6 Cultural Regression
What goes up, may come back down. Historiography in the modern era saw progress in the rise of the West and the radiation of Western tools, tastes, sciences, ideologies, and forms of social organization. The marching boots of World Wars I and II muddied that stream of narrative. The post-WWII decolonizing era ushered in new global sensibilities, and even within the West, postmodernism looked askance at the idea that Western culture somehow improved on any of the others. Eclectic appropriations of poly-cultural religions, meditation practices, workout programs, fighting styles, fashion accessories, diet fads, drinks, and dishes became the latest turn of the wheel of Western consumerism. Postmodernism flips from paleo and primitive to forward-learning and futuristic in almost the same motion. For postmodernism, time’s arrow lacks both head and tail, because no direction can claim privilege. Sometimes culture needs to catch its breath. On a cultural level, you can certainly shop till you drop for all the latest everything, but every cart has its capacity. There comes a time when piling more in implies spilling more over.
Children grow into the mentalities of their parents, at most. Mostly. In times of rapid social and material change, there may arise generation gaps in which children adapt to a world their parents never knew. That is one definition of progress or cultural evolution. But far more likely, children struggle to even reach normal adult functioning in whatever cultural stage or level their family may already occupy. The current disciplines of psychology and psychotherapy document developmental hitches, detours, and stagnations for myriad reasons. “Normal” adult development is not always the norm. (Kegan, 1982; Vaillant, 1993; Van der Kolk, 2014). Lack of attachment, trauma, social adversity, disease, deprivation – it all adds up. Given that personal development tends to recapitulate previous stages of cultural evolution, current adults who fail to integrate Kegan’s self-transforming mind (to cite just one model) may manifest the more impulsive or ritualistic behaviors that once led our cultures. Street gangs can be interpreted as Viking warriors out of time (Freinacht, 2017). Fundamentalist zealots are inquisitors manqué. Developmental differences thus create a sort of cultural time capsule in which we can view the characteristic behavior styles of all prior epochs, all on the same urban streets.
At the level of leading cultural paradigms (integral, Spiral Dynamics, and metamodern “memes”), sometimes reorganization is required. Like corporations hungry for improved profit margins, sometimes cultural systems need to shrink to grow. The creative process has its dark nights. The cycle of integration-disintegration-higher integration has both personal and social dimensions. Disintegration may feel like a step back, and in some ways, it is. Whether evolution or devolution results from a deconstructive turn cannot be predi