Spiral Dynamics

Discussion concerning other (non-RS) systems of theory and the insights obtained from them, as applied to the developing RS2 theory.
Post Reply
Little Dragon
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:05 pm

Spiral Dynamics

Post by Little Dragon »

A quote from Graves: "...... suggests the means for managing the biopsychosocial development of the species ...... any relatively homogeneous group ..... , or individual ....

From http://www.clarewgraves.com/articles_co ... ummary.pdf

Does anyone think that it is being used intentionally, in the politcal area for example, to manage (control) the population?
User avatar
bperet
Posts: 1501
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2004 1:43 am
Location: 7.5.3.84.70.24.606
Contact:

Abuse of systems

Post by bperet »

Quote:
Does anyone think that it is being used intentionally, in the politcal area for example, to manage (control) the population?
It is knowledge. It's application is what can constitute "abuse", not the system itself. But understand that service-to-self will do what service-to-self does -- use it to gain power and control. Service-to-other will use it to help smooth over boundaries and rough areas to promote growth and understanding.

Just look at the group wielding this double-edged sword and you will see its application.
Every dogma has its day...
Little Dragon
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:05 pm

Re: Abuse of systems

Post by Little Dragon »

bperet wrote:

Just look at the group wielding this double-edged sword and you will see its application.
Yes, that is what I was trying to do, looking for examples of its application, mainly to increase my understanding of this system.

For instance, in the recent election it seemed to me that the Repulicans were pushing the blue and orange buttons, the Democrats the green along with the blue and orange (but not as effectively).

My comment about "controling the population" was based on the observation that SD has been marketed to the oranges.

Anyway, I though SD deserved its own topic somewhere and would welcome any coments and discussion on it.
User avatar
bperet
Posts: 1501
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2004 1:43 am
Location: 7.5.3.84.70.24.606
Contact:

Ken Wilbur video

Post by bperet »

Watch the video on this site:

http://www.integralnaked.org/live/view_ ... itics.aspx

It is Ken Wilbur's analysis of politics. Very interesting.

(Link provided by zenmaster)
Every dogma has its day...
Little Dragon
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:05 pm

Spiral Dynamics

Post by Little Dragon »

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately my location rules out an internet connection with streaming vid or audio.
User avatar
SiteAdmin
Site Admin
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 10:23 am
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Contact:

Politics and vMemes

Post by SiteAdmin »

The quick summary:

Republicans:

-- Majority are blue, conformist, Christian, patriarchal, ethnocentric and militaristic, and favors slavery (economic slavery these days), and a political system based on aristocracy.

-- Minority (conservatives) are orange, Wall-Street types, with a more world-centric view, and a political system of meritocracy (promotion based on merit).

Republicans emphasize the interior; problems are a result of your own failures.

Democrats:

-- Majority are orange, world-centric, meritocracy (rewards for correct behavior), liberating (no economic slavery).

-- Minority are green, world-centric, environmentalistic, seeing humanity as part of a world-wide environment.

Democrats emphasize the exterior; problems are a result of lack of opportunity or denial of it.

An interesting bit is his comments that America was primarily orange-green, and thus maintained a world-centric view and was helpful to the world. After the attack of 9/11, it kicked America back to blue-orange, pushing the valuing system back to an ethno-centric and imperialist one, treating the world as something in need of "conversion" to their system.

As an aside, if the 9/11 attack did not occur, Kerry would have won the election by a landslide, because Bush represents the current mainstream "blue" and Kerry was on that orange-green transition which WAS America. Of course, the world is very concerned about this, since they are the targets of conversion to blue.
User avatar
SiteAdmin
Site Admin
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 10:23 am
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Contact:

Ken Wilbur video summary

Post by SiteAdmin »

Here is the text from the summary page for Wilbur's lecture video:

At the recent 5-day Integral Institute seminar on Integral Business Leadership, Ken Wilber was asked, by a senior Zen teacher, “What do you think of the Republican convention?“

Ken responded by giving an overview of what a truly integral politics might look like, and used that to compare and contrast with the Democratic and Republican conventions, both of which are less-than-integral. We think that this twenty-minute summary is brilliant, insightful, deadly serious, and wickedly funny, all at once. But by all accounts it is an extraordinary account of why all politics today are considerably less-than-integral, along with certain features that almost certainly would have to be included in the future in any truly integral politics.

In this synopsis, Ken focuses on three items that all political theories have attempted to address but none have managed to fully integrate. These are the tension between (1) the individual and the collective; (2) the source of the cause of human suffering: is the individual primarily to blame or is the society primarily to blame?; and (3) the different levels of development that the different political parties tend to represent: any truly integral politics would include and represent all of them, and yet how on earth do you do that?

Due to time considerations, Ken did not discuss two other equally important ingredients in any integral politics. One. In representational democracies, people have a right to be at whatever stage of development they are at, and generally speaking, within free speech, a right to express the values of whatever stage they are at. Traditional-fundamentalist (blue) has a right to be traditional, modernist (orange) has a right to be modernist, postmodernist (green) has a right to be postmodernist, and so on. This is generally modified in practice, to the extent that the center of gravity of a culture will tend to impose its values on others, especially if they are first-tier (or less-than-integral) values. Nonetheless, in democratic societies, there’s a general background understanding that people have a right to be, and a right to express, whatever stage they are or whatever belief system they possess.

Two. They do not, however, have a right to act on those beliefs. This is generally handled in representative democracies by a separation of public and private, and by a similar if more specific principle of the separation of church and state. This means that, for example, in the privacy of my blue-meme mind, I am free to believe that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and that nobody achieves salvation without a belief in Jesus. In public behavior, however, I am not allowed to burn at the stake somebody who disagrees with me. In terms of integral psychology, this means in the interior of an individual (i.e., the upper left), the person can believe whatever they like; but in their public behavior (i.e., the upper right), they must behave according to laws drawn from a worldcentric or higher level of development (lower left), or else they are charged with civil or criminal behavior and removed from society if necessary (lower right).

This separation of church and state, or more generally what Max Weber called the differentiation of the values spheres, is one of the great and enduring contributions of the Western enlightenment, a contribution almost entirely misunderstood by extreme postmodernists, who in fact are operating under its protection while bitterly condemning it.

(The most common version of this is the aggressive attempt to reduce “I” and “It” to “We,’ or the attempt to reduce art and science to a social construction, which can therefore be deconstructed. As it turns out, this reductionism presumes precisely what it denies, but then, deconstructive postmodernism has been little without its performative contradictions.)

A truly integral politics exists nowhere on the planet at this time, principally because not enough individuals have emerged at the integral levels of consciousness, and hence no governments anywhere have integral representatives as members (except rarely and by accident). Its principal challenge is to create some form of governance that allows each stage to be itself within the constraints of not harming others (i.e., to let red be red, and blue be blue, and orange be orange, and green be green, etc—precisely because, as we saw, this is a right in virtually all free societies), and yet to govern from the highest, widest, deepest, and most encompassing levels of development emerged to date (starting at yellow). Most representative democracies do this anyway, except their center of gravity is not yet fully integral, and they do it implicitly, not explicitly.

For a further discussion of Integral politics that includes all five factors, please see A Theory of Everything, where, in a series of endnotes, Ken pursues these issues. Much fuller presentations of integral politics are now being posted by various scholars at IntegralUniversity.org, set to launch in late October, so please come join us at that time if you’re interested in this or virtually any other Integral topic. With some 25 fully operational websites all hooked together through Integral Commons, we would love to have you join what will be the world’s largest Integral learning community.
Little Dragon
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:05 pm

Politics and vMemes

Post by Little Dragon »

Thanks Lone Bear for taking the time to make those lengthy posts.

I had not considered the possibility of a "politics" above the green level.

Another item that has interested me for some time and that I now see a little more clearly since my introduction to SD is that the label "liberal" has been inserted into the blue meme set as a trojan horse for the purpose of political control.

It makes me wonder if I have something similar in mine, who might have placed it there, and for what purpose.

Opps, I'm sounding a little paranoid. But Hey! I'm entittled. Ya gotta realized that my cousin dragons in Europe were hunted down and exterminated by the Knights, just because they occasionally ate a couple of the Kings cows and invited some of those love starved maidens into their caves ..... well .... maybe they did that on too many occasions.
MWells
Posts: 146
Joined: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:29 pm

Spiral Dynamics

Post by MWells »

Little Dragon wrote:
Another item that has interested me for some time and that I now see a little more clearly since my introduction to SD is that the label "liberal" has been inserted into the blue meme set as a trojan horse for the purpose of political control.
As Ken Wilber points out, the Green meme is having a tough time currently expressing their values in a "healthy" manner. They are still in the midst of sorting out what it means to be compassionate, caring and selfless. Unfortunately, during this sorting-out process, they are often asserting their values in an inappropriate manner (because their way is perceived to be the "best"). The conservatives are just exploiting their mistakes.

The lesson is to not force others into your valuing system, but to see how your valuing system can harmonize with what currently exists. It is impossible to see what currently exists when every problem is seen to be caused by a lack of enough "care and compassion".

During that video, Wilber says that when asked "what is the cause of suffering in the world", the democrat (green) will say "lack of opportunity". While the republican would say "lack of responsibility". The answer involves both (an "integral" approach), but neither side is capable of seeing it from the perspective of their valuing systems.

I think th 2nd tier approach to government, or social engineering could provide conditions for much more rapid advancement of individuals through the "spiral". This is because the limiting factors to growth in society are strongly tied to economic and political concerns. Yellow is capable of addressing such concerns with a 10,000-ft-view approach. Such an approach would result in much more efficiency and effectiveness of an individual's efforts, for example - which is of course, one of the things that limits progress.
Post Reply