Fields / Portal
Human, Software, Spiritual
Development is one word used in three places. Erikson describes each stage of a life as a crisis to work through, not a box to tick. Software keeps a version you can return to, so a mistake does not erase what came before. Fowler describes stages of faith as ways a person makes meaning across a lifetime. Read through each other they teach a few shared things: setbacks are part of growth, a scaffold comes down when it is no longer needed, and a life is not a version number.
Principles
Erikson’s crisis
Eight stages, each turning on a tension such as trust versus mistrust or generativity versus stagnation.
wiki: EriksonA version you can return to
History that keeps every step makes it safe to try. See version control.
git: Pro GitFowler’s stages
James Fowler’s model of how faith and meaning-making develop from childhood onward.
wiki: FowlerParallel and Competing Theories
Stage models from China and India, older than the Western ones above, that end somewhere different: in ordinary life, or in letting go.
The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures
A twelfth-century Chinese Chan sequence in which a herder searches for, tames, and finally forgets the ox, then returns to the marketplace: development that ends in ordinary life.
wiki: Ten BullsThe four āśramas
A classical Indian model of a life in four stages: student, householder, forest dweller, and renunciate, each with its own duties.
wiki: āśrama