Spiritual Exoskeletons and Endoskeletons - Which One Describes You?

This is part of my "grand unified theory" (ala Malcolm Gladwell) about the development of human spirituality. It is based on the work of Jonathan Heidt, James Fowler, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jean Piaget, and many other thinkers in the world of spirituality. (Yes. I believe that our morality is one face of our spiritual development.) This includes Object Relations theory as well.

James Fowler, author of The Stages of Faith (summarized here, though I believe people stay in the earlier stages of faith far longer than this optimistic projection) has built a model of spiritual development that echoes Jean Piaget's stages of psychological development. A developmental model of spirituality makes immediate sense to me, as we already speak of spiritual "growth." We develop physically, emotionally, psychologically, morally, and in all other ways. Spirituality is developmental too; how could it not be?

The main focus of my interest today is the shift between stage three (Synthetic-Conventional) (exoskeleton) and stage four (Individuative-Reflective) (endoskeleton) according to James Fowler. I know for myself that this shift reached a crisis point in my early forties. It dovetailed with a probable mid-life crisis. My trust in and reliance on my childhood faith had taken too many blows. I was being existentially ejected from (birthed from?) identification with that religious denomination. The process took years and was deeply painful. Another soul who was undergoing a similar birthing likened it to the process of becoming a butterfly after one has been a caterpillar.

"This is where things get crazy and kind of disgusting. The caterpillar does not simply rearrange itself into a butterfly or moth. It takes much more than that. The caterpillar starts to digest itself! That’s right, it releases enzymes that start to liquify almost the entire caterpillar. If you were to cut open a cocoon during this stage, a liquid caterpillar smoothie would ooze out." Mike Szydlowski, The Columbia Tribune, Oct. 2021

Goo

We found this analogy apt. It was NOT comfortable. Emanual Swedenborg would say that this shift is from "historical faith" to "living faith."

"There must be, for Stage 4, a relocation of authority to within the self. While others and their judgments will remain important to the Individuative-Reflective person, their expectations, advice and counsel will be submitted to an internal panel of experts who reserve the right to choose and who are prepared to take responsibility for their choices."  James Fowler, Stages of Faith

A Barrier Between Stages Three and Four

The shift from three to four can be very painful, especially if one has been in a denomination that requires its members to stay in stage three. Stage three relies on an outside authority. It relies on obedience and compliance within its membership. This outside authority serves as a spiritual exoskeleton to the membership. All of us require this stage as part of our development. It enables us to grow our spiritual core (endoskeleton), the place from which we can discern, sift, and organize our own authentic spirituality.

All denominations that need stage three adherents see this shift as a threat. Members who question the legitimacy of the teachings and rules threaten the leaders' authority. Eventually, these members vote themselves out of involvement as they realize their inability to change the denomination. Depending on the level of cult dynamics in the denomination, this ejection from the group can be hugely isolating, disillusioning, and painful. One can lose a sense of belonging in an otherwise cohesive and interconnected "family." The leaders generally invalidate the pain of such members and see their departure as "trimming dead wood." (I have heard this spoken explicitly.)

Exoskeleton

In truth, those who manage to launch from such a denomination are the living wood, and can eventually find root within a group that welcomes stage four spirituality. (I have found a home in a Unitarian Universalist congregation.) But many stay alone and isolated, unwilling to trust again or otherwise unable to find a new spiritual home. They are suffering from spiritual trauma and abandonment.

Endoskeleton

This shift from an authority-based faith to a living, inwardly reflective faith is part of our healthy spiritual growth. Our spirits call us to grow to this level and beyond. Unfortunately, many religious denominations see this shift as heresy, disobedience, rebellion, and "falling" from grace. These groups tend to punish, shun, vilify, and cast out such members. No wonder it can be hard to leave!

As those of us who have left such groups tend to remain isolated, we can be unaware of the huge and growing body of people on a similar path. If only we had a way to form our own, mutually supportive spiritual communities. Yet we tend to be gun-shy of belonging again.

I believe that authentic, unhampered spiritual growth requires that we make this shift. We are designed to think for ourselves based on years of spiritual work and learning from others.  We are built to continue growing spiritually, constantly deepening and adding greater nuance to our understanding. But we also need a spiritual community. Such supportive and non-dictatorial communities exist out there. They are just hard to find. They tend to mind their own business.

Do you rely heavily on outside authorities and some declared text as literally the Word of God? Then you are probably in an exoskeleton stage of spirituality. There is nothing wrong with this stage, but we are meant to evolve beyond it.

Do you think for yourself, incorporating years of experience, thought, and observation into how you understand the human condition and our responsibilities to each other? Then you are probably in an endoskeleton stage of spirituality.

Do you do some of both? Do you feel wobbly and insecure about what to think and whom to trust? Then you are probably in transition.

All of these stages are normal. This model is not to be used to judge others but to assess oneself and understand others.

The Evolution of Morality Part 1: Care and Fairness

Morality has been the subject of academic scholarship for many years. Moral values are not, as I originally imagined, a set of known values about which the whole world agrees.

Springing from Piaget's observations of the stages of cognitive development in children, Lawrence Kohlberg (1927 - 1987) developed a related theory of moral development which has been foundational to this subject's ongoing study.

If morality is developmental, then no wonder humans struggle to agree on what our moral values "should be." Depending on all sorts of cultural and experiential factors, individuals will prioritize certain values over others. An individual will hold fast to the values that "feel right" until and unless the rhetoric around them and how they understand their experiences change sufficiently. 

One of the most prominent theories today posits 5 foundations of morality.

These foundations can be most succinctly summed up here: https://moralfoundations.org/

You can find an in-depth exploration within the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion

Here are those 5 foundations of morality:

1) Care (aka "do no harm")

2) Fairness

3) Loyalty 

4) Authority 

5) Sanctity (aka purity over impurity)

How we understand these values matters, because how we prioritize them affects so much: what we expect from others, what offends or disgusts us, which political and religious leaders appeal to us, what foundational values we imagine should underlie how we govern/are governed, and so much more. 

One final thing to know before I start discussing these foundations:

As a rule "Conservatives" generally weight all five values equally, while "Liberals" generally weight Care and Fairness above the other three.

The following discussion contains my distillation of how I arrived at my "liberal" moral foundations. It is reflective, personal, and designed to add to the discussion. It is not "what everyone should think so if you disagree you are wrong," nor is it prescriptive or authoritative. I do believe it is valuable as part of the discussion.

CARE and FAIRNESS 

Care and Fairness encapsulate all the other values in my mind. They are a summation of the Golden Rule which is found in some form in all world religions. If one genuinely cares about others in equal weight to oneself, one wants equal care and fairness for them as well as oneself. One does not tend to look at others as a threat, but rather, as one's neighbor; therefore one does not tend to dehumanize groups by calling them "criminals" or "immigrants" or "from shit-hole countries." 

Under the Golden Rule, one tends to see the other in oneself and feel compassion for the hardships that the other has endured (and often continues to endure). One isn't as likely to scapegoat a marginalized group or to lay all the world's problems at their feet as some seem to. Laying society's ills at the feet of "the homosexuals" or "those transgender freaks" or "those teenagers having sex" is seen as incredibly ignorant. Instead, problems are seen as societal and innate to the human condition. Battles can be fought within oneself reducing the impulses to hate, scapegoat, or marginalize others. 

The Care and Fairness foundations often show up as activism for social justice causes around the world. They may show up as someone refusing to shop with businesses that exploit their workers just to bring "deals" to their customers. (Personally, I find the idea that some poor worker was exploited just so I could save a few bucks abhorrent. Who am I to deserve to save a little more money at the expense of some nameless, faceless worker in an impoverished country?)

The way liberals and conservatives hold "fairness" can look quite different. I have been on the receiving end of a lot of injustice, which makes me want to stop all injustice everywhere. If someone else is suffering from bullying or marginalization, I believe we all suffer. "We all suffer until nobody suffers," so to speak. 

But among some conservatives, the fairness argument seems to sound more like, "I want to be protected from cheaters" as though they themselves never cheat. There doesn't seem to be any sense of their own cheating ways---their entitlements, their desire for special status, or the ways their own team might cut corners. "Cheaters are some group "out there" and never themselves or their own team members.

In my mind, for genuine fairness to exist, everyone must be rigorously aware of their own impulses to cheat. We are all natural-born cheaters, be we liberals or conservatives, anarchists, or anything else. Until that universal human tendency is recognized, cheaters are always "them" "out there" different from "us" "in here." Therefore, if fortune favors our side, we tend to believe we deserved it. If fortune favors our opponents, we are likely to cry, "unfair!" 

This is a universal human trait. We ALL must stay alert to this tendency within ourselves and our group.

Next post: The Evolution of Morality Part 2: Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity - coming soon

Thank you for reading!