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abigailgem comments on The ideas you're not ready to post - Less Wrong
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Scott Peck, author of "The Road Less Travelled", which was extremely popular ten years ago, theorised that people became more mature, and could get stuck on a lower level of maturity. From memory, the stages were: 1. Selfish, unprincipled 2. Rule- following 3. Rational 4. Mystical.
Christians could be either rule-following, a stage of maturity most people could leave behind in their teens, needing a big friendly policeman in the sky to tell them what to do- or Mystical.
Mystical people had a better understanding of the World because they did not expect it to be "rational", following a rationally calculable and predictable course. This fits my map in some ways: there are moments when I relate better to someone if I rely on instinct, rather than calculating what is going on, just as I can hit something better if I let my brain do the work rather than try to calculate a parabolic course for the rock.
I am not giving his "stage four" as well as he could. If you like, I would read up in his books, including "Further along the RLT" and "The RLT and beyond" and "The Different Drum" (I used to be a fan, and still hold him in respect).
You could then either decide you were convinced by Scott Peck, or come up with ways to refute him.
Would you like an article on this? Or would you rather just read about him on wikipedia?
Wikipedia says,
I suspect most, if not all, regulars will dismiss these stages as soon as reading convinces them that the words "rational" and "mystical" are being used in the right sense. That is, few here would be impressed by "enjoying the mystery of nature".
However it might be useful for beginners who haven't read through the relevant sequences. Voted up.
I don't think that "enjoying the mystery of nature" is an apt description of that last stage. My impression is more that it's about appreciating the things that can't be said; i.e., of the "he who speaks doesn't know, and he who knows doesn't speak" variety.
There are some levels of wisdom that can't be translated verbally without sounding like useless tautologies or proverbs, so if you insist on verbal rationality as the only worthwhile knowledge, then such things will remain outside your worldview. So in a sense, it's "mystical", but without being acausal, irrational, or supernatural.