Dancing with Green

[Nexeternity]

Hi guys!

I work with some amazing green guys.  They are loving, caring, empathetic, just all around great dudes.

Only one problem.  They get crazy aggressive with orange, blue, and red.

They think the US government and military should all die.  They are happy when soldiers die in Iraq and come back with PTSD.

They think the right wing in their country should all be killed,

Obviously murderers and pedophiles, should be shot on the spot.  No mercy, no sympathy, no compassion.

They are terribly resentful towards the rich.

 

Sometimes I try to sneak in my perspective, that people do the best they can with their level of conciousness, that violence will never be a solution, that "bad" people can grow and change and that love can help with that.  That in a certain sense people cant help how they act and everything is as it should be.  That hatred and violence always back fires and hurts you.  That these "bad" people dont live happy lives, that they suffer tremendously from their evil so it would be better to see them with pity rather than anger or hatred.

 

They mostly think I am justifying or legitimizing "evil" ...

I mostly stay quiet, sometimes I make a comment but kinda scary to face the reactions.

Not sure exactly what to do, I know staying totally quiet is not authentic, but neither is talking too much.

Trying to find the balance.

 

[Leo Gura]

A very common problem for Green. Green becomes so self-righteous it's unable to see the absolute necessity of all the lower stages.

Best solution would be to hand Green a gift of a Spiral Dynamics book. Just reading the book can be enough to awaken Green into Yellow. Or at least early stages of Yellow.

Those people have failed to fully integrate Blue and Orange. They sorta skiped over it to arrive at Green faster, but it's a flimsy and dysfunctional Green now for that reason.

[Nexeternity]

@Leo Gura haha thanks!  i will try that... not sure they will take 

[dynamics]

@Leo Gura About the hate toward governement, military and ect., is it a manifestation of red ? It's looks like they put the green values as their god, the only true god. They react as some blue could react in front of someone telling that the bible is not true, except that in their case the bible is the green values. It's look like the content is green but the container is blue with a touch of red. 

I guess that's what you mean by they dont have fully integrated blue and orange. 

[Leo Gura]

@dynamics No, hate can exist at any stage.

[JustinS]

Haha orange is a reaction to blue, green is a reaction to orange and yellow is a reaction to Green, well not a reaction for yellow but a understanding and "seeing" that the stages lower are necessary steps. I can understand, I've had some pretty radical green friends and have moved on. It's interesting when a radical green takes a psychedelic and experiences turquoise and comes back to its ego, the radicalness becomes more intense. 

Are they into nonduality? I think nonduality leans towards yellow.

[whatishappeningtome]

Thank you everyone for sharing and talking about these ideas. I love that the spiral dynamics model has accounted for the necessity of INTEGRATION of each stage before properly moving to the next. As Leo just posted in another thread, the fastest way to grow Orange is to attempt to run a business. I am so grateful that I have began to move into Green only now, after I have exhausted orange to its limit while working on my business.

If we do not integrate orange, we would likely demonise 30% of the worlds population. Just like our green culture does today. 

[Nexeternity]

@JustinS   Nope, die hard atheists, rationalist, materialists.  They think spirituality, shamanism, meditation retreats is a "hippy" wastes of time.  

They think psyheledics just give you a nifty experience in your "brain".  They think shamans are just manipulative people out for the money.

They think regular self help is that way too, people manipualting you to take your money.

When I speak of non duality and the illusion of self and ego they can kind of accept the illusiory nature of life and reality but they dont really get how investigating that can "change things in the real world"

When I get existential on them they pretty much brush it off as pointless chatter... one time one of them said life just is, and the point of it is to be happy., well that was pretty spot on heh.

Its strange... they are all artists so they are in touch with their muse... but they just think that intuition, intelligence, and creativity are just functions of the brain and its evolution.

[Zweistein]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@dynamics No, hate can exist at any stage.

@Leo Gura Does hate exist in an enlightened stage also? ;-)

(Yeah yeah, I'm back at moralizing in green, lol. I will go and do dishes now...)

Edited June 29, 2018 by Zweistein

[JustinS]

@Nexeternity Hmm maybe the best thing to do is to just focus on you and see how things eventually plays out 

Best wishes. 

[Dovahkiin]

@Leo Gura @Nexeternity This seems like a prime example of 1) how people almost always straddle multiples stages and 2) how the model breaks down when we try to assign particular opinions / political stances (as opposed to generalized ways of thinking) to certain stages. 

 

Green is defined by belief in equality and wide-reaching compassion. Leo, you’ve used this as a justification (which I agree with) for dispelling the fear that SJWs pose some kind of threat as collectivist thinkers. You’ve pointed out that the Soviet Union and previous iterations or communism have been blue, not green, and that your typical SJW is not the threat orange projects onto them. All true. Your typical green nowadays isn’t anything like collectivist ideologies of the past, and orange shouldn’t be so fearful.

 

These people, however, are literally calling for the death of significant portions of the population. They furthermore reject ideas of spirituality and are nearly full-blown materialists, rationalists and pragmatists, per Nexeternity’s follow-up post. This is not just green with a few kinks!

 

I think the problem goes back to your depiction of blue through the very narrow lens of how blue has manifested in America, the religious right, the Bible Belt, etc. By defining blue this way and then listing off hundreds of groups/opinions that define orange and green (I assume this is what you’ll do for Green), you ignore the possibility of blue consciousness latching onto one of these groups/opinions, which I’m convinced happens in the modern world, where people are exposed to all kinds of ideas left and right.

 

You admit that there can be orange self-help or green self-help or yellow-self help. This can’t be maintained without allowing for this type of nuance applying to the other categories you list, such as progressive ideals. The boxing in of so many groups and opinions into just one color isn’t tenable.

One of the subtler elements of the SD model is important here: the fact that the ego of any stage likes to fancy itself as being two stages above where it is. You alluded to this in your first SD video, and indeed, in 1951 Carl Rogers coined the idea of an “actualising tendency,” or a bias toward one side of the spiral or the other. Don Beck ended up echoing the idea, and it seems to basically come down to a bias toward either agency or communion - the individual or the collective. People will lean more heavily to one side or the other, and as a result be more amenable to stages on the same side, hence the feuds between neighboring SD stages being the most intense, and hence these coworkers espousing some green, but doing it in a blue way and lashing out against much of orange (blue and green are both collectively biased, orange biased toward the individual).

 

When I watched your first video I felt myself really wanting to be yellow (I was orange). After all, isn’t yellow defined by knowing the model? I know the model now. If I’m yellow, that means I’ve evolved much further than most people! It means I’m awesome! Seeing this nonsense in myself, I can see parallels across stages:

 

Red: Hey, I’m really no worse than those wall steeet guys- just looking out for numero uno!

Blue: The absolute best values are fairness and equality. Now I know the truth. We need to squash all who are preventing equality.

Orange: I get spiral dynamics now! I’m second-tier! #Winning

Green: With my newfound appreciation of spirituality, openmindness and connection to my heart, I’m surely almost enlightened.

 

So, more relevantly to this discussion, blue can put on a green costume. One can adopt the ideals of progressivism while still lacking compassion for much of life. One can claim to want fairness and then create and follow a rigid, absolutist dogma of what fairness is. You aren’t seeing this because you defined blue in a narrower context than the other stages. The claim that someone can be green without integrating the prior stages hugely contradicts the fundamental principle you’ve taught- that people move in one direction up the spiral and pass through each stage, with each stage furthermore LEADING to the next, in the way dissatisfaction with materialism and a hurting heart unveil green.

 

This direct a criticism may have sounded arrogant but I’m willing to risk that to express what feels like an important problem clearly.

[Scholar]

36 minutes ago, Dovahkiin said:

@Leo Gura @Nexeternity This seems like a prime example of 1) how people almost always straddle multiples stages and 2) how the model breaks down when we try to assign particular opinions / political stances (as opposed to generalized ways of thinking) to certain stages. 

 

Green is defined by belief in equality and wide-reaching compassion. Leo, you’ve used this as a justification (which I agree with) for dispelling the fear that SJWs pose some kind of threat as collectivist thinkers. You’ve pointed out that the Soviet Union and previous iterations or communism have been blue, not green, and that your typical SJW is not the threat orange projects onto them. All true. Your typical green nowadays isn’t anything like collectivist ideologies of the past, and orange shouldn’t be so fearful.

 

These people, however, are literally calling for the death of significant portions of the population. They furthermore reject ideas of spirituality and are nearly full-blown materialists, rationalists and pragmatists, per Nexeternity’s follow-up post. This is not just green with a few kinks!

 

I think the problem goes back to your depiction of blue through the very narrow lens of how blue has manifested in America, the religious right, the Bible Belt, etc. By defining blue this way and then listing off hundreds of groups/opinions that define orange and green (I assume this is what you’ll do for Green), you ignore the possibility of blue consciousness latching onto one of these groups/opinions, which I’m convinced happens in the modern world, where people are exposed to all kinds of ideas left and right.

 

You admit that there can be orange self-help or green self-help or yellow-self help. This can’t be maintained without allowing for this type of nuance applying to the other categories you list, such as progressive ideals. The boxing in of so many groups and opinions into just one color isn’t tenable.

One of the subtler elements of the SD model is important here: the fact that the ego of any stage likes to fancy itself as being two stages above where it is. You alluded to this in your first SD video, and indeed, in 1951 Carl Rogers coined the idea of an “actualising tendency,” or a bias toward one side of the spiral or the other. Don Beck ended up echoing the idea, and it seems to basically come down to a bias toward either agency or communion - the individual or the collective. People will lean more heavily to one side or the other, and as a result be more amenable to stages on the same side, hence the feuds between neighboring SD stages being the most intense, and hence these coworkers espousing some green, but doing it in a blue way and lashing out against much of orange (blue and green are both collectively biased, orange biased toward the individual).

 

When I watched your first video I felt myself really wanting to be yellow (I was orange). After all, isn’t yellow defined by knowing the model? I know the model now. If I’m yellow, that means I’ve evolved much further than most people! It means I’m awesome! Seeing this nonsense in myself, I can see parallels across stages:

 

Red: Hey, I’m really no worse than those wall steeet guys- just looking out for numero uno!

Blue: The absolute best values are fairness and equality. Now I know the truth. We need to squash all who are preventing equality.

Orange: I get spiral dynamics now! I’m second-tier! #Winning

Green: With my newfound appreciation of spirituality, openmindness and connection to my heart, I’m surely almost enlightened.

 

So, more relevantly to this discussion, blue can put on a green costume. One can adopt the ideals of progressivism while still lacking compassion for much of life. One can claim to want fairness and then create and follow a rigid, absolutist dogma of what fairness is. You aren’t seeing this because you defined blue in a narrower context than the other stages. The claim that someone can be green without integrating the prior stages hugely contradicts the fundamental principle you’ve taught- that people move in one direction up the spiral and pass through each stage, with each stage furthermore LEADING to the next, in the way dissatisfaction with materialism and a hurting heart unveil green.

 

This direct a criticism may have sounded arrogant but I’m willing to risk that to express what feels like an important problem clearly.

Very well put! I have the feeling that far fewer people are green than one might actually assume. The question is, is it more likely that a blue person has compassion for a certain group (transgenders, animals, women) over an ideal of justice, or is it more likely that a green person lacks compassion for a certain group (oppressors, biggots etc.)? Compassion is not exclusive to stage green, but it is a defining factor. I think in most cases it would be the former that is more likely. We have to keep in mind that Spiral Dynamics is not a model of ideology but of consciousness development. A certain level of consciousness makes it more likely to adopt a certain ideology, not the other way around. Most people are against slavery, but does that mean they are all green? 

Everyone can have empathy and compassion for some groups. Lot's of people love puppies, and almost everyone loves their own family. Green is not simply that you learn to have compassion for a certain group, the defining consciousness of green is in my opinion more of something like having compassion for all beings, to simply sense that all beings have their own perspective, and maybe even to see how limited they all are in the ways they act. The deep consciousness of someone else's perspective reveals that they are the way they are because of circumstances, be it their personality or their environment. That is not simply an ideology that is being adopted, I think it is actually truth revealed through consciousness. When you become conscious of the nature of your perspective, which I think plays a big role in becoming green, you realize your own limitation, and thus everyone's limitation.

I don't think that a person of that level of consciousness would be likely to blame someone on anything. Most people I would call green are very compassionate even towards people that they would think commit evil acts.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Scholar

[Dovahkiin]

@Scholar Yeah, I think your point that ideologies may be more likely to arise from states of consciousness along the spiral, but that the reverse - an ideology implying a state of consciousness - is really apt and exactly what I’m trying to talk around. 

 

Way more likely a green person puts compassion for oppressed people over an ideal of justice than lacking compassion for certain groups.

 

I’m with you on green seeing all perspectives as valid, but seeing all perspectives as necessary or inevitable seems yellow. But then again, I’m with you on not defining someone’s level of consciousness based on one belief. Ultimately SD is infinitely dimensional like anything and categorizations are bound the fall short. Categorizations can be useful nonetheless though, I guess. 

[Nexeternity]

@Dovahkiin   Hey there!  I like your analysis.   Just need to add these guys are very green, they are the nicest people, and I dont think they would actually hurt anybody if it came down to it, but who knows.  They do love to vent out their anger and say preposterous things sometimes, but overall they dont act on this hate by hurting anyone.

Just needed to clear that up.  I never feel any threat of physical violence going down when I am around these people and I have alot of trust in them, they are good friends.   

Just the harsh comments pushed me to write these posts.

[Dovahkiin]

@Nexeternity got it, thanks for the clarification. I was just going off of the comments from your initial post of “think the right should die,” “are happy when soldiers die or get PTSD,” etc. It sounds like there’s more to these guys, and definitely sounds possible they are green in many ways. It just also sounded very possible they are using green values for blue and orange purposes, and I thought this was a good segue to contemplate something about SD in general: the problem with using an opinion to categorize a stage of consciousness, and the potential for prior stages to “hijack” the appearance of later stages.

 

Ultimately you know these guys, not me! More important to me are the larger, more generalized points.

 

Cheers!