Star Trek TNG - A Spiral Dynamics Goldmine

[fridjonk]

I've recently been rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I've noticed just how good of a show this is to deepen your understanding of how SD works in "real-world" situations. You might think, well it's just a show in the end, can't be that accurate of how civilizations and societies would act in real life.

But as @Forestluv brought to my attention recently, the producer of the show Gene Roddenberry was rumored to be aware of Clair Graves' work. 

So if you've studied the model or something like Integral Theory, then this can be a fun way to keep exploring and thinking about how different stages behave and how they resolve all kinds of interesting dilemmas. Of course, it's not perfect so go into it with your own authority and knowledge to try and notice how complicated it can be to live in a universe with all these different world-view species. And notice how similar it is to how the world operates today, these different species could be looked at as if they were nations in today's world. 

The federation is prime time yellow in their approach to most conflicts, yet have an orange view of exploration for science, hence, "To boldly go where no man has gone before". They solve problems with an "above" judgmental tier 2 approach and follow the so-called Prime Directive wherever they go, in which states they're not to intervene with an alien civilization below a certain threshold of cultural, scientific, and technological development; a very yellow approach. This is done so they're not to impose their own values and ideals on them, as this can severely mess up the development of their society. 

In the episode "Who watches the watchers" it is seen how severe of a consequence it can be for a civilization to come in contact with a stage Purple society. After witnessing their medical powers and beaming technology, they were convinced that captain Picard was their god. And so they started to worship him and it took a great deal of effort to convince them that he bled just as they did. 

Some of my favorite episodes are where the character Q appears. A stage Coral being who could be seen as god (with god-like powers) in human form. The Q member which is most often presented, one of many, has what could be seen as extreme trickster archetype characteristics seen from stages lesser than Coral. Yellow still does not understand that "death" and the wiping out of a whole civilization could be seen as god's highest form of love. Yet it is not known if Q does this out of amusement, which seems to be the case, or if he's doing it out of love but unknowingly, which would be weird because apparently he's omniscient. Despite if he does this out of amusement or love, it's still nonetheless done out of love because all of reality is love-driven. The most evil and vile things are pure perfection and beauty. 

Here's the list of species/planets ranked by their stage:

Purple: Mintaka III 

Red: Klingons(Red/Purple), The Borg (Red/Blue/Beige)

Blue: Cardassians, Romulans. 

Orange: The Ferengi, Vulcans(orange/blue) 

Green: Rubiicun lll (Extreme green/blue) 

Yellow: The Federation

Turquoise/Coral: The Q Continuum, Betazoid, El-Aurian. 

Please correct me if you feel otherwise.  

Edited November 30, 2020 by fridjonk

[fridjonk]

This is pure orange gold, and it cracks me up. 

They've turned capitalism into a religion. 

 

A beautiful Yellow/Turquoise speech to the Cardassians and Klingons.

Notice how the Klingon immediately threatens death (Red), which is hilarious, one of my favorite Star Trek moments ever. 

But the Cardassians respond in a more humane way, yet disgusted but not as brutal as red. 

And seems like the Romulans (blue) might have realized that they have some common orange with the federation. 

Coral being hunted by blue. 

"You were terrified of something you couldn't understand", beautiful, sums up tier 1. 

This is great. 

Edited November 29, 2020 by fridjonk

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, fridjonk said:

They've turned capitalism into a religion.

And so did the Ferengi -- zing!

[Sempiternity]

Another thing to consider is that Gene Roddenberry has a very specific vision for the future. Where humans have evolved past conflict, drama, taking offense, holding grudges, possession attachments, loosing control of emotions, etc. He saw humans as being completely selfless. But, the writers, who where stage Blue/Orange complained that they could not write stories without conflict and drama, as that was the world they lived in. They couldn't even imagine stage Yellow and above society. So not long after they started TNG, the writers got the producers to push Roddenberry out, so they could write from their Blue/Orange perspectives. 

[Leo Gura]

@Sempiternity You can't sell peace and love to a gaggle of devils

[fridjonk]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Sempiternity You can't sell peace and love to a gaggle of devils

Don't you know the 76th rule of acquisition? 

"Every once in a while declare peace...it confuses the hell out of your enemies". 

[DocWatts]

Not sure if anyone here was a fan of the Next Generation spinoff show Deep Space 9, but an interesting thing to note is how that show explores alot of these Cultures with a lot more nuance.

The Ferengi and Cardassians cultures in particular are given much more depth, to the point where thier TNG counterparts almost feel like caricatures of thier DS9 counterparts.

Even the Federation is shown to be a much more nuanced take of a stage Yellow culture, one that has done alot to uplift Humanity but still has problems that it's struggling with.

 

[fridjonk]

@DocWatts Awesome! I'll make sure to add DS9 to my watchlist. 

[Yog]

@fridjonk  DS9 goes more in depth on some of the races/cultures because its  main plot revolve around a static station. I am sure you'll like it.

Btw TNG is dope.

Here is some stage Beige Pickard for you
 

And some Cisco tripping balls.

 

Edited December 1, 2020 by Yog

[fridjonk]

1 hour ago, Yog said:

Here is some stage Beige Pickard for you

That's some real dedication to flute mastery!  

[fridjonk]

Coral/Turq

[blackchair]

why is Borg red?

[DocWatts]

Just now, blackchair said:

why is Borg red?

Borg doesn't map cleanly onto the SD-model in my view, similar to how you wouldn't map an AI on to Spiral Dynamics. Unlike a lot of the other races which are meant to be rough analogues of various Earth cultures, the Borg are meant to be, well, Alien.

Borg arguably doesn't have what can be considered a Culture, though thematically there are some interesting parallels you could draw to ideas like Utilitarianism, Communism, or Capitalism taken to thier logical and horrific endpoints, but throwing an SD meme at the Borg is a pretty big stretch.

[blackchair]

8 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Borg doesn't map cleanly onto the SD-model in my view, similar to how you wouldn't map an AI on to Spiral Dynamics. Unlike a lot of the other races which are meant to be rough analogues of various Earth cultures, the Borg are meant to be, well, Alien.

Borg arguably doesn't have what can be considered a Culture, though thematically there are some interesting parallels you could draw to ideas like Utilitarianism, Communism, or Capitalism taken to thier logical and horrific endpoints, but throwing an SD meme at the Borg is a pretty big stretch.

i thought so....its far feched

[fridjonk]

8 minutes ago, blackchair said:

why is Borg red?

Yeah I'll agree with @DocWatts

You can't really pin them to a stage, that's why I stated it as (red, blue, beige).

Red because of their habit to destroy other cultures and blue because of their queen, which her main purpose was to bring order to chaos. 

[Thewritersunion]

Lol. I wish we had all the rest of the new stages in Tier 2/3 in there