Peck's Theory Blog#8

Scott Peck developed a theory in which groups of people come together through four stages in order to create an authentic community. I think that there have been many times throughout everyone's life when these stages have taken place, and most of the time unknowingly have taken place. Thinking back on my experiences, I think that a community that I have been apart that used this theory would be when I was on a competitive dance team in my freshman year at OSU called Buckeye Fusion. I think that from the beginning of the school year to the end, our team went through all of the stages of Peck's theory.

The first stage, known as pseudocommunity, occurs when a group first comes together and is getting along, but relationships may not be real or true at this point. I saw this when I first made the team. The team was full of girls who were returning and others, like me, who were new. We all got along at first because I think all of us new girls wanted to be accepted and feel like were part of the team. The older girls also got along because I think they wanted everyone to feel welcomed. I could tell it was artificial because no one really knew each other at this stage we were all still trying to get to know each other.

The second stage is chaos. During chaos different people may try to invade through harmony and put their opinion in changing the course of things. People start forming friendships and conflict can arise through conflicting opinions. I definitely saw this occur on my dance team. At one point too many opinions were being thrown out which went against the captains opinions. Cliques formed between different groups of people within the team who had their own ideas. Some people felt that they had a good or better idea than the captains causing conflicts in that manner.

The third stage occurs through the realization that these conflicts were creating barriers. These barriers would prevent us from reaching our common goal. For instance, on the team, there was a point before the competitions in which we all sat down together and realized that the fighting was doing nothing but hurting us. We came up with a consensus on how to handle things. Everyone agreed that in order to meet our goal of placing during the competitions, we needed to work together and let go of all preconceived notions. 

This realization led to the fourth and final stage of a true authentic community. After resolving the major conflicts, we came up with a plan on how to share opinions with the captains without disrupting practice time or creating even more conflict behind the scenes. There was still a little conflict, but, this time, it was handled correctly. Everyone was looking towards the greater good of the team as a whole instead of themselves at this point. This developed authentic community helped us realize how we can have a consensus that can benefit the whole team.

I think that throughout the year our whole team went through the stages of Peck's theory. I did not realize it until now, but I think it is pretty interesting how things changed as time went on according to the stages. The common consensus we had was to put our personal opinions aside and work together for the greater good of the team as a whole. I think it worked out for us in the end too, because we ended up doing well in competitions and placing in some of them. Using Peck's theory our team was able to ultimately reach our common goal and work together as an authentic community.