Spiral Dynamics Stage Yellow Examples Mega-Thread

[petar8p]

Quote

@Leo Gura

Yellow is generally in favor of more social engineering, not less. Yellow just wants to do it in an integral, Spiral conscious way, using a systems theory approach.

All stages basically want to socially engineer society to fit their values. Yellow wants to socially engineer society to accomodate the entire Spiral, recognizing the value each stage offers and the need to help people grow through all stages up to Yellow.

Don Beck and his work trying to teach Spiral Dynamics to Israelis and Palestinians is the epitome of stage Yellow social engineering efforts. It's really eye opening to read about.

My work to integrate science, spirituality, and Western philosophy is also very Yellow.

 

Is this what you're talking about?

Edited September 17, 2018 by petar8p
Learned to use the forum better ;)

[PetarKa]

For those of you who've watched Doctor Who, I think you'll find him a Yellow thinker.

If you don't agree please tell me so we can discuss why.

[Dinesh Karki]

where Cal Newport fit in spiral Dynamic?

[PetarKa]

On 9/7/2018 at 4:52 PM, Revolutionary Think said:

Yellow with a small hint of Turquoise? 

  

Seems to me Green with several Yellow elements. Not Yellow with Turquoise. I say Green because this guy promotes a lot of equality and love ideals.

[PetarKa]

On 7/22/2018 at 3:25 AM, Brittany said:

Scandals that resulted in people moving from Orange to Yellow:

Julien Blanc

Julien is a RSD pick-up-artist who had a huge scandal. After his scandal, he released a great yellow/turquoise video below called "What is happiness?".

Michelle Phan

Again, another person had a scandal and became yellow. Michelle Phan quit youtube and went on the sage path for a while.

This is her last video on youtube- which was quite yellow and shows her journey towards truth.

Quote from her video: "It wasn't happiness I was looking for, it was the truth".

 

I've watched Julien's content and I can almost certainly say that he is green. If you see the progression in his content you'll probably find that he was Orange and that he is now reacting against Orange and displaying Green values. Most of his ideas about happiness are from spiritual books from Eckhart Tolle and other gurus. His spirituality is at the level of Green, not Turquoise. Also, Julien was (I don't know if he still is) a vegan.

I watched Michelle Phan's video and browsed her channel. This also seems like a strong reaction against Orange and a shift towards Green. Although she is not fully immersed in Green - her prime motive is her own happiness; there's no emphasis on loving and caring for others. Again, her spiritual pursuits are at the level of Green.

Neither of the videos present systemic thinking and and multi-perspectival thinkiing. Also, even though I don't quite understand Turquoise very well, from what I do understand about it, Julien doesn't embody such deep values. That's just Green thinking.

[Taylor04]

14 hours ago, PetarKa said:

I've watched Julien's content and I can almost certainly say that he is green. If you see the progression in his content you'll probably find that he was Orange and that he is now reacting against Orange and displaying Green values. Most of his ideas about happiness are from spiritual books from Eckhart Tolle and other gurus. His spirituality is at the level of Green, not Turquoise. Also, Julien was (I don't know if he still is) a vegan.

[...]

Neither of the videos present systemic thinking and and multi-perspectival thinkiing. Also, even though I don't quite understand Turquoise very well, from what I do understand about it, Julien doesn't embody such deep values. That's just Green thinking.

I'm inclined to agree, but Julien doesnt seem like the typical Green either. For one, he doesnt strike me as progressive left, which is the social manifestation stage Green resonates with. In the typical orange to green switch, people do stop chasing their own material wealth, but then they start craving self-congratulation in the form of "caring about society". I dont see that in Julien.

The dutch spiral dynamics site phrases Greens motto as "I sacrifice myself now to be accepted by the group”. This sounds very much like what Julien did before his crisis; he craved social validation on a massive scale, like a green. Then he snapped out of it and what he says now is more about work for the sake of engagement. Sounds yellow-ish.

My theory is that, while he probably displays a mix of the three, the transition from green to (some) yellow often goes through a retrogression via orange. Simply because our mostly green culture only knows two stages: green (the left) and non-green (the right). So when you disassociate with green, you assume you must be non-green, i.e. orange for a while, before you find out thats not you either and you refine into yellow. Thats why you may see orange.

Veg*anism seems like clear cut green, but many may only do it because green had a virtual monopoly on dietary folklore and they were convinced its healthy.

To be honest, I somewhat perceive his teaching as systemic. It's not traditional green "creationist" spirituality. And its only vaguely inspired by Tolle, who is green, but not overtly imo. For instance how we arrive at some condition by going in the seemingly opposite direction or how we get in state (if you 've seen his videos, you know what I am talking about) is something that sneaks up on us, we cant effort it. Not all spirituality is green. Not all high-achiever efforting is orange. Yellows do that too. To quote Julien "its not what you do, but where its coming from". Yellow does it for the right reasons. You say you see no systemic or multi-perspectival thinking in him. What would be some examples of this, if it were present? I find RSD quite multi-perspectival, as far as I interpret it, with their talk of nuanced truths (ie.not one sided) and often quite strong focus on both sides of an issue,such as understanding where feminists come from. RSD often sounds very diplomatic rather than classic orange. That would be yellow - its still "selfish" efforting, but for the right reasons (being engaged rather than material gains) and without so much willingness to step on others throats.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Taylor04

[Lelouch]

Pierre Grimes

I think this guy is legit at the edge of yellow in the direction of turquoise. He has a great understanding of enlightenment, Buddha, consciousness, meditation, hierarchies and so on, however, he lacks the embodiments of these concepts, he is very cerebral and left brained dominant. But at the same time, he is also very close at pushing yellow to its capacities. He was great friends with Alan Watts, which I think is also someone deserving of the yellow title given how non-judgemental Alan Watts. Pierre is also very meta unlike the other examples, you can notice this meta energy within the first 2 minutes of the video. I don't want to be a party pooper but a lot of the other examples are not really yellow imo. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manly Palmer Hall

Founder of the philosophical research society, giver of thousands of lectures, written 150 volumes of work, written The Secret Teachings of All Ages which popularized mythology, the occult, and other esoteric topics in America. The same as Pierre Grimes he knows about all kinds of topics and is able to combine them holistically, for example, he has lectured about intuition, tarot cards, astrology, drugs, mysticism, pineal gland, hermeticism, mythology, finance, language, enlightenment, and so on. He combines these topics beautifully. He is also very big picture oriented and genuinely concerned about the entirety of humanity. He some very interesting novel lectures about the chakra and the mind. And also some complex and nuanced lectures about what thinking is. I think Manly is significantly higher than Pierre Grimes since he also has some siddhis like a photographic memory. People say-- and you can confirm this yourself by watching a video lecture of him-- that when he spoke his eyes moved from left to right as if he was reading from his mind. I'll dare you to find him say "uuhhh" one single time in his lectures that are hours long!  Another interesting characteristic of Manly P. is this one: Clean content, concentrated information, which is very prominent in his lectures.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Lelouch

[Lelouch]

On 7/8/2018 at 0:57 PM, molosku said:

Random question not worthy of its own thread. 

I see the importance of not trying to rush or skip stages. I find evaluating myself as any color difficult, but I can say that I see the limitations of green quite brightly, even though I cant say I have transitioned "trough" it as a "phase". 

I deeply resonate with the idea of "seeing reality as it is, not as I think it is", which could be one way to summarize yellow in one sentence. I have some green ideals, but I'm not passionate about them in a way that would make me join a protest or an activist group. 

How to succesfully transition stages without building an identity out of the ideas and perspectives of that particular stage first, just to see the limitations of that stage and start deconstructing that identity? Am I already stage yellow but confused? Do I have to become and SJW just to see that it does not make me happy or change the world?

As a contribution: in my opinion the BEST documentary ever made. Very highly yellow. A must see for every self-actualizer. Consciousness, existence, humanity, the eco-system, highly different cultures and customs, world problems and the systems where those problem sprung out of, all displayed beautifully from a non-polarized perspective. As a film enthusiast I find this documentary pure art.

 

I actually have the same issue as you. I think this shows the limitation of the SD model when we take the individual point of view, I think SD works great from a macro perspective but lacks nuance from the micro perspective. 

[Leo Gura]

@Taylor04 Green is not truly integral. Green's mixing of East and West is shallow and flaky.

[Andreas]

If anyone of you played the game ‘Detroit: become human’ i think Connor is the perfect example.

[Taylor04]

Interesting observation: In the movie The Matrix, the matrix font is which color? Green. And the sequel says that this is the sixth iteration of the matrix. Seems to me like an analogy for spiral dynamics.

[Cudin]

I am coming to the conclusion that almost no one really get the SD model. There is a facebook Integral SD group where some dudes claim to be Turquoise (some even Coral) that are flatearthers, pro-trump, libertarians.

That showed me the danger of tier-1 vMemes deluding theirselves to think they are second tier. Of course, there is a specific warning about this in Beck / Cowan's work, but it's kinda scary to see how far it might go.

Egos doing ego stuff...

Do you guys honestly think that there might be a tier-2 person that is Libertarian, for instance?

[Taylor04]

4 hours ago, Cudin said:

Do you guys honestly think that there might be a tier-2 person that is Libertarian, for instance?

See my two long posts on page 14 of this thread. A tier 2 person is more likely to be a market liberal than not. Economically literate non-statism is the political manifestation of stage yellow. The emergent thinking structures employed by market liberals are precisely what SD describes about yellow. Promlem is, that people don't comprehend emergent thinking until they posess it, so greens are not aware of anything beyond green. They mistake yellow (libertarianism) for a flavor of orange, since it looks a lot like it if you are blind to emergent processes. They project their green pre-emergent thinking structures into the later stages, thinking that yellow is some sort of hyper-green continuation of left-wing beliefs about ecology and socialism. If that were the case, why is it so hard for greens to get there?

[Forestluv]

On 9/8/2018 at 11:59 AM, Sockrattes said:

@Taylor04

I think you are right about most post here. Many of them are orange and green. Yes.

Less than 1% of the world's population is yellow-centered. I'd say less than 2% of the active forum members are Yellow-centered. Yet, a fair amount a green-centered with substantial yellow. (I consider myself green-centered and learning yellow). 

I'd say most active forum members are Orange-centered and there is substantial Blue. A lot of members live in Blue-centered countries.

Those centered in Tier 1 still see SD as a hierarchy of levels. The traditional views of hierarchies is that higher is better. This can lead to competition, debates and views of superiority and inferiority. I'm still Tier 1 centered and I need to be mindful that the mission of the forum is not to win debates against other SD levels. Rather, the mission is that the average conscious level of the forum is raised. 

Because there are so few Yellow-centered people, yellow-level videos are much rarer than Tier 1 level videos. And it's much easier for the forum to identify Blue, Orange and Green level videos. Notice how in those mega-threads there is generally a forum consensus on the consciousness level of Tier 1 videos. Yet, yellow is more difficult for us to identify because it is a stretch for us. That's why there is confusion on the mega-thread and discussion about whether the video is really at a yellow level.

[Cudin]

 I honestly think that it's quite deluded to think that stage yellow is libertarian. It is most likely free of most ideologies. Libertarianism is just too naive and doesn't recognize the spiral. Green people think it's orange precisely because it is. Of course, yellow people recognize that the free market capitalism is just one step on the evolution os mankind, but there will be a time that it will have mutate to a superior way of societal organization. The competition model of growth just becomes inefficient with time, and it also seems to be very naive regarding the fact that we live in a planet with limited resources, but our economic system demands infinite growth.

Even the recognition that the political game is pretty much useless - It's just an ego power game, doesn't come near libertarians. The true revolution can only happen from within each living being. True freedom has nothing to do with economical freedom. 

 

 

[Taylor04]

Well, appreciate your own uni-perspectivalness in this. What should we expect green to think about yellow? Memes (being analogies for genes) aim to preserve and spread themselves. So we can expect the green meme to put up any barrier it can to keep its members from properly understanding yellow and moving towards it. We can expect greens to not think very highly of yellow and even disregard it as something else. Also, being tier 1, we should expect greens to not understand the emergent argument of yellow, which is precisely what we find in the green mainstreams miscomprehension of market forces. Greens hate libertarianism, so they cant imagine that it is the manifestation of a higher stage. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to move up from green to yellow. (Much like orange minds cant imagine that the green stage is something they should go towards. I happen to think that while whole societies move through these stages, individuals cant move up much. The kids of highly green parents may become yellow. This is a multi-generational thing, we cant move up by meditating enough.)

The color yellow has even long been associated with libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. These color analogies work very well. Its very light, almost see-through, symbolizing laissez faire. And yellow looks orange if you are wearing green-tinted glasses. Green, being very dark (symbolizing its authoritarianism), would either not be able to see yellow at all because it is too light (green thinks yellow doesnt want to do stuff, like feeding the poor, that yellow employs emergent properties for, which green doesnt understand yet) or see it as orange. Trying to explain emergence to a green is like trying to explain "being on land" to a fish, it doesnt understand what being out of the water is because the assumption of water is so deep, it doesnt recognize it as an assumption.

The other view (by many on this forum, including the guru) is that yellow is essentially a more meditated version of green, fully compatible with all it's wacky tier 1 beliefs (that have a very bad historical track record of being right). Should we really expect a tier 1 meme to have it all figured out, and be right about the entire spiral? Hardly.

If you think libertarianism is naive and purely competitive, then you speak like someone who has only heard green caricatures of libertarianism. Maybe you should learn about it, rather than just discarding it from a green point of view. Libertarians have been saying their ideology isnt really about uncaring competition for ages. Cooperative effects through selfish intentions; the effect is emergent, therefore tier 1 is blind to it. Indeed, learning to understand systemic market forces is one of the best training grounds for accessing the yellow stage consciousness out there. Sadly, greens are rarely drawn to it, because their green thought leaders told them "thats all orange selfishness, nothing to see there".

While libertarianism is a step towards freedom of ideology, they're less attached to their beliefs than a tier 1 is to his beliefs, (the libertarians you'd see on TV are often too identified with ideology). But yellow is only a step in that direction. More growth in that direction happens in later stages (I assume). But first we have to be free and rich to afford that luxury. These stages follow societal need. Possibly free markets have to mutate to something superior at some point, but that doesnt take away from the need to move towards them now, as a transition stage. I'm not saying that yellow is perfect or that all of tier 2 will be overtly free market. But most green beliefs have to go away as humanity moves to tier 2. Later stages will likely be more free of ideology, but we cant afford that yet in a world full of backwards reactionaries. Yellow is not there yet. (It is the beige of tier 2, a initiation phase.)

Libertarians do not propose a "competition model of growth", they propose a cooperative model, but the effect is emergent and therefore not understood by tier 1. Resources are limited, but not finite. That they should be finite is a green superstition that higher stages do away with. All empirical evidence suggests that resources are replenishable, which is why green predictions of an end to growth keep being refuted by history over and over again. High growth until everyone on earth is rich enough is easily possible. (Unless greens succeed at keeping us poor.)

The recognition that the political game is just an ego power game is widely had in ancap circles, and most dont care about R vs. D. You are just more likely to see the few who do care on TV. And true freedom absolutely depends on economic freedom. We only have time to meditate if we are rich. We only have social progress, like tolerance of gays, as an emergent side-effect of economic progress. Activists follow progress, not the other way around. Greens can only worry about the environment because orange made them rich enough to afford the luxury. Environmental protection is a form of capital consumption that depends on economic productivity. It happens naturally as society gets rich,  o environmental statism needed. (Yes, by slowing down growth, environmentalists are harming the environment.) How come places like China always get these green ideas as they implement markets and move out of poverty? Must just be a coincidence!

[Taylor04]

11 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

Less than 1% of the world's population is yellow-centered. I'd say less than 2% of the active forum members are Yellow-centered. Yet, a fair amount a green-centered with substantial yellow. (I consider myself green-centered and learning yellow). 

I'd say most active forum members are Orange-centered and there is substantial Blue. A lot of members live in Blue-centered countries.

 

These are old numbers. Yellow is 5% or even close to 10% by now, as Ken Wilber said. Although on this forum most people are orange-green. Green is the dominant cultural meme of our day, with at least 70% of the power. Although greens, wearing green-tinted glasses, dont see the green around them, and think the blue and orange residuals are more powerful than they are.

[Cudin]

@Taylor04 well, keep repeating that mantra. I wish you good luck. 

[Alex4]

On 21/9/2018 at 9:48 PM, Serotoninluv said:

Less than 1% of the world's population is yellow-centered. I'd say less than 2% of the active forum members are Yellow-centered. Yet, a fair amount a green-centered with substantial yellow. (I consider myself green-centered and learning yellow). 

I'd say most active forum members are Orange-centered and there is substantial Blue. A lot of members live in Blue-centered countries.

Those centered in Tier 1 still see SD as a hierarchy of levels. The traditional views of hierarchies is that higher is better. This can lead to competition, debates and views of superiority and inferiority. I'm still Tier 1 centered and I need to be mindful that the mission of the forum is not to win debates against other SD levels. Rather, the mission is that the average conscious level of the forum is raised. 

Because there are so few Yellow-centered people, yellow-level videos are much rarer than Tier 1 level videos. And it's much easier for the forum to identify Blue, Orange and Green level videos. Notice how in those mega-threads there is generally a forum consensus on the consciousness level of Tier 1 videos. Yet, yellow is more difficult for us to identify because it is a stretch for us. That's why there is confusion on the mega-thread and discussion about whether the video is really at a yellow level.

I think people from this forum is mostly yellow, I can not imagine an Orange person listening Leo's videos every week. I think must of us here are Yellow with Orange and Green influence.

[Alex4]

 

13 year old and yellow