How to Face Complexity: Adult Development and Worldviews

Summary#

This paper was done for an independent study credit in my master’s studies in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University. The essay reviewed a variety of literature to try to answer the question of why some people can grasp complexity better than others, because we need more people to see and understand the complexity that our world faces.

The full paper can be downloaded here.

Excerpt from Introduction#

In a design workshop last fall, a fellow participant sitting across from me asked in an exasperated voice, “Why doesn’t everyone out there think in big pictures?” His tone suggested that he meant it less as a question and more as a condemnation: “Why don’t people consider systemic and long-term impacts?” It is a good question, when asked sincerely. Because it is not hard to imagine that if more people thought in larger perspectives, then the world would be in a better place than where it is today.

The first part of this paper is my attempt to answer that question. And it reaches for insights from the perspective of adult developmental psychology, which studies the maturation and growth of adults across many dimensions, one of which is our ability to take on larger and more complex perspectives. I invite you to examine with me the current theories and models around adult development, why it matters to someone’s capacity for perspective-taking, and how it is different from what we normally consider as learning and training. My hope is for you to come away with new possibilities for growth, with sympathy for the limitations in you and the people around you, and with inspirations for designing environments that support people’s growth.

The second part of this paper is about human belonging, and the more complex forms of it that are required in a post-modern world. I am confronted by this complexity in myself, a mix of East and West, being born in China then settled while I was young in Canada, and having lived in a spattering of other countries (Scotland, Norway, Singapore, and Taiwan) at various times — where I belong has been a central and yet difficult question. Not only that, the diverse stretch of cultural and geographical experiences is compounded by the many sub-cultures I have been part of (e.g. spirituality, therapy, activism, entrepreneurialism). After coming back to Toronto and while spending time in close quarters with my parents during the covid lockdown, I came to see how distanced I am from the traditional world where they came from, this small remote town in China where their families knew each other before they were born. My parents know their roots. I, on the other hand, belong everywhere yet also nowhere, uprooted and blown adrift by the global post-modern life.

My experience is unique in its particularity, but I don’t think I am alone. The diversity of the modern culture is conjoined with isolation, fragmentation, and polarization. The strong boundaries that marked traditional communities of belonging have been blurred, erased, and replaced by individualistic self-actualization on one end and tribal preservation on the other. The effort to integrate our diverse selves into a shared common is ever more complex.

So, while the first part of the paper examines development from the individual perspective, the second part examines development from the relational or collective perspective. The question being explored is: what are the forms of human consciousness that can hold the relational complexity of our post-modern society? Our capacity to meet the complex challenges of our times might depend on it.