A Broadening Identification
According to Wilber and many other theorists, as we grow and develop, we achieve a broader identification on the spiritual, cognitive, and moral levels. An infant is totally self-absorbed; a young person learns to identify with the family, then the group or country; a person still more highly developed learns to identify with those outside the tribe–perhaps even all other people and even with the whole world or universe.
Explain how a broadening of identification could help your own creative process. Consider all 5 stages: preparation, concentration, incubation, illumination, and verification.
I believe that Wilbers ideas on broadening ones identification helps with the development of the creative process. I also like how he shows that an infant is totally self-absorbed and as we get older we learn to identify with others. As young children we then identify with our parents and eventually learn to make friends. In our teens however are care for parents decreases and the care for friends grows. Once becoming an adult, we learn to balance frienships, family, and ones own self. Once in the elderly stage self absorbtion then decreases and family and friends matter the most. Each one of these stages of life contain different creative attributes and allow for a person to see life in different views based on what stage of life he or she is in.
I agree with Wilber and his idea that as we grow older we achieve a broader identificaton. I think that this helps with creative because it give you more to work with. if you are only thinking about your self you limit your creative process. If you look at the world there are a lot of idea and creative people out there. Seeing how some one else was creative may help you with your own creativity. in some respects you are more creative as a child but i think that if a child could some how become aware of the world there creativity would double.
Colene, I’m afraid I oversimplified Wilber’s ideas in this blog. Some people never grow beyond infantile self-gratification or tribal identification, no matter how old they get. It is not always a matter of age how broad someone’s identification gets.
It is the likes of those who paint the picture of a demon when they visualize their oponents who lack the identification, yes? But although this idea of devil adversaries is ignorant, it allows one to act with some form of confidence, with a feeling of irrefutable purpose. The other day, I was saying to my friend who is a marine that humans are human; they all have sides to their personality. Even if my friend sees my ex as a psycho bitch, I tell him that although she has that potential, she can be the friendliest most pleasant person you have ever met. This is true for all humans. One just needs to learn how to tap into that side, lower their defenses, so to say. He rebuttled, “Well Saddam Hussein is not a nice person.” I reaffirmed my position, saying that although you may be inclined to believe that he could never be pleasant, I know that he can be. For one to assume that he is the archangel is quite ignorant. However, when a country like the U.S.A. needs to get its hands on money and oil, we need to argue these ignorant points to the masses so that we can get our actions done. If we went on every moral war we could find our focus would be in Africa and all over the place quite frankly. At this moment it is easier to believe that the enemy is a demon, and arguably, it is better. It just depends on what your idea of “better” is. Is it gaining power in the world to help secure the economy of your nation? Or should we be inhibited in our progress by an argument that questions our ethics? Though the presmises for this war were far from the truth, were the goals not beneficial? It’s a complicated world. How useful is this “identification” that describes how “aware” we are? Is it really awareness? Or is this “awareness” just something that inhibits progress? How broad of identification should we have? For the more we identify with the outside world, the more we lose our sense of selfishness. Good or Bad? You choose, because it is a choice that is very difficult for myself to make. The key is finding that equilibrium, I suppose. But remember that many creative people were highly self-confident, and self-assured. Sometimes we need to just forget about everyone else and concentrate on what is good for ourselves.
Very thoughtful and mature response!
Because we are all egocentric, it is easy for us to demonize people who frustrate our wishes and act with motivations we disown or reject. Exkhart Tolle, Charles Tart, and others would say that we are asleep instead of awake. Being alseep means we see a distorted picture, as if we were watching dream symbolism or viewing reality through a funhouse mirror. Our picture is distorted by what Linda Elder of the Critical Thinking Foundation calls “our selfish desires” and “our innate selfishness.”
Many psychologists and theologians would say that there is no one who is totally bad. After all, the worst of the gestapo were kind to their own children and pets! We all have a shadow side and an ego and other complexes, and to achieve “a broadening identification, we must make it our lifelong quest to “wake up” and see ourselves and others clearly==and with compassion.
I think broadening one’s identification on the spiritual, cognitive, and moral levels can help creative processes by allowing new and possibly radical ideas. If you look at art at a young age it is stick figures, verse when you get older and learn how to actually draw beautiful facial features, proper eyes, you can accentuate certain areas or leave them out completely. You said that the infant is absorbed with itself because it doesn’t know any better. When we grow up and learn that it’s not socially acceptable to be only into ourselves, that’s when we make the changes. Isn’t it true that with age comes wisdom? All of the attributes (spiritual, cognitive, moral levels) lend themselves to age in my opinion.
Some people however, are socially inept from the whole situation. They obsess over the smallest things-their hair, their nails, their grades, seems to not matter to them about other people, how they are and what is new with them. Could be family problems, you would think people would notice something is wrong with a “friend” but these days people seem to be really self absorbed. Maybe that’s just what I see. There are those that care, I just seem to think that those are few and far between.
You also said in your post that people begin to identify with family, the group or country. As I have gotten older and while I have been away, I have discovered slowly that family is the most important thing to me. It took a long time to realize just how much so. 3 years away from home and I am just now starting to get it. Friends don’t have the same connection with you unless you have known them since about 3rd grade or are really on the same page in life.
Great answer, Zoid! Very thorough and thoughtful!
Great answer, Zoid! Very thorough and thoughtful! I like the fullness of your response and the effort you put into thinking the issues through.
As we grow we learn how to react to life. Everyone faces different scenarios and challenges throughout life and it is our reactions to these obstacles that create our thought process. We learn as independent bodies how to react and adapt to environments that we experience. For example if I fail a test that I really wanted to pass but didn’t study, I have learned that if I want to pass I must study.
The way we prepare ourselves for challenges will predict the outcome. How much time we invest on a project will determine how successful the project will be. Some individuals have learned how to read the small signs of inspirations, warnings, or other factors that help us. Dreams and meditation are great for examining unconscious wisdom that some people who cannot slow down their busy lives can’t see. Everyone handles bursts of inspiration differently. Some keep track of them with journals, while others won’t think twice about the ideas because their past experiences have shown them to block it off.
Everybody views criticism differently. Some people cannot accept failure, while others strive off of it. All of these different reactions are shaped uniquely among each one of us from our past life experiences. These collected beliefs shape who we are individually today.
Thoughtful! Some younger people don’t always perceive this cause-effect chain.
Creativity Log 7
Broadening Identification
My interpretation of Wilber’s theory is very similar to his original, but I will tie some of my own life experiences and theories in as well. Someone once put faith and spiritually in a metaphor that, I thought, was spot on with its digress of spiritual honesty, and advancement of spiritual identification. The metaphor I heard was this: Imagine Spirituality as a glass of water. When your young, the glass is shallow and easy to fill, however as one’s life progresses the glass gets deeper and deeper and there for, harder to be spiritually inspired with the same amount of water. Further, it takes miraculous life experiences or leaps of faith to add more water to your cup, but inevitably the glass will get bigger, and we are left seeking more water to fill the void.
This relates to Wilber’s theory because when he speaks of the infant being self-absorbed, that is when his glass is shallow, and he doesn’t have or need as much spirituality to function, he is only concerned with his self. As the person gets older, his glass grows with him. A person now concerned for a community or a country desires more faith and therefore seeks more spiritual enlightenment, in turn his glass grows to compensate for this. Finally an old individual, now aware of cosmic importance needs even more water to fill his spiritual void caused by his intellectual and spiritual expansion. It can be argued that these two theories are directly related or that they are counter productive. If one never grew spiritually and intellectually, neither would his glass; therefore there would be no need for further spiritual quests. Luckily this is not the case.
Lovely!
This is in regards to David Prater’s blog post on Wilber’s theory. He uses a Paulo Coelho quote to give support to his opinion. I some what agree with his opinion, but am going to play the devils advocate. The “glass” of spirituality and self-awareness grow with age. The “glass” gets bigger as one experiences tests and trials throughout their life. With age people become more aware of their own personal morals, beliefs, and outlook on life. The disagreement I have with most of these blogs on Wilber’s theory is that no one is disagreeing with his theory, or even stating the negative effects, or downfall. Why should a broadening of identification be beneficial to someone? At a young age children are naive, ignorant, and happy. Children don’t have a care in the world. As these children grow they experience stress, sadness, death, and many more depressing feelings. Yes one can say this is what makes a person and that is part of life, but is it beneficial to ones creativity. I am sure sadness, depressing, and anger has created some very creative things. I know for myself in poetry that during times of sadness you can let all your emotions out and create something truly beautiful. But has anyone stop to think of how beautiful life is when you don’t know feelings of negativity. Imagine the things that could be accomplished if the “glass” stayed small. Some say many things wouldn’t be accomplished, I say to that, “The glass is large and people have grown, but has war, anger, famine, depression, and poverty ended?” No I think not, so lets imagine that the “glass” stayed empty maybe the world would be a better place, maybe creativity would expand, or maybe we would die off.
Interesting! It could be that no one else is challenging Wilber out of politeness to me–but Wilber does have his critics.
The definition of maturity as the ability to empathize better with others is one accepted by many thinkers in both psychological and spiritual fields. The idea is that the baby is selfish, the child learnes to share, the older child identifies with his family, and so forth, through identification with one’s country, world, galaxy, cosmos, etc.
identifying with ones own trip weather the individual is young or old is in my opinion the most primary root instance we have. safety in the herd if you will comes from identifying with the people around you that you spend the lions share of your time with. there is nothing wrong with this but it can narrow your views of others and of the world. if you step outside your comfort zone into someone’s culture, and start to look at people and things through someones point of view it would allow you to perceive and create new ideas outside of what your mind has grown accustomed to. and in doing this you are expanding your creative mind and allowing it to look at creative ideas and problems that before you broaden your personal identification you may not have been able to process in the same way!!!
This is a very interesting post! I feel like the broadening of our identification, as you discuss, is vital to our growth. I agree with you that we develop, from the infantile ages to our adult years, but it depends on our openness and broadening of our own world. We cannot expect to change anything if we are not open to the Unified Field, or connecting with those outside our own realm of influence. The family is an important aspect of our growth, maybe the most important because it provides us with a base from which to leap into the world. We go back to it time and time again, but if we never venture out and attempt to broaden our identity, how can we expect any development? I think it this is verified for myself by meeting people that are not open or do not have a broad identity…they stick out like a sore thumb! And there are many of these people! Some days, it appears that they are everywhere, and maybe they are, but maybe they are just on a different part of the path than myself. This conflict is part of the identity- for me it is realizing that no matter what I think, it is vital not to judge others, even when attempting to figure out the idea of identity. Learning to deal with this is difficult, but as I said vital to broadening one’s identity.