What are we aimed at? A lofi developmental model 🛤️

… Achievement -> Happiness/Connection -> Meaning/Purpose …

What are we aimed at? I use the Integral developmental frame as one heuristic to understand things and see where potential lies (also part of the Level Up ⬆️ metaframe).

Many adults are really good at including motivations toward objective achievement "orange", a powerful aim that can bring a lot of good into the world. When people realize achievement won’t bring happiness, they start to seek happiness directly. You can see this motivation toward inner subjective well-being or outer community/connection "green" sprouting up in places like Austin and Amsterdam. Here too people can start to feel empty—happiness/connection are both often fleeting and ironically self-centered (think social media). So people realize happiness/connection is not the final aim, it’s a strategy to find meaning/a purpose for their life energy. So they start to seek meaning/purpose directly "teal". One way this shows up is seeking inner-transformation via self-development programs and coaching. Another way is by seeking outer-transformation via addressing global existential crises.

This kind of “what-are-we-aimed-at” development tends to occur when the motivation starts to feel empty, fails to address its impact, or fails to meet environmental challenges. This process of revealing more fulfilling motivations may be endless. There may be no final destination, but we can identify a few more movements… meaning tends to be seen through as a construct to avoid intimacy with the infinite chaos of being, so people shift to orient toward intimacy with all that is (aka surrender), which eventually gives way to unity.

Survival -> Pleasure -> Duty/Belonging -> Achievement -> Happiness -> Meaning -> Surrender -> Unity -> ?

With love, Jordan