SA’s over-abundance of Scott Peck’s “Stage Oners” – Daily Newsletter

Hi there,

It was my privilege some years ago to discover the writing of Scott Peck whose books I’ve been turning to fairly often of late. Peck, author of the magnificent Road Less Travelled, was a philosopher/psychologist whose insights into the human condition offer some clarity on this most complex of issues. Among his theories is that each of us fall into one of Four Stages of psycho-spiritual development. Peck believed 20% of the population are in Stage One, the “chaotic/antisocial” bottom rung, described elsewhere as People of the Lie.

Stage One is  “absent spirituality” where people are “utterly unprincipled.” Such individuals, Peck wrote, are “self serving and manipulative…..they have no mechanism that might govern them other than their own will…..frequently found in trouble or difficulty and often in jails. Some of them, however, may actually be quite self disciplined in the service of their ambition and may rise to positions of considerable prestige and power. They may even become Presidents.”

We heard from FNB yesterday that consumer confidence is at its lowest in a decade. The storm over Nkandla rages on. Economic costs of the grand social engineering experiments of Cadre Deployment, Affirmative Action and unrealistic Labour Laws are starkly apparent. South Africa has a General Election next month. Many yearn for change. Yet political analysts tell us the ruling party and its flawed leader will be returned to power with a hefty majority. Which defies all logic. Except, perhaps, that our unfortunate history has left the country with a proportion of Stage Oners that far exceeds the global average. Verwoerd and his cronies never thought that far ahead, did they?

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