Loevinger's model of ego development and the fediverse

Loevinger's model of ego development is something I learned about a little while back, it refers to a model proposed by developmental psychologist Jane Loevinger building on the idea that the ego itself is something that goes through a process of maturation.

In a Freudian sense, the ego is the intermediate between the super ego and the id. The id is all of the base desires completely unfiltered by any mediating Factor. The superego is the moralizing force that tries to completely dominate all of those base desires, and the ego is the mediating force in between the two that needs to deal with the fact that we live in reality and in reality both the superego and the id provide suggestions and measures that are important for understanding and surviving within the world. 

As the ego develops, therefore, it represents a greater understanding of both oneself, other people around you, and the world, so that this moderating realistic Force within oneself can best act in that way mediating between impulses and morals.

Ego development starts with the very basics of learning to control your id and later developing and utilizing your superego. Once you have developed the concept of morality, then it becomes a matter of refining that morality in more complicated ways, and actively understanding that the world is an ambiguous place and that's where the ego comes in to try to rationalize between the base desires of your id and the structured morality of the superego. Later on, people realize that their morality is subjective and begin trying to understand moral relativity, but after that is mastered there are further steps where individuals learn that in spite of their morality being subjective and relative one cannot simply fall into the trap of moral relativism because as human beings morality is still essential, and so the superposition of understanding the importance of morality and also understanding it's relativity is one of the paradoxes inherent in life, which is itself part of ego development. The final level of ego development is where your ego has become extremely wise and competent at dealing with the many aspects of the world.

A lot of people who think that they are quite intelligent people have a surprisingly undeveloped ego. And this manifests as one of two different scenarios, either people who end up dominated by their id, who just do or say whatever they want without any regard for how it affects others, or people who are dominated by their superego, who seek high levels of control of themselves and high levels of rejection of others who do not match up with the moral code that they have devised. 

The fediverse as a platform has a lot of different people on it, and one of the most important skills to get on the fediverse is realizing that you are not the other people here, and while there are certain people that you simply can't coexist with and that's going to happen regardless of your level of ego development, there are going to be a lot of people that you could coexist with you just need to separate yourself from others to the extent that just because you see someone say something you don't like it doesn't mean that they have a duty to you to temper that, but also that even people you don't like on here are often despite all outward appearances reasonable and decent people. The issue is that often they hold opinions that you're not going to like. 

Babies start off as level zero of ego development, pre-social. As they grow, they begin to have a sense of self and assert that sense of self which is the first level of ego development, and after that they begin to adopt some rules that act to help them protect themselves in society, which is the second level of ego development. Typically, people at these levels probably aren't going to be on the internet, they probably don't know how to read and write because this happens very early on in our lives.

I think that the tendency for certain blocs within the fediverse to rely on things like fediblock also demonstrates this lower level of ego development. There's just an assumption that because somebody somewhere put somebody's name on a list that those people are bad people, and in a lot of cases the people using those lists don't even have any idea how individual instances ended up on that list. I always enjoy using my instances as an example, because if you dig a little bit you will realize that I'm the one who put my name on the fediblock list, by calling the maintainer Nazi Gestapo a bunch of times and threatening to call them "doubleplus ungood" thus you have a situation where people think that I am so dangerous that I can't be listened to in the least, and they think that because they're listening to my advice. Ironically, people who lock my instance thinking that I'm a Nazi are in fact themselves doing so because I called them Nazi Gestapo which is humorously ironic in my view. This method of just going with whatever everyone else tells you to do is consistent with the conformist level of ego development. Such people don't think for themselves in these terms, they just follow orders with the assumption that other people will be better than them at parsing right from wrong, regardless of any of the other complexities with that strategy. The conformist level of ego development is consistent with school children, people who are following the rules because they see the rules as something to be followed, rather than for any self-aware or community aware reasons.

The next level is self-aware or conformist-conscientious, and represents what Loevinger believed was the model for adults in society. While this level retains a high level of conformity with societal norms, it introduces the ability to consider multiple viewpoints and self-criticize.

The next level would be conscientious, where the individual has fully internalized all of society's rules, recognizes exceptions and the like, and begin to have a more sophisticated moral system for example by feeling guilty for harm that one does rather than just because one broke the rules. 

After that is the individualistic level where there's more respect for differences between individuals. There is a greater respect for individual autonomy, and a slow March away from moralism. 

The autonomous level then it seems like it would be more about individual autonomy, but in reality it is more about finally reaching the ability to engage in synthesis of complex ideas, to be able to act as an autonomous moral agent without the specific demands of a morality imposed by society, though that will only come with an understanding that there are limits to our personal autonomy based on the interdependence between people. 

The final level under Loevinger's model is called "integrated", which takes the ability to act as an autonomous moral agent from before and expands that to a new viewpoint that transcends simple moral binaries or conformity. This stage involves a full recognition of life's complexities, acceptance of contradictions, and a deep understanding of human limitations. People at this level understand that there are often dichotomies and paradoxes in life that exist and cannot or do not have to be resolved or simplified. This level represents a tiny minority of humans, and the overwhelming majority of people never reach this level in their lives.

Now in the same way that someone who is living a self-actualized life under Maslow's hierarchy of needs will still occasionally be hungry or lonely, a person who has achieved an integrated level of ego development won't always behave in that way. It's more about that individuals maximum level of capacity rather than always living in that zone.

One thing that's interesting about ego development is that if you don't know what you're looking for, you can end up with a Simulacrum of ego development. For example, I find that there are a lot of people who can make sophisticated moral arguments, but only certain ones. They're essentially at the conscientious level, and so they are copying what they think is moral behavior, in a very sophisticated way. If you present them with an argument that they haven't encountered before, then they lack the facilities to engage with an argument they haven't already been shown an answer to. This is where the "NPC" meme comes from -- people who appear pre-programmed with a conformist ideology who are pretending to be more complex than they really are. At some point there likely was a person with a high level of ego development who would have made such an argument, but the person who makes the argument is not necessarily the one who recites the argument.

One thing that I think a lot of people might get wrong is they may end up trying to model the people that they see on the fediverse with a fairly simplistic model that assumes people on freeside are just people without morals. Now certainly there are certain times where that might be the case, but at least some of the time the people who are advertising how bad they are with swastikas and the like are in fact doing it as a deterrent against people who are at a lower level of ego development. People who just listen to what they're told and do what they're told we'll see the symbols they're told are bad and assume that those people are bad and stay away. Once you actually start seeing some of these people interacting, particularly once you get them away from situations where they are putting on demonstrations to scare off such people, a lot of the time you find that they're decent people. One way that you can tell is that it's pretty rare for anyone on freeside to go after you just because you say something like racism is not good or sexism is not good, it's only once it becomes clear that you are doing so solely for the purposes of illustrating how moral you are to others that they'll start to get aggressive with you. A parallel to this would be something like Marilyn Manson using satanic imagery that scares away people who will only follow orders, while his actual moral discussions are deeply focused on thinking for oneself and acting with integrity.

I think the best way to enjoy the fediverse is to move beyond simplistic moral judgements and look at things in a broader way reflective of the uncertain and often paradoxical nature of the world. There's a lot of people on the fediverse who I disagree with on a visceral level, whose words punch me in the gut, but who still make points worth considering regardless because the world can be a lot more complicated than just selecting between good and bad. Even the ideals you hold most dear can have glaring flaws, and even the ideals you want to fight to the death can make important points you shouldn't ignore if you want to have a good model of the world.

In a previous post I talked about how many civilizations require multiple different ideologies in order to survive, such as the Germanic warrior ethos and western roman empire's ethos combining with Christianity to produce a powerful civilization in the west. It's something we have to accept, that life contains paradoxes and they can't be resolved because they're just true and the more you try to resolve them the more off base your answer will be.

I'm just trying to understand the world myself, and at the end of the day I'm just some yokel from the middle of nowhere so let's not pretend I'm the top of human experience. We see what we see, and try to understand, and try to build a model of the world, but it doesn't take much and then if you're being honest you might find yourself destroying your old ideologies because you prove to yourself that you're just wrong.

It does mean though that we're all connected in societies that find health or lack of health as a societal whole rather than just as individuals. That's where these long essays of mine I hope might help others break out of pure programming and think for themselves, seeing someone else struggling to think for themselves. There's obviously a huge power structure that would like us to stay at the conformist level and pretend to be something greater by reading their book and reciting all the passages verbatim and without critical thought, but everyone who does that is missing something. People who only know how to recite others words are missing out on a core piece of being human, and that's something worth fighting to achieve.

One thing I've been thinking about a lot is also how to help someone else bootstrap themselves into the higher levels of ego development, since I have a son. Obviously the first chapter of my book is called "Question everything and everyone -- especially me" because pure conformism is the easiest level to get trapped in, but there's a reason the second is called "Basics" and lays out a series of deontological truths for a young boy to follow until he gets to that point of breaking out of conformity. Besides words, there needs to be a demonstration in your own actions from birth of how an adult behaves, and that shouldn't be raw conformism or future generations will believe that's how an adult behaves.

Imagine your life is a flame passed down to you by your parents, and part of that flame is your life, and some of that flame is your culture. You can feed that flame in yourself by stoking the flame with culture and with critical thought, but eventually your flame will go out, and that's why you must pass it on to your children, and also try to help stoke the flames of those around you. If you do so correctly, than even as your own flame goes out, it lives on around you and in front of you with the lives you create and the culture you drive forward.

So all that being said, I think understanding the levels of ego development are important not just to look down at people who are at lower levels, but because facilitating people's growth into higher levels of ego development can help us have better conversations online. If we can figure out a way to help the people stuck in the conformist level grow then a lot of people who might actually have a lot of potential could start participating for real instead of just reciting other people's arguments, and that could be quite interesting. Many of these people aren't bad or useless people -- A lot of them are intelligent and creative people who could be greater assets to the world given some personal growth. The first step would be understanding the levels so when you face someone who isn't at the same level you know what you're looking at, but also to start considering strategies for breaking people's programming at conformist levels. How do we nurture self-awareness? How do we nurture integration of paradox? How do we nurture breaking out of purely moral binaries? It's a difficult question and I think more thought is needed because it's going to be key for the future of culture to achieve higher levels as a society.