RoninWolf

I'm almost finished reading Ken Wilber's "Theory of Everything", and for the last few chapters this has been on my mind. Wilber speaks of green's desire to destroy blue at any cost, which, without knowing, is self-sabotaging (as it cuts those in that level and below off from reaching Green); but in teaching tier one thinkers the model of spiral dynamics, are we not doing something similar? If integral thinking is introduced prematurely, I wonder if this would interrupt the natural progression through first tier stages where pluralist, rational etc worldviews are supposed to be present in a pre-integral framework. If we are supposed to progress through each stage naturally and absorb the entirety of its content, is yellow any different? If, for example, (somehow) a racist stage blue person suddenly understood and embraced spiral dynamics completely, he would no longer have any reason to be prejudiced to different races or cultures. Is this even possible before green? Whatever the answer, this person will have begun thinking in stage yellow without having even set foot in either orange or green. This is undoubtedly unhealthy for the spiral. While resources on various models of cognitive development and internal theory are freely available online, these are mostly relegated to upper class academia and those of us deeply interested in self-actualization. Still though, I'm sure many of us have had an influence on some friends and family with our talks of spiral dynamics. What are your thoughts on this? Thank you for reading.

@Manusia Watch his video on stage orange. Hell is a story. It is useful for you to try to think this way about everything you know in Islam. The fact that you're here means you already have suspicions that there is far more to reality than the Quran, and you're right. Notice the feelings of guilt that plague your mind when you do things that you enjoy, and then ask yourself; is this actually bad? Catch the mind in the act and notice the limitations of this ideology - then go beyond them. The absolution of your guilt will liberate you until you feel trapped by the meaninglessness of orange's hedonism. Then, esoteric spirituality and self generated morality will liberate you from that. Keep going.

Antinatalists hold that because birth is the cause of all suffering, not reproducing is the highest act of love and empathy for your would-be child. I held a strongly antinatalist view of reproduction until my first LSD trip last year. In this trip, I seen a girl who I recognized as being my daughter. I watched snippets of her whole life as she grew up into an intelligent and loving person. This left me feeling shaken and uncomfortable as it was such a dramatically antithetic theme to what I had believed. I've tried focusing on this in subsequent trips in order to wrap this up and come to some conclusion, but instead I am still extremely conflicted. Before this trip, I had spent 4 years deeply depressed with a suicide attempt under my belt from before I began self actualizing, This trip showed me that life is a gift, darknesss is light, and that this experience, this place, this thing, is the most profound beauty that exists. It gave me an entirely new perspective on life. Still though, even if we argue that life's joys make it worth its suffering (for those of us in first world countries etc anyway), the fact remains that a child does not choose to exist, reproduction is awful for the environment, and the world is already overpopulated. Breeding is a gamble with someone else's life to make a mini-me. Most people are horrible parents.

@SolarWarden I'm curious to see if this is a phase, but even still, if it tapers off by next year...what was it? I agree. Wondering if there's something I'm missing out on here, a hole in my knowledge that I can fill in. I would love for Leo to respond.

You're right, and of course SD isn't as black and white as us 'being' one stage in every aspect of our being. I just thought this switch in belief to be extremely unusual; and deviating from the spiral, I want to try to understand from a sort of psychoanalysis POV what is actually taking place here.

No, he is absolutely serious.

I have a friend who, since I've known him, has exhibited behaviors very clearly representative of stage orange. He has been hedonistic, success focused, atheistic, and dismissive of anything 'airy fairy'. He plays lots and lots of video games, drinks and smokes lots of weed. His ambition has been to be a rich and popular youtuber/streamer. He cares little about the environment or animals, and thinks the point of his life is to just have fun. He is very into fitness and posts lots of those motivational quotes with buff guys on his instagram, etc. You get my point - we all know guys like this. Anyways, recently (past 4 months or so) he started watching the TV series Vikings, and got really into it. He has started to change his hair to a 'Viking'-like style, listens to danheim and wardruna, posts about wanting to 'raid England', and has even sort of changed his personality a bit to seem more like some kind of hardened warrior. The biggest thing about this, and the entire reason for making this post however, is that he has become Norse Pagan, or 'Asatru'. It is my understanding that he now claims to believe in and worship the old Norse Gods, and wishes people to respect his faith just as they would a Christian. From a spiral dynamics perspective, what is going on here? Could it be an undeveloped stage red that prematurely jumped to blue as a child? Stage orange romanticizing red in the way that green does purple, gone far? This has been floating around my mind for some time now, and I am very interested to hear some thoughts on this from all of you. Leo, if you are reading this, of course your insight and interpretation would be highly valued. Edit: I've been contemplating this for a while, and have come up with a potential answer. To expand on @SolarWarden's first comment, it is possible that my friend has not properly integrated his stage red/blue. This absence then, will have left him with no healthy way to express these stages, thus weakening the foundations of his growth beyond and into orange. Perhaps his 'playing this character' is the psyche's attempt to express these stages, needing desperately on the deepest level to find some utility for them.