# 95 A Reflection On Maturity And Summer’s Politics

"The Kitchen Table" Presented by The Pacific Institute Canada

A Reflection On Maturity And Summer’s Politics:

In this episode, Dave, Gregg and Ron offer their wisdom models, especially Dave’s analysis on the four capabilities of maturity. Mature thinking must include empathy and not just confrontation. Are we being emotional in our worldview, but increasing the threat in our politics. We can smarter, wiser. We can be better.

Additional References

Maturity in the Study of Wisdom- Dave Derksen

With greater maturity comes a greater likelihood that one may offer a wise response in any situation. Knowledge from study and insight from experience provide background understanding which supports a wise response. However, without maturity, knowledge and experience alone may lead to responses that are unwise (self-serving and intrusive i.e. unhelpful to others). Note also that a wise response may be inaction. To decern whether or not to act in a situation requires maturity.

Four Maturity Capabilities

To develop maturity means to become more capable of:

1. Objective self-analysis (holding and evolving our beliefs and opinions, rather than being subject to their control*)

o Extending the time between stimulus and response to allow for analysis

o Acknowledging our emotions as part of decision making rather reacting quickly based on emotion.

2. Understanding and integrating multiple perspectives

o Living with ambiguity

o Acknowledging the world view and motivations of others

3. Empathetic reasoning (thinking humanely)

o Considering the welfare and experience of others as well as our own.

o Recognizing the needs that lead to decisions e.g. safety (physical, social, emotional etc.) or sense of purpose.

4. Thinking and acting autonomously and authentically

o Aligning actions with values – congruence between beliefs and behaviour

o Giving appropriate weight to the influence of external factors (consequences of actions)
Dr David Rock
As away to understand: either why you’re behaving or acting the way that you do, or why others do. We offer you neuroscientist Dr. David Rock. SCARF model . Rock identifies social situations that creates either are reward response for us or threat response.

Rock explains there are five social domains : status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness & fairness that if you have in life things move along quite nicely however, once these are threatened it causes people to react with fight, flight or freeze reaction.

It can help explain our original questions

•Why the world is so polarized.

•Why there is a increasing lack of civility and citizenship responsibly and rise of populism.

•Where people are tend to look for things that people are against versus what people are for.

•Why there is an erosion of pluralism and growth in tribalism