Would Be Grateful for Help with Stage Yellow Confusion

[TreeJeff]

Good day all.  I'm legitimately curious about this since I'm trying to sort out a value or two, and not just attempting to cause a stir: 

It was my understanding that Stage Yellow is looking to embrace solving challenging problems without the expense of others.  If someone like our President (or any government entity for that matter) desires to improve the lives of others as maybe his or her life purpose, and he does so through government policy, at some point, wouldn't that be costly to others?  Sort of "Do this or else."  The characteristics of the people being forced (race, sexual orientation, wealth status, whatever) doesn't matter.  There is still an idea, his or her idea (facts), being implemented through force, even though maybe that idea supported the whole.  And even the idea of supporting the whole is relative.  It would seem to me that a Stage Yellow person would desire to teach the benefits of a concept and support the whole through voluntary interaction, rather than force it on people.  But, they would also understand that not everyone would agree with said idea, INCLUDING the umbrella idea I just mentioned of voluntary interaction rather than force.  Stage Yellow would accept that and take action accordingly, whatever that may be (like Leo's preventing Neo-Nazis from storming through Turquoise Town), to do their best to manifest themselves within that environment, while also keeping others in mind.  I assume I am just not getting it or maybe defining terms differently than the model intended. 

Where is my misunderstanding or confusion? 

I'd be grateful for any thoughts you may have.  Thank you!

Edited July 19, 2018 by TreeJeff
Sentence was not clear to the subject it referenced.

[DocHoliday]

Being at Stage Yellow necessitates having gone through stage green first. If one successfully went through green in a healthy way, he will have found out that what he wants for himself is actually also what other people want for themselves. Beyond that, yellow isn’t necessarily concerned that much with personal egoic desires but more so with what is the best and most appropriate decision to make in order to achieve the greatest benefit for the majority of people, or even all of the people. Also, there is no more black and white for yellow, so a “do this, or else..” mentality is nothing that yellow would ever consider or take on. Because everything starts to become more relative than absolute, finding the best solution to solve a problem might now even incorporate more than just one ultimate decision or law or regulation. It’s all more adapted to the individual case, and generalisation is avoided, if possible. 

[Leo Gura]

@TreeJeff You basically got it right.

The realities of real-world politics and government are extremely complex, messy, and difficult. When you go to apply Spiral Dynamics in the US political system, for example, all hell will break loose. All your lofty Yellow ideals will the tarred and feathered. You will be called a pedophile, a charlatan, and worse. And even if you succeed in getting elected President or Senator, or whatever, since you are not an absolute monarch, your power to change policy will be extremely limited because you have to work with all the other parties in power, who will not be at Yellow, and will look at you like a leper.

It doesn't matter what color stage you are at, or even if you are totally enlightened like the Buddha himself, if you were President of the US you would have to make incredibly painful choices that would involve the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people REGARDLESS of your choice! This would be true even for a fully enlightened Turquoise leader! This is the part about governance that laypeople do not understand: simply because of the scale of a country like the US -- 330 million people -- most decisions will result in deaths of tens, hundreds, or thousands. Just by deciding to remove regulations on car pollution, you will kill people. Just by deciding to fund an infrastructure program, you will kill people. And so on.

A Yellow leader understands all this. So does a Turquoise leader. Yellow and Turquoise leaders are mature enough to understand that their actions will result in many deaths, which is why they would take their job very seriously and work very hard to make the best decisions possible. They would also know that their decisions could save tens of thousands of lives relative to a Tier 1 leader.

Being Yellow, Turquoise, or enlightened does not mean you will be a flawless leader whose policies please everyone and hurt no one. People will get killed and hurt under the watch. They will even get killed and hurt by your highest ideals and most noble policy changes.

Those are the harsh reality of governance. Which is precisely why we need highly conscious leaders in power, not people like Trump, who's actions will result in harm to millions as he approaches policy in an ignorant, simple-minded, and narcissistic manner.

And BTW, the people will also hate you because they are at Blue, Orange, and Green, and you as Yellow will not satisfy their bloodthirsty tribal desires to attack the enemy color. So as Yellow, even if you succeed, at least 1/3rd of the country will think of you as a traitorous devil.

Still want to be leader?

[Xenomorf]

@TreeJeff Hello dude ! 

I encountered the same problem one day ( "looking to embrace solving challenging problems without the expense of others" ).

In my obsessiveness I wanted to create a dynamic principle that can guide me, also existing as a reference point when doing this sort of job while still keeping on track with the spiritual work I do.

I narrowed it down to what I wrote in my signature below 

Wish you the best

Edited July 20, 2018 by Xenomorf
better description

[TreeJeff]

@DocHoliday Thanks for the quick response!

12 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

If one successfully went through green in a healthy way, he will have found out that what he wants for himself is actually also what other people want for themselves.

Is this referring to the empathy formed in Green and sort of what could be considered fundamental needs/wants such as love, survival, and freedom of many stripes such as no fear of death?

12 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

Beyond that, yellow isn’t necessarily concerned that much with personal egoic desires but more so with what is the best and most appropriate decision to make in order to achieve the greatest benefit for the majority of people, or even all of the people.

It does seem like Yellow embodies some of this for sure, with a little Turquoise thrown in for good measure.  I guess one part of my confusion is:  How would I know what is best and most appropriate for a group of people?  Just do the best I can recognizing that, in all likelihood, I'll be incorrect to a degree?  It would seem that if I was incorrect for someone, and it was a situation where I was forcing everyone to comply, then that would be costing those that did not want to comply.

 

12 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

Also, there is no more black and white for yellow, so a “do this, or else..” mentality is nothing that yellow would ever consider or take on. Because everything starts to become more relative than absolute, finding the best solution to solve a problem might now even incorporate more than just one ultimate decision or law or regulation. It’s all more adapted to the individual case, and generalisation is avoided, if possible. 

I guess this is almost exactly what I am attempting to sort through.  If indeed Stage Yellow is against "Do this, or else," which is what a law is (an idea with violent action to back it up), and all perspectives are very much relative, in general government of any non-voluntary form over other people would be for those of Tier 1 stages where they want a requirement of force to either maintain a belief structure, collude with for gains, or save a tree for example.  Because some people (individual cases) within the borders of that governed region may not believe in the Westboro Baptist doctrine, be excellent hair stylists but not have the money for a license, or would love to save the tree but the firewood is the only heat source they can afford.  It would be an added cost to them all if forced to do those things.  Or am I way off?        

[TreeJeff]

@Xenomorf Thank you for your thoughts and best wishes.

It is a tough nut to crack indeed.  I like the conclusion you came to.  It is similar to my changing thoughts when thinking about moving to a higher stage in SD.  I may have found a dynamic principle, which is kind of what I'm attempting to flush out in this thread.  I'm certainly finding flexibility and understanding of different perspectives is creating fewer triggering events for me.    Thanks again.

[DocHoliday]

10 hours ago, TreeJeff said:

@DocHoliday Thanks for the quick response! No Problem.

Is this referring to the empathy formed in Green and sort of what could be considered fundamental needs/wants such as love, survival, and freedom of many stripes such as no fear of death? ||| Yes that's pretty much it. Survival is the mother of all competition and because orange was obsessed with competing and fighting to win (survive, subconsciously), it was too blind and self-obsessed to see that to win in any form of competitive envirnoment or mindset like making the most money in business, fucking the hottest women, having the most prestige and power in society and so on, is what everyone else was striving for as well, and of course as we know, once you had your own fair share of all of that stuff it's no longer exciting to you, so you try to help everybody else to achieve their desires too - not necessarily exclusively the ones listed above that were so stereotypical of orange, but any desires for that matter as green becomes more supportive and cooperative. Sure enough though, whatever one seeks to accomplish in life, all he ever searches for is fulfillment, happiness, independence and success (in overcoming himself repeatedly in order to self-actualise his full potential).

It does seem like Yellow embodies some of this for sure, with a little Turquoise thrown in for good measure.  I guess one part of my confusion is:  How would I know what is best and most appropriate for a group of people?  Just do the best I can recognizing that, in all likelihood, I'll be incorrect to a degree?  It would seem that if I was incorrect for someone, and it was a situation where I was forcing everyone to comply, then that would be costing those that did not want to comply. |||  Yes, as Leo pointed it out already, making decisions that kinda go above people's heads that may not perfectly go along to their liking is very difficult and complicated indeed, but what I would say is that when you truly are at stage yellow and you have embodied all other stages below you to a respecatble degree, then you will intuitively know what's best. You're familiar enough with all the bad pathways the ego could go down in respect to the Tier 1 stages, so now you're able to see way further ahead what's going to happen over the long run. This is what yellow people like to adjust themselves and their decisions and actions to the most, I'd say. So out of that clear(ed up) vision they're generally quite proficient in making the "best" decisions. 

I guess this is almost exactly what I am attempting to sort through.  If indeed Stage Yellow is against "Do this, or else," which is what a law is (an idea with violent action to back it up), and all perspectives are very much relative, in general government of any non-voluntary form over other people would be for those of Tier 1 stages where they want a requirement of force to either maintain a belief structure, collude with for gains, or save a tree for example.  Because some people (individual cases) within the borders of that governed region may not believe in the Westboro Baptist doctrine, be excellent hair stylists but not have the money for a license, or would love to save the tree but the firewood is the only heat source they can afford.  It would be an added cost to them all if forced to do those things.  Or am I way off? ||| No you're definitely not way off, it's quite reasonable what you're bringing up. Even though also Green of course can have strong physical or even violent reactions against the non-abidance of its laws and regulations, coming from green and having emerged out of it, yellow is far more flexible and adaptable in regards to laws, rules and regulations. Exactly because yellow can see how complex everything is, it tends to incorporate a way higher relativity of everything as we have already found out. But, establishing highly relative rules and laws is extremely challenging as it will obviously give differnt people a differnt treatment, that may be more suited and adaquate for them, but then it's of course very likely that other people aren't able to see or respect that and start to complain about the ways in which they are treated differently. But I really don't know ecactly how a true yellow government yould be like in reality since we're so far away from that anyway and thus, this is all just speculation to a certain degree...

 

Edited July 20, 2018 by DocHoliday

[TreeJeff]

@Leo Gura

On 7/19/2018 at 1:26 PM, Leo Gura said:

@TreeJeff You basically got it right.  |||  That's good news!  And thank you very much Leo for addressing my question.  I sincerely appreciate it.

The realities of real-world politics and government are extremely complex, messy, and difficult. When you go to apply Spiral Dynamics in the US political system, for example, all hell will break loose. All your lofty Yellow ideals will the tarred and feathered. You will be called a pedophile, a charlatan, and worse. And even if you succeed in getting elected President or Senator, or whatever, since you are not an absolute monarch, your power to change policy will be extremely limited because you have to work with all the other parties in power, who will not be at Yellow, and will look at you like a leper.  |||  I cannot agree with you more here.  I guess that is kind of the crux of my questions.  The relativistic nature of the universe and Stage Yellow thinking practically applied would remove the current government paradigm to a degree.  It would seem to me that the result would ultimately end up being the option of secession down to the individual, with folks being entirely tolerant of whatever other people are doing "over there."  In attempting to discuss this with others, I have been essentially called all of those negative things you mentioned in one form or another.  But that way, everyone can actualize themselves without costing others unless they voluntary want to be in such an arrangement because it is more valuable to do so from their own perspectives.  

It doesn't matter what color stage you are at, or even if you are totally enlightened like the Buddha himself, if you were President of the US you would have to make incredibly painful choices that would involve the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people REGARDLESS of your choice! This would be true even for a fully enlightened Turquoise leader! This is the part about governance that laypeople do not understand: simply because of the scale of a country like the US -- 330 million people -- most decisions will result in deaths of tens, hundreds, or thousands. Just by deciding to remove regulations on car pollution, you will kill people. Just by deciding to fund an infrastructure program, you will kill people. And so on.  |||  Most definitely.  I agree that the US Federal Government's forceful influence, either by deregulation or increasing regs, is not going to be acceptable for all people within their jurisdiction, and therefore, is a cost that a Stage Yellow leader would dislike.  But they would have to accept it IF that is the current paradigm and they were to be elected to office. 

A Yellow leader understands all this. So does a Turquoise leader. Yellow and Turquoise leaders are mature enough to understand that their actions will result in many deaths, which is why they would take their job very seriously and work very hard to make the best decisions possible. They would also know that their decisions could save tens of thousands of lives relative to a Tier 1 leader.  |||  That's probably true.  But would it be more agreeable to a Stage Yellow leader to only want to lead those that desired similar results so that they were all manifesting their selves without costing others?

Being Yellow, Turquoise, or enlightened does not mean you will be a flawless leader whose policies please everyone and hurt no one. People will get killed and hurt under the watch. They will even get killed and hurt by your highest ideals and most noble policy changes.  |||  Completely agree.  So again, wouldn't a Stage Yellow leader prefer to not force others that were not manifesting themselves in the same way as the leader so that the people would not have a cost to their lives unless they volunteered to manifest themselves in the same way?  Or am I reading into the Stage Yellow expression too literally?

Those are the harsh reality of governance. Which is precisely why we need highly conscious leaders in power, not people like Trump, who's actions will result in harm to millions as he approaches policy in an ignorant, simple-minded, and narcissistic manner.  |||  Agreed.  He is no friend of mine.

And BTW, the people will also hate you because they are at Blue, Orange, and Green, and you as Yellow will not satisfy their bloodthirsty tribal desires to attack the enemy color. So as Yellow, even if you succeed, at least 1/3rd of the country will think of you as a traitorous devil.  |||  Absolutely.  Probably about 97% of the country is more accurate.

Still want to be leader?  |||  Only if they (and I) voluntarily decide to do so and we agree that the value of having me as leader is worth more than any disagreements we have on philosophy, policy, approach, etc.  Otherwise, it would be very non-Stage Yellow based on my understanding of it thus far.

And I guess that brings me to my source of confusion again.  You mentioned that many people think they are higher in SD than they actually are and I am really unsure as to where I might sit in general.  Here's the reason:  My political perspective could be called voluntaryist, which is another word for anarcho-capitalist, which is another word for libertarian, mind you more of an academic libertarian.  You pegged that term and its associated philosophy as very Stage Orange.  Based on everything you said about Stage Yellow, the philosophy behind libertarianism seems much more in line with it than Stage Orange. 

If anything, the topics you discuss in your videos draws me more toward it than away (which could be confirmation bias I suppose).  I've never read a page of an Ayn Rand novel, but recontextualizing with the fact that she was coming from Soviet Russia, I might give her somewhat of a pass for leaning toward individualism.  Anyway, all the philosophy really says in lay terms is "Don't hurt people and don't take their stuff."  A law is "Do this, or else," meaning I will hurt you if you do not comply with me manifesting myself.  Seems antithetical to Stage Yellow thinking. 

If everything is morally relativistic and no one person or thing has more value than anything else except for the value someone places on it while manifesting themselves, then the high-level, practical governmental implementation of Stage Yellow would seem to be secession down to the individual IF desired.  It would look something like:  Group A with Beliefs/Government A is located in Area A, which is adjacent to Group B with Beliefs/Government B located in Area B and they do the best they can to be tolerant of each other, trade, and live in peace.  I used to think this was "best" until I realized that may not happen and Group A may want something from Group B if they were in Stage Red, in which case, Group B would desire to preserve their selves so they unfortunately have to defend. 

Even in your Neo-Nazis coming through Turquoise Town example, there was a loose depiction of property rights because you didn't want them in there.  Aside from that instance, Group A and B live in relative peace without force on each other in the manifestation of their selves.  However, I have no fantasies about it being a utopia and recognize that it will be balanced by the free market of ideas.  There are some people already attempting to do this like the Seasteading Institute.  https://www.seasteading.org/  And we are seeing some other indications of this with the smaller countries in Europe like Liechtenstein, also Brexit, Calexit, etc.     

As you might imagine, me thinking this approach is all Stage Yellow and hearing you using the libertarian term as an example of Stage Orange, is disconcerting and I am trying to clear it up for my potential growth.  Any thoughts, even brief, would be helpful.  Thanks again.

 

 

[TreeJeff]

On 7/20/2018 at 11:19 AM, DocHoliday said:

Yes that's pretty much it. Survival is the mother of all competition and because orange was obsessed with competing and fighting to win (survive, subconsciously), it was too blind and self-obsessed to see that to win in any form of competitive envirnoment or mindset like making the most money in business, fucking the hottest women, having the most prestige and power in society and so on, is what everyone else was striving for as well, and of course as we know, once you had your own fair share of all of that stuff it's no longer exciting to you, so you try to help everybody else to achieve their desires too - not necessarily exclusively the ones listed above that were so stereotypical of orange, but any desires for that matter as green becomes more supportive and cooperative. Sure enough though, whatever one seeks to accomplish in life, all he ever searches for is fulfillment, happiness, independence and success (in overcoming himself repeatedly in order to self-actualise his full potential).

@DocHoliday Thank you again for your insightful comments.  Absolutely agree.  In recognizing that hedonic adaptation is going to happen when everyone is approaching things from an egoic perspective, it becomes clear that in order to consistently achieve those higher values you mentioned, one must start to detach to reach that potential.  Counter-intuitive really.  There was definitely some "letting go" that needed to take place in order for me to realize that initially.

On 7/20/2018 at 11:19 AM, DocHoliday said:

Yes, as Leo pointed it out already, making decisions that kinda go above people's heads that may not perfectly go along to their liking is very difficult and complicated indeed, but what I would say is that when you truly are at stage yellow and you have embodied all other stages below you to a respecatble degree, then you will intuitively know what's best. You're familiar enough with all the bad pathways the ego could go down in respect to the Tier 1 stages, so now you're able to see way further ahead what's going to happen over the long run. This is what yellow people like to adjust themselves and their decisions and actions to the most, I'd say. So out of that clear(ed up) vision they're generally quite proficient in making the "best" decisions. 

I think that's probably true.  Generally longer-term thinking is more conducive to overall prosperity and incorporating the SD model into that thinking would likely prove useful.  It certainly has for me.  And I have no doubt that someone at Stage Yellow would do a much better job at making decisions in a position of power.  But, I guess that is part of my main question because I would be willing to bet that unless everyone that was being led felt the Stage Yellow leader provided enough value, the Stage Yellow person would not want to lead or have that power over those people.  To do otherwise would be antithetical to the Stage Yellow manifestation.  Which is likely one of the reasons we don't have a fully actualized Stage Yellow person as a leader in politics.  It would seem to me, and I recognize that I'm starting to beat a dead horse here, that someone in Stage Yellow would prefer, IF they could set it up, to specifically not force others to follow. 

On 7/20/2018 at 11:19 AM, DocHoliday said:

No you're definitely not way off, it's quite reasonable what you're bringing up. Even though also Green of course can have strong physical or even violent reactions against the non-abidance of its laws and regulations, coming from green and having emerged out of it, yellow is far more flexible and adaptable in regards to laws, rules and regulations. Exactly because yellow can see how complex everything is, it tends to incorporate a way higher relativity of everything as we have already found out. But, establishing highly relative rules and laws is extremely challenging as it will obviously give differnt people a differnt treatment, that may be more suited and adaquate for them, but then it's of course very likely that other people aren't able to see or respect that and start to complain about the ways in which they are treated differently. But I really don't know ecactly how a true yellow government yould be like in reality since we're so far away from that anyway and thus, this is all just speculation to a certain degree...

I appreciate your serious consideration of these thoughts and I'm glad I'm not far off the mark.  Your point about highly relative rules and laws is probably one of the reasons the current government paradigm isn't working and one of the reasons I believe a Stage Yellow person would not lead those that did not believe in the value of their leadership.  I agree that all of this is speculation because all governments are so far from it.  However, using it as a model or goal for the future to work toward may be useful. 

And this is really the fundamental point of my confusion with respect to where my development is on the spiral in general.  As I mentioned in my response to Leo:  my political perspective could be called voluntaryist, which is another word for libertarian.  He said that term and its associated philosophy is textbook Stage Orange.  Based on everything I've read about Stage Yellow so far, the philosophy behind libertarianism seems much more in line with it than Stage Orange.  All the philosophy really says in lay terms is "Don't hurt people and don't take their stuff."  A law is "Do this, or else," meaning I will hurt you if you do not comply with me manifesting myself.  Seems antithetical to Stage Yellow thinking.  Stage Orange wouldn't care as long as they benefited from the law (crony-capitalism).         

Like Leo mentioned in his Re-contextualizing discussion that the US Constitution needs to be amended to better fit Stage Green.  I don't really yet see how that would be any less destructive than the US military attempting to force change in the Middle East.  It seems to be the same in principle.  There are probably a couple million people in the US that would be so incensed by such changes, that it would lead to some unfortunate circumstances.  Force tends to be met with resistance.  Better to let everyone progress naturally through the stages through education in my humble opinion.  If Cali or Texas vote to secede because one population is majority Stage Green and one is majority Stage Orange and neither wants to be hampered in their development by the others' forceful influence then the Stage Yellow thing to do would probably be to let them go.  The Cali population would likely learn the lessons faster to graduate to Stage Yellow and the Texans would likely see some shift to Stage Green.  Higher likelihood of less resistance to the changes.  It would look something like:  Group A with Beliefs/Government A is located in Area A, which is adjacent to Group B with Beliefs/Government B located in Area B and they do the best they can to be tolerant of each other, trade, and live in peace.  If you want, check out https://www.seasteading.org/.  It is a similar proposal. 

Not to mention anyone in mostly Stages Blue through Turquoise could be a libertarian, it would just manifest differently:

Blue:  My religion is more important than your earthly laws.

Orange:  My materialistic success should not be hampered by others.

Green:  My social group should not be legally restricted by others.

Yellow:  Everyone should be able to manifest their highest self as long as it is not at the expense of others, but recognizing it may not always work out.

Turquoise:  Not sure but probably similar to Yellow.  They just would be at peace with everything and manifesting themselves for reality.

And maybe at Turquoise all of this breaks down and it doesn't matter.  I'm not there yet, and neither is most of humanity.  I'm having difficulty seeing that the paradigm I described above is not the next step in human development (Stage Yellow governance).  You might imagine that here I am thinking it is a Stage Yellow approach when Leo says it is mostly Orange I have become quite concerned about where I sit.  So this is what I am trying to nail down.  Sincerely appreciate your thoughts so far.