if you are ready to understand stages in the way they are meant to be understood, you are ready to understand them as cognitive functions in their own right, so whatever fascinates you about typology goes for stages.
the ability to see these patterns within your mind is called vision logic and it is itself a stage of development. with vision logic, you comprehend that one way of looking at any ethical dilemma of your life (or any other subject, that is relevant to you) is more integrated, than a competing view, that you also have inside of yourself, because it's from your past and possibly supported by people around you.
you understand that being more integrated is a value in itself, because higher stages are simply more functional in all thinkable ways. higher stages are made of all the functionality of earlier stages, but add a level of self-control and self-knowledge to all of this functionality.
so you have a new inner compass for navigating life and arguments with people. people around you may say that everything is subjective and that you might as well be living according to their concept of life, but you understand the value of your more integrated concept, without dismissing the partial validity of their concept and you can't be persuaded to regress into old lifestyles, that prevent you from being all that you can be, but you won't be tempted to tear town their life, just to justify your choice.
it's immensely pacifying for your soul and your relationship with the world, to understand and to see everything in perspective.
when your vision logic kicks in, you won't automatically know about stages though, your mind would have to do a life time of analysing and comparing the patterns, that your mind can now perceive, until it would put the whole puzzle together and see how all of humanity, every single interpersonal conflict, every culture, every political or philosophical argument is the expression of a particular level of integration, of organized complexity.
this is where the value of ken wilber's books come into play, because he has spelled it out for us and, unlike previous researches of the subject, given us a language, that allows all those who can see to communicate what they see to each other. only this normed language can allow us, to translate the stage of evolution that we have attained into an integral way of being communal with each other.
alone we can only see how the world is operating and become lonely like dr manhattan, but together we can invent a more integrated society, that treats all stages with respect, but prevents them from running over each other in blind rage about the differences, that earlier stages can not comprehend.
this way the integral vision can eventually pacify the whole world. without it, not a single argument of todays world can ever be settled and we will continue to be entirely divided into nations and parties that sabotage each other for the sake of competition, which makes it impossible, to reduce of fix the ways in which we destroy plantet earth, physically.
carl jung writes about how what we call civilisation is not a true civilisation yet, rather our specialization has created seemingly endless conflicts, we have fallen apart into thinkers, feelers, intuitives, sensors who have their own paradigms and despise each others concepts of society, who try to brainwash each other into changing sides, so it's like a more subtle form of slavery.
to become integral is to integrate the valid aspects of all of these approaches into a whole and it ends the many forms of suppression, from which everyone and nature (ecology) itself suffers. this will be the real civilisation.
in my opinion vision logic is the consequence of no longer hating some of your own cognitive functions, but understanding their value, in principle. it doesn't have to be the most introspective understanding, like it will be for intuitive introverts. it could mean that intuitives eat healthy and bother to exercise and that feelers bother to read some smart books. you also begin to recognize the value of all contributions, that other people can make to your intelligence. you can suddenly understand them.
it doesn't mean that you loose your type, it means your individuation is completed, because all functions are integrated into the team of your dominant function, rather than being closed out.
now that the inner arguments between the functions have been overcome, the mind discovers, that there is more, it discovers the stages. the discovery of stages is the next half-step of evolution and to invent a language for it is simply a must.
on the other hand, if you can't even understand cognitive functions yet, if you don't even realize the value of being that analytical about the perspectives, that other people hold, then you will only misunderstand stages as cliches and you will probably simply instrumentalize the labeling to invalidate some shit that bothers you and that isn't helping.
shit, i'm pretty sure my food burned on the stove.
Weird. It seems like I used to be better at tuning out the noise, or maybe I just remember it differently.
