moving thoughts from inside to out is a technical explanation of how the complexity of a mind's meaning making evolves. a more concrete explanation with more evocative names for the balances may make the ideas clearer.
the animal balance is the first balance where meaning comes into existence via the separation of inside from out and the creation of an understanding of the world as cut up into categories rather than an undifferentiated soup. this is the balance of toddlers, young children, and most complex animals (after all, we humans didn't develop our mental faculties in isolation). it's defined by its limit of only being able to see categories in the explicitly perceived territory of the world, because even perception is not yet object.
it's in the child balance where perception enters the realm of object. this is the stage children and some 'advanced' animals like dolphins and apes reach. in this balance meaning can take into account not just what is perceived but also how perception works. in the child balance humans and other animals understand how mirrors work and that things don't disappear when they are out of sight. it's something that individuals evolve into during their lives as a result of experience and learning. yet they are limited because they can only consider their perceptions as object and are held subject to all their other thoughts.
being able to hold one's own perceptions as object means someone can also hold the perceptions of others as object, so in the child balance it's possible to 'see things from someone else's perspective', although at this balance in meaning making that should be taken literally. children and apes can keep secrets because they understand that they may know something that someone else does not because the other one did not experience it. this is the beginning of creating a socialized mind that can model others as more than mere things in the world but as processes that may also think. but here the ability is strictly limited to perceptions and knowledge because those are the only mental processes being held object.
it's not until the next balance, the traditional balance, that the preferences of ourselves and others become object. as the name suggests, the third balance is the traditional balance of adulthood and seems reserved for humans. here preferences become object, allowing adults to think about their own wants and needs and the wants and needs of others. this capacity that is missing in the child balance prevents those in that balance from overcoming many kinds of social conflict on their own. children, apes, and dolphins only work well in fairly small groups with relatively homogeneous desires unless adults step in to mediate conflict. adults, on the other hand, can come together despite wanting different things to form armies, religions, businesses, and other types of organizations through socialization that accounts for preferences.
the difference is that in a child balance culture all the members of that culture are limited to understanding that others have different perceptions and knowledge. this means that each member of the culture can, at best, operate under the assumption that other members will act on perceptions the same way they would. different preferences are not part of the model of others. in a traditional balance culture, members can also model each other as having different desires. rather than, for example, the frustration children feel when their friends don't also want to play a game when they want to, adults understand that others may have reasons for not wanting the same things as them. this allows adults to model others as more complex processes that include their own preferences that motivate different behaviors, letting a traditional balance culture mediate members' wants to facilitate greater harmony.
the traditional balance is aptly named because it seems to be the natural level of mental complexity in humans. if a person doesn't move much (our ancestors typically stayed close to home because travel was dangerous and difficult) or have much contact with people from different cultures, one's native culture is sufficient to resolve most differences in preference, even if not to everyones' satisfaction then at least well enough to keep society together. thus it's not surprising that early psychologists assumed the evolution of meaning making stopped upon entering adulthood. but with the advent of longer life spans (since meaning making capacity is not inherited and must be developed by each individual during their lifetime) and greater interaction between cultures via cheaper, faster, safer travel and faster, more reliable communication, the 20th century has seen more people enter into a qualitatively new balance.
thus the modern balance only needs to come into existence when people encounter adults from other cultures. for some this conflict results in a retreat to the safety of their home culture, but for others it forces an increase in mental complexity in order to accommodate the differences that exist between cultures. born of a need to understand others' world views, the modern balance is where metaperceptions become object. it's no longer enough to understand what others see and what they want, but to also understand how they come to perceive what they do.
the best way to see this change is in the kinds of conflicts people in the modern balance get into. adults in the modern balance won't argue about whether or not the sky is blue (that's an argument for the child balance) or whether it's good or bad that the sky is blue (that's an argument for the traditional balance), but they may get into arguments about whether it's beneficial for people to live in a culture that thinks blue skies are good or bad. when such arguments cannot be resolved in the modern balance the solution is often tolerance, but of a different kind than found in the child or traditional balances. children may tolerate that different people have different ideas, and adults in the traditional balance may tolerate that different people have different wants, but it takes the modern balance to fully tolerate differences of culture and ways of perceiving that are fundamentally inconsiderable at previous balances because they reside beyond what can be held as object.
the modern balance is what many people in developed nations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries expect of each other. but according to the work of kegan and lahey only at most 40% of the adult population in any developed country is in the modern balance at any given time and nearly all of the population in the modern balance is over 30. this unfortunately means that for the majority of the adult population in these countries their own cultures expect them to make meaning in a more complex way than they do. there are cultural shifts happening in these countries to support the notion of an extended childhood, but this still leaves older adults in the traditional balance behind.
and we are nearly all left behind by the demands of the fifth balance, the postmodern balance. almost none of humanity is in or transitioning to the postmodern balance and only the most erudite of institutions attempt to make postmodern claims on people, whereas most governments, businesses, and religious organizations in developed nations make modern claims on their constituents. getting to the modern balance is challenge enough for the world today. but because it is interesting, let's consider what to make of the fifth balance.
it's here that the next set of things move from inside to out and metapreferences enter our realm of thought. what is a metapreference? if understanding metaperceptions is about understanding how others use their knowledge and preferences through the lens of their culture to perceive the world, then understanding metapreferences is about understanding how others use their knowledge, preferences, and culture to choose the things they prefer. put another way, it's the ability to not just view cultures as separate things that should be respected, but a way of understanding how different cultures integrate to form the whole of humanity.
the postmodern balance is perhaps most interesting because it's often a thing some folks try to demand from others who are still struggling to deal with the modern balance. most writing about postmodern perspectives is theoretical work done by people who have not entered into the postmodern balance in their own meaning making. they are generally in transition to it and thus articulate incomplete pictures of it. so it's no wonder that postmodernism can seem so bizarre: it's asking us to make meaning from the postmodern balance while most of us are struggling with demands to enter the modern balance.
i hope this makes the balances i described previously a bit clearer. and i plan to delve into this topic more to make clearer the subject-object distinction this theory relies on and develop clearer portraits of daily life in each balance.