Spiral Dynamics - Stage Blue Notes

[Daniel Balan]

Stage blue is absolutist, conformist and the rise of civilization.

Absolute belief in one right and true way. And obedience to authority.

Relies solely in belief in some higher authority. A God.

It is collectivist rather than individualistic. It seeks to be involved within the collective. It's life is intertwined with the life of the collective.

The collectivist stages work for the higher good of the collective, whereas individualistic stages work for the development of the self.

Strong emphasis on religion and the afterlife.

 

 

 

 

If you take a stage blue person, and you talk with him about these values, you are going to become his best friend.

Beware of a sneaky politician who would take all these keywords from this list and then go rallying and tell that stage blue audience everything it wants to hear. And that crowd will forever become loyal to that politician. That politician will tell them everything they believe in and everything they want to hear.

 

The simple fact that you are watching a video about spiral dynamics on your own volition, this puts you on the spiral into the high orange, maybe green or even low yellow, stage wise.

 

Also while watching this spiral dynamics video series, when you will be reading a stage's value set list, you will say in your mind, yes, that's it, this is what is good for me and the world.

 

If you are at stage blue, You will agree with everything on the list bellow. But if you are at a higher stage you will disagree with most of the things on this list.

 

 

Values of stage blue

• Absolute truth and ideology (They hold their ideology sacred. To them their truth is the absolute truth, there is no room for other truths, there is no room for other ideologies but the one that blue believes it is right.)
• Belief, faith and certainty in their set of values (There is a clear right and wrong)
• Stage Blue values hard work, discipline and duty.
• Law and order
• Justice ( Justice goes hand in hand with the enforcement of their truth, they want to enforce their civilization onto others, their worldview enforced onto others).
• Blue values hierarchy, social order and the status quo( there is no need to inovate and to be progressive. Our tradition, the way our ancestors did it is the absolute best way to live life)
• Blue values patriarchy ( Women are there to serve men! Men are the enforcers, they do all the hard work, and women get the benefits of that, and therefore the women should raise the childern and cook food. Women should not hold any position of power acording to blue. And this is not bad, that is the hirarchy, that's the role of the woman)
• Meaning and greater purpose( Blue's greater purpose is not selfish, it is to be a good citizen, to follow the rules, to be a good christian, to raise his family, or to be a good wife or a good husband, but ultimately is to serve God)
• Morality is huge for stage blue( A strong sense of right and wrong)
• Culture, Tradition and heritage( Those values are sacred to blue, they get extremely defensive when attacked on cultural or traditional ground! They need to defend to the teeth their culture and tradition and customs)
• Crusading for a righteous cause
• Serving God
• Theology and doctrine. Orthodoxy, dogma and conformity (Stage blue beliefs that absolute truth has been written by god himself in a book)
• Stage blue values family very highly
• Obedience and reverence
• Respect for your elders
• God and country (Patriotism, our country is the best country)
• Righteous living(you live your life according to principles, you have a strong moral code of conduct, you have a sense of honor
• Reputation (How others perceive you)
• Good manners, decency, dress etiquette, hair regulations, uniforms.
• They find profanity offensive.
• They find as blasphemy speaking down to authority, don't speak down to God. You need to submit to God.
• Blue values prayer. You pray to God for the things that you need.
• Blue values authority books like the Bible, the Quran, the constitution etc. Blue believes that you can write the absolute truth in a book.
• Pledges and allegiances, rituals and ceremonies.
• Very eager to obey authority, whether is the priest, the pope, mohamed, jesus, or a teacher.
• Blue values the afterlife. (Heaven, hell and salvation)
• Strict church attendance every Sunday.
• Blue wants extreme self control and the suppression of your emotions.
• Blue values charity, giving back to his community .
• Values loyalty and hates traitors( Traitors are people who refuse to obey the absolute truth that blue blindly follows)
• Blue values borders( Borders with their neighbours)
• Blue values integrity and good character

 

 

When does blue emerge
 

• Blue emerges when the limitations of red are exhausted.

 

Characteristics of blue

 

• For blue life has meaning direction and purpose, with predetermined outcomes.
• Blue always searches for order, security and stability
• Blue is trying to be concrete and likes to develop structures
• Dedicated, responsible and meticulous
• Trustworthy, predictible and loyal
• Righteous stable living
• Obedience is enforced through a sense of duty and guilt
• Blue tries to get rid of impure toughts from the mind. To blue the devil isn't a metaphorical symbol. It is something real.
• Blue is about surrendering worldly pleasures for reaching salvation for the afterlife.
• To blue everyone has a proper place within civilisation.
• Blue believes that the whole universe revolves around mankind, but not just mankind, it thinks that the only thing true in the universe is his race, his culture and his religion. Blue believes that God created the entire universe for the stage blue's culture and religion to be at the top! And rule over the ones who are different to it.
• Blue never questions authority, elders, religion, or teachers. Because it perceives that the former are the true carriers of the truth.
• Blue loves laws, regulations, and disciplining one's character.
• Blue enforces laws and order because otherwise we'd get chaos and anarchy.
• For blue reality is strictly objective.
• Has high rigidity, no open mindedness, and high dogma.
• Right and wrong are absolute, they are not social constructs.
• Cultural traditions and values are also absolutes, they are not social constructs.
• Blue has a very black and white worldview. For blue it is objectively defined what is good and what it is evil. There are no nuances. For blue you are with it or against it.
• Blue takes a very strict and literal approach to the interpretation of religious text. If the bible says that we should stone to death the homosexuals or the pagans, that's exactly what we should do. There is no questioning on whether this approach is a healthy approach, NO. THIS IS THE WILL OF GOD AND IT SHALL BE DONE.
• Blue fiercely defends religious doctrine against heresy and corruption. Blue thinks that his bible and his religion is the ultimate and absolute truth, so any deviation or any attack on his doctrine is the influence of the devil. To blue the heretics are those who try to make 'clever' interpretations of the bible.
• Blue is just a congregation of believers.
• Blue always invokes an anthropomorphic father figure god, at every situation that is happening.
• To blue God is a bearded man in the clouds that reigns supreme over the earth.
• God is a human. Because I am a human.
• Blue believes that there is a higher power, and that higher power wants it's civilisation to win against the heretics and the pagans. Blue believes that God wants his family to acquire more land, more wealth than the families of it's enemies.
• Blue believes that ultimate judgement will punish with eternal flames the wicked and the heretics and it will reward with infinite bliss all the good Christians.
• To blue heaven and hell aren't metaphors. They are literal places one goes after death.
• Blue believes that evil must be stamped out. Eradicated totally from the world. To blue God is in a grand battle against the devil.
• Blue is extremely judgemental with sinners.
• Blue rejects multiculturalism. To blue it's traditions, it's customs, it's culture is the best and all the other ones are inferior. They are lower on god's ultimate hierarchy.
• In blue's eyes foreigners, animals, trees and plants, and mother nature largely exists to serve stage blue mankind. To serve this one true civilisation. And everything which is not mankind shall be exploited and stripped of every resource.
• Blue fears the most being kicked out of his community. To be marginalized. To blue being kicked out of the church is the worst thing. It is life and death.
• Blue is all about conquering other lesser civilizations, about building an empire or kingdom.

 

Examples of blue

 

• The middle east
• Romania
• Russia
• Cult of personality
• Nazi Germany
• Palestinians
• Zionists
• Saudi Arabia
• Christians
• Muslims
• Iran
• India
• China
• Patriotism
• Standing up for the national anthem
• Monasteries
• The religious right wing in America
• Conservatives
• Republicans
• Banning abortion and birth control
• Building border walls
• Anti-Immigration
• Witch trials
• Crusades
• White supremacy
• K K K
• The 10 commandments
• Noah's Arc
• Uniforms
• Catholic and Orthodox nuns
• George W Bush
• Mike Pence
• The Samurai Code
• Hindu Religion
• Alex Jones
• Fox News
• The second amendment
• Mandatory military service
• Virginity pledges
• Nationalism
• Queen Victoria's England
• Military families
• Police officers, Firefighters and in general blue collar workers.
• Religious terrorism
• Spanish inquisition
• Spanish conquistadors
• When a soldier jumps on a grenade. Take one for the team.
• Theocracy
• Prayer in school
• The colonial south( USA)
• Imperial Japan
• Patriarchy
• Culture warriors
• 20th century Marxism(Eastern bloc of the iron curtain).
• Grand cathedral and temples and mosques.
• Unequal women's rights
• Demonizing homosexuals
• Marriage

 

 

Statistics of blue

 

• About 40% of the adult global population is blue. And about 30% of the cultural global influence is dominated by blue.
• If you live in a first world democracy you might be underestimating how much blue the world is, and even how much blue your first world country is.
• The style of government that comes in a state with a fully stage blue citizenry is an authoritarian regime. Very order driven, no separation between church and state, very theocratic. Always has imperialistic ambitions. To check whether a nation has outgrown blue, check if it has imperialistic ambitions or not. If it wants to expand it's current territory.

 

What triggers blue

• Stage Red
• Stage Orange
• Stage Green
• Stage Yellow
• Relativism and not knowing. Uncertainty. Those trigger the hell out of blue.
• Atheism, Secularism, Skepticism. Because this goes at the heart of everything blue stands for which is absolute truth. This calls all their ideologies into question. Relativism strips blue of all it's certainties and absolute truths that it holds so dear. It is an existential threat to them. You cannot change a stage blue person.
• They are also triggered by post modernism, intellectuals and academic elites.
• Blue is triggered by Barack Obama. (To blue Obama represents this intellectual, overly academic, overly strategic, philosophical, relativistic, complex thinker, whom is multi-cultural, cares about considering values of different societies. NO! For blue this is treason. To blue Obama is a traitor.  Obama was mostly in the green stage. And blue's sworn enemy is green. Blue hates the most stage green.
• Space cadets, philosophers and free thinkers.
• Hippies
• Sex
• Rock and heavy metal
• Rap music
• Materialism, hedonism
• Not fasting, not respecting the fast period, or the Ramadan
• Moral corruption triggers blue.
• Change to the traditional status quo.
• Changing things just for the sake of changing things.
• Progressivism
• Lawless, disorder, and anarchy.
• When justice is not served. When sinners get away with their sins.
• Lack of hierarchy.
• Terrorism.
• Multiculturalism and globalism
• Excessive selfishness and egotism.
• People who aren't willing to sacrifice for the team
• Disrespect for the status quo.
• Breaking agreements or the word given.
• Disloyalty to their civilization.
• Blue is very sensitive to traitors. A traitor is someone who betray the culture blue was indoctrinated into.
• Blue is triggered by the questioning of the existing orthodoxy. And by people who question classic social roles. Like the role of the woman in the household.
• Heresy and blasphemy
• Science encroaching on religion, blue is extremely sensitive when it sees the secularization of society

 

Unhealthy manifestations of blue

• Ideology and radical fundamentalism
• Very closeminded, rigid, stubborn and unwilling to evolve.
• Blue will be unloving to those who are not within his inner circle of blue people.
• Traps the mind in rigid and intolerable rigid beliefs. Belief is confused with the truth.
• Blue gets stuck in one paradigm and no longer can snap out of it in order to see the world from other perspectives.
• Very prone to mob and herd mentality.
• Unable to think about metaphysics.
• Prone to idol worship. Worships the image of Jesus rather than the more abstract and metaphorical of his teachings.
• Constantly under the pressure of guilt
• Prone to hypocrisy. Because although it preaches about morality and holy living, blue is one of the most violent, most aggressive. (You cannot substitute a belief system with genuine spiritual purification)
• Low tolerance for outsiders
• Very judgmental and demonizing. Because blue believes in objective good and evil.
• Can easily justify cruelty with holy scriptures
• Closed to innovation
• Blue is sexually repressed
• Blue societies prohibit sexual education in schools
• Unable to make sense of the value that other cultures exhibit
• Blue has a lack of intellectual curiosity about the world.
• Closed to mysticism and nonduality
•  Blue can have a lot of repressed anger
• Racist, Homophobic and misogynistic
• Can be oppressive to minorities
• Reads sacred text way to literally
• Prone to black and white thinking
• Prone to us vs them mentality
• Tends to not having compassion to the weaknesses and frailties of other people
• Blue is way too strict with their children, often times forcing them to adopt certain customs and traditions and codes of conduct.
• Blue cannot see the commonality between all the cultures and all religion
• Blue can be excessively bureaucratic and theocratic
• Prone to nationalism and communism
• The worst excesses of blue are genocide and ethnic cleansing

 

 

Stage blue sayings

 

• God gave us this land
• This is the way god intended it to be
• They will be punished in the name of Jesus
• Make America great again
• A revival of traditional values
• Say what you do and do what you say
• Just stick to the rules
• Actions speak louder than words
• Honesty is the best policy
• Better safe than sorry
• Take one for the team
• Blood and soil

 

 

How to transcend stage blue

 

• Read very deeply about stage blue, as you read about your current stage you gain self-awareness and therefore you start to observe the limitation of your current worldview.
• Also read in depth about the next stage which is stage orange.
• The thing that keeps you stuck in blue is the fact that you resist stage orange and green so much.
• Stop judging orange, green and yellow. Stop judging the hippies, the progressives and the liberals
• Stop judging the intellectuals, the elites and the globalists.
• Stop judging materialism and success, stop judging homosexuality
• Stop judging relativism, post-modernism, mysticism, new age spirituality (You are refusing to accept evolution due to the fear of the possible excesses which comes with evolution)
• Stop moralizing. So long you demonizing the inner demons of others you will continue to be stuck with your own inner demons.
• Stop clinging to tradition, let it go! Notice that all tradition eventually dies.
• Start thinking for yourself. Stop thinking along the rigid lines of the dogma you have been indoctrinated into.
• Start to question all authority. Notice that authority is often wrong, authority is often abusive. Therefore you need to become your own authority
• Start to notice the limitations of religion. There are much more effective ways of practicing spirituality than religion.
• Start to notice abuses of the church
• Notice that beliefs are extremely self-deceptive and that belief is not equivalent to truth and to reality. You could never capture reality within a system of beliefs.
• Notice that all beliefs are ultimately false and are just a creation of the human mind and that they are relative and are there only to serve the human ego.
• Start to be more rebellious
• Notice the limitations of judgments and moralism( Notice that when you are judging others you are actually judging yourself)
• Start to acknowledge that reality is more relative than you ever thought and this notion of absolute truth maybe doesn't exist at all.
• Start to acknowledge that good and evil do not exist( Notice that what you call evil, someone else calls good, and what you call good someone else calls evil, that depends on your ego and what your agenda is)
• Start to question whether God exists at all.
• Start to question what God is.
• Start to question your religion and culture
• Start to question your culture's so called exceptionalism( If you are blue you think your culture is the best)
• Start to notice that the hierarchy of your civilization is repressive and how it hurts other people, especially minorities. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the people who are being hurt by the hierarchy of your civilization's caste system
• Notice that is more fun being independent that being reliant on a culture or a set of beliefs or traditions.
• Start to read self-help books about success.
• Stop being an anal rule keeper. Relax your rules.
• Develop a thirst for personal success.
• Start to have a desire to climb the hierarchy. To get to the top. Strive to be the best at something.
• Notice that separation of church and state is a good thing. Notice that secularism is a good thing. You wouldn't want to live in a theocracy.
• Start to study history and start to study the abuses and excesses of stage blue nations throughout history. (Study the Nazis, study Hitler, Study Soviet Russia, Communism, Stalin, study the crusades, study the Spanish conquistadors) Start to see the enslavement of other races that have happened throughout history.
• Read and research for yourself. Develop a student mindset where you are eager to learn about anything. Read multiple perspectives. ( The problem with blue is that it surrounds itself only with other stage blue individuals and it lives in this bubble of stage blue perspectives, thus living inside an echo chamber and this way it cannot fathom the existence of other perspectives.
• Go to a diverse university so you get exposed to new perspectives and cultures.
• Start to study science
• Practice radical open mindedness.
• Notice that reality is much more complex and nuanced rather than black and white.
• Embrace your feminine side more
• Acknowledge that humans are not superior to animals
• Acknowledge that men are not superior to women
• Acknowledge that whites are not superior to any other minority
• And finally the master key for transcending any stage, especially stage blue, is to practice contemplation and self-reflection.
• Reflect on your own behavior and analyze where you are making mistakes.

[Daniel Balan]

I've spent the last two evenings to take notes from @Leo Gura's stage blue video. No AI. I paused and manually wrote on my commonplace book all the important aspects of stage blue. Hope it helps someone. Cheers!