A kvetch, an idea, and an explanation:
kvetch:
I'm sympathetic with others who find the elevated terminology/communication style to be ... unhelpful (?) or even counterproductive. I've already soapboxed about that, but one last salvo, if you'll indulge me. Let's remember for a moment that the statistics of Wheaton Levels (ERE or otherwise) are such that each level higher is occupied by ~1 order of magnitude fewer people. If there are ~10^10 human beings on the planet, you're talking about insanely tiny social circles at Wheaton Level 8, 9, or 10. Then exclude children. Then exclude non-english speakers. Maybe 100, if lucky?
On the planet. How many that remain know about this forum? And if they did, do they want to hang out here? (If there are a handful of you here, congratulations! You've found the ERE
Giga Society.)
Point being, I can't see how typing up responses using the "complex language" of WL7,8,9,10+ is, statistically, worth the time, considering the receptive audience is so small and the irrelevant audience is everyone else. Even just "to have a record of it for those that are developing" still seems, statistically, silly to me. The math would seem to suggest that this would benefit maybe 1-5 people, while cluttering threads with language that indeed might
turn off considerably more, one way or another, like a wonder drug that provides an amazing cure to 0.1% that take it, but noxious side effects for 25% (seems like an upside-down
NNT to me). But that's just like, my
opinion, man. This is not my house. Post what you will.
One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? -Walden
I understand the desire for deep communication. I really do.
idea:
Just for a moment, dispel the notions of Wheaton Levels, Maslow's heirarchy, Kegan Levels, martial arts belt systems—all of that stuff. Now, consider the hourglass:
What happens when an hourglass is flipped over? The sand in the top chamber is drawn down a progressively narrowing funnel, which is constricted so much that only a few grains are able to get through (it can take a long time for any given grain), and those that do then free-fall into the second chamber, and spread out along the base.
The idea is this: the grains of sand are people; the glass represents where people can go in time. You could view this metaphor through a number of lenses, but for giggles, let's use ERE. In that context, the funnel that separates the chambers starts wide (linear, paycheck-to-paycheck thinking) and narrows progressively as exponential (investments), yields/flow, etc. are incorporated into a lifestyle. What's the narrow constriction point? Systems thinking.
Some grains move faster than others, some move in little cascade cohorts. Some grains just sit for a long time without going anywhere, and in the brief snapshot of time that we have on earth, most aren't going to make it through the funnel. Someone might jiggle the funnel if it gets stuck, and that might loosen up the grains to get things flowing again, but no amount of shaking is going to dramatically speed things up. Unfortunately, the way this particular hourglass is constructed, it's more like a centuryglass—and only a relatively few grains slip through in a given lifetime. So it goes.
So far, this metaphor recapitulates certain conclusions of e.g. Wheaton Levels: There is only one direction of flow. Path-wise, any given grain could certainly take a different, unique route to get there, but
conceptually there is only one way out through the hole. Where I think this idea is useful is in what happens after a grain squeezes through.
1) It falls, unrestricted by the funnel. 2) And it spreads out.
To clarify those two points, I'll bring in a comparison to Plato's Cave Allegory (which has been analogized to ERE numerous times). The cave is the funnel, and there are tons of people in there. There are people at various stages of finding their way out of the cave, but really—there is only one mouth to the cave. Ok, and now someone has just stumbled out into bright daylight and a world they didn't even know was possible...
Now what? This is the free-falling sand. The world outside is vast, and there are no longer any cave (funnel) walls to act as boundaries, and boy it sure takes some head-scratching to figure out what the new terrain looks like and where to go. But inevitably, the person who has made it out of the mouth of the cave will start off away from it,
along a heading that is unique to them. This is the falling grain that hits the pile at the bottom and tumbles in whatever direction fate has for them, even though many other grains bounce in other different directions. They spread out.
For what it's worth (not much, perhaps), I've found both the "falling" and "spreading out" aspects of this metaphor to be true in my experience.
explanation:
To synthesize the kvetch and the idea, I'll briefly explain why I don't post on these forums much at all anymore. (I don't feel any need to justify this, but in the past I remember other forumites lamenting that people would just leave without saying why)
SImply put, it's difficult for me to contribute anything useful because 1) I don't find many "funnel" topics interesting anymore, and 2) if I'm vain enough to say I have fallen through the funnel hole (lucky enough, more likely), I also don't find many of the pile topics particularly interesting either (or worth the effort to decipher). Perhaps I'm just in the air or on the other side of the pile, who knows? Maybe I'm still in the funnel but blind to it and too lazy
This means, though, that forum member composition or shifts in the "forum culture" aren't likely to do much for me. Outside of those things, all I really have left to contribute mostly amounts to 1) spammy links I found interesting on the web, or 2) completely irrelevant niche topics which, frankly, I don't care to hear the ERE community's opinions about, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear about either.
In any case, maybe the above idea of the hourglass is useful and/or helpful to someone, or can help explain why some forum members bail out after a couple of years.
so I come out ahead, wheter I engaged or not. 
) "gatekeeping" happens automagically at the individual level 
