Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter is a leading expert in mature ego development and self-actualization. She is the strategic advisor and research director for Vertical Development Academy, which focuses on consulting, assessment, coaching, and research dedicated to facilitating leadership maturity in individuals, teams, and organizations. Dr. Cook-Greuter is the creator of VeDA’s Maturity Profile, MAP, and its assessment methodology.
1) Framed within the context of your rich wisdom on how our language affects our understanding—as well as the presumption we both agree fun is not bound by this construct—what is your definition of fun?
My expertise is in developmental theory; in that context, I think what somebody considers fun varies with where they are in their development. Take jokes for instance, in early-stage development, jokes are more often than not at someone’s expense. Whereas late stage, a good joke is more self-deprecating. I make fun of myself, because I know I’m a fool. We’re all fools, so therefore I can laugh, even at myself.
Playfulness is a component of fun. Our capacity to play. I like to play and that to me is fun. I like playing with whatever is around that’s handy. For instance, play could be shaping bread into critters.
Research suggests that, for many, later stages of life are not happier, by any means. That’s the anticipation that people have, that if you get to these later stages then you will be happier. Chances are you won’t. I would say fun has a different quality for me than happy.
You can have fun all the way up and all the way down. It’s not, in that way, related to stage development. It’s a capacity to engage in creative playfulness. I’ve got grandchildren, and one of my biggest joys is to do crazy things with them. Teaching the stork walk, or whatever, doesn’t matter. And you invented it on the spot. It’s often not premeditated or anything. That to me is fun.
2) How are altered, nonordinary states beneficial for the development of our ego? How do you see unadulterated fun as a useful tool to achieve time in this form of consciousness?
Pure delight can do this. You see something you never saw before, even a speck of dust or something dancing in some light, and … it’s fun, it’s delightful. It may not last, but for the moment it gives you a little bit of extra energy or joy. In the long run, if you’re the type of person who is noticing these things—not everybody does—I think it can help to move you forward.
I’m not going to tackle the argument if it’s a result of the pursuit. Because there’s certainly seekers that look for it, and because they invite it in, it comes. But it’s clear that delight and wonder are connected to transcendence.
Most spiritual trainings also emphasize wonder. The not knowing, the wonder that comes with being alive. It can also be a personality matter. I grew up naturally curious, incredibly curious, and observant. These moments happened even when I was a small child, particularly in nature. Wonder has something to do with natural curiosity as well.
3) Where I have been genuinely touched by your work is how much of what we think we experience is a construction. You have said that ego is a construction, “a subjectively felt experience.” I propose that happiness is subject to the same limitations. What are the implications of needing convention when we are developing our personal meaning of happiness?
Happiness does rely on subjectively felt experiences. We experience happiness through consensus reality. It’s not reality. “The map is not the territory,” as we say. My sense is fun is more in the moment, maybe genuine when I experience it, but then my memory of my retelling of it, my attachment to it, that is the space of happiness. Fun lives in the moment, it’s there but ephemeral. In some ways, that’s part of its appeal … it’s there and then it goes.
4) How does our “judgment habit” hold us back? What role does experiencing wonder (e.g., a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable) play in potentially mitigating the effects of the judgment habit?
There’s no way you can become an adult or a human being in a society without acquiring the judgment habit, but it is always culturally bound. However, in conventional meaning-making, every time we name something we are already judging it through a shared lens. We are pulling meaning out of the background of the fluid experience.
We don’t need to limit amazing experiences through boundaries of language. We don’t have to name our experience. They are just there. Music, for example, can certainly transport people into this space.
Then the question is, what kind of music? And, that depends on the epoch we live in. Is it a personality issue? What is it? I know I’m so biased in what music really, really, really gets me to this blissful state.
The way we judge also has an effect on children. This can be good or bad. One thing I’m doing with my six-year-old grandson is a game called Missed. So, anything you do that doesn’t go right, you actually celebrate. We say, “Hooray, missed!” The learning opportunity becomes fun rather than this pressure to have it done right.
5) It is evident that young animals, including humans, use fun for meaning-making in early development. Since a fun experience is not constrained by the need for preexisting reference, how might it be used to deconstruct some of the constraints we are bound by through more mature cognitive development?
Freedom from constraint is not limited to early development. Anyone who has access to play, access to ideas—even access to abstract constructs—who is willing to play with ideas and constructs is going to be more likely to develop than somebody who is attached to ideas and constructs in a sort of static way, “This is how the world is.”
As soon as you open yourself up to saying, “Well, maybe not. Maybe there could be another world, or there’s another way to look at things,” you have more space and it helps you grow. We seem to be getting more ossified … in what we believe, what we do, and what we see. We have no interest, no curiosity for anything else.
When you are open to new things, the unexpected can happen. If you go about your life in the traditional, scientific paradigm, you may not get any new results or anything surprising. Surprise, wonder, delight are pieces that foster development and discovery.