Who grades the graders
I spent six years in a community that ran on developmental stages. The teacher was assessed — by a process he designed — as operating at a level the rest of us had not reached. Which meant his behavior could not be questioned by people whose objections were, by definition, arriving from a lower altitude. You can guess the rest. The structure did not have a flaw. The structure was the flaw.
We do not deny the obvious: people have different needs. A beginner and a master need different things, and no one disputes it. Our objection is to one specific move — the slide from different needs
to different levels.
A need is horizontal. A level is a ranking. The instant an institution ranks members by psychological or spiritual development, it creates a prize — being rated advanced — and hands the keys to whoever runs the assessment.
The people who build these systems always, somehow, score as advanced inside them. The integral designers mean it sincerely. Sincerity is not the safeguard they think it is. It is what makes the capture invisible to the captor.
Where we concede ground: Pretending everyone is at the same level is also a lie. A flat institution just drives its real hierarchy underground.
What would change our mind: A developmental assessment that the people it rates as lower endorse as fair — across cultures, and across a full generation.
Read the full synthesis: Can one institution serve people at very different stages?