Can one be in multiple Spiral Dynamic stages?

[StarStruck]

Like, partly in blue, partly in yellow? I know that subsequent stages overflow but how does that work if a person is blue-yellow? I think if you want to reach yellow you first need to pass through orange and green so the person must also have some traces of those stages?

[integral]

Yes, watch leos videos he covers it,

[Leo Gura]

Blue-Yellow is an oxymoron. You probably just aren't familiar enough with the stages yet.

If you think you're Blue-Yellow, you're probably Blue but like to think of yourself as higher.

[nitramadas]

Spiral Dynamics (SD) isn't a perfect model.  It would have to be 3D to make up for its lackings, but then it would lose some things too.  It's unable to fill in the gaps that are made evident by other models such as Socionics and the Enneagram, but for the single function of identifying health / development progress it's pretty good.  

Most people on this forum believe you can be multiple stages at once.  But that's wrong.

If you want to understand yourself in detail & see where those Yellow traits are coming from, you'll need to resort to other models.  

 

To know you SD stage, just think back and see if you can identify parts of your life in which you changed in ways matching the SD stage descriptions.  E.g. were you ever obsessed with success/achievement/money?  If not, then account for the slight differences in the ways genders experience the stages (if needed).  If you've never identified with Orange descriptions, then you're probably Blue, and can forget about Yellow for now.

The biggest sign you're not Yellow would be if you know you've never been through Green (as it's usually pretty obvious if you've been through it).  Also keep in mind that you've gone through some of the stages during childhood, if that's the case you'll need to account for those differences too.  E.g. A 13 year old Green isn't gonna be that interested in recycling, they'll just be speak overly abstract and be overly credulous when it comes to spiritual teachings.  Might be really into crystals, chakras, and listening to Gurus all.. day.. long..

Edited January 8, 2021 by nitramadas

[Hello from Russia]

The thing is, you can experience/act with higher values/virtues but it's all about your center of gravity in the end

For example, a blue person can actually sometimes show some multi-perspectival & highly nuanced thinking, but he does it only like 0.1-1% of the time in very rare scenarios. In 99% of time, he'll be a dogmatic guy who only sees the World from 1 limited perspective. Can we say that he is yellow? Well, not really. But can we say he acted out some yellow qualities in these 0.1% scenarios? Sure

The yellow guy would be the one who would use these things like 50% of the time or more, his status quo and center of gravity would be that it happens almost automatically. If you need some super-duper rare conditions to spark yellow thinking, then you're not really yellow. 

Edited January 8, 2021 by Hello from Russia

[Superfluo]

@Leo Gura Or maybe a person has repressed some emotional stuff that when triggered makes him defensive, aggressive, dogmatic, adopt black or white thinking, etc when otherwise he/she is stage yellow. In this case you can be both. Precisely because he/she hasn't integrated the repressed aspects of himself/herself.

[Average Investor]

The stages transcend and include as you move up. No one is just going to be solid in on color, but they most likely have a dominant amount in one. Stages can vary on the environment and activity as well. Then you have to consider states that one could be in as well. 

[StarStruck]

So it is wrong to say one can be yellow and have strains of blue because blue is already integrated? What if stage yellow has all the benefits of yellow but is still nationalist?

[StarStruck]

@neutralempty I read the book spiral dynamics but it was too technical and academic that I didn't get the full picture. I will try to look for more non academic books on spiral dynamics. 

[Tim R]

2 hours ago, StarStruck said:

So it is wrong to say one can be yellow and have strains of blue because blue is already integrated? What if stage yellow has all the benefits of yellow but is still nationalist?

The colors aren't strict categories. The question is not "are you this or are you that" but rather "which colors are you to what degree?".

Spiral dynamics describes a spectrum that is representative for the state of development of your values. 

Blue and Yellow are pretty far apart from each other and don't comply. You can't like and dislike the same thing simultaneously. Equally, you can't hold two opposing values at once.

You can't be dogmatic and open-minded at the same time, you see? 

It's something like this: when you build a house, you set the ground stones. Those are e.g. blue and orange. Then you keep building until your house is more or less complete and you're at yellow - there, in a sense, the ground stones themselves have disappeared and what is there now instead is the house. 

But you can't build a proper house when your ground stones are all crooked and out of place, in other words; when the aren't integrated - therefore you will probably never get to a healthy or well-developed state yellow in the first place. Which is why you won't find yellow and blue at the same time. 

You can get away with being mostly orange without having properly integrated blue, but only because they are so close to each other. 

Yellow understands blue and can see though its eyes, but in a detached way. Without thinking that this is the right way of looking at the world. So you won't find a nationalist yellow person, only someone who understands why somebody else is a nationalist. 

[StarStruck]

@Tim R that assumes that all houses are solid and not shaky.

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You can't be dogmatic and open-minded at the same time, you see? 

I know a lot of people who are open-minded about one topic and close-minded in another topic.

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You can't like and dislike the same thing simultaneously. Equally, you can't hold two opposing values at once.

I do therapy and I notice that I have a lot of opposing values. I think it is very rare to find people who don't have opposing values. If you dig deep enough, you will find it somewhere, unless that person is very developed.

[Tim R]

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I know a lot of people who are open-minded about one topic and close-minded in another topic.

That's not real open-mindedness though. That's simply "I want to hear something about this and nothing about that".

23 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

I do therapy and I notice that I have a lot of opposing values. I think it is very rare to find people who don't have opposing values.

What I meant was that your values can't oppose each other when they are as far apart from each other as fro example blue and yellow or red and green. You can't be a Hippie and a Warlord simultaneously because both hold (strongly) opposing values. 

Of course people have opposing values, but that's because they aren't properly conscious of either one of them. If you'd formulate your values (which is what you do in therapy, I assume) you become conscious of your values and find out that they might contradict each other to some extent. The more conscious you become, the more transparent do your values become to yourself. 

[StarStruck]

@Tim R fair enough

@neutralempty I will look into that book

[Vittorio]

Yes. It's higly unlikely that you completely belong to a single stage.

[nitramadas]

22 hours ago, Vittorio said:

Yes. It's higly unlikely that you completely belong to a single stage.

While it is a spectrum, there IS gonna be a stage stage you can't get past, and THAT is your stage.  E.g. Orange will have zero comprehension of Turquoise without exception.

You can't view SD as a collection of traits.  Those traits are just common manifestations/side-effects.  A stage is the level of awareness responsible for those traits.  A stage itself is invisible, and can only be inferred indirectly.

 

On 09/01/2021 at 4:20 PM, StarStruck said:

I know a lot of people who are open-minded about one topic and close-minded in another topic.

That's not really much for us to go on.  You might as well be saying "I know someone who's ok with violent video games, but not violent films!"

What can be analyse from that?  Even if you said "I know someone who's pro-abortion but is also vegan" that would also be completely meaningless.  There is no such thing as objective morality, so by themselves these ideas have no value.

[StarStruck]

I discovered I'm red-blue while I thought I was orange. I overestimated myself and aimed at the wrong things for selfactualization. At least now I know.

[Amilaer---]

55 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

I discovered I'm red-blue while I thought I was orange. I overestimated myself and aimed at the wrong things for selfactualization. At least now I know.

It seems hard to be only red-blue and be interested in actualized.org. You are in this forum. No doubts, you have some orange sparks. don't worry . 

[StarStruck]

2 minutes ago, Amilaer--- said:

It seems hard to be only red-blue and be interested in actualized.org. You are in this forum. No doubts, you have some orange sparks. don't worry . 

I'm mostly blue though but I'm still in red because of high impulsivity, lack of order, no basic discipline, etc.

I developed myself in green and yellow. Systems thinking pushed me up the spiral a lot!

[StarStruck]

Transferred some replies from this thread:

https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/22318-spiral-dynamics-stage-blue-examples-mega-thread/?page=60#comment-810903

2 hours ago, Elevated said:

@StarStruck I think the mistake you're making is trying to pin them down to one stage with only a few behaviours. Spiral Dynamics has a lot of explanatory and predictive power, but it is just a model at the end of the day. People are far too complex for any one model to adequately explain all facets of behaviour, belief, etc.

When it comes to religious belief, I think the question is, upon which grounds do they rest their truth? A Stage Blue thinker will tend to rest their truth upon a monotheistic God or a "holy" book like the Communist Manifesto. This means that you can have a Stage Blue person who is an atheist, but still ground their truth on some absolute thing regardless of what the evidence might say. A radical communist will constantly refer back to the Communist Manifesto regardless of how many times that form of Communism has failed. 

A Stage Orange thinker on the other hand, will tend to ground their truth upon 3rd person inter-subjectively verifiable data, in other words, an objective, physical reality. The truth is not found in a single absolute source, but is instead found by going out into to the world and observing the truth for yourself, then confirming those observations based on peer review. 

Bringing that back to your parents, if they have a Stage Blue core they'll tend to make appeals to some sort of absolute truth, in lieu of any actual physical evidence. The key difference between Red and Blue is that Blue's source of truth will be outside themselves, whereas Red will be their own desires put above the desires of anyone else. Blue needs some sort of non-verifiable external justification for why they do what they do (i.e. God made me do it), whereas Red will do it just because they damn well wanted to. 

Thanks, that cleared up a lot about my parents.

I'm still confused about myself though: I'm atheist, but I have a strong stage red inside me. Also highly impulsive, ego-centric and power obsessed. I'm making small bounds into blue by introducing discipline and strong values among other things. So I thought I was in stage red-blue, until I heard that atheism starts at stage orange which makes it impossible for me to be red.

In this thread people said you can't be in more than 2 stages, so I'm still confused how I fit into red-blue-orange.

9 hours ago, Tim Ho said:

Yes, not only that, most people don't have a single color.  Instead we have a spectrum of colors on different aspects.

blue-yellow is not possible because you have to past Orange and Green before you can be Yellow.  Yellow see the world as it is, mostly clear, while Blue see the world through a big filter.   They are in different tiers. 

I know but I thought one needed to fully integrate the previous stage before leveling up. So is it possible to be for example orange and still have some unprocessed stage red?

3 hours ago, Rilles said:

Atheism/agnosticism is at Orange. Fundamentalist Religion is a Blue value since it must adhere to dogmatic morals to be fundamentalism therefore its Blue.

The gist of it:

Purple: Animism

Red: Animism or Religion

Blue: Fundamentalist Religion

Orange: Atheism, Agnosticism or n/a

Green: Spirituality

Yellow: Spirituality or mellowed Atheism

Turquoise: Spirituality/Non-Duality

 

Something like that, you would have to go case by case.

Edited January 14, 2021 by StarStruck

[Elevated]

@StarStruck You can have Orange or Green beliefs even if you have a Red-Blue core. Also, remember that you've likely been very conditioned by our Stage Orange society. You may see certain Stage Red behaviours and attitudes within yourself, but those are only the ones you notice precisely because they are so not the norm. That'd be like defining the entirety of a 9 fingered person based on their 9 fingers despite the fact that everything else about them is normal. You notice the 9 fingers because that is the thing that is out of place. 

Point being, there is probably a lot more Orange in you than you give yourself credit for, it's just that some of your pathologies are rooted in Red. That doesn't necessarily mean that your core is Red. To begin dealing with those pathologies specifically, you have to take them through Blue, then through Orange, etc. That doesn't mean that the average of all your behaviours, beliefs, attitudes, and so on is Red. 

Edited January 14, 2021 by Elevated