You Cant Live A Big Life With A Small Identity

TITLE: [6/7] You Can’t Live a Big life With a Small Identity. Let’s Fix That Together. CHANNEL: Mr Clark’s Classroom DATE: 2026-03-28 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Who am I becoming and from what level am I asking? Now, in parts one to five of this lecture series, we’ve been exploring the theme of uniqueness in various ways. I’m going to do a brief rundown of those in a minute, but it’s the second part of that question that needs a full and thorough breakdown. From what level am I asking? Because fundamentally, we don’t just have one identity. So, we can’t pursue uniqueness in just one single way. Just doesn’t really make sense. So, look at the first part of that question, who am I becoming? We can’t answer the question who am I currently, let alone becoming, if we don’t address the question of where you are when you’re asking that question in the first place.

Who you see yourself as in the first place, it depends entirely on the level of development that you’re asking the question from. And that’s what we’re looking at today. So, we’re doing a thorough breakdown of an idea that turns up in integral theory, in spiral dynamics, and other actualizing-based hierarchies. But, I don’t want to focus too much on the jargon and the terminology, and instead I want to go for a more functional approach. So, that you can actually do something with this information, rather than just argue about definitions, really. So, fundamentally, you can’t answer who am I without first asking from what level am I asking the question. So, that is the focus for today. And given that we are talking about uniqueness, you could also formulate the question as who am I and then what does uniqueness look like from this level?

So, the question of who am I? That is going to change as you grow. And given that you’re not also just one singular identity, then what does uniqueness look like is also going to be changing. So, that is why I say with those two questions, that’s what we’re referring to today. Who am I and from what level am I asking the question? So, that’s what talk six is going to be about, but I also want to give you a super brief overview of how we got to this stage in the first place.

Now, in lecture one, we looked at why you are unique from a first and third-person perspective by pretty much exploring various different terms in psychology and philosophy. And then in lecture two, we identified our mentors and saw how they can help to reveal our uniqueness, or at the very least of the qualities and the traits that are important to us. In lecture three, that was a thorough reminder to not reduce yourself down to just being a project. And remember, I know it sounds really obvious, but you’re a person underneath who is undertaking that project. So, how can I pursue uniqueness presupposes that there is an I to begin with. So, we zoomed out to really focus on that aspect. Abraham Maslow helped us along in lecture four with his ideas of the being values and what the ideal human looks like as well, as they are in the process of self-actualizing.

So, if you’re not sure where to begin, then these traits well, they can be a fantastic blueprint, really, to help us orient ourselves on the way. And then in lecture five, we looked at Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of the flow state and we combined it with Cal Newport’s idea of deep work to help us very much temporarily experience and embody these being values from Maslow, as well as give us some weekly structure to help routinely planning exactly how we’re going to become this next version of ourselves. And that’s where part six comes in. By looking at development within integral theory, it’s going to show us that the question of who am I changes depending on your level of development. So, that question of who am I becoming or what does uniqueness look like, it’s actually more of a dynamic question than a static one. So, what it means to be yourself depends on the level of development. So, with that in mind, let’s see what Ken Wilber has to say about something like this.

Okay, where do we even begin with Ken Wilber? Right. I just want to set the stage first of all before we do a systematic breakdown of various levels that you address concerns about self-identity from. And I think an easy way of starting a conversation like this is by considering the idea of states of consciousness. Because we’re all familiar with the experience of being awake and then the feeling a bit more tired and falling asleep and then dreaming and being in a deep sleep and things like that. Now, these are all different states of consciousness. And by that, what I mean is they’re temporary and they come and go on a daily basis. So, different states, they allow us to ask different types of questions and they’ll affect the mindset that we have when we approach those questions, but they’re not sticking around for the long term. Another way of sort of thinking about this is that they’re transient. Now, I know this is really obvious, but it’s important when we compare them instead to stages of consciousness.

So, if a state is temporary, then a stage is permanent. These are the actual milestones of growth and development that you’ve passed through and they’re going to stay with you. So, let’s say like and I’m in the UK at this point in time. So, if you go to a mainstream school, you progress through the years from reception up to the GCSEs in a very logical way. And then you go from year one, then two, then three, and so on up until year 11. And then when you’re in year 11, you haven’t completely erased what it was like to be in year five. You’ve just continued to develop. Just like the five-year-old version of you didn’t erase the year two version of you. Now, every day in year two and in year 11, you’re going to go through these various states of being awake and tired and sleeping and dreaming. But, once you’re in year 11, you don’t need to go through the stages all over again.

So, as you develop, you transcend and include, to use Ken Wilber’s terminology. You’re getting more complex and you’re using the building blocks that you’ve already established from a previous stage. So, just to make this really, really clear, you think about it like an author. So, an author doesn’t need to relearn the alphabet or how to write when they start their next book because that knowledge is already in place. But, there is an increasing complexity of going from letter to word to sentence to paragraph to chapter to book. We’re exactly the same. So, each of your developmental stages are very much like the chapters of a book that’s still being written, if we want to be all cute and poetic about it.

So, all of this development is setting the stage to talking about self-identity because answering that question of who am I is going to look extremely different to someone who is, let’s say, five years old compared to 15, compared to 25. And so on. So, I’m going to introduce you to three separate terms here, which might be quite useful to help break this down a little bit further. So, speaking a bit more technically, we answer a question like that by starting at an egocentric level.

So, the egocentric level, that refers to me whenever I use the word me. Which then, as things go on, as it develops and expands, it develops into the ethnocentric approach. Which that is going to be referring to us instead. And then again, this is very much using Ken Wilber’s terminology. If we were to expand that further again, we get to the idea of being worldcentric. Now, let me just explain what I mean by using these three terms because they might be terms you’ve never really heard before or they just need a bit of explanation anyway.

So, that’s going to refer to all of us. So, in terms of this, egocentric, here I’m trying to mainly understand, like as a young child, who I am. So, the letter or the term I is important. It’s how I fit in or don’t with my family. What makes me me? So, there’s already a glimpse of that question of uniqueness forming.

But, once I’ve got a decent enough grip on who I am and who I’m not, I can then start to consider my school environment and my local community, maybe my wider area as well a little bit. So, in other words, that’s where ethnocentricity starts to come in. So, ethnocentric, that means I’m starting to understand the culture that is shaping who I am. The three-year-old doesn’t really have a critical idea of culture and what it means, but at 13, given that we’ve grown up a little bit and we’ve started to develop, we’re maybe starting to realize that there’s more to me than I first thought. I’ve been influenced and encouraged by a particular group or set of groups, like the country that I’m born into and maybe the religious values, maybe the norms of the culture around me and so on. So, what makes me unique is now more of a question of what separates me from others around me, rather than just being purely self-interested with that question.

Now, at some point, I start to realize there’s not just me, there’s not just us, but there’s also even more of us. And that’s where the worldcentric angle starts to come in. So, worldcentric in this sense, it’s realizing there’s not just one way to live or one religion and that’s all. It’s not one easy, correct versus false way to live. So, again, the uniqueness question has expanded, this time to include people all around the world. So, the question transcends and includes just me and just us and then now includes all of us.

So, just to try to really spell this out and bring it all together, we can be introduced to different states of consciousness at any level, but we can only really reach higher stages with dedicated growth and more intentional practice.

So, a 5-year-old, for example, they can slow down and they can meditate or they can have this incredibly joyous peak experience just as much as a 25-year-old. The states are available to both of them. But, what each of them can really take from those experiences is a different question altogether. Because it’s a question of depth. So, if you like, there’s another way you can think about all of this. You can think of states as horizontal movements and stages as vertical. So, horizontal would be states. Stages would be vertical. We can have more and more states because that’s about breadth. But, we need to change the language to be more like better. It’s going to be about better or higher or lower because we’re talking about the depth of the situation here.

If you’re a fan of Carl Jung and the shadow, then this is where shadow work would fit in really nicely with integral theory as well. Now, I’m not going to dwell on this for the sake of this particular talk, but if we’re going to talk about growth and development and depth, then it’s possible for that growth to be stunted or for that development to go off track. So, you might overshoot in one direction or undershoot in another. Again, if you’re familiar with Aristotle, it’s similar to his idea of the golden mean, where you’ve got a virtue that sits in the middle of two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.

So, what is too much or too little at each stage and then how does that next stage attempt to correct that problem? In terms of all this, we’ve got there somebody like Jung combining with Aristotle. These are very much bonus book recommendations. Then we’re combining that then with Maslow and then now with Wilber. And because they’ve got so much in common, understanding one of them is going to help you to get a bit of foot in the door and understanding another.

And I’m going through all this in such detail because it’s so fundamental to understanding that question of uniqueness. Because, like I said before, humans don’t just have one personality. We’ve got multiple aspects that are always developing through various stages of consciousness. And some pull ahead of others at certain times. So, each stage, it sees the world differently. So, it’s going to define identity differently. It’s going to ask different questions based on what it values and what it can even comprehend as well. So, each level, the question of who am I has a different answer. And so does what does uniqueness look like.

All right, that’s my painfully oversimplified approach and introduction to Ken Wilber. Or at least what’s relevant of Ken Wilber for this particular lesson. So, now let’s do a systematic breakdown of what these stages actually look like by looking at Spiral Dynamics.

All right, early caveat here before we all start arguing. Different thinkers are going to conceive of a different number of levels or stages based on what it is that they’re mainly focused on. So, I don’t want to get too bogged down on who is right versus who is wrong here. And instead, I want to focus on a much more practical and functional way of using this approach.

So, the colors that we’re going to be focusing on are beige, purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and turquoise from lowest to highest, respectively. And what we’re looking at is how each level would approach the two questions: who am I and what does uniqueness look like?

BEIGE - Survival level. Who am I isn’t really relevant as a question at all at this level because you’re probably just trying to survive and make it through the day or the night. A person at this level is basically waiting to be nurtured and cared for. Questions around uniqueness are completely irrelevant.

PURPLE - The person is starting to become a little bit more conscious. Who am I is another way of asking where is it that I belong? Who you are is very much based on your family or your group or your tribe. The question of uniqueness is actually at this level still quite dangerous. It’s a potential threat to be unique.

RED - There’s a real sense of power and autonomy building up at this stage. Who am I becomes how strong am I? Especially compared to others. Uniqueness looks like superiority. Being yourself means essentially not letting anyone control you.

BLUE - Much more about order and enforcing principles and traditions, upholding the law. Who am I is going to be better addressed by asking what is my role? You can have a sense of uniqueness at this level as long as it is obedient to a higher order and as long as you fit in with the established structure. Being yourself here means becoming who you are supposed to be.

ORANGE - Personal achievement defined by what you want rather than what others want for you. Who am I is still about role, but centered around what can I accomplish? Uniqueness is based on what makes you distinct from others, the classic example of uniqueness. The shadow side of orange is that you over optimize the project side of yourself.

GREEN - The pluralistic or relativistic level. Still about accomplishment, but to a deeper level in terms of concern for others just as much as for myself. The questions are around authenticity. Uniqueness here is essentially self-expression. There’s a real focus on being egalitarian. A lot of tolerance and acceptance and diversity.

YELLOW - Second tier in Spiral Dynamics. Self-actualizing territory. Focused on functionality, competence, and finding solutions between seemingly contradictory truths. Who am I accepts that I’m not just a fixed and static thing, I’m more of an evolving process. How do all of these parts fit together? Uniqueness is focused around integration. We’ve accepted we’re an evolving system. We stop trying to be one thing and start learning how to hold many different things together.

TURQUOISE - Focused on the good of all living entities. A more complete acceptance that the self is part of a larger whole. Who am I is identical to how am I a part of the whole? Uniqueness doesn’t disappear but must be considered within the biggest possible frame. Pursuing uniqueness is an expression of the totality of your experiences.

Conflict is inevitable because we all operate at different levels and as a result we all ask different questions. An orange-centered person is likely going to think that a blue person is excessively rigid. A green person might think that orange is too shallow. Red might see green as being too weak. Yellow sees the partial truth in all things.

A lot of the aspects around an identity crisis can also be thought of as issues with developmental transitions just as much as they are specific personal problems. You might be asking a green level question and intuiting a turquoise level response but trying to comprehend it in a blue-based environment.

The question is not who am I once and for all because it’s just too static. Instead: who am I becoming, and from what level am I asking?

Book recommendations: The Essential Ken Wilber, No Boundary, Integral Life Practice, Integral Ecology, Spiral Dynamics, and Erik Erikson’s work on developmental crises (trust vs mistrust, autonomy vs shame, identity vs role confusion, intimacy vs isolation).