Why is one stage not better than the other? (Spiral Dynamics)

[Ampresus]

Hello everyone. As some may know, I am doing research on Spiral Dynamics so I can introduce it to my class. I am in 10th grade. Because I only have 15 min, I won't be talking about the stages themselves. What I will talk about is change of consciousness in the spiral. How people see more perspectives and decide to live differently.

While reading on spiraldynamicsintegral.nl I stumbled upon prof. Clare W. Graves talking about change. He says the following: ''Life conditions determine which level of consciousness is the most appropriate (one Value System is not better or worse than the other….)''

Can anyone explain this to me? I recall Leo saying something like this too. How one stage is not better than the other. Please I need some elaboration. From my perspective, the highest stage is the best stage to be. Right?

[NoSelfSelf]

This is like saying to a kid that his car toy is worse than the real one while hes happy playing with it...there is no better or worse you like something and you work on it until you outgrow it...its a personal perspective whats better or worse for someone...

[Shadowraix]

How do you dictate better and worse? Through relative standards of course! This relativity is why you can't apply a better/worse across the board. For example seeing yourself as superior because you are higher up on a model you've aligned your standards to is automatically biased towards you. You are asking for people to behave and think like you.

This is why spiral dynamics should only be used to understand and to grow yourself if the higher stages is where you want to be.

No demonization or shame or superiority. 

[Forestluv]

@Ampresus Rather than seeing it as “better” I would view it as “development” or “maturity”.

We could say a 10th grade student is more developed than a 4th grade student. Yet is it fair to say the 10th grade student is “better” than the 4th grade student? To me, that doesn’t seem right.

Similiarly, I would say the green stage is more consciousky developed than the blue stage.

And it’s really cool to see how curious and excited you are about SD. And that you want to share it with others.

[Aeris]

wrong stage coral transcend all the self talk and metaphysics

others stages are mindless, idiotics, blind, sellfish and anti harmonic.

but this are just words, words are by definition meaningless

Edited February 28, 2019 by Aeris

[Shin]

It is like saying your 20 years old self is more important than your 25 years old self.

One include the other, it is not a question of better or worst.

 

[Aeris]

I would be so glad when transhumanism biology would allow us to completely eraze part of our mind, better.

[Markus]

@Ampresus Saying one is better disregards the necessity and inevitability of the spiral. As a metaphor, it's like saying a senior citizen is better than a middle-aged person or a young person, or a child. And life conditions do play a big role. It generally takes a privileged environment to be able to evolve to the higher stages. You aren't gonna become green if you're some hunter-gatherer tribesman, or a person almost starving to death in rural Africa. The less privileged you are the more simple and selfish you might need to be.

[Aeris]

4 minutes ago, Markus said:

@Ampresus Saying one is better disregards the necessity and inevitability of the spiral. As a metaphor, it's like saying a senior citizen is better than a middle-aged person or a young person, or a child. And life conditions do play a big role. It generally takes a privileged environment to be able to evolve to the higher stages. You aren't gonna become green if you're some hunter-gatherer tribesman, or a person almost starving to death in rural Africa. The less privileged you are the more simple and selfish you might need to be.

very true, you did good to point this, I tend to forget

[Scholar]

If more developed stages are not better than less developed stages, one might want to inspect what the even mean when they say something is better.

 

Is our society better than the roman empire that enslaved people? Is our society as good as a future society that will be fully enlightened and reduce harm to all life on this planet?

Good and evil are subjective, but I would argue that if one inspected what they value internally, one would quickly come to the realization that yes, one judges more developed stages to be better, as long as they are healthily integrated. What's better, a car that can drive on a road, or a car that can drive on a road and additionally fly?

 

We categorize and value everything, in fact even the notion that everything is relative, and that we should (!!!) think that way is itself a value judgement. The rejection of set categories is very greenish, I think it would help to understand the purpose and usefulness of these categories. 

 

Why do we call things better than other things? What will be the consequences of calling more developed stages better? What would happen if we honestly inspected our values and then without prejudice would truthfully represent them in explicit value hierarchies? 

Maybe we could recognize that betterness can be useful but also destructive, but that in actuality is difficult to truly go beyond these value judgments.

 

 

I definitely like developed stages more than lesser developed stages, they are better by virtue of almost everything I value. I think a more useful question would be to ask yourself what you value and how any of the stages fit into that. When you see a lot of people saying that one stage is not better than the other, they really just want people to avoid feeling superior because they are more developed. The framing itself is flawed, as something cannot be better than anything else. Rape is not better than saving someones life, and it is quite trivial to say "Stage X is not better than stage Y", because betterness is not founded on objective measures. It is a misuse of language, due to a lack of inspection and self-reflection.

[TheAvatarState]

@Ampresus from your perspective, you are interested in consciousness work and know about the spiral. That immediately puts your value system in integral stage yellow. You want to move up the spiral in all areas and become a happier, healthier, more conscious person and that's great! From a RELATIVE Individual perspective such as yours, attaining higher stages is better, yes. You have the power and capacity and knowledge to do so. 

Now let's look at how Claire Graves used the model. He used it more of an objective way to model societies. Each society is where they are at because of the state of their government, economy, resources, religion etc. One of the main points of integral thinking is to stop culture war, and that means to see each society where they are at and not to blame each other. From a global perspective, no stage is better than the other because each stage is important and necessary. The problem with Green is that they try to inject green solutions to countries that are at blue or red, and it doesn't work. That's why this model is so important! All this model is about is high-level understanding and compassion. No stage is better than the other. You might ask, "then why are we trying to move up if no stage is better?" Not better, more advanced and evolved (through necessary steps and stages). We can't end culture war without having understanding and compassion to those at lower stages. We have to meet them where they're at. Does this make sense? 

[Hellspeed]

Because if someone is using as a ladder SP to see their progress and everything else related, they are stuck in the monkey logical mind, 5 senses, disharmony, EGO driven suffering.