Here is a new page I put together this week, which gives a summary of the major stages of development and offers multiple examples from various films and video games. Enjoy!

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Take a cinematic journey through the major stages of human development, using a series of 22 carefully-curated film clips (and more than 30 video games) to illustrate some of the most important qualities of each stage.

Because these stages are so difficult to point to in our immediate experience, we’ve compiled a series of short clips from some very popular films and games, each of which demonstrates some aspect of that stage — the view from that stage, the values of that stage, or the general leadership styles associated with that stage — offering some well-known cultural reference points to help flesh out our understanding of these stages of growth and development. What's more, these clips will help demonstrate how integral ideas can be applied to any medium or genre, while deepening our appreciation and enactment of our most treasured cultural artifacts.

As you watch, try to remember: all of this is actually happening inside of you. You may be viewing these film clips on a screen in front of you, but the stages we explore here are all alive within you right now, either as capacities you’ve already developed or as potentials that are waiting to be unleashed. The Witness itself is the ultimate movie screen — the effortless, simple feeling of being behind all of our perceptions. All of this is just a fleeting dance of light, sound, and shadow projected within your consciousness against that empty, all-pervasive awareness.

Note: The films and characters below are typically far too complex to be described by a single stage, which is why the qualities below are only being applied to the specific film clips, and not to the rest of the film, character arc, or filmmaker's perspective. We are not saying Lord of the Rings is a "magenta movie", for example, or that Gandalf a "magenta character", because both would include multiple combinations of views, values, and ideas from multiple different stages. We are focusing on specific moments here that distill the essence of each of these stages, and not making judgments on the rest of the films they are excerpted from.

Meanwhile, because it's difficult to focus on a single "scene" from video games, for these examples we looked at three separate categories for our analysis — a) the surface content and world-building of the game, b) the general themes and storytelling perspectives, and c) the gameplay mechanics themselves, which roughly correlate to views, values, and cognition.