Following the last blog...

More research today, more writing discovered that gives voice to my difficulties with the Bush administration, as well as the Christian/conservative movement in vogue:

There are stages to spiritual/religious development, just as there are stages to physical, mental, and emotional development. If we go by M. Scott Peck's model, the four stages are: I. chaotic (pre-religious), II. fundamental, III. athiest/agnostic/skeptic, and IV. mystical. Google 'spiritual development' for a full description; Dr. Peck is right up there at the top.

What is important to my thinking is that the fundamental stage is based in a need to feel some kind of control in the cosmos (unspoken, but this can be fear at the bottom of everything) and is typified by rigidity, legalism, literalism, authority, and conformity. People at this stage tend to perceive that they have found the truth and feel a need to convert the other 99% of the population that doesn't seem to be where they're at. The issue of concern is that such people don't recognize that there are further stages of development, and rather than looking for something more developed than their own understanding they see those beyond them as threatening and wrong.

My own observation is that people at this stage haven't integrated all parts of their personalities, beliefs, and behaviors into a consistent whole. This stage is marked by a great deal of inner conflict that is avoided by projecting fears of evil outside the self, which prevents the integration. They live in a state of unacknowledged fear, forever puzzled that they don't really have the promised joy deep down when they see it in others (those in Stage IV), and occasionally the unacknowleged darker side of themselves, which they haven't developed the skill to act against, seeks expression. That is why we have fundamentalist, charismatic leaders who are caught, literally, with their pants down doing the very things they preach against.

It's possible to remain in this stage the rest of one's life.

What happens when such people attain positions of power in business, religion, and government? The secret, behind-the-scene abuses of people, their money, their trust, their bodies, the perception of evil and enemies that have to be obliterated from the face of the planet...all of the abuses we have seen during this period of neoconservatism. That it is secretive reveals something: somewhere deep inside they know that what they're doing is wrong.

All of this is why so many people object to the policies of the present government and speak out (since such people are at a later stage of spiritual development), and also why the government doesn't understand -- and thus respond to -- the will of the people.

If anything must be done to correct this situation, it seems that the most enduring would be the most difficult: to bring the people of an entire nation to accept that there are stages of development higher than that of those in power, and to no longer allow people into positions of authority when they are at lower stages.

History is shot through with those of lower development taking the reigns. Is it impossible to change such a solid habit of humankind? While we breathe I can't discount the possibility that we could.