easy climbs, thus in practice climbing the more difficult mountains with greater vigor and skill. This makes us re-evaluate the “general rule of blefuscity” that our friend at stage 11 Formal formulated (that blefuscity makes for a more difficult climb unless it’s a very steep climb, in which the reverse is true). It turns out to be not-so-general after all: Even steepness can make for an easier climb, because, together with the right kind of blefuscity, it motivates the climber and breaks up the climb into manageable and interesting parts. Here, at a view from stage 12 Systematic, we see that neither blefuscity, steepness nor indeed “difficulty”, were what they seemed. They are all so much more contextual than we would have thought.

The systematic stage 12 thinker may seem less sure of herself, having to think longer, to explain herself more technically and wordily, but she has nevertheless a much deeper understanding.

So at the stage 12 Systematic we tend to want to squeeze everything one and the same coherent system, not being able to compare different systems with quite different properties.

The main problem of many of the adult development theorists, from Jane Loevinger and Susanne Cook-Greuter to Robert Kegan, stems from the fact that their authors are at this cognitive stage. This is why their minds smash development into one unified model of one-dimensional development. They fail to see that there are different forms of developmental systems and that the logic of one such dimension cannot unproblematically be applied to the others.

Inventing a new form of plotline or genre within literature. Inventing new words for theories, systems or “principles about principles”.

Anti-racist argument: Racism is an emergent property of all societies and interacts with things like inequality. Blaming and pointing fingers is generally unproductive and one should instead try to address the long-term issues that may be causing ethnic tensions under these particular circumstances. Conservative argument: There are challenges in reconciling Western and Islamic culture which depend on how these categories interact, rather than flaws inherent to either category.

Stage 12 Systematic thinkers will tend to have less rigid opinions but more rigid argumentations.

But perhaps the easiest way may be by means of their cognitive biases: Stage 12 Systematic thinkers tend to believe that the world consists of systems and their properties. So you find a strong bias towards explanations of this kind: structures, patterns, regularities, the economy, the biological body, Darwinian evolution, the gender norms and so forth.

branches such as general information theory, cybernetics, complexity science, chaos theory, the systems sciences, metatheory (theory about theory), Wilberian integral theory and perhaps epigenetics. Of course, just studying these sciences doesn’t mean that the student is automatically a stage 13 Metasystematic thinker. And most of the innovators within these fields are of still higher cognitive stages (14 Paradigmatic or 15 Crossparadigmatic). I will present this stage more briefly. The point is that the stage 13 Metasystematic thinker is capable of comparing the general properties of systems, naming these properties and reasoning about when they generalize or not. Let’s jump right to the invented example.

value created by the cliff/climber system as a whole. So the overall alignment of the system determines the climb: not any single variable like blefuscity. Our previous ideas about blefuscity reveal themselves as “true, but partial”. So we have added a term, alignment, to describe the system as a whole. Let’s expand that term: How much can you adjust the different variables so as to increase their alignment? We are now introducing an invented meta-systematic term: alignability. The cliff/climber system has low alignability (a property of the system): It is difficult—or it has high cost—to change any one variable (to, for instance, make the cliff less rugged), and the different variables effect almost no change upon one another. The low alignability of the cliff/ climber system will only produce value in relatively few cases.