Taylor04

I realized something: The core of environmentalist ideology is blue. I noticed this when I heard Mark Steyn compare warmists to ISIS. They both hate enlightenment-age modernity and want to return to pre-industrial poverty, authoritarianism and religiosity. How do you advocate that? Well, post-blue wealth and equality were created by hydrocarbon use. So you attack hydrocarbon use. Thats precisely what warmism was designed to do. And wanting to return to before orange is per definition blue. So green ideology is led by a cabale of blues at the center. All this talk of yellow and turquoise and coral is silly. Humanity is still largely engaged in a struggle of blue vs. orange.

@Serotoninluv No, it is a green-YELLOW perspective that Green perceives as Orange. I think this forum and the spiral dynamics video series portray a green narrative of what whatthey wish the spiral would continue like: green beliefs and green opinions and green politics, but with lots of equanimity. Why the luxury to no longer demonize other stages? Because green eliminated them all and there are no other stages left to fight. This is still an expression of monoperspectivalness, just in the form of wanting green to become so dominant that is gains the luxury of quitting the fight and turning spiritual. It is easy enough to think one will not demonize anyone in a future where there are no enemies left to demonize. Sort of what the 1000 year Reich wished it could have been for the last 990 years, if things had gone their way. This still indirectly illustrates a desire to abolish other vMemes and make green dominant, just in the form of inventing a future where they already killed them. It's still demonization in the form of deeming the other stages inferior enough to be worthy of eradication. That is quite different from the "both perspectives have upsides" view of real yellow. I can see why this view appeals to greens who stumbled onto spiral dynamics. They don't like the notion that real yellow is the growing challenge from the neoliberal agentic side, that emerged out of the internet circumventing the green monopoly on ideas. (Agentic vMemes seem to spead due to new communication technology; orange emerged out of the invention of printing press.) So they invented a spiral that accommodates their beliefs. Unfortunately it does not work that way. Spiral Dynamics does not support the view that the spiral stops oscillating after green, nor that agentic vMemes die out after orange. And the book specifically mentions that green does not like tier 2, so we know that whatever greens would prefer yellow to be, that is not it. Tier 2 is supposed to have equanimity, but that does not mean that yellow couldn't be in disagreement with some green beliefs. It still integrates some of them. Also, one has to distinguish yellow from tier 2 as a whole. While tier 2 as a whole might not be agentic per se, yellow is an agentic stage. Yellow does not have to be all cozy with green politics, nor or is anyone who disagrees with collectivist beliefs by necessity orange. That would imply that history ends with the latest low consciousness stage belief system, because tier 2 is just too zen to get any wiser. Tier 2 vMemes do disagree with stuff they don't like, and will try to participate in the battle of ideas. They just do so from a lighter, less hateful place. But it is perfectly reasonable to rebel against something, if it is deemed destructive.

@Samra Yes, I sense a little yellowness in Bill Gates. He has for instance said that green energy is unwise and his solutions are not the typical "more social engineering". As such his solutions are "integrative", because they take their real world consequences into account, unlike green "solutions" which only measure intentions and ignore consequences. Gates seems to look at the world empirically and rationally, and decides on solutions based on what works. This empirical approach has led him to disagree with the typical green solutions. He still comes at it from green assumtions though, which makes him less yellow. Keep in mind that yellow is the rebellion against green, like green was a rebellion against orange. These rebellions tend to oversteer a bit. Yellow is the rebellious teenager who storms out of his green parents house shouting that he hates everything they stand for. So real yellow can be expected to be aggressively anti-green. At times axiomatically anti-green: "if its what the greens say then it must be wrong". So yes, yellow is agentic and anti-collectivist. It is anti-environmentalist and does not believe in global warming. Yellow wants to tare down the wind turbines and smash the welfare state. Bill Gates is not like that. He is a bit yellow through valuing rationality over groupthink. But he is not very deeply yellow. For instance, his conclusions are in effect very pro-market and agentic, but he is unwilling to say this directly. He does not say that is was agentic market liberalizations that created these waves of poverty reduction. He only mentions unspecified " progress". Mass poverty goes away when a society moves from blue to orange. Orange reduced birth rates and closes the malthusian trap. This is death to the low-K gene set that exists as an adaptation to the blue world. The reason humanity has such a hard time getting out of poverty is that the low-K gene set needs it to survive. To remove poverty, the resistance of the low-K gene set needs to be overcome, that wishes to keep the birth rate gravy train rolling. Gates favors reduction in poverty through markets and agency, as such he is in favor of making the world more warm-colored. Thats not what greens want. Low-K vMemes do not favor changes towards high-K vMemes, ever. The low-K gene set wants low-K vMemes, even at the expense of fighting to keep poverty alive. And then Gates mentions his belief in warmism, which is green. Its funny how they blame every crop failure on global warming these days, like there were no storms or crop failures before. 100 years ago these things were explained by God, now they are caused by global warming. Gates apparently isnt yellow enough to have outgrown that.

I agree. He seems like a green-friendly yellow.

I was asked to provide some contemporary yellow thinkers, and since this is the yellow examples thread, here's what I replied: Most people in the first world are somewhat yellow, because they grew up being subjected to multiple perspectives. Matt Ridley is in the best yellow thinker I can think of. His latest book The Evolution of Everything is a great introduction into proper systems thinking. James Damore, the writer of the google memo, is an example of the kind of yellow meta perspective that sees how the political sides are both necessary and a balance to each other. The youtube channel Rebel Wisdom seems very yellow and has some videos about spiral dynamics. And the blog libertyblitzkrieg has a series on spiral dynamics that influenced my writings here. I think The Rubin Report is a good place to hear yellow ideas, although its not as pure. And I think Douglas Carswell, Stefan Molyneux and Alex Epstein deserve honorary mentions as well, even though they have some tier one aspects to them. And lets not forget F. A. Hayek (and other supply-side economists) who might have been one of the earliest yellow thinkers of humanity. I like to add Nassim Taleb, Jeffrey Tucker, Tom Woods, and especially the blog Brodoland, which explains the true yellow concept very well, and mentions some "further reading" sources, but gets some details wrong. For instance, I dont think red and blue exist much any more in the first world. They were pre-industrial phenomena, with a completely different outlook on life than anyone in the first world has today. A real blue would be some medieval peasant, who's bordering starvation, mired in superstition and cruely traumatized. The first worlders we call "blue" are not really blue but have an orange/green perspective on life, and may have a slight blue tint to it, thats it. They are often orange with plenty of green beliefs (thats unavoidable because of green media and schooling monopolies), who have maintained traditional religion in place of green religion (environmentalism), which are functionally the same; belief in an invisible threat in the sky that requires moralizing our actions to avert divine retribution (warmism). Blue and green religion run on the same cognitive hardware, and it is easy to see how someone indoctrinated into one can easily flip to the other. If people respond to any of my posts with serious arguments, I will be around to respond to them for at least a while. (They start on page 14 of this thread.) Also, I'd like to mention an error in an above post that I cant change any more: the term "systemic order" should say "spontaneous order". Look the latter term up if you want to know what I mean by proper yellow "systems thinking", a term which is thrown around a lot here, but usually just seems to refers to peoples (tier one) belief in central planning.

This is my latest theory on spiral dynamics. It might be right or wrong, but I will share. So I think while societies as a whole move through every stage, we overestimate how much individual people move up. Except for fairly exceptional instances, these stage changes are a multi-generational effort thattakes centuries. People tend to stay what they got born into, and maybe move a quarter vMeme up or so at best. Stage changes mostly happen when people got born into a very late stage. Individual humans seem to be selected to be either on the warm or the cold side of the spiral, and depending on our level of consciousness we will flock to one of the memes the society we live in offers us. Not sure how this works, but humans seem to be either warm colored (K-selected) or cold colored (r-selected). There is an interesting presentation on youtube called Gene Wars for further explanation. I think it is either genetic or we rate our relative status some time during childhood, and then pick which mating environment would be most beneficial for us, and spend the rest of our lives trying to create that mating environment. The relatively strong/smart want a "selfish" meritocracy where they have all the reproductive advantages, and the weaker r-selected want to stifle meritocracy, so that the strong and smart dont have all the mating advantages. Society seems to go fourth and back between domination by either. Some examples: Red antiquity was bad for the genes of slaves, but good for the one of chieftains. Blue medieval ages brought slave religion and palace economies where mating opportunity was more random and based on status. Anything that stifles meritocracy is good from an r-selected perspective. Then came the orange laissez faire age, which made everyone rich, but genes care about relative status, and capitalism was relatively good for the smart and diligent and relatively bad for the less so. Then we get green with a return of palace economies in the form of welfare-warfare statism. One of the first measures the progressives implemented when they became agenda setting in the 1900's was to implement unequal income taxation and monetary communism, in effect a transfer of wealth from K-selected individuals to r-selected individuals that stifles meritocracy. So this desire for "equality" isnt as noble as they present it, they simply wish to create the mating environment that benefits them at the expense of others. A contemporary first world K-selected person can be orange or yellow, but cant be green, and a r-selected person can be blue or green, but not orange or yellow. Moving up the spiral only happens on average and "with each burial"; i.e. in the next generation. The children of orange parents may become green, and the children of greens may become yellow. Society as a whole moves through the stages as an average of where the individuals are. So lets start with a blue-dominated society. Here most r-selected people will be blue, but the K-selected people will be split between red and orange. Since the cold colored side is unified and the warm colored side is split, the cold colored meme will dominate society. The blues usually dont move up, because their society confirms their views and they are in an echo chamber. Now, as the average level of consciousness improves, there will be a net change of warm colored people from red to orange. (That doesnt have to mean that they are the same people moving up, but that new oranges replace old reds.) And at a certain point most of the warm colored individuals are orange, and society tips to being blue-orange. But blue is the low end of the spiral now, so as the level of consciousness improves the r-selected people will start resonating more with green. Now the cold colored side is split and the warm side is unified and society will be orange dominated. As enough cold colored people appreciate green, we again get a tip to first orange-green and then green domination. This leaves us with the current situation in the first world: a green-dominated society where the K-selected slowly trickle up from orange to yellow. Greens stay where they are, because moving up would not only require moving against a groupthink they find plausible, but also to steer in the right direction from within a perspective that leads them astray. They cant go towards yellow, because they dont even know what yellow is. The best they can do is to improve within their meme and be good people, which is difficult enough, so their kids have a chance to be yellow. Turquoise wont really happen until society is sufficiently yellow for new r-selected children to start rebelling against their yellow parents, which wont be for another 30 years or more. Now, this is of course a massive generalization and not always as clear cut. One reason it might apper that people move from cold to warm or vice versa is that we might have become culturally indoctrinated by a meme that does not fit our selected mentality. For instance, a cold colored individual might have been born in an orange pocket and then move to green as he individuates away that conditioning. This should not be seen as a move up the spiral but a shedding of the wrong conditioning. And since the dominant meme runs the means of predation, and therefore gets first dips on indoctrinating all new individuals, many people are conditioned into the dominant meme for the first decades of their lives and then individuate away from it. So someone born in todays society would usually receive a green conditioning and if that person is r-selected, it will feel all is proper and the green shades fit. But if the person is K-selected, it will move to a warm-colored meme after childhood. Some people never quite escape this, due to lack of access to information or courage to go against the mainstream. What sometimes seems to happen that the split side will form an amalgamation. So for instance the green and blue may find enough common ground to partner up to overpower orange for a while. I think naziism in the 30's was such a blue-green amalgamation. (Hardcore green environmentalism and socialist "egalitarianism", but with deep blue elements such as loyalty.) Communism, too, seems like green intellectuals taking charge of a blue society and forming a blue-green amalgamation. The reason they fought each others was not due to ideological differences, but because cold colored dominance tends to be violent and because they competed for the same ideological territory. It was a fight of Coke vs. Pepsi. Another example: neoliberalism in the 70's might have been the orange-yellow amalgamation that overpowered green dominance for long enough to avoid economic collapse in the west. (Early yellow thinkers formulated the economic theories, and orange went along with them because they could see empirically that it worked.) This recent mixing might be a reason why so many greens have a hard time keeping orange and yellow apart. In their lifetimes they have mostly experienced it as a mixture, and orange has taken on a lot of yellow rhetoric. But the distinction is that yellow understands proper systems thinking aka. emergent properties (for instance free market economics) and orange only applies them empirically.

@Zizzero Yes, I would say that is a good way of putting it. This kind of meta-perspective thats not "for" either "side", but hovers above them is, ironically, kind of yellow. I might make some arguments at a later time for why my view of yellow as "a more intelligent orange" is correct. Namely, that it is on that side of the spiral. Much like orange is a more intelligent red, green is a more intelligent blue (real historical blue, as in medieval catholicism or fundamentalist islam, not contemporary american "blue" which isnt really that blue), and blue is a more intelligent purple. These "orange values" are not orange values, but warm-colored values. Red shares these "orange selfishness" (think a viking chieftain). I think the unifying factor is K-selection bias for the warm colored memes (look that up of you dont know what it means) and r-selection bias for the cold colored ones. Thats also where greens desire for equality comes from. They dont like meritocracy.

I think some definitions are in order, because you seem to use the term "systems thinker" in some narrowly specific way. It sounds like you are suggesting that it means "thinking of the entire system", i.e. rationally planning all of society, i.e. not taking any systemically created order into account. This would practically be an opposite meaning to the dictionary definition of "systemic order" aka. having a comprehension of emergent properties aka. appreciating when humans can't rationally plan society. It is the view that society is like a plant that we can put in the right conditions for growth, but not make it grow ourselves. Peter Joseph suggests that anything that isnt centrally planned - such as markets - is just narrow and short-sighted gratification of impulses without order. This is an extremely strong statement of not believing in any systemic order at all. Of being so blind to systems thinking that one inserts its opposite in its place. Actual systems thinking (if my definitions are right) would be an approach diametrically opposed to his "humans should plan everything, and everything that isnt planned is just random disorder" view of things. This kind of hyper-anti-systemic thinking isnt just not tier two, it is specifically anti tier two. It is the complete rejection of tier two. Please tell me the people in this community didnt just find an elaborate way to re-define "systems thinking" to mean good old communism in order to declare it tier two. That would be really silly.

Yes. It would even imply that property rights are not enforced by initiation of violence. So there would not be a "capitalist system" as such. The rich would have to buy their own security guards / insurance policies instead of making the middle class pay for it. This is very un-orange. Many stage orange "capitalists" tend to insist that the state needs to impose property rights for the economy to work. I have no problem with green communes etc., as long as they are not mandatory. (Most greens seem to want to erect a mandatory global green commune.) I would even suggest that in an anarchist world entire cities might agree to engage in some lifestyle that in some sense is imposed on everyone in that area. That means some people who dont like it will have to move away. Initiation of violence? Yes. But it is important to note that in anarchism nobody would enforce the anarchism. It is not a system, but the absence of one. We have trouble comprehending that, because we were only schooled in thinking in terms of competing systems. Anarchism doesnt require that every last person on earth decides to abide by the non-aggression principle. It just means enough people abstain from supporting a centralized system for the initiation of violence for there to not be one. That there is no central system for doing evil does not mean that no human can do evil any more. People could for i stance still form a military club, collect money to buy bombs, and then invade stuff. I imagine they will be a lot more revenue-restrained. In many ways, such a world would be a lot more socialistic than many contemporary greens assume. True the-workers-own-the-factories socialism can only come about as a consequence of a libertarian world, not by imposing it via fiat. The state-socialists are holding that progress back, because they are unwilling to go through the transition stage. I also like to point out that I am not against eco-consciousness per se. I very much like nature, and probably spend more time in it than most greens. I want the planet to be more green and be nice to animals. I just dont think statist engineering is a very good means of doing that. Social engineering failed at everything else, so why do we still think it is the best means of providing a clean planet? The empirical evidence agrees with me. The world gets cleaner and greener where people get rich, not where they are the most environmentally activist. Parks, clean power plants and plastics removal efforts are capital consumption, that we can afford more of as we get rich. The theory that poverty is good for the planet is about the wrongest idea that everyone believes. It slows down the decline in birth rates and prolonges dependence of old, dirty technologies.

To sum it up, what the greens in this thread are saying is that green beliefs are objectively true. That the green reality is reality. And that the other views of reality are wrong. In their view, the spiral works like this: there are those who dont understand the green reality yet (stage 1 to 5), they get to have their views but they are wrong about reality, then there's green which somehow got it all right despite being low level consciousness, and then theres all the stages after green that agree with green beliefs, such as warmism and socialism, and just add spirituality to it. There could be no stronger expression of having one perspective, of monoperspectivalness, than to equate ones perspective with reality, and then fancying oneself "integrative" because all the stuff one is dogmatic about is reality and therefore it is ok to objectively believe in it. After all, one mixes a few ideas from different sources. But as long as they all are compatible with green, thats not "integrative". This is even worse than traditional religion, where a similarly narrow belief is held to be true, but at least the believer knows his faith is a faith. As Ken Wilber writes, spiral dynamics is not about spirituality. The spiral and spirituality are separate channels of development much like work life and private life are separate areas of performance. You can be good at one and bad at the other. You can be spiritual on all stages, its just more visible in greens who are the first to have the luxury to obsess about it, thanks to orange having created all that wealth for them. (But to get anywhere with it, it is best to be on the leading edge of the spiral. That is why so many eastern philosophy dedicated greens havent been getting many results since the seventies, green is not leading edge any more.) The spiral is your underlying heuristics penchant, your energy-saving mental shortcut for arriving at your beliefs. The book Spiral Dynamics never describes the tier two memes as overtly spiritual, and it would be odd to read that into it. How likely is it that with every stage change politcal beliefs change, but somehow yellow has exactly the same beliefs as green? But thats what greens are saying! (Name something that you think green and yellow disagree about.) The greens then insert spirituality as a replacement, and pretend tier two is about that. This is not the case. Political stances change, greens just dont like it. The book practically describes yellow as free market, and newer writings make it more clear. I suggest that all tier two memes are anti-authoritarian, which is the future of humanity.

That is is all you need to realize that I dont agree with green assumptions, not that I must be orange. Keep in mind that memes next to each others tend to disagree with each others. That I dont share green assumptions just means I am one of the warm colors. So my disagreement with green can come from below or above. I might be above, and a you as a green might just not properly conceptualize what's above you. I might already have incorporated some healthy green aspects and moved past it. You are somewhat right that being green-phobic is a bit unintegrated. That is something I have to work on. But you are wrong in thinking that I have to agree with the green perspective to have integrated green into my thinking. I incorporated plenty of the underlying assumptions of healthy green, such as the notion that material accumulation is not the source of happiness, and I am an (authentic) egalitarian. But I do not have to agree with all th ideas of mean green to be integrative. Mean green is actually an obstruction to moving to tier two. One doesnt have to be completely neutral about all memes to posess some yellow. Integrativeness means mixing different tier one memes, but you can still have your heart in one of them. I suspect it evens out more later, but one can be a bit polar. That I dont like some aspects of (mean) green doesnt mean I couldnt be integrative. You imply that one cant be yellow without agreeing with the core of green. The irony in that is that the core of green is green monoperspectivalness, i.e. that green beliefs are reality and that therefore tier two continues with a green mentality and political beliefs. The book Spiral Dynamics specifically warns of this "green talking turquoise" type. They are unwilling to accept that green ends, that they have to change, so they project greenness onto the rest of the spiral. Whatever yellow truly is, green is a low consciousness meme and we can expect it to react violently against it. This is precisely the reaction greens to show against voluntarist ideology, which greens perceive to be orange. Do you really think the future of humanity on tier two is to rely on authoritarian green solutions? Nah. Its ugly. Green authoritarianism is on its way out, it hasnt been the leading edge for decades. In its fight for survival, you can expect the green meme to throw any barrier in its members path to keep them from moving up to yellow, including disregarding post-green as orange and projecting green onto the later tiers. Another hint is that Rothbardian liberalism fits with yellow chronologically. It is not classical liberalism, even though many misidentify it as such. Classical liberals were orange. Rothbardian anarchism was only formulated in the seventies and only got big this century. It fits with when yellow is supposed to emerge, and with the proportion of the population being of that bent. The world has been moving steadily in this direction, fitting with a predicted growth of yellow. Liberalism (19th century) was followed by collectivism (20th century) and is now followed by liberalism (21st century). Do you see the oscillation? Like in the spiral. And finally I would ask why you think yellow is a new tier if nothing changes. Why should it be so hard for greens to become yellow? Does spiral dynamics agree with your view that yellow is compatible with green beliefs, that they have to give nothing up, make no difficult admissions, and just have to be a bit more spiritual to be turquoise? No. What you green-wanting-to-be-tier-two people all misunderstand is that spiral dynamics is not about spirituality. They are separate channels, much like your work and private life are separate areas of performance. You can be good at one and bad at the other. Tier two is not green politics plus spirituality. You can be spiritual on all stages. Yellow is a new tier precisely because greens dont want to admit that what they currently believe is being overturned and what they hate the most is the next stage. Of course greens dont want to be replaced by their political enemies. Should we expect them to like yellow? Spiral Dynamics says green reacts violently to tier two. Yet you think somehow the disagreements between green and yellow are less than the disagreements between orange and green? The hint on who is right in this entire argument is: Whatever yellow is, greens will not like it.

Interesting, thanks for bringing. But I have a sense you misunderstand what turquoise is.

These are old numbers. Yellow is 5% or even close to 10% by now, as Ken Wilber said. Although on this forum most people are orange-green. Green is the dominant cultural meme of our day, with at least 70% of the power. Although greens, wearing green-tinted glasses, dont see the green around them, and think the blue and orange residuals are more powerful than they are.

Well, appreciate your own uni-perspectivalness in this. What should we expect green to think about yellow? Memes (being analogies for genes) aim to preserve and spread themselves. So we can expect the green meme to put up any barrier it can to keep its members from properly understanding yellow and moving towards it. We can expect greens to not think very highly of yellow and even disregard it as something else. Also, being tier 1, we should expect greens to not understand the emergent argument of yellow, which is precisely what we find in the green mainstreams miscomprehension of market forces. Greens hate libertarianism, so they cant imagine that it is the manifestation of a higher stage. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to move up from green to yellow. (Much like orange minds cant imagine that the green stage is something they should go towards. I happen to think that while whole societies move through these stages, individuals cant move up much. The kids of highly green parents may become yellow. This is a multi-generational thing, we cant move up by meditating enough.) The color yellow has even long been associated with libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. These color analogies work very well. Its very light, almost see-through, symbolizing laissez faire. And yellow looks orange if you are wearing green-tinted glasses. Green, being very dark (symbolizing its authoritarianism), would either not be able to see yellow at all because it is too light (green thinks yellow doesnt want to do stuff, like feeding the poor, that yellow employs emergent properties for, which green doesnt understand yet) or see it as orange. Trying to explain emergence to a green is like trying to explain "being on land" to a fish, it doesnt understand what being out of the water is because the assumption of water is so deep, it doesnt recognize it as an assumption. The other view (by many on this forum, including the guru) is that yellow is essentially a more meditated version of green, fully compatible with all it's wacky tier 1 beliefs (that have a very bad historical track record of being right). Should we really expect a tier 1 meme to have it all figured out, and be right about the entire spiral? Hardly. If you think libertarianism is naive and purely competitive, then you speak like someone who has only heard green caricatures of libertarianism. Maybe you should learn about it, rather than just discarding it from a green point of view. Libertarians have been saying their ideology isnt really about uncaring competition for ages. Cooperative effects through selfish intentions; the effect is emergent, therefore tier 1 is blind to it. Indeed, learning to understand systemic market forces is one of the best training grounds for accessing the yellow stage consciousness out there. Sadly, greens are rarely drawn to it, because their green thought leaders told them "thats all orange selfishness, nothing to see there". While libertarianism is a step towards freedom of ideology, they're less attached to their beliefs than a tier 1 is to his beliefs, (the libertarians you'd see on TV are often too identified with ideology). But yellow is only a step in that direction. More growth in that direction happens in later stages (I assume). But first we have to be free and rich to afford that luxury. These stages follow societal need. Possibly free markets have to mutate to something superior at some point, but that doesnt take away from the need to move towards them now, as a transition stage. I'm not saying that yellow is perfect or that all of tier 2 will be overtly free market. But most green beliefs have to go away as humanity moves to tier 2. Later stages will likely be more free of ideology, but we cant afford that yet in a world full of backwards reactionaries. Yellow is not there yet. (It is the beige of tier 2, a initiation phase.) Libertarians do not propose a "competition model of growth", they propose a cooperative model, but the effect is emergent and therefore not understood by tier 1. Resources are limited, but not finite. That they should be finite is a green superstition that higher stages do away with. All empirical evidence suggests that resources are replenishable, which is why green predictions of an end to growth keep being refuted by history over and over again. High growth until everyone on earth is rich enough is easily possible. (Unless greens succeed at keeping us poor.) The recognition that the political game is just an ego power game is widely had in ancap circles, and most dont care about R vs. D. You are just more likely to see the few who do care on TV. And true freedom absolutely depends on economic freedom. We only have time to meditate if we are rich. We only have social progress, like tolerance of gays, as an emergent side-effect of economic progress. Activists follow progress, not the other way around. Greens can only worry about the environment because orange made them rich enough to afford the luxury. Environmental protection is a form of capital consumption that depends on economic productivity. It happens naturally as society gets rich, o environmental statism needed. (Yes, by slowing down growth, environmentalists are harming the environment.) How come places like China always get these green ideas as they implement markets and move out of poverty? Must just be a coincidence!

See my two long posts on page 14 of this thread. A tier 2 person is more likely to be a market liberal than not. Economically literate non-statism is the political manifestation of stage yellow. The emergent thinking structures employed by market liberals are precisely what SD describes about yellow. Promlem is, that people don't comprehend emergent thinking until they posess it, so greens are not aware of anything beyond green. They mistake yellow (libertarianism) for a flavor of orange, since it looks a lot like it if you are blind to emergent processes. They project their green pre-emergent thinking structures into the later stages, thinking that yellow is some sort of hyper-green continuation of left-wing beliefs about ecology and socialism. If that were the case, why is it so hard for greens to get there?

Interesting observation: In the movie The Matrix, the matrix font is which color? Green. And the sequel says that this is the sixth iteration of the matrix. Seems to me like an analogy for spiral dynamics.

I'm inclined to agree, but Julien doesnt seem like the typical Green either. For one, he doesnt strike me as progressive left, which is the social manifestation stage Green resonates with. In the typical orange to green switch, people do stop chasing their own material wealth, but then they start craving self-congratulation in the form of "caring about society". I dont see that in Julien. The dutch spiral dynamics site phrases Greens motto as "I sacrifice myself now to be accepted by the group”. This sounds very much like what Julien did before his crisis; he craved social validation on a massive scale, like a green. Then he snapped out of it and what he says now is more about work for the sake of engagement. Sounds yellow-ish. My theory is that, while he probably displays a mix of the three, the transition from green to (some) yellow often goes through a retrogression via orange. Simply because our mostly green culture only knows two stages: green (the left) and non-green (the right). So when you disassociate with green, you assume you must be non-green, i.e. orange for a while, before you find out thats not you either and you refine into yellow. Thats why you may see orange. Veg*anism seems like clear cut green, but many may only do it because green had a virtual monopoly on dietary folklore and they were convinced its healthy. To be honest, I somewhat perceive his teaching as systemic. It's not traditional green "creationist" spirituality. And its only vaguely inspired by Tolle, who is green, but not overtly imo. For instance how we arrive at some condition by going in the seemingly opposite direction or how we get in state (if you 've seen his videos, you know what I am talking about) is something that sneaks up on us, we cant effort it. Not all spirituality is green. Not all high-achiever efforting is orange. Yellows do that too. To quote Julien "its not what you do, but where its coming from". Yellow does it for the right reasons. You say you see no systemic or multi-perspectival thinking in him. What would be some examples of this, if it were present? I find RSD quite multi-perspectival, as far as I interpret it, with their talk of nuanced truths (ie.not one sided) and often quite strong focus on both sides of an issue,such as understanding where feminists come from. RSD often sounds very diplomatic rather than classic orange. That would be yellow - its still "selfish" efforting, but for the right reasons (being engaged rather than material gains) and without so much willingness to step on others throats.

Actually, green already blended eastern philosophy into a western scientific framework a long time ago. Using the word "integrate" about it doesnt make it yellow. If green already did it, why would yellow be more of the same? Remember, the stages oscillate and tend to rebel against the one that came before it. We can expect yellow to at least disagree as much with green as green did with orange. Even more, since its a new tier. This is just a friendly warning. Greens misunderstand what "integrative" and "systemic" means. It refers to being able to conceptualize or at least theoretically deal with emergent properties. One good test of this is whether free market economics seems plausible to you. F.A. Hayek's talk about society being guided by unseen order is a good example of this. If you dont resonate with this much, then your mind is still green. Tier one minds resonate with non-systemic explanations, such as statism. Green beliefs such as government environmentalism are unlikely to come from a integrative yellow mind, now matter how much seemingly yellow verbage you slap onto it. Greens tend to interpret the spiral from a distinctly green perspective and confuse variations of green for higher tiers. The book Spiral Dynamics even warns of the "green talking turquoise" type. This is to be expected, because greens crave social acceptance, and talking tier two makes one impressive to other greens. But keep in mind that we cant skip stages, and yellow is individualist. When were these supposed turquoise people individualist? They think they can skip yellow. But a lot of the sophistication of turquoise comes from having gone through "selfish" yellow. The jump to yellow is harder than you think. We are unlikely to move more than one tier up in a lifetime. Best case. People born into orange or green can be yellow at best. Talking turquoise is too far. And as I mentioned in my previous post, to get to yellow, greens have to be willing to give up on green beliefs, not dig themselves further into them. That requires a willingness to seem "uncaring" and give up a lot of peer confirmation. Alex Epstein is a yellow thinker who could aid this transition. The best chance you have is reading actual yellow content like libertarian econ, which your green mind unfortunately wont resonate with much. Thats why its so hard to move up from green, greens are not drawn to yellow systemic solutions. Being insulated in a green culture, that confirms green non-systemic notions from all sides, youd have to go out of your way to shut out green content.

Sorry to sound negative, and I don't mean to be rude or anything. Being new, I apologize if I'm not hitting proper decorum, or post this in the wrong category or something like that. But I just had this on my mind since first seeing a actualized.org video years ago. I do like Leo and his work a lot. I think this site and the videos are an impressive achievement in terms of collecting and conveying information. But all of this talk about blending with the cosmos is really just ego decoration. If you meditate long and hard enough, your mind will be able to do these party tricks. This has nothing to do with enlightenment.

@QandC Thanks

Yes tier 2 does accept the other stages. But as a value judgment. That does not mean it has to be ok with everything green does. Tier 1 memes want to force themselves on everyone. Voluntarism is the negation of force. It the sense that it wants to abolish force, it is not compatible with green. Example: green wants high taxes. Thats force. You are not allowed to opt out. Voluntarism is agains that, so it does not agree with green. It wants to get rid of forced taxes. If you want to, you can form a green high tax commune in a yellow society. But you cant force it on everyone. Green is exclusive and wants to force itself on everyone in the sense that youre not allowed to be yellow in a green world. Voluntarism seems self-centered from a green perspective, because green does not appreciate the systemic effects that yellow relies on. Green does not understand them, so it disregards them. Green only sees the non-nystemic part of yellows argument. Which look very orange. One reason why yellow is a new tier, and why its so hard for greens to move up, is because they have to give up on all that fluffy self-congratulation and become seemingly selfish to get there. Remember that the stages oscillate. Its a fourth and back between individualism and "caring about society". Green was collectivist, so yellow goes back to individualism again. Yellow is self-centered in the sense that it is a return to individualism, but without stepping on anyone else (as orange is willing to do). Yellow appreciates systemic win-win situations, which appear win-lose to (non-systemic) green. Therefore green says: " oh, you want someone to lose, youre just like orange". But what yellow is really saying is that there is a systemic effect that nobody has to lose. Helping people is not the same as social engineering. Beck is engaged in direct private charitable engagement, not social engineering. The difference is that one gets his hands dirty and the other deals i abstractions. Systemic thinking is precisely the antithesis to social engineering. Social engineering relies on direct (non-systemic) effects. Systemic thinking sees the bigger effects that whtever you do, you are likely to mess up more things then you are helping. This is hard to explain, because as I mentioned, if you dont get it then you dont get that you dont get it. Non-systemic thinking: We move a brick there, now theres one more brick there. We use one less plastic bag a hundred times, now a hundret less plastic bags are used. Nothing happens between the sum of parts and the whole. Systemic thinking is different. You force people to use fewer resources, you made them poorer and actually caused more use of resoures overall. Environmentalism has largely been counter-productive, because it relies on non-systemic thinking. Resource finiteness and sustainability are prime examples of non-systemic theories. Tier 1 people never understand these kind systemic effects. They think if they move bricks for long enough, eventually all the bricks will have been moved. In reality theyre creating more bricks on the first pile than they are moving. Another way to say "systemic" is that one has realized that social engineering doesnt work. Systemic thinking and social engineering are mutually exclusive. Pre-systemic (social enineering) thinking says that things only change in the direction that we make them change. Systemic thinking means you appreciate that you cant engineer the system, you have to wait for it to rectify iself. It happens by itsef, and the best thing you can do is not wreck things, thereby delaying progress. Thats stage yellow thinking. Matt Ridleys latest book is a great example of this line of thought. Yellow wants society to fits its values, but it does not want to social engineer it. Most greens are entirely misunderstanding what stage yellow is. You think its a more sophisticated version of green, which adds spirituality and has a finger in a systems theory textboox. But reading books is not the same as understanding it structurally. As I said above, the stages oscillate and yellow goes towards individualism again. (A good indicator that voluntarism is yellow is that green hates yellow, and you hate voluntarism.) Green already contains those aspects. Why do you think its a new tier thats so hard to get to? Because greens are unwilling to give up their belief structures. (And because systemic thinking is very hard, its not emotional like stage green thinking.) They want to move up but take the green beliefs with them. Sorry, not possible. (Metaphorically you could say that yellow is lighter than orange and green because it needs to lose a bunch of darkness.) Its more of a letting go process than a sucess you achieve if you try hard enough. Its also typical of green spirituality to see it as a thing to achieve, some state to get to. They think its like the orange chase for excellence: be good in school, be the best, then God will love you/you get rich. They just replace earning Gods love or getting rich with "achieving enlightenment". It is typical for tier 1's to confuse their beliefs for reality. Green is especially bad at this. They assume that every stage must believe in these narrow green beliefs such as social engineering and environmentalism because they are reality. But yellow largely gives up green beliefs such as social engineerd environmentalism. It relies on market forces to do the job. Social engineering is a tier 1 thought structure. I think many people really want tier 2 to be versions of green in order to not have to leave the comfort of green. (The entire culture is green, its very rewarding.) Ironically, the more they try to progress upwards, the deeper they dig themselves into stage green. To become yellow, you ancually kind of have to be willing to be a bit more orange for a while. Your work is impressive, but it is stage green.

I'm human. Do you think enlightenment is feeling like youre the universe?

A lot of the examples in this thread are mistaken. People seem to either mistake stage yellow for "stage green plus spirituality" or mix up yellow with orange. It is neither. Yes, yellow contains some spirituality, but not in the way greens think. It is also a return to individualism and thetefore (from the perspective of green) "selfishness". Yellow is a new tier of systemic thinking, meaning it does not rely on the social engineering solutions of tier 1. If someone wants to social engineer things and the world (e.g. believes in the left or environmentalisml, he is most likely still tier 1, no matter what he fancies himself. The problem is that when you dont get it you dont get that you dont get it. You dont understand systemic solutions, so you disregard them and think youre wiser or more compassionate than people who propose systemic solutions. A good example of stage yellow is free market environmentalism or Rothbardian anarchism. If you think these are "selfish" or just over-zealous versions of orange, then youre stuck in green and need to read up on them. If youre green as an adult, you most likely wont make the switch, but your kids have a chance if you at least keep yourself from joining the mean green meme.

@MarkusSweden Youre stage green. Stage greens feel guilty for not constantly meddling with things, because tier 1 does not understand systemic order.

@JohnnyRocket Leo is stage green on the spiral dynamics model, Peterson is yellow or orange. These tend to hate ech others.