Anemone's Research Emporium

Cognitive Development in Adulthood

Complex non-linear logic is emerging today for the first time in human history, supplanting the linear logic we learn in school. It involves conflict being built into systems to keep them dynamic and alive, unlike linear logic which tends to be static, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

Complex non-linear logic is transforming science (chaos, complexity, emergence), but it is also transforming the way we look at ourselves as human beings and people.

The Book

Why it Takes Ten Extra Years to Grow Up: The Evolution of Adulthood from Prehistory to the Age of Complexity, by Anemone Cerridwen

Brief synopsis

Author's rant

I wrote this book over a period of five years, starting in March 2002. This was just supposed to be a short book speculating on what religion would look like once humankind finishes going through its current cognitive developmental shift. Unfortunately my introduction got away from me, and I still have no idea what religion will look like in the future, except I expect it will be more about helping people deal with being spiritual beings and less about the nature of God (which is ultimately unknowable anyways).

This is a Great Work. It wasn't supposed to be, but there it is. One day I looked at it and it had come alive under my hands, and I was awed.

I actually would have preferred to write paperback novels, like in the Beatles' song, since I needed a job, like in the Beatles' song, but unfortunately I still don't know how. This is the first book I was able to write. That's what I get for going to university on the science track like a good girl, instead of running off to the fine arts high school like all my favourite teachers (and my artist brother) did. Oh, well. I'm still working on novel writing. Perhaps someday.

Great Works are terribly difficult to sell. If they understand you right off, it isn't a Great Work. If it's a Great Work, people hate you for the longest time, and misunderstand you all over the place, then one day all of a sudden you were popular all along. Right. So far I haven't got a publisher or an agent, which is part of the mystique of it all, I suppose. But someday perhaps, a hundred years from now, they will look at my work and say "She got all the details wrong". That is what they say about Darwin, and it would make me perfectly happy.

But I'd still rather be writing paperbacks. It seems more respectable, somehow.

As I was saying, one day I looked at it and it had come alive under my hands. Going from first to second draft put it on a bit of a diet (155,000 words, down from 220,000), and made it more presentable, but hasn't changed the aliveness of it. Putting it on any more of a diet might kill it, though, so no more major overhauls, just polishing.

The problem with both drafts, people will say, is that while I refer to all sorts of cognitive developmental research (Piaget, Kohlberg at al.) to map out the cognitive developmental shift from primitive culture to modern culture, I have pretty much nothing to draw on for the shift from modern culture to the whatever-you-call-it culture that's emerging and is based on complexity theory, except for one other book (Clifford Anderson's The Stages of Life), my own impressions, and the examples I give of the different types of thinking in the media today. And some people will say it is up to me to provide all this documentation, instead of the brief outline I have provided. The problem with that is that it will take an army of researchers and a minimum of twenty years of longitudinal research to test my hypothesis, research I am in no position to do (not a university researcher, not the type), and, once that research is done, the book becomes somewhat beside the point (or at least due for a serious update). Better to get what I have here out now, so that people can spend the next few decades tearing it to shreds, than to wait until it doesn't really matter any more. (Besides, there's tons of stuff here for people to generate PhD theses from, for all those wanting to hide in school an extra decade while they finish growing up. And I wouldn't want to hog all the fun.)

As I was saying before, so far I don't have a publisher, though I have submitted it here and there. If you're keen, please let me know!

(Because I need a job, even though I still don't have a clue how to write a paperback novel.)