clash of spiral dynamics stages - interesting experience today

[Michael569]

Though I would share a fun experience I had this morning. Walking along a shopping mall on my way to work, I saw an advert on over-the-counter Viagra with one of those "no more prescription required!" slogans. 

• My first reaction was: "well, that's a bit inappropriate" (blue). 
• Second reaction: these ED people...its all their fault if they just stopped stuffing themselves with crap, their penises wouldn't be clogged up with atherosclerosis. (orange)
• Third reaction: perhaps these people don't know any better, nobody told them so they just do what they can to bring more happiness into their lives and lives of their partners...these pour souls need to be shown a better way (green) 

Showed me that there is still some residue of blue hanging around but it was quickly stepped on by clash of orange and green. Been noticing similar reactions in different situations lately. 

[Leo Gura]

Turquoise: "Ha! Infinity on full display. Could not be otherwise. Amazing!"

[Michael569]

@Leo Gura what would be the yellow's reaction then?  

[Leo Gura]

@Michael569 Your entire opening post

[Samra]

Interesting way of breaking down your though process! I think it can be read this way as well: 

1. Automatic Reaction : this is your fundamental hard wired system of beliefs learned from childhood and youth. It's automatic, stored like a computer ( ex. Driving without needing to pay attention fully) It's the fastest reaction speed of your brain  ( human X 20) ( stage blue is close to logic)

2. Your chimp mind reaction. this is your emotional reaction. (Human speed X 5)  in development psychology, stage red is gut oriented. Stage orange is flexible. Chimp works with emotions and is super strong, and is always on survival mode.

3. Your human reaction . This is were finally your human side of brain gets a chance to speak. It's your frontal cortex ( I think)  catching up. The more you become present and meditate, the stronger it gets. But you can't completely get rid of chimp side. You can rewrite the computer however. Also , stage green is heart and emotion driven.

Stage yellow is logic driven. Maybe stage turquoise is a lot more holistic of all parts of logic, heart and gut. Not sure.

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Samra

[Zweistein]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Michael569 Your entire opening post

Do you guys realize how far we have come? Thank you, Leo!

[Michael569]

@Samra well written and yes I quite agree with your post! Oh boy, the chip mind is so strong, so so strong and constantly making sure it is not threatened. Sometimes it feels like for every single bit of orange peeled-off, two more grow back  Seeing this with a lot of ego backlash on meditation, healthy/unhealthy eating and spontaneous victim thinking sometimes. 

Good breakdown, thanks for the input!

 

 

[Elisabeth]

1 hour ago, Samra said:

Stage yellow is logic driven. Maybe stage turquoise is a lot more holistic of all parts of logic, heart and gut. Not sure.

This is probably a misunderstanding. 

@Leo Gura I'm still a bit confused on the stages and their interrelating in the individual.

It seems from your initial video as though orange is mostly defined by individualistic values. Then green is mostly defined by emotional development, by expanding your empathy beyond your immediate group. Yet yellow is mostly defined by intellectual capacities to think everything through in a systemic manner. 

If it were so, the classification pretty much makes no sense. What I see around me is, that many people who are quite orange in their actions/value orientation in life have no problem at all grasping yellow type of thinking. Of course, my friends are a bit of an intellectual bubble.

Even people who are somewhat blue in their values like adhering to religion and morality can be excellent thinkers and strategs. 

Also, if yellow was mainly about philosophy, stupid people would have no chance reaching yellow. And that seems like a false implication to me, as a person can be weak in the abstraction land yet rather self-aware and integrated at the same time. 

Also, the link between individual development and cultural development pointed out in spiral dynamics seems rather weak. It's unclear to me how people from green or yellow families ever go through full-blown orange. Also, "blue" religious people often have much more concerns for the world at large than "orange" businessman. And, it's equally unclear how people thousands of years ago who were born to mostly blue societies could go through orange and green to reach tier two and get enlightened, when those value-systems were non-existent culturally speaking. 

Do I make sense? Will you speak more about how the metrics is actually build on the green and yellow videos? Or maybe you've already finished them... Do you consider one more QA clarification video after the series is all out? Will you clarify the individual/culture link a bit? Thanks a lot.

Edited June 28, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Samra]

@Elisabeth why do you think yellow driven by logic mainly is a misunderstanding? You are saying the same thing in your own post : "Yet yellow is mostly defined by intellectual capacities to think everything through in a systemic manner. " 

[Elisabeth]

7 minutes ago, Samra said:

@Elisabeth why do you think yellow driven by logic mainly is a misunderstanding? You are saying the same thing in your own post : "Yet yellow is mostly defined by intellectual capacities to think everything through in a systemic manner. " 

Yes, I say it because I got kind of the same impression from Leo's first video on spiral dynamics. 

But, this must be a limited view. A person isn't really yellow unless they have integrated green, and green is all about emotions. That means a yellow person is already very familiar and in tune with their own emotions. There must already be a synthesis (or transcendence off) both rationality and emotionality. (Also, Leo is all about going "post-rational" and understanding how "logic" is just a human way to make meaning). All in all, a person does not go back to be "driven by logic" after they've already become intimatelly familiar with their emotional and spiritual side. 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Samra]

@Elisabeth  I think we are almost saying the same thing. Being logical after stage green is a world apart from being logical in stage blue. Same as being in heart in stage purple is a world apart from being in heart in stage green. "Pendulum". In stage yellow, you have mastered most of your emotions, therefore you can go back to mind from heart ( don't take that too literal). I say logic/mind , heart/emotion , gut, just to make distinctions. It's obviously more complicated than that.

Edited June 28, 2018 by Samra

[ValiantSalvatore]

@Elisabeth I can tell you what I know from the audiobooks I listend to . This can offer some clarifications, the more I look into it the more complicated it get's. Anyway, here is what I want to explain.

Yellow here has been split into teal and turquoise they sometimes differentiate that into two distinct stages. So, each of these lines can be developed by training them individually, yet you can't go over your overall development in the cognitive line. Wilber called this line in the Audibook cosmic consciousness the straight iq, knowledge, book reading line of development. Since, the interviewer asked. So, you can never reach a higher stage on a different level .. than your cognitive line since that is that what you are aware of . He mentioned that some of the lines correlate for instance the cognitive line with the moral line, that most moral people are intelligent or even highly intelligent. But you can never have a person who is morally higher developed on these stages than his cognitive line. But , you can have people who are high on the cognitive line and low morally, like Nazi scientists. 

He mentions, that most people who went to university develop their yellow thinking their, since it is more process and systems oriented especially when you study smth. that includes systems like cs or engineering or other stuff pretty much anything nowadays imo..

So, the cognitive line is the most importnat as far as I remember... , yet he mentions also others which are equally important (relative here..) like values, self-identity and cultural ? As far as I remember. Also, some lines can develop individually most likely imo. I do not know everything and can't remember everything, so I am also curious if a person who is not very high on the cognitive line can be morally highly developed or at least in other lines. But most likely everything is possible ? So, not every line is interdepent on others and other lines develop through training them individually. The theory can be picked a part in pieces like these lines here and each could most likely have their own video.

Sometimes I think that or even when I type this and ppl read it that you need a high iq for going yellow from what I read .. it accelerates it but the correlation was 0.4 for the self-identity line. When I contemplate about it from my own "emperical basis". I think ego development does the most work for other lines like values, self-identity ofc and needs also. And that the way how you are thinking changes when you reach the yellow cognitive line. 

Many intelligent people are orange or I would even dare to say the most. I am also curious how values and emotions can be distinguished or if they develop somehow convergingly, that's how it feels partly for me. I would say I am orange / green emotionally and values I am not making a judgement. So, a green cognitive development would be able to see that things are relative and related to the specific thing it relates to. Orange cognitive development would be able to strategize and think through things logically with a neutral facade. But these are my own examples Piaget has most likely better examples and research behind it. ( Did not look it up) 

An example for a yellow line that I can remember of is the sexual line or even just the integral.. that you are able to integrate both feminine and masculine aspects of oneself even when one of the two is dominant or not or you have a neutral core. 

Edited June 29, 2018 by ValiantSalvatore

[Elisabeth]

1 hour ago, Samra said:

@Elisabeth  I think we are almost saying the same thing. Being logical after stage green is a world apart from being logical in stage blue.

No problem. I'm still a little confused about the metrics spiral dynamics uses to judge progress, since it treats so many axes simultaneously. I actually wasn't personal with qouting you, I just used it as one of many examples of the misunderstanding I see when talking about stages green vs. yellow. 

[Elisabeth]

4 minutes ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

 the interviewer asked. So, you can never reach a higher stage on a different level .. than your cognitive line since that is that what you are aware of . He mentioned that some of the lines correlate for instance the cognitive line with the moral line, that most moral people are intelligent or even highly intelligent. But you can never have a person who is morally higher developed on these stages than his cognitive line. But , you can have people who are high on the cognitive line and low morally, like Nazi scientists.

Hm.. hm. Thanks. It would be really weird (and not in line with my perception of people) if you couldn't be higher along other lines of development than the cognitive. Even the moral line, like there are people out there who are really kind and caring but not very well read. So maybe it's just a matter of how they test for it! It sure does get complicated. 

[ValiantSalvatore]

Some are related and some not. I can relate that there are very kind and emotionally affective people but sometimes their values are just fucked and they get very angry when their beliefs are hurt. Kinestetic or sexual is the best line to see that everything does not need to depend on the cognitive line imo

[Leo Gura]

8 hours ago, Elisabeth said:

If it were so, the classification pretty much makes no sense. What I see around me is, that many people who are quite orange in their actions/value orientation in life have no problem at all grasping yellow type of thinking. Of course, my friends are a bit of an intellectual bubble.

No, it actually makes perfect sense. Each next stage oscillates between individualistic vs collective ego. It swings like a pendulum, but the entire pendulum is always moving upward, hence it's called a Spiral!

"Spiral" means: you're always retracing your path, but also moving upwards.

Orange will often find it easier to resonant with and to understand Yellow, than Green. Because someone stuck in individualistic ego finds it challenging and uncomfortable to swing back to collective ego, and vice versa.

Orange's harsh judgment of Green makes it very difficult for Orange to integrate Green.

Also, the stages do not replace one another, but build on top of one another. Green includes Orange in it. Yellow includes Green and Orange, etc.

[White]

@Leo Gura orange can't integrate green. It has to develop it. But I get what you're saying. Orange shadow will inhibit transcendence into green non dual states.  But they are only states. Non dual states are not the stage themselves, they only give insights into the structure above. That's why Wilber refers to Non dual states as "peek" experiences (as in they give you a "peek" into the next structure). It's true that green like every stage is a existing structure already carved out in the collective we space and stored in the collective psychic storage bin of humanity, but there is work to be done and that work is understanding your own stages shadow (that's where integration comes in!) and then understanding your own stages limitations/ contradictions. Healthy green should study spiral dynamics and other models, but it should also study yellow guys like Jurgen Habermas and Ken Wilber. Trying to understand Habermas when you're at blue or orange is not a complete waste of time, but coming back to it when at healthy green you're going to interpret it differently.  And this is the case for all stages and their wisdom.

Edited June 28, 2018 by White

[dynamics]

 

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

No, it actually makes perfect sense. Each next stage oscillates between individualistic vs collective ego. It swings like a pendulum, but the entire pendulum is always moving upward, hence it's called a Spiral!

"Spiral" means: you're always retracing your path, but also moving upwards.

Orange will often find it easier to resonant with and to understand Yellow, than Green. Because someone stuck in individualistic ego finds it challenging and uncomfortable to swing back to collective ego, and vice versa.

Orange's harsh judgment of Green makes it very difficult for Orange to integrate Green.

Also, the stages do not replace one another, but build on top of one another. Green includes Orange in it. Yellow includes Green and Orange, etc.

@Leo Gura Thanks fo that. But Im still confuse about what change in intellectual capacities between orange and yellow. I guess, at yellow, the fact that you can integrate emotions in your thinking will change the way you will interpret concepts. But again some orange folks are really good at systems thinking from a rationnal perspective. Could we say that some people are at yellow in cognitive/intellectual capacities and orange in self-identity and values ?

[Leo Gura]

@dynamics Yellow is aware of the entire Spiral for the first time.

Orange is not aware of itself. Yellow is.

Orange does not do true systems thinking. Orange manipulates systems, which is NOT systems thinking. Systems thinking is when you design systems to enhance the ENTIRE spiral, not just your stage. Orange only cares about Orange. Yellow cares about all the colors.

[dynamics]

@Leo Gura Interesting tought ! Thanks