Carl-Richard

@Nilsi You seem to be talking about a more practical everyday concept of pragmatism. I'm specifically talking about epistemological pragmatism: the idea that "truth" is better stated as "utility". Epistemological pragmatism is more linguistically messy than epistemological realism, because it's obsessed with stating the context and conditions for truth claims; "this is true in so far it's useful for this aim". Meanwhile, realism focuses on the truth claims themselves; "it's true though". Of course, realism can still be context aware, but it's not baked into the language. The concept of utility always signifies "utility for what or whom"? So it's always somewhat context aware. On the other hand, the concept of truth, fundamentally, is true by virtue of what it is, irrespective of any external condition. So realism need not be context aware. Now, what pragmatism gains by being more informative (context awareness), it loses by being less elegant (stating the truth plainly). In this way, it's more feminine; it's less concerned about reducing things down and rather stating things in their full complexity, even if it's more chaotic and messy; being open and allowing vs. judging and deciding. All in all, in their mature (not naive) forms, I see pragmatism and realism as simply different ways of speaking about the same issue, with different pros and cons. And I simply prefer the baked-in context awareness over the elegance.

@Leo Gura Is it true that you only read the title before commenting? 🥲

I train with a plan but still try to go intense. I did try the slow and controlled approach for about a year when I was trying to fix my muscle imbalances, but now in the last few weeks when I tried the usual intense training, it's night and day in terms of how it feels (mood, energy, pump, etc.). It's also night and day for your cognitive functioning (for example, lactate is directly involved in glutamate transmission). If it's one thing a newcomer does not naturally gravitate towards, it's slow, controlled, deep stretch, pause at bottom.

Probably. This is just testing Wilber's Waking Up vs. Growing Up hypothesis. You should expect to find people with mystical ideas and states that do not understand Orange, Green, Yellow, etc., which means that mysticism by itself cannot be the highest level of human development. Now, you can argue like Wilber that once you max out Growing up then Waking up would be a "step up", which to my knowledge is what he describes with Tier 3. But of course, that is different than claiming whatever has been claimed about Turquoise; that it's somehow distinct from Yellow and somehow not mystical (or is it?). I'm planning to read a bit more about Wilber's Tier 3 idea. Now, while I don't think Turquoise currently exist, I do think it will probably exist in the future, but what that looks like, we don't know.

Loads of steroids and coffee 😤 It's not that they don't listen to their bodies. It's that they listen to their mind first and body second. The way they structure their training penalizes intensity and flow, which is what makes training feel good and how you perform the best. They make training feel like you hate yourself. Back in the day, bad form meant "not full range of motion". Today, thanks to Dr. Mike and Mr. Nipples, bad form means anything else than slowly controlling the excentric, ridiculously deep stretch and pausing at the bottom. You can train intensely with full range of motion (good form), no problem. Not at all. Training hardcore is what feels good. It is what comes naturally before your nerd brain takes over and overanalyzes everything. And really, fearing being judged as an "ego lifter" is the real ego lifting.

That would be fine if only it didn't have exactly the same problems of sampling bias as I described initially (only US and UK samples; Cook-Greuter, 2013, p. 19). When you only sample people in the West, mystical ideas seem to pop up at the top of the model. And here, the mysticism is undeniable: Cook-Greuter (2013) explictly calls the Unitive stage "a shift from a personal to a transpersonal or immediate witnessing capacity" (p. 86). EDIT: I'm actually blind: she had one international sample, however she states nothing about the demographics, and it's likely an internet-based sample which skews more Western anyway. The interesting samples are rural and tribal people in Eastern societies.

Another quote from The Never Ending Quest (2005, p. 18):

Put a human baby in a black box and see what SD stage they develop.

There is also a problem with sample size. According to wikipedia, the initial student sample that Graves used to construct the main levels consisted of 1065 people in the ages of 18-61. According to The Never Ending Quest (2005, p. 66), "most of these were in the lower age group", presumably ages 18-30. Now, for virtually all people, in order to develop a SD stage, there has to at least be a SD stage below it that is well-integrated into society which you can critique. The only exception is if you're a super-genius like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein who can develop revolutionary new paradigms completely on their own, which is obviously way more rare than 1 in 1000. As we speak, the highest stage that is well-integrated into society (i.e. that has an abundance of communities, institutions and organizations) is Green. In the 1970s, when the research was being done, this was way more questionable, but let's assume it was also Green. How on Earth would you expect Turquoise to be measured in a sample of 1065 people, mostly in a "lower age group" who are probably not at their developmental peak, in a questionably Green society, in the 1970s? There is no Yellow society to critique! Where is Graves getting his super-geniuses from? How big is that sample? How many Einsteins, Newtons, Darwins? No, it is in my opinion much more likely that he sampled some people at Green-Yellow who would've had mystical experiences influenced by the 60s wave of New Age, who would've rated it as the most life-changing experience of their life and that revolutionized the way they think about the world, and that this is what has been described as Turquoise. I'll leave you with some quotes. Try to guess which ones are a description of Turquoise and which ones are simply descriptions of New Age ideas: Spoiler: All of them are Graves' own descriptions of Turquoise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graves's_emergent_cyclical_levels_of_existence

As an empirical scientist, your job is to follow the data, and when your data is characterized by sampling bias, this will be reflected in your conclusions, especially if you are an expert scientist. If it's not, you're not doing something right. I'm not pointing to a flaw in their scientific expertise. I'm pointing to a flaw in their scientific process. Science always has flaws, and this particular flaw I'm claiming has quite particular consequences. If you want to dispute that claim, I'm much more interested in you doing that than trying to explain what Turquoise is for the fourth time. So tell me for example: 1. How is the sampling bias not a problem for the model in general? 2. How does the sampling bias not affect Turquoise specifically? 3. How does the increase in Western adoption of mysticism at Green/Yellow not affect Turquoise specifically?

Do you have any specific examples of that? In what way? Sounds like mysticism or intuition, which again, is present at all stages. How do you elevate human consciousness?

What problems does Turquoise solve that Yellow is unable to solve?

I said it has been significantly repressed, for example due to theologians like Augustine of Hippo who influenced the modern conception of faith. Let's put it this way: who here is into Jewish Kabbalah or Christian mysticism?

Contemplate with it how many mistakes it makes.

As you point to yourself, SD (Don Beck) does not make this Waking vs. Growing up distinction theoretically (only Ken Wilber does), nor would you expect it to be able to sift out this distinction empirically (in the data interpretation process), again because of the sample bias. Had the sample been more universal, specifically including cultures with prevalent non-dual mysticism, then you could expect such a distinction to be found, and "Turquoise" would be considered as a phenomena of Waking up rather than Growing up. Ken Wilber found this distinction theoretically by learning about the history and different cultures with non-dual mysticism, but I'm saying you will find it empirically as well using the very methods that were used to create SD, given that you sample the same cultures. Systems thinking in Yellow and systems thinking in Turquoise are not "symbolically different" (to borrow Hanzi's term), only in specific areas application, which does not provide a radical new view, does not critique Yellow's "way of thinking" or produce radical new solutions to problems. Hence, it's not a meaningfully new stage.

There is nothing to critique about Coral, because basically nothing has been said about it.

While Don Beck might've insisted on that, the SD book chapter describing Turquoise oozes with New Age non-dualisms, it's actually comical: Imagine if you had said "Orange is just a different application of Blue dogmatism". That doesn't quite make sense. It's not a significant step up. It doesn't provide a radical new view of things. It doesn't provide a radical new way of solving problems. So I just don't see how Turquoise meaningfully critiques Yellow. "It's kinda like mysticism, but not really", "people at this stage may have non-dual experiences, but it's not that". I don't buy it. But let's assume you are pointing to some true differences: I doubt thematic analysis of single-question essays is even able to catch such nuances. When interpreting the data, based on my limited experience with thematic analysis, it's much more likely that you will siphon all of it under the same theme (Turquoise).

Also stress from lack of feeling competent or in control of your own actions?

I don't understand what you mean by "complexly navigated journey" or "vertical thinking" or really most of what you said. But let's assume that's a critique ("transcend") of Yellow: what does it embrace ("include") from Yellow?

Sure. Very few people use academic defintions of words.

Let me tell you word salad is fun until it has to interface with the real world.

By "incoherent", I don't mean that the stage is incomprehensible or lacks internal inconsistency. It's that it's not consistent with the rest of the model (it doesn't critique or transcend the previous stage, Yellow), and it just also happens to be based on flawed empiricism (WEIRD bias). The description of Turquoise is in fact entirely comprehensible and internally consistent: it's the New Age religion of Western rich kids. I really recommend The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht though. It's really sobering for anyone who is interested in Spiral Dynamics.

That's funny. I was just reading The Listening Society describing downward assimilation: taking symbolic code (language, culture) from a higher stage of cognitive complexity and using it at a lower stage of cognitive complexity. That's of course a concept I'm intuitively familiar with, but it's good to hear it being echoed. But if that is what was meant, I still don't understand how it explains the incoherence of Turquoise. By the way, The Listening Society claims Turquoise is incoherent because 1. it doesn't provide any critique towards Yellow (which I agree with), 2. the cognitive development it requires is simply too rare (which connects to 3.), and 3. it has no social manifestations (communities, institutions or organizations). It also describes Turquoise as "new-agey 'holistic' or 'integral' people", which echoes my hypothesis. People who object to 3. (e.g. in this thread), are most certainly subject to the same New Age conflation that I used to explain why Turquoise is incoherent: American college hippies discovering Eastern mysticism is not equal to the emergence of a new symbolic code, nor is it indicative of the cognitive development required to understand it.

I honestly understood 0% of what you wrote.

This triggers me.