Boethius

Any given society is basically forced to level up into the next stage whenever its functioning at a given stage is insufficient to meet the challenges of its environment. So a Purple society faced with the threat of a neighboring Red warlord must put forward its own Red warlords to meet the challenge. But a society packed with warring Red warlords (say the Arabian peninsula during the time of Muhammed) must consolidate its warring factions in order to become a more orderly Blue society (which in the case of Islam then became a very powerful caliphate). One thing we know from history is that the age of empires (i.e. competing societies centered at Blue) lasted for thousands of years. The transition to Orange coincided (roughly speaking) with the stabilization of the various Blue spheres of influence, and the transition to Green and above corresponded with both WW2 and the development of the atomic bomb. Now that the threat of nuclear annhilation is in many ways "hanging over" the head of humanity, we can no longer afford to fuck around with warfare and violent means for settling disputes. So Green, Yellow, and Turquoise as necessary developments in preventing Armageddon. If it were not for all of the technological developments of the 19th and 20th centuries, there's a good chance we'd all still be centered at Blue/orange. So it's not that we humans have all of a sudden gotten much smarter than we had been before, so much as we've been forced to get more serious about handling conflict productively and engaging in complex systems thinking. One last point I would like to make is that every human being carries the entire spiral around with them. That is, each person advances in their own personal life from beige (infant) to purple (baby) to red (toddler) to blue (child) to orange (teen) to green (young adult) to yellow (adult) to turquoise (mature adult or elder). When society was centered at blue there wasn't any pressure or incentive for a person to develop to higher stages (or to activate the energies of the higher stages, depending on how you want to look at it). And in fact lots of people in our current society at "stuck at" lower stages like blue or orange. In any case, there is probably some natural limit around how quickly any given person can develop -- you can't expect a 15 year old to be centered at Turquoise, for example, and if they were it would make for a rather maldeveloped person. So at some point probably this century, absent genetic engineering or the aid of artifical intelligence, we're probably going to have access to the full spiral of human development. In fact, a country like the Netherlands might already be there. So really the exponential growth of the Spiral can be thought of as producing fully developed human beings, and it's going to be super interesting seeing what sorts of challenges the species faces once our people have reached the practical limits of human development.

OK. I will experiment with the sort of advice you've provided. Thankfully I don't feel like I'm living my life (personally) in a way that's subordinate to the assumptions that so many Boomers tend to posses. More it's been something that arises when I am in a mixed-generation group of people -- the Boomers always have the loudest voices in the room and hence seem to be the ones who set the course for the group at large. Anyways, thank you for your insights!

Man, I hate doing this. I can't help feeling like a child talking back at his parents when doing this, lol. I find it's easier to just "accept" whatever assumptions the person in question is making about the situation and then respond to those. But of course that means I'm almost accepting the role of being a child, instead of acting like the adult that I am.

WestWorld definitely had more complicated themes than Green's motto of "let's have respect and empathy for everyone". I'm thinking, in particular. of its explorations of loopiness and how loopiness when combined with encounters with the self can lead to the emergence of higher levels of understanding and order. The scene (included below) where Maeve upgrades herself pretty well captures the general idea. This show was hugely influential in my own spiritual journey as I was watching it during a vacation abroad where I was experimenting with mindfulness very intensely, having what were for me out of the "ordinary" experiences of the present moment (no surprise given how ridiculously in my own head I had been up to that point), and culminating with a committment to mindfulness as a way of life. So it felt like a profound synchronicity between the show and what I was experiencing, and for that reason WestWorld will always hold a place in my ❤️

I started following him because of his videos on Spiral Dynamics (which is not something he invented, of course). I came to the forums to engage in discussions around SD. I've found wisdom in some of his videos about interpersonal communication and dynamics, but I haven't gone down the rabbit hole regarding his views on the "higher level" topics like consciousness or reality. Not sure I'm greatly interested in doing as much, in all honesty.

@Blackhawk You might enjoy reading the 19th century classic Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, as he develops a similar idea (maximizing human happiness) in a great amount of detail and nuance.

Oh ok, I see what you mean. So what we're talking about then is trust, no?

Isn't this at its heart an argument for following a more traditional path? Like joining a Buddhist lineage or a Christian church, for example. I mean, if you're looking for wisdom from a living teacher you need to accept that not everything he/she does, says, or teaches is going to be perfect.

It says in Deuteronomy that homosexuals should be stoned death. It also says women who falsely presented as virgins before getting married should be stoned to death. Christians who are not biblical literalists or fundamentalists would say that none of that talk about stoning applies today, it's all a part of God's covenant with ancient Israel. Of course, the larger issues around Christianity and homosexuality are ridiculously complicated and contentious, with entire denominations being ripped apart over these very issues. Hence the controversy over a music video like Montero.

As a gay man, I find it very hot! Especially when he's grinding his bootie against the devil's crotch at 2:30. That is a depiction of gay male sexuality we almost never see in mainstream society, and it's sure to scandalize straight people, so I love it!!! That being said, as a Christian, I believe allowing oneself to be seduced by the devil, or attempting to seduce the devil, is unutterably foolish and injurious to one's soul. So hopefully no one takes this video too seriously.

Why do you care? Not that I'm granting the legitimacy of what you're saying, but even if what you're saying were true, why would you care? What is it to you? You said before " his contents will make you confuse about reality and waste your time". Well, OK. I'm sorry you feel you have wasted your time following his material. Truly. Now why don't you go somewhere where you find more knowledge, wisdom, insight, compassion, etc? A lot of us find wisdom on this forum, which is why we are here, but of course to each his own...

Leo says things you disagree with and no one in this forum (Leo included) feels accountable to you, personally, in explaining the reasonableness of his ideas. And so you conclude that he is a cult leader and everyone here is a part of his cult. Is that about right?

Fair enough. I guess I was talking "past you" on this topic. You said you're trying to be a good person, so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Based on what you've written, it seems that when you're talking about race/racism with a Black person your idea of appropriate conversation is to prove to them that you're not racist. That you're *trying* to not judge them based on the color of their skin. I wonder why you think they do, or should, give a shit about your attempts to be not racist? Let's try this thought experiment: if I told a woman that I try my best to not call women b*****s, but that otherwise I don't really care about "women's issues" (equal pay, sexual harassment, access to affordable abortions) how would you, as a woman, feel about that? Would it lead you to think that I was a "good man"? If you want to talk with POC about what you two are watching on Netflix, then the colorblind approach is perfectly workable. But if you want to talk with POC about issues of race/racism, then they probably don't want to hear about your attempts to be not racist. To make a big stink of your struggle with not being racist is IN ITSELF the height of white fragility, which of course is the focus of this entire thread in the first place.

It's funny how I read both books on INTPs (my type) by Dr. A.J. Drenth without seriously questioning the value of MBTI in the very first place. I guess it just felt inline with my experience of myself and of my interactions with other people. Maybe the lay reader interacts with these models in a similar kind of way, taking what they want and need and forgetting the rest? I'd also point out that in the article https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201402/the-truth-about-myers-briggs-types?amp it is written at the end that "Perhaps the best use for the MBTI is for self-reflection. If used as a starting point for discussing how people vary in their personalities, and emphasizing tolerance for individual differences and taking others’ perspectives, then it can be a useful tool. However, it is important that the test administrator caution against over-interpretation of the results, and discuss the limitations of the instrument." So there's a lot of nuance in this conversation around MBTI (probably more than is required for this particular thread, in all honesty). Anyways, thanks for responding.

So the heuristic you're applying is that the credentialed experts (writers for Psychology Today, for instance) are in general (even if not complete) agreement that MBTI is not good, in some way or another. Horse shit, one might say. I personally would say that that actually is a pretty good heuristic to apply when you're trying to figure out what are the reasonable things in the world to believe. It's an approach you may over time find to be lacking in nuance (which is why I spent time commenting on continuous vs discrete models of personality and provided links to articles that go into detail on the nature of the criticisms of MBTI). But as heuristics go, it is a good one to start with, and by the sounds of it that is one of the heuristics you are applying in helping yourself to understand the world.

The meanings of these words is shifting as our society engages with the ideas of Social Justice and as we start to center the voices of the marginalized. Here, for example, is a recent article by The Guardian on racist jokes as a form of gaslighting: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2020/mar/12/its-time-to-put-an-end-to-the-gaslighting-that-occurs-every-day-in-australia

I thought at the beginning of this thread you said you don't know anything. By the sounds of it you know everything! By the way, the Areo Magazine article has author "Laith Al-Shawaf, Ph.D. is a researcher and Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado". But if you want a different article on MBTI you could try https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/my-brothers-keeper/202002/in-defense-the-myers-briggs

This is a good article on MBTI: https://areomagazine.com/2021/03/09/should-you-trust-the-myers-briggs-personality-test/ The criticisms are mainly philosophical ones about the personality model being discrete rather than continuous (at the Big 5 and HEXACO are). Thinking about introvert vs extrovert I think clarifies the issue. For people who are extremely introverted, learning that one is an introvert can help make a lot of sense of oneself. But for people who are in the middle of the introversion/extroversion spectrum, discovering you're in the middle may well say little of great value about you. This seems like a problem that's unavoidable when discrete models of personality are based on continuous spectra (as MBTI is). I'm not sure what to make of this myself, other than the ambiguous statement that some people find MBTI useful (those that hew to a particular personality type) whereas others don't (those who are on the boundary between different personality types & perhaps those who belong to the most common personality types?) Maybe we have to consider what is the purpose of personality tests in the first place, what are we hoping for them to tell us about ourselves. In any case, it is not as simple as "science has proven MBTI to be false".

OK. So what does racial healing look like to you?

I wouldn't tell a rape joke to a woman, a dead baby joke to a person who experienced miscarriage, a 9/11 joke to a person who lost a loved one in the collapse of the towers, an AIDS joke to a gay man, or a racist joke to a person of color. I can't imagine any of those people would appreciate hearing such a joke from me. Besides that, this just feels like a no-brainer to me: racist jokes perpetuate racism. I have a POC friend who was hearing racial jokes from some "friends" of his and he gently let them know he found their "jokes" to be offensive. They responded with "we're just joking, don't take it so seriously". Which is really just a way of saying "too bad, we don't care how you feel about our jokes". He chose to disengage from those people and reports being happier for it.

GREEN: Prior to 2015 I would read a political or cultural article that had been written by a conservative and find myself agreeing with them in part, but then I would ask "what is their position on marriage equality?" I'd go to their wikipedia page and find their stance on marriage equality was bigotted, actively opposed, or just non-supportive, and then I would say to myself "well, who cares what they have to say about anything". And so I'd just ignore the things they had to say that I kind of agreed with. It was very tribal for me, as a gay man, since I felt a great sense that I didn't "belong" in the society at large and that society wasn't designed for people like me. So I was playing for Team Blue (i.e. Democrats) and was willing to adopt Blue logic, talking points, perspectives, etc, in order to advance the position of the Democratic party. YELLOW: That changed for me after Obergefell vs Hodges came down in June 2015 ratifying marriage equality throughout the United States of America. And after seeing the White House lit up in the colors of the gay pride flag! The very emotional issues around belonging started to lose salience for me. And so I became comfortable in engaging more thoroughly with the perspectives of conservatives (even social conservatives!) without great regard for their position on marriage equality. As I became more interested in hearing what they had to say and more accepting that I agreed with them on different things (more things than I would have been willing to accept prior to 2015, that's for sure!) I started to feel like I was deprogramming myself from some sort of a "cult" -- the cult of liberal politics, I suppose. I started to become angry at myself, at others, and at the Democratic party for only allowing a limited set of perspectives and voices to be representative of the whole. In fact, since I was so vocal about this discontent of mine, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people I've spoken to over the last few years would describe me as a conservative, as confused, or as both! I "walked away" from the Democratic party as a way of escaping the trap of tribal identification though I never gave any realistic consideration in voting Trump. I became an Independent (along with 40% of all other Americans, as I like to tell people). TURQUOISE: Something I started struggling with in late 2020, however, is that even though the issues are complicated, multi-layered, and ridiculously nuanced, does anyone really care to hear "my take" on any given situation? Does anyone need to hear Boethius' view on the political calculations behind defunding the police, for example, or his assessment of all of the wonky policy details that would lie behind such an initiative? Probably not. So it's like, how can I appreciate the complexity of these issues (personally) while talking to people who remain committed to seeing the world through a Blue pair of goggles or a Red pair of goggles. It probably requires having some incredibly holistic sense of what my goal is in discussing politics in the first place and then secondly having a realistic sense of how I am situated as a participant in the larger political conversation. With the understanding that most people don't want to hear most of my thoughts on most of the subjects as a humbling tool in helping me get my footing. So it seems to me that I'm leaving Yellow (knowledge elitism) and moving into Turquoise (relational intimacy?) with my current understanding of political conversation. But maybe that's all just a bunch of ego, who knows....

My focus is on helping to bring healing to the 400+ years of oppression against people of color and against Black folk especially. I suppose it does involve some guesswork as to how to do so effectively and without centering myself in the conversation. But I am grounded in my intention to be helpful, and so I'm comfortable in "feeling out" the best approach for moving the conversation forward. Now, what is your intention when engaging in conversation around race/racism?

It's a problem because you keep making yourself the center of a conversation on race/racism. And you do so while engaged in conversation with a biracial woman (Etherial Cat) who has repeatedly expressed frustration about how you're not "getting it". Instead you keep re-directing attention back to how good of a person you are. The goodness of your personal character is not the focus of this thread's conversation; white fragility is the focus. So congratulations on working to make sure you treat people of color with the same amount of dignity and respect as you accord to white people. Truly. It sounds that like that's been a very heartfelt goal of yours. Now a good next step may be to learn about systemic injustice and to practice "decentering yourself" from conversations about racism. Good luck ?

Do you hope for the return of Christ this century?

I see in a previous comment that you refer to POC as "colored people". And you write that we need to "crack down" on a good portion of the "colored" community. Not sure how you look yourself in the mirror in the morning.