Imbalanced Integration

The balance between adulthood and childhood is easily overstepped. We can at times forget who is managing. And to bring the past along with ourselves, step for step, is not necessarily to make the paradigm shift into a new Meme. Such a shift into a progressive predominance of preferred behaviours, or a new set of proclivities, is too easily to fear being hoisted on one's own petard. Yet it is an Integrative Maturation that would have us evolve, become more sophisticated, realize our potential, and provoke at our entelechy. (Or is it that entelechy provokes at us, or not, given its Greek concept of 'innate drive'?)

Throughout history we have eschewed hierarchies. More evidently though, we actually have bowed to them. We have allowed the natural evolution of childhood inculcations of the paternal and maternal dominance to propel us a populace, and we've given over our individualism to the leadership and governance of An Other. Naturally. Our families, our schools, our churches, our institutions, our political system, our religions, and even our spirituality renders it so. We are more easily subservient to the cultural paradigm into which we are born than we are emboldened to walk out on the tight ropes from one paradigm shift to another, and to 'go it alone'. It is a natural gregariousness, a natural interdependence, and a natural need to have group inclusion that drives us to stay within the species into which we are born. Especially if not impelled by adversity. And though there are indeed rarities, anomalies, and individuated persons who clearly are far out to left field (or is it too far on the right?), there is a generalized adherence to the status quo by the vast majority of us that is undeniable. We are who we are. And we resent those who think they are better than ourselves. They may evidently seem better, be taller, have more money, be more innately academic, be more beautiful, have altogether better luck; but we resent it if they look down on us; or conversely (to use a sad phrase) there are those who from cat-like aloofness 'do not suffer fools gladly'.

Most sets of paradigms aspiring toward depicting mankind's evolution has the basic tenants of self-centricity, filial-centricity, ego-centricity, cultural-religio-centricity, nation-centricity, and world-centricity. To complicate matters, within each set of such a centricity are a similarity of persons with personality traits and character traits (inherently different in themselves) as well as the whole gamut of the bell curve of I.Q. In other words, an exceptional talent and gifted scholar may still predominantly operate from a Stage Three of six. And the loving circle of a psycho-geometric meme may well find herself caught up in her proclivity for a Stage Two Paradigm. That is, we are as intermixed and convoluted as can be, and in our small meme behaviours we can live comfortably within our Large Meme habits, without consciously thinking. Six large Memes. Kazillions of little meme behaviours. Yet each of us is hopefully aspiring to evolve toward more effectively contributing to the health of the whole Whole. Or do we?

Huh? Meta-cognitive thinking does not come easily. We simply think. It is not the simplistic choices between left and right that keeps us in balance, nor is it the incremental steps we take from A to Z; it is the integration and inclusion and acceptance and absorption of everything not only as it is, but as it may yet evolve to be. Had we not evolved we would still be Neanderthals. If we do not evolve we, as a species, will keep revolving around the first Six Memes. For fear of becoming Integrative, we may well stay in a tension of unmanageable imbalance. Ha! A pity. Even a cat has only nine lives.