Heinrich Faust

Look at any foreign country, and you'll notice, that America has no far-left. From a European perspective, there's just a right-wing and a centre party, and Bernie Sanders would be a moderate leftist. Just today, I stumbled over this article, which states that the big German conservative party is more left-wing than the Democrats: https://www.politicalcompass.org/counterpoint-20211001-german-election In the current American election system, it's extremely hard to have more than two parties. If a third party would rise, probably, one of the old parties would fall.

I don't know politicians good enough to judge on their particular stage. I just read through Marco Bülow's Wikipedia biography and his website. He seems pretty stage green to me.

Yes, MDG is the only Norwegian party fully stage green. Sp and SV are pretty green, too, having the same issues as Ap. V are like 2/3 orange and 1/3 green. R, however, is a good example of a (mainly) stage blue far-left party. With the next elections, we should start an own thread about Norwegian parties. I actually wanted to do that already for these elections, but I was busy with the thread about the parties in Germany, which held federal elections one week after Norway. And sorry for talking about Norwegian politics in the Canadian thread!

That's no surprise. Social Democracy is coming from a stage blue-orange tradition and has never fully grown into stage green, neither in Norway, nor anywhere else. They still have to keep their traditional voters happy. As its name implies, Ap represents the working class. And the average worker has no interest in drugs other than tobacco and alcohol. Not all leftists are progressives; many are just traditional simple people. It's also revealing, that the party youth was pro decriminalisation; just the conservative older comrades prohibited it.

The structure is given from Germany's political system. I doubt that. I estimate, there already are some (partly) stage yellow people in the German parliaments. And, by the way, not all Volt politicians are at stage yellow.

Well, first of all, the FW are a stage orange conservative party; there's no big change to gain from them. Maybe they would demagnify the AfD a bit. If one of them makes it into the Bundestag, probably through winning more than 5%. In the past 40 years, there was the rise of the Greens, the rise of Die Linke, and the rise and fall of the Pirate Party, not to mention the rise and fall of several far-right parties, including AfD, which is the most recent example of a new party rejigging the system. And we might witness an ongoing rise of the FW in the upcoming years. I'm positive, there will rise a stage yellow party sooner or later, too. If Volt fails, there will establish another progressive party. On the other hand, there is no necessity of a stage yellow party yet, neither in Germany, nor in any other country (except in Sweden maybe), because stage green is not fully embodied yet. Sure! It's much about personal preference. Like rather working at a startup or at a big stock corporation.

What do you think is orange about them? To me, they seem dogmatic and myopic, especially their foreign policies. E.g., what's their concept to prevent Putin from invading Eastern Europe? Or, what's their concept to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons and bomb Israel? I just can't see any yellow whatsoever. In fact, they still have a too blue base. Well, that could actually be, but if that would be the case, it would be the sleaziest yellow possible: just poking fun at lower stages, without providing any solutions at all.

I think, Die Linke is more of an exception. A German party has to have an extremely strong heartland to win direct mandates when still getting less than 5%. Probably, FW could make it, if the CSU would let them (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckepackverfahren). However, the Union parties' current policy is to get rid of the federal FW, rather than cooperating with them. Nevertheless, the FW have a fair chance to crack the 5% in the next federal elections. Until then, they're going to get into some more state parliaments, especially in more rural and conservative states like Saxony-Anhalt. If they manage to bed down in more states, or even on a federal level, this will extend the conservative camp, but also split it up and make possible more ragbag coalitions against the CDU (e.g., SPD-Grüne-FW). Volt, however, got a disastrous result. I've been in some German cities the past few months, and there were Volt posters literally everywhere. It somehow already looked like one of the big parties. So, 0.4% is quite disappointing. They should have made 0.5%+ to get access to the public party funding. They might need a decade until they grow into the Bundestag. Now, they have to do three things: 1st, growing their base and winning some local elections to gain more attention; 2nd, get public party funding through winning 1%+ in some state elections (concentrating on more progressive states like Hamburg and Hesse); 3rd, get their work done in the Netherlands and other countries with easy conditions. There could be a good niche for them in Switzerland, e.g. In 2025 finally, Volt might win seats in Hamburg. The Tierschutzpartei got a decent result, similarly to their Dutch sister party earlier this year. Now, when the Greens are going to be part of a governing coalition, the Tierschutzpartei can easily position itself as a more fundamental green party and enjoy an even larger clientele. Not sure, if they will ever make it into the federal parliament, but they have fair chances to get seats in some state parliaments, especially in Berlin. Die Basis got a decent result, too, and it will probably be its best result ever. My guess is, that they will vanish, once the pandemia is over. The PARTEI is stuck at 1%. They will never find 5% of the electorate bothering going to the polls for a satirical party. Team Todenhöfer was a one-hit wonder. When Todenhöfer retires, the party will as well. And he's already 80… The Pirate Party joined Volt in failing to reach 0.5% for the party funding. But unless Volt, the Pirates are already far, far past their peak, and not just in Germany. The ÖDP lost half of its voters. It got marginalised by the growing Tierschutzpartei, and I doubt, it will ever recover.

The "international proletariat" is stage blue.

I guess, they will build an Ampel coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals. It's what SPD and Greens are aiming for, and they can "blackmail" FDP to join them by threatening with a left coalition.

Here's a nice documentary about the small parties (in German): https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfzoom/zoomin-kleine-parteien-junge-waehlerinnen-102.html

I think, I covered that here:

Northern and Western Europe is. Southern Europe is at around the same stage, and the Eastern part is below the US. So, yes, the EU is slightly above the US. Including the Non-EU-countries, it's about equal. (And including Russia, it's below, of course.) If I compare Switzerland, Germany and Sweden (I lived in all three of them), I can tell, that Sweden is by far the most developed one, and still not at stage yellow. Switzerland (I'm just talking about German Switzerland, because I don't know enough about Welsh Switzerland) is about the same stage as Germany, maybe slightly above, but there are also areas in which Switzerland is more orange or even blue. It's hard to compare, though, because these two countries are very similar, and Germany is too heterogeneous.

Violence and domination are stage red male features. It's not about men, it's about stage red. Accordingly, patriarchy is a stage blue feature. Fighting patriarchy is not fighting men; it's fighting stage blue. Funnily enough, it's the men at the lower stages, including orange, who complain about not being allowed to be men. Stage green men never complain. And that is, because the rising green society does not cut down on masculine behaviour; it cuts down on red, blue, and orange behaviour. It's a big misunderstanding. And that not just confuses the lower stages, that confuses stage green, too.

Yes, it's another prime example of stage green in a deluded form. And they seem to be also guilty of another issue of the far-left, which I started to discuss in the corresponding thread I linked in the opening post: Subtle flirting with stage blue. Since I can't read Finnish, I'll quote from their Swedish page: https://www.kristallipuolue.fi/svenska-teser/ "Finland bör återerövra sin självbestämmanderätt gällande sin ekonomiska poltik och övrig lagstiftning. Detta eftersom det är Finland som bäst känner till resurserna och behoven i det egna landet." "Beslutsrätten över invandringen bör finnas i Finland. Syftet bör vara att upprätthålla lag och ordning i samhället, hjälpa människor i nöd och befrämja möjligheter till återvändande till respektive hemländer." "YLE måste dela neutral information ur olika synvinklar från både öst och väst." I'm not saying, they actually do promote blue ideas. I'm just saying, that there are subtle points of commonality. And all these points are stemming from conspiracy theories or a general aversion against stage orange.

I don't have enough understanding of stage teal, so I will limit my answer to stage yellow. Yellow means evolving into yellow, not forcing into yellow. Germany is currently consolidating at stage green; there is still much orange left to evolve into green, and the society is far too orange to evolve into yellow yet. So, currently, yellow laws basically look like pragmatic green laws. In my opinion, the difference between green and yellow is the consciousness behind the laws. Let's compare: Green views itself as absolute truth, whereas Yellow views itself as relative truth. In a high blue country, Green would still craft green policies; Yellow would support orange policies. Green easily becomes dogmatic, whereas Yellow always keeps a pragmatic approach. Green is more likely to lack a proper evolution, e.g. Die Linke, which kind of skipped stage orange. This backfires in the form of insufficient economic and foreign policies. Green fights against Orange and Blue. Yellow tries to integrate all stages. Green only can solve problems caused by Orange. Yellow can also solve problems caused by Red, Blue, and Green. This is particularly useful in policy of integration. Green is bound to lose focus, and to waste resources on minor problems. Yellow is better at seeing the big picture. Green will become conservative when it's time to move on into yellow. Fun fact: Karl Marx is stage orange.

Thank you for sharing your story! I can relate to that, because I grew up at stage blue as well. And turning from blue to orange as an adult, still felt strange in a stage green society like Sweden. I'm glad to hear that you finally are in a happy relationship, and I have great respect for that. It's definitely not easy after decades of single virgin life.

Could you give some names? Or are you referring to members? About the same stage as CDU. That is a bloody blue statement. And, this is by far not their worst statement. You can pick any random sentence of their programme - it's all about fight and revolution, us vs. them. "Die Arbeiterklasse muss nach dem Sturz der Diktatur des internationalen Finanzkapitals und der Eroberung der Staatsmacht in den einzelnen Ländern die Diktatur des Proletariats errichten und die Produktionsmittel in gemeinsames Eigentum des gesamten werktätigen Volkes überführen." Uhm, so, what about the MLPD? Not a single word about animals, just about humans. And not about all humans, just about the "proletariate". Everybody else can go to hell... or to Gulag. And yes, you can be stage green without being vegan. And, you can very well be stage yellow without being vegan. They are mainly green. They fight orange with orange weapons. And they spoof green as well (e.g. "Faulenquote"). But just attacking orange and green, doesn't make them yellow. They are green intellectuals, feeling superior, and making fun of lower stages, without even providing proper solutions themselves. It's an unserious protest party, unable to solve any problems.

@Late Boomer Very good answers! @zazen Did you watch and understand Leo's series about Spiral Dynamics? Red Pill is a low conscious ideology at a range from high red over blue to low orange. The idea promoted in your quote is nothing but reactionary, sexist pants. And, by the way, today's relationships are already much happier than all the centuries ago, when people just married anybody and were stuck on each other for the rest of their lives. Thinking these couples were somewhat happy is as delusional as thinking you will be happy when you will finally have found a woman to settle down with.

You're welcome! Great, that you want to take more responsibility for society. Are you talking about any particular one? All the parties I classified as yellow do include green morality, from what I can tell. Die PARTEI is difficult to rate. I classified it as "green-orange", because their electorate tends to be green, and the very idea of a party parody itself is orange. I don't really notice any yellow features. And, I doubt, there are. Spoofing democracy is not stage yellow, it's pretty arrogant orange behaviour. I even met some PARTEI-voters at my university in Germany. They felt really smart about not voting a "stupid, lying normal party". In fact, it's just refusing to take responsibility and blaming the society - nothing conscious about that at all. I mainly judged reading their programme. It's very green, and it felt really conscious and pragmatic to me, that's why I rated them yellow, too. Plus, there are huge similarities to Volt's programme. Well, there was no party that seemed bluer to me than MLPD. They glorify Stalin, they want to quit the EU, they don't even support Germany's democracy. This party is a prime example of stage blue left-wing extremism. There might be a few unconscious mainly stage green radical leftists voting for them, but the party itself is blue, blue, blue.

In my opinion, there are three different strategies: Trying to get the government as conscious as possible. This can involve tactical voting and is risky, because you never really know which coalition will be made and how the election results influence the coalition building process. Trying to get the parliament as conscious as possible. This is much simpler: just voting for the most conscious party, which is going to get seats. Supporting the most conscious party. There's this common misconception that votes for smaller parties are just wasted. Of course, a party outside the parliament will never have the same influence, not even as the opposition. However, there are several reasons why it can make sense voting for a small party: It will get them some public attention, especially if it's a decent result. It's communication with other voters and can help the party to get better results long-term. There might be this little chance for a surprise result. Most recent German example: FW in Rhineland-Palatinate. As most European countries, Germany funds its parties generously. But only parties outreaching 0.5% in federal elections or 1% in any state elections! The more votes, the more financial support they get. The big question is: When will a stage yellow party take hold in the array? I hope soon, but I really don't know. Also take into account that these elections aren't just about Germany. Germany is the leading power of the EU, so German federal politics have impact on whole Europe.

Yes, the American two party democracy is somewhat retarded. (Just the Singaporean one party democracy is worse.) Germany is quite moderate, though. There's a 5% threshold, meaning that all but the first six parties are most likely not be able to win any seats. In other systems, like in Israel, Switzerland or the Netherlands, there is much more variety represented in the parliaments. They have clearly orange aspects as well, especially in their economic policy. The party is very popular among libertarians, by the way. Some for AfD, some for the small fascist parties (NPD and III. Weg). But there are not enough real fascists to carry weight anyway. I called two of the stage green parties deluded for playing around with stupid ideas spun around conspiracy theories. Whereas I'd call all of the stage blue parties deluded, so it's not even worth emphasising that. Examples, please. I only can see nationalist and neoliberal thinking. It's stage green, though. That's picking on words, not on content. Stage blue thinking. All in all, I think you're mainly at stage green, but trapped in some conspiracy theories around climate change and Covid. That corrupts your overall view on these topics, and you rationalise green as blue and vice versa. Maybe ask yourself: How come that your stage green(?) friends and the vast majority of all people with higher consciousness agree on topics like man-made climate change, whereas you share your views with the vast majority of representatives of the lower stages? Couldn't it be that you're the one who made a wrong turn at one point? Yes, most of them are! If you take a closer look at who exactly is on which side, it's quite obvious who are the deluded ones.

Well, I could also call it "anti-corona-measures party"; would be more accurate, true. To me, alternative medicine seemed to be their biggest topic besides all that opposition to all the corona measures, and by the way, the point I liked about them. That's their programme (in German): https://www.spd.de/zukunftsprogramm/ It's hard to find non-green ideas. It's totally possible to be stage green and still ideological and deluded (one could accuse you of exactly that). Literally no examples of orange or even blue aspects whatsoever. I can't find any blue aspects on them. Climate change denial, nationalism, anti-globalism including proposed EU exit, economic liberalism, no responsibility for fight against Covid, Third World countries or whatsoever, no empathy for minorities, reactionary view on family, society, and culture, xenophobic, us vs. them thinking, support for corrupt systems like Russia, promoting liberal smoking laws, but against legalisation of cannabis or psychedelics, protectionism, and overall no progressive ideas whatsoever. This party is just blue with a bit of orange, and it cooperates with hardcore stage blue parties like Rassemblement National.

Does the same go for gold? It kind of has a practical worth, even though a quite limited one.

There's a bunch of reason. I don't have proof for all of them, but I think, most of it is quite intuitive. And this is not limited to Germany, by the way; there's a load of democracies with similar situations. SPD is the classic labour party with a long blue tradition. While the élite is mainly stage green nowadays, there's still a considerable blue minority in party base and electorate. This group is slightly ceasing or defecting, which is one reason for the ongoing marginalisation of Social Democracy. The defection could be even higher if there was a more "social" blue alternative like the FPÖ, which is stealing many traditional voters from the Austrian SP. The AfD is too economic-liberal to take big-time advantage of that. The SPD is also quite popular among immigrants, especially stage blue Muslim immigrants, who more often are attacked by the right, whereas stage blue Eastern European immigrants aren't that shy to vote for AfD. Die Linke was a stage blue dictatorial communist party itself, just 30 years ago. So, it's no surprise that they have an ongoing blue heritage. In fact, it's more a surprise how stage green they became. Their blue voters do not just include old GDR nostalgics, but all kind of people who feel economically left behind by modern society, e.g. a significant part of the unemployed population. The stage blue electorate is quite heterogeneous. There are different immigrant groups and the classic working class, which we already covered. These groups combined are much larger than the usual nationalist far-right. The modern right-winger is a mixture of stage blue and stage orange. There's a smaller group of very religious people with a tendency to the right. And finally, there's a little group of old-school communists, who either vote for Die Linke or their own small parties (MLPD, DKP, SGP). I assume, the majority of the stage red population doesn't vote at all. They have little use for democracy. If they vote, they either vote for someone they can relate to, which might be a neo-fascist party, or they vote for the party offering the most personal benefits to them. So, if they are businessmen, they could vote for FDP as most liberal party. Since many red people are low-wage earners or on the dole (or dole-spongers with black income), there's probably a significant support for Die Linke.