How Dangerous is Postmodern Cultural Relativism?

[thisintegrated]

3 minutes ago, lmfao said:

LMAO, "mod-like". I don't think that's a good argument if you're trying to pass it off as one, but if you're talking about his vibes (not his number of posts) well then that's just how you see it. I can see it, but it's just a fun comparison which says nothing meaningful.

Knowing or trying to figure out what stage you are isn't important if you've known about SD for a while. 

Sure it's not important, nothing is.  But it sure is interesting, and very worthwhile to learn.

 

And yeah, I was mostly referring to his vibe.  Though, the kind of people that stick around in large numbers are Greens.  Anyone with a massive post count is most likely to be Green or Yellow, but Yellow is many times rarer than Green, so most that you'll see will be Green.  And I could write a bunch about why, but I'm trying to type less these days.

[lmfao]

@thisintegrated you don't need to type too much hombre. Yeah his vibe is hella mod-like hahaha. 

Going with these rough statistics, you're pretty much right about those sticking around being green and yellow. 

[thisintegrated]

12 minutes ago, lmfao said:

There was an obnoxious user many months ago who got very obsessed with spiral dynamics, trying to figure out other people's and his own SD stage constantly. [he eventually got banned] He was just constantly insecure, trying to set up hierarchies about it. Don't fall untill the same trap. It's like people online who overly obsess about IQ or MBTI types 

lol, reminds me of this "stage Coral" guy I recently chatted with here who looked down on anyone below stage Coral.

That said, models are, typically, a stage Yellow thing.  They're a tool for gaining knowledge and understanding, and should be encouraged.  Many models, such as the IQ test, or astrology (which is kind of treated like a model), can do more harm than good.  But models like MBTI/Socionics/SD/the-nameless-9-stages-of-human-development-model, are worth studying for decades as they can go very deep.

[Milos Uzelac]

On 7/11/2021 at 3:03 AM, lmfao said:

But do you not think Hungary's anti-gay laws are anything but regressive and evil?

From my perspective. Yes, it feels like a regression, from the perspective of the relative psychological and cultural development of the country no, it just feels like cultural backlash of the less developed people on the spiral living in the country who were the shadow of its relative status of being a member of the Union.

 

On 7/11/2021 at 3:03 AM, lmfao said:

Do you think it is untruthful to tell kids that being gay is okay? Why would you think it isn't?

Depends on the pressure of the environment you are in and yours and its level of development. Personally, I have no issue I've been friends with gay people in my own country, and even though I don't plan on having kids anytime soon I think I will hopefully have the same attitudes when I have them.

On 7/11/2021 at 3:03 AM, lmfao said:

Article then talks about the culture war, and the war against populism. It's a rant about how liberal globalists wish to take over the world, atomise society into a collection of disconnected and lonely individuals. It's just a bullshit rant of whatever. 

The main point of the article, as I see it, is to highlight the consequences of fragmenting society into this pole of the relatively affluent and wealthy educated winners of the global world with their refined cultural tastes and attitudes and the losers of the global world who suffer economic depravity and lack of opportunity, are stuck in the family unit and have no financial ability to educate themselves further and to move upwards on the social ladder, the rich have basically pulled the ladder for them and in their traditional and rigid mind they have developed resentment to this perceived threat of radically changing society culturally not corresponding with their own economic progress and development. Populism, therefore, becomes a kind of a manipulation scheme of the politicians to channel and to use the anger of the disaffected and suffering crowd into culturally regressive politics while not changing and improving the underlining economic conditions that are causing their resentment and skepticism to gradually shifting and changing society. Also, a traditionally oriented work environment helps reinforce these populists' narratives into an unquestioning echo chamber and work culture of people who worked there from my experience

 

On 7/11/2021 at 3:03 AM, lmfao said:

The article seems to praise Hungary for their laws banning education of homosexuality as a victory for populism.
Does this make populism incompatible with free knowledge and education of the people? 

It makes it incompatible with enough open-mindedness and mental and emotional resilience to pursue further education as the demand of the constantly adapting and specializing individual in the contemporary global market society and not being stuck in resentment and victimhood in your current economic position and projecting your contempt and unhappiness onto something else or someone else developing and growing in society.

I don't know currently if it just a current backlash or were these countries generally that underdeveloped than what the elite of the country tried to represent them to the world as. Though Poland and Hungary always had more of a traditional and religious base in their own country due to historical circumstances than the rest of Europe so the demarcation line of the level of the development of the Union is clearly drawn in those countries or at least prove that relative economic development doesn't always correspond of the overall cultural development of a country.

[lmfao]

@thisintegrated For me, all those models becomes prisons eventually.

MBTI for example, becomes a recognition and understanding of some archetypes. If you have a pattern seeking brain which makes connections you'll be drawn to such models, because you'll feel like you're really seeing these patterns. 

Problem for me is that it becomes like a tumour. My mind can end up ruminating and getting obsessed in random rabbit holes.  Repetition of different impressions, feelings and thoughts with vivid imagery.

If you ever get to the point where you're starting to see the patterns everywhere you look, it becomes a problem. It means your eyes aren't fresh.

[lmfao]

@Milos Uzelac Good post. 

26 minutes ago, Milos Uzelac said:

the rich have basically pulled the ladder for them

How do you think the rich ended up pulling the ladder from them? (I know that's a hard or vague question to ask). It's just what happened? 

Edited July 12, 2021 by lmfao

[Stomatopod]

3 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

 was around 16 when I entered Yellow, getting super deep into Yellow around 17/18

Considering the brain isn't even fully developed until age 25, I suppose can already congratulate you on being the single most advanced human in the history of the world.

[thisintegrated]

 

15 minutes ago, lmfao said:

@thisintegrated For me, all those models becomes prisons eventually.

MBTI for example, becomes a recognition and understanding of some archetypes. If you have a pattern seeking brain which makes connections you'll be drawn to such models, because you'll feel like you're really seeing these patterns. 

Problem for me is that it becomes like a tumour. My mind can end up ruminating and getting obsessed in random rabbit holes.  Repetition of different impressions, feelings and thoughts with vivid imagery.

If you ever get to the point where you're starting to see the patterns everywhere you look, it becomes a problem. It means your eyes aren't fresh.

Yeah, it's easy to get trapped.  But intellectual obsession is still an important phase to go through.  On a broader scale, that's what Yellow is.  Yellow is about finding the actual truth; and then Turquoise is about throwing it all away.

It's only bad if you get "stuck" on a model and are no longer thinking for yourself.

[thisintegrated]

3 minutes ago, Stomatopod said:

Considering the brain isn't even fully developed until age 25, I suppose can already congratulate you on being the single most advanced human in the history of the world.

lmao.. that's an interesting thing to say, with a bunch of funny implications, but I won't argue.

There's nothing particularly amazing about being tier 2.  The only difference between me and tier 1s is time.  They'll come to the same point when they're ready.

[Arcangelo]

@thisintegrated  You are deceiving yourself you are not tier 2

Trust me

Edited July 12, 2021 by Arcangelo
The self

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

Hmm, how does one.. "abuse" weed?

Smoking it 3-4 times a day and essentially making it your main "occupation".

 

4 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

Err.. these two are not the same.  One's Red, the other's potentially Yellow.

You can never really boil something down to just one SD stage. Much of my behavior during that period was heavily hedonistic, self-centered, deceitful, disorganized and directionless. Even though my main activity was to philosophize about whatever popped into my head, the structure of that activity was extremely compulsive and undeliberate (basically just an endless barrage of intellectual stoner thoughts).

It's not like the type of contemplation that Leo talks about where you sit down for many hours and focus your mind intensively on just one question or subject (even though I could do that too). That takes a lot of deliberation and emotional self-composure. Emotionally, I was a complete wreck, trying to escape the sound of my own conscience by drowning it in pseudo-intellectual brain diarrhea.

 

4 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

You sure you're not Turquoise? lmao

Being Turquoise is not synonymous with adopting New Age platitudes (Green) like "living in the now", a saying which I frequently used as an excuse to avoid personal responsibility (hence trying to escape the sound of my own conscience). There is this funny marriage between the deconstructive nature of Red and Green. A teenager with a weak conscience or chaotic mind can co-opt a saying that is initially meant to point to some deep existential truth and use it in order to fuel their own self-destruction.

 

4 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

Well that certainly sounds like Green.

...or Purple or Blue or Orange or Yellow or Turquoise. Every stage of the spiral is concerned with some type of growth or future-oriented behavior to some degree. Tier 2 is especially not uninterested in the future despite having the potential to incorporate a mystical paradigm that advertises the importance of beingness. If anything, Yellow and Turquoise are the most future-oriented stages there are. Systems thinking and holism is all about capturing the bigger picture, and that includes future states of existence. For instance, why are people like Sadhguru running large-scale projects with millions of volunteers in order to save the environment? Why are Yellow think tanks like the Neurohacker Collective so concerned about the pitfalls of "exponential tech"?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (Yellow poster boy) has this model called "being-becoming". It emphasizes the importance of recognizing the intertwined relationship between 1. trying to create a tomorrow and 2. actually being able to live in that tomorrow. In other words, there is no point in trying to improve your life if you don't know how to fully experience that life, and it doesn't truly make sense to try to fully experience life if you're not trying to improve that experience in some way. Both are concerned about optimizing for something, and Daniel realizes that these two functions work synergistically: becoming better at "being" makes you better at "becoming" and vice versa.

 

4 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

I've no idea what stage you're actually at, but if I had to guess, maybe Green.

I believe it's kinda a false question right out the gate, which was something I was trying to imply in my first comment where I talked about the difference aspects of myself. We all have different sides of ourself at different levels of development. For example. you can be heavily Orange in many of your occupational and interpersonal domains (e.g. working on Wall Street, partying and snorting coke from some stripper's boobs) while you're flirting with Tier 2 in the cognitive and aesthetic domains (e.g. learning about Spiral Dynamics, systems thinking, complex systems theory, post-Kuhnian metaphysics etc.).

When it comes to myself, I've lately been exploring a lot of Green in the political and ideological domain (socialism, LGBTQ issues, race, historical materialism, postmodernism, etc.), so it's maybe not so far off. Then I have also been retrieving and consolidating the constructive aspects of Blue that I had burned up during my Red rampage (structure, routines, discipline), getting back into the social game, partying, university etc. That is also a problem with trying to pin yourself down on SD when you're young, because you haven't really settled with anything yet.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, lmfao said:

Yeah his vibe is hella mod-like hahaha. 

Bruh ? Maybe I should've applied after all. I don't want to ruin my hobby though

[Milos Uzelac]

7 hours ago, lmfao said:

How do you think the rich ended up pulling the ladder from them?

7 hours ago, lmfao said:

How do you think the rich ended up pulling the ladder from them?

On 10/07/2021 at 3:00 AM, Milos Uzelac said:

 

It's a very complex and systematic issue. But to narrow it down into my opinion and current possessing info on the topic education that is not easily affordable and good-paying jobs and careers now that require a degree now and constant professional perfecting, over shipping of industries to Third World countries, the increasing privatisation of previously free public goods such as education and healthcare in order to generate profit, debt peonage of a lot of people by taking loans with high interests from banks, little to no savings of most people that would go towards education and creditor economy and policy programs that are mainly focused on increasing efficiency, the revenue stream and profits of the already minority of upper eschalons of the economy. In short, the negation or curbing of the role the state played earlier in regulating the economy so it would not devolve with pure market mechanisms that are primarily aimed at increasing profits and funneling society into the opposing poles of winners who seized their opportunity in time in the economy and now have a monopoly on it and the losers who missed their mark or didn't make the right calls or moves and not giving them more chances via any meaningful regulatory mechanisms that previously existed and were aimed at raising the quality of the public as a whole and not cherry pick individuals exclusively on the performance. An economy functioning in the aim to increase the wealth of and fortify the social positions of the upper successful eschalons and credentialised classes as much as possible while leaving everyone else behind. There of course more nuances and intricacies to this given each countries specific situation and conditions but this can generally be put on he trend that has been happening over the last thirty years on the planetary scale. The current credentialised managerial and educated classes or the heirs of wealth using the previously existing more publicly oriented system to get ahead of everyone else and become winners of the system and then set up policies to fortify their social positions and compensation revenue for their function in order to enjoy as much benefits as possible and to increase their wealth acquired from those positions at the cost of most of the rest of the countries economy and people who didn't seize the opportunity in time or missed it. I may have butchered this last part but I aim to further inform and educate how this results systematically in the above mentioned result. 

Edited July 12, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[thisintegrated]

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I believe it's kinda a false question right out the gate, which was something I was trying to imply in my first comment where I talked about the difference aspects of myself. We all have different sides of ourself at different levels of development. For example. you can be heavily Orange in many of your occupational and interpersonal domains (e.g. working on Wall Street, partying and snorting coke from some stripper's boobs) while you're flirting with Tier 2 in the cognitive and aesthetic domains (e.g. learning about Spiral Dynamics, systems thinking, complex systems theory, post-Kuhnian metaphysics etc.).

When it comes to myself, I've lately been exploring a lot of Green in the political and ideological domain (socialism, LGBTQ issues, race, historical materialism, postmodernism, etc.), so it's maybe not so far off. Then I have also been retrieving and consolidating the constructive aspects of Blue that I had burned up during my Red rampage (structure, routines, discipline), getting back into the social game, partying, university etc. That is also a problem with trying to pin yourself down on SD when you're young, because you haven't really settled with anything yet.

I actually strongly disagree with this.  "we're all the stages at the same time!" is a common idea I see on the forum.  It turns SD into some collection of traits rather than a coherent system, stripping it of any value.  You don't have to "become Blue" to have structure in your life.  Each stage can have structure.  The only reason Blue is known for structure is because it's the first stage to really discover it.  Orange has the structure of Blue, it just doesn't feel the need to focus on it.

Being Orange while having aspects commonly associated with Blue doesn't make you Orange AND Blue, you're still just Orange.

 

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Being Turquoise is not synonymous with adopting New Age platitudes (Green) like "living in the now"

No one ever said it was.  Turquoise is very different to Green.

 

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

...or Purple or Blue or Orange or Yellow or Turquoise. Every stage of the spiral is concerned with some type of growth or future-oriented behavior to some degree.

I only quoted that as it sounded specifically Green, not any other stage.  Even if other stages can have the same ideas, the wording/underlying-motivations can be unmistakably Green.

 

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

If anything, Yellow and Turquoise are the most future-oriented stages there are.

Yellow, yes.  Turquoise? Not so much.

You have to remember that Turquoise sees everything as already being 100% perfect.

 

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

why are people like Sadhguru running large-scale projects with millions of volunteers in order to save the environment?

They're not.  Turquoise is rarely so proactive.  Never heard of Sadhguru doing something like this, but if he is, he won't be taking it seriously like a Green would.

Edited July 13, 2021 by thisintegrated

[DocWatts]

@Milos Uzelac

@thisintegrated

Since the point was broached, there are some inherent limitations to Spiral Dynamics as a personal development model.

As a model for how Culture Value Codes (or worldviews)  function and evolve via a dialectical process it's brilliant and highly useful.

But I would also argue that as a personal development model, worldviews are just one (albeit an important) aspect of one's growth and development. The problem with using SD to chart someone's overall development is that it collapses several different lines of development in to a single axis, and is ironically a subtle form of reductionism when used in that way.

As I'm sure you'd agree, it's possible for someone to be at a level of depth and complexity significantly above or below their SD-Stage; something that a Spiral Dynamics doesn't really incorporate in to its model.

A 15 year old might indeed resonate with Yellow, but it's probable that they're at a level of complexity and depth where the Yellow their working with is a flattened and simplified form.

Likewise, someone like the Buddha wasn't 'Turquoise' (because that worldview didn't exist at that time), so much as an individual with a level of depth and complexity that was far greater than the Cultural Value memes that were available to him (which was likely SD-Blue)

Edited July 13, 2021 by DocWatts

[thisintegrated]

42 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

@Milos Uzelac

@thisintegrated

Since the point was broached, there are some inherent limitations to Spiral Dynamics as a personal development model.

As a model for how Culture Value Codes (or worldviews)  function and evolve via a dialectical process it's brilliant and highly useful.

But I would also argue that as a personal development model, worldviews are just one (albeit an important) aspect of one's growth and development. The problem with using SD to chart someone's overall development is that it collapses several different lines of development in to a single axis, and is ironically a subtle form of reductionism when used in that way.

As I'm sure you'd agree, it's possible for someone to be at a level of depth and complexity significantly above or below their SD-Stage; something that a Spiral Dynamics doesn't really incorporate in to its model.

A 15 year old might indeed resonate with Yellow, but it's probable that they're at a level of complexity and depth where the Yellow their working with is a flattened and simplified form.

Likewise, someone like the Buddha wasn't 'Turquoise' (because that worldview didn't exist at that time), so much as an individual with a level of depth and complexity that was far greater than the Cultural Value memes that were available to him (which was likely SD-Blue)

As SD is really just mapping out levels of awareness, I don't see a problem with calling someone like Buddha 'Turquoise' (though I don't really know much the Buddha).

We say that Orange is all about money and success but, of course, we know this is just a manifestation of Orange's level of awareness.  Orange, itself, has nothing to do with money.

[DocWatts]

22 minutes ago, thisintegrated said:

As SD is really just mapping out levels of awareness

While one's level of awareness of course is going to be filtered through thier worldview, one's worldview isn't all there is to awareness.

Both Plato and George W Bush were both roughly at SD-Blue, but just focusing on thier SD-level is to miss the vast differences of complexity and depth between these two individuals.

 

22 minutes ago, thisintegrated said:

We say that Orange is all about money and success but, of course, we know this is just a manifestation of Orange's level of awareness.  Orange, itself, has nothing to do with money.

Where Orange as a paradigm actually originated from was the Enlightenment, where its core pillars were the deconstruction of mythic superstitions and the separation of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful (or morals, science, and art) in to thier own spheres, so each could pursue thier own Truths.

As you correctly point out, the folks who conflate Orange with success within a Capitalist system focus excessively on just one aspect of Orange.

Edited July 13, 2021 by DocWatts

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

I actually strongly disagree with this.  "we're all the stages at the same time!" is a common idea I see on the forum.  It turns SD into some collection of traits rather than a coherent system, stripping it of any value. 

This idea is taken directly from Ken Wilber, who collaborated with Don Beck to create Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi), which is a far superior framework than SD on its own. I often use "SD" to refer to SDi. Wilber makes the distinction between levels and lines of development, and he does this based on empirical data:

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

10 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

Being Orange while having aspects commonly associated with Blue doesn't make you Orange AND Blue, you're still just Orange.

Even within the original SD framework, this is not true. Your center of gravity can lay between two stages, marked by e.g. either BLUE/Orange or Blue/ORANGE depending on your advancement. This in the SD book.

 

10 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

You have to remember that Turquoise sees everything as already being 100% perfect.

In SDi, this is mostly only true for the spiritual line of development, but this insight shouldn't impede one's vision of a better future. That would be to conflate the Absolute and the relative.

In the original SD, turquoise has actually nothing to do with spiritual awakening. Holism as a concept is not completely synonymous with spirituality.

 

10 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

They're not.  Turquoise is rarely so proactive.  Never heard of Sadhguru doing something like this, but if he is, he won't be taking it seriously like a Green would.

Look up Rally For Rivers, Cauvery Calling, Project GreenHands etc. Even if Sadhguru is highly enlightened, he is obviously taking it seriously.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Consept]

6 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

They're not.  Turquoise is rarely so proactive.  Never heard of Sadhguru doing something like this, but if he is, he won't be taking it seriously like a Green would.

Turquoise can be very proactive, they basically live their life in service, whether it be giving daily talks to help people raise consciousness or doing what Sadhguru does with his eco efforts and volunteers. I think they realise that they can have a powerful impact on the planet and humans and so they use their higher perspective to carry it out. There are of course some that would probably just meditate in a cave but i dont think its intrinsic. Turquoise also is more community orientated, each stage of sd goes from individual to communal, yellow is individual and so next stage would be communal.