The Clare Graves Model is the Most Manipulative Thing I've Ever Heard Of

[Sea]

For all the criticizing of religious people in yesterday's video, I honestly don't know what's more manipulative: modern forms of religion or the Clare Graves model. Religion is very manipulative to children to the point of even being abusive in its indoctrination. But try talking about heaven and hell to a non-religious adult and see how much they care. At least hell is not something people are biologically programmed to be afraid of, social disapproval is. Even with only Leo teaching this model, he's a very strong authority figure for many of his followers. I used to give Leo a lot more credence before, and I found it almost impossible to disbelieve anything he said. And if knowledge of this model spread and more public figures began to talk about it, they could essentially bully millions of people into adopting whatever worldview they decided corresponded to the color at top of the hierarchy.

My biggest problem with this is Leo didn't even provide any evidence to back up his claim that this hierarchy is based on a one-way natural psychological progression (that people don't go backwards). I guess Leo's big argument for why this model should be followed is that you would go through it anyway if you lived long enough, and only some people progress fast enough naturally to reach the higher levels in their lifetime. However, the fact people never regress on the hierarchy presented in this model seem like a very questionable claim to me that contradicts personal experience. In my opinion, Leo shouldn't even begin talking about how to use the model until he has presented strong scientific evidence to back up his claim.

The internet shows us the wide variety of different worldviews and life paths people take. If you give me any two worldviews I can guarantee you I'll be able to find a blog or an article written by someone who converted between them, in either direction. I've read some really surprising religious conversion stories. And if we take politics it only gets easier as people are generally more flexible in their political views than in their religious ones. Buddhists converting to Christianity, Christians converting to Islam, staunch conservatives becoming communists, it's all there. I have close family members who according to this model, have "regressed" over time. I have personally taken both small steps forward and small steps back in different areas of my worldview. I changed my mind on certain things, then changed back years later. And lo and behold, I checked the wikipedia (people will say it's unreliable but imo it's going to be more reliable than biased new age sources) article for Clare Graves and found this:

"Graves' work observes that the emergence within humans of new bio-psycho-social systems in response to the interplay of external conditions with neurology follows a hierarchy in several dimensions, though without guarantees as to time lines or even direction: both progression and regression are possibilities in his model. Furthermore, each level in the hierarchy alternates as the human is either trying to make the environment adapt to the self, or the human is adapting the self to the existential conditions. He called these 'express self' and 'deny self' systems, and the swing between them is the cyclic aspect of his theory. Graves saw this process of stable plateaus interspersed with change intervals as never ending, up to the limits of the brain of Homo sapiens, something he viewed as far greater than we have yet imagined."

The part about not being able to guarantee direction confirmed my hunch of course. But the entire paragraph gives a different perspective on the model than Leo has presented. Without this one fact, what other reason is there to following the Clare Graves model than feeling like you're a good "personal development", "spiritual" or "progressive" person? And whenever you're doing something to be an X person, you're really doing it to fit in and gain the social approval of a certain group. This ties in to my first paragraph.

I feel like mindset and worldview should evolve organically and authentically. They should change as a result of finding new information or new perspectives, and changing your current worldview to account for them. Changing your worldview or life mindset according to some model requires a leap of faith strangely similar to what's seen in religion actually, someone else knows what's best for you. 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Sea

[Colin]

15 minutes ago, Sea said:

I guess Leo's big argument for why this model should be followed is that you would go through it anyway if you lived long enough

RIght off the bat, this is incorrect. He said that most "blue" people will remain blue until the day they die.

[Colin]

19 minutes ago, Sea said:

I feel like mindset and worldview should evolve organically and authentically. They should change as a result of finding new information or new perspectives, and changing your current worldview to account for them.

This is literally almost exactly what he said about changing from one "stage" to another stage.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Colin

[Sea]

7 minutes ago, Colin said:

RIght off the bat, this is incorrect. He said that most "blue" people will remain blue until the day they die.

Yes I know that, in the next sentence I said only some people will reach the higher levels in their lifetime. By "long enough" I meant like a superhuman lifetime, possibly hundreds of years.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Sea

[Colin]

@Sea I recently had the thought that there are no true masters in this world. That one would have to live to be like 300, in good health, and use that time wisely to be a "true" master. What do you think of this idea?

Edited June 18, 2018 by Colin

[Colin]

1 minute ago, Sea said:

@Colin I don't know if the masters alive at the moment are "true" or not but living for a long time would certainly give one a very objective, big picture perspective. There would be nothing akin to experiencing first hand several huge societal shifts. At best, people have only lived through one major revolution. Of course, the benefits of meditating and contemplating for hundreds of years would also come into play.

meh

[Leo Gura]

@Sea A stage Yellow person is never going to revert back to stage Blue. It's sort of like leaving a cult. Once you are conscious enough, re-joining a cult cannot work on you. For example, there is no way that Albert Einstein or Barrack Obama could become an ISIS Jihadist (unless maybe his brain is damaged). It would never happen because he's too conscious for that.

You're not going to see a stage Orange society revert back to stage Red. America is never going to become a theocracy like Saudi Arabia, for example.

Etc.

Temporary regression is possible in the sense that one may still not be stabilized at one's level. For example, America leaned Green with electing Obama, and then regressed back down to Blue/Orange with electing Trump. But this was not a change in America's level of development, it was just a difference of expression. America is evolving up the Spiral. America is not going to be Blue in 100 years as much as it will be Green. So to say that there is no directionality would be very misleading. There will never be a time when slavery and Jim Crow laws get re-instated. That ship has long sailed for Americans.

When you are angry/fearful, you will express lower stages than when you are joyful and confident. So there's that additional wrinkle. For example, if America experiences a new great depression, or a nuclear attack, then the population will be angry and fearful, so they will skew more conservative, more Blue, more authoritarian.

BTW, Clare Graves' understanding of Spiral Dynamics was itself limited because he was not a nondual mystic. He didn't really understand the connection between Spiral Dynamics and Consciousness. My explanations of Spiral Dynamics are not just a parroting of someone else's theory, but my understanding of it, which is informed by my nondual experiences.

And very importantly, being at higher levels is not "good" or "better". Turquoise is no "better" than Red. At the highest levels of nonduality you will have unconditional acceptance for all stages, all "evils", all ignorance. You, as God, are EVERYTHING, with no better than, worse than, or lesser. A human is not better than an ape or a dinosaur or a pig.

Yes, Spiral Dynamics can easily be abused, like any model. As far as models go, Spiral Dynamics is a very complex and nuanced one, with lots of subtlety, which can easily be misapplied unless you study it very closely. There is a tendency to oversimplify Spiral Dynamics. To apply Spiral Dynamics properly you need to be a solid stage Yellow. Lower stages will tend to misapply it.

Is Spiral Dynamics limited? Of course.

Is Spiral Dynamics the Absolute Truth? Of course not.

Is Spiral Dynamics helpful for growing yourself and your society? Very much so, if you apply it carefully.

Can Spiral Dynamics be abused to justify all sorts of judgments and evils? Of course.

[TomDashingPornstar]

Wouldn't Trump be at least  yellow because he's actually run a massive organization of people before? You know, systems thinking.  I thought all of the people at the G20 summit, etc, are coral, which is after turquoise.

I listened to a podcast once that says Coral is when you are able to manipulate the environment so you don't have to change.  Meanwhile, everyone else must adapt, migrate, control what they can, or die.  The environment will change you, if you don't control it.

Edited June 20, 2018 by TomDashingPornstar

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, TomDashingPornstar said:

Wouldn't Trump be at least  yellow because he's actually run a massive organization of people before?

No!

Lol

Hitler, Bin Laden, al Baghdadi, Atilla the Hun, and Caligula also ran massive organizations. That is NOT systems thinking.

[tsuki]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There will never be a time when slavery and Jim Crow laws get re-instated. That ship has long sailed for Americans.

Are you sure about that? Can't same actions come about through different reasons?

[Leo Gura]

8 minutes ago, tsuki said:

Are you sure about that? Can't same actions come about through different reasons?

It's a function of consciousness. If collective consciousness is high enough, it will not happen.

There is too much stage Green in America to allow for that. So unless you kill off all those Green people, it won't happen. Green would riot in the streets. We are already seeing a huge backlash from Green against Trumpism, and Trump hasn't done anything even close to that.

Even the most conservative Republicans do not want slavery back. Because they are too evolved for that. But 200 years ago, it could have happened. That's how much collective consciousness has grown.

[tsuki]

@Leo Gura So, are you saying that no reason whatsoever would necessitate slavery to a person in a green stage?
What if a green person recognizes generalized idea of slavery within, let's say, capitalism?
Or that generalization would also be unfathomable to a green person?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, tsuki said:

@Leo Gura So, are you saying that no reason whatsoever would necessitate slavery to a person in a green stage?
What if a green person recognizes generalized idea of slavery within, let's say, capitalism?
Or that generalization would also be unfathomable to a green person?

Green's top value is equality, civil rights, and breaking down hierarchies. So slavery seems antithetical to that.

Green is very critical of the wage slavery of capitalism. Although real slavery is much much less conscious than the "slavery" of capitalism. To call capitalism "slavery" does a disservice real slaves.

Imagine someone like Bernie Sanders. He's not going to enslave anyone, even if he's given absolute power. But he will tax the rich to level the playing field. Which is why Blue & Orange hates him.