Spiral Dynamics - Literature

[Bojan]

Let's gather this somewhere. Anywhere! So the Bible is Stage Blue, as well as the Quran. What about Hamlet, Moby Dick, and other classics?

Hero myths and legends are stage Red? Like the iliad and odyssey. Stage orange books are about money and sex, like The Great Gatsby or  A Change of Place. Stage green books?

Edited January 22, 2022 by Bojan

[Dingo]

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - prime example of healthy Orange

[Vynce]

18 hours ago, Bojan said:

So the Bible is Stage Blue

Christians dogmatically believing in the Bible are examples of stage blue. However the Bible is written from a stage turquoise perspective. It's just all about the interpretation. If you listen to someone like Eckhart Tolle (prime example of stage turquoise) you notice that he picks a lot of symbols from the Bible to describe non-duality. Tragically most christians don't know anything about the nature of non-duality, so the Bible is part of this dualistic fuckery. 

[Bojan V]

Few things about the book A Course in Miracles...

It was scribed by a person at the Green stage, but the content and the structure of the Course is at least Turquoise, if not higher. That's my opinion, but of course i can't be sure...

Edited June 17, 2022 by Bojan V

[AtheisticNonduality]

On 6/17/2022 at 6:56 AM, Bojan V said:

Few things about the book A Course in Miracles...

It was scribed by a person at the Green stage, but the content and the structure of the Course is at least Turquoise, if not higher. That's my opinion, but of course i can't be sure...

My comment about the cute cat, Aurobindo, and The Life Divine was deleted!

[Bojan V]

@AtheisticNonduality Don't worry, I've read it. My comment was deleted too. It happend because of the crash of the website.

[Kshantivadin]

On 1/22/2022 at 4:49 PM, Bojan said:

Stage green books?

The way of the superior man - pinnacle of healthy, high green relating to life and masculinity, emerging tier 2 I would say, the fact that it's written from a place of a certain spiritual realisation doesn't make it turquoise in my eyes, but I don't know anything about turquoise anyway.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Kshantivadin

[Oeaohoo]

Any model in which Think and Grow Rich is two stages more advanced than Homer’s Odyssey is a deeply flawed one!

I would say that Shakespeare is early Orange, with a lot of Blue (inspiration from Chaucer and late medieval literature) and even Red/Purple (pagan morality) hanging over, and some anticipations of Green (love of perspective, fetishism of human relationships, relativism). Later English authors like Dickens more or less continue this trend towards Green, though in certain ways Victorian morality constituted a last strong gasp of Blue.

Moby Dick and most other American literature is much more solidly Orange, with admitted glimmers of that weird form of intense Blue which you get in the uprooted and desecrated land which is the USA.

[Flyboy]

The Neverending Story is a deep enlightenment metaphor if you know what you're looking for.  Also the Alchemist.

[Matt23]

On 6/21/2022 at 3:01 PM, Oeaohoo said:

Any model in which Think and Grow Rich is two stages more advanced than Homer’s Odyssey is a deeply flawed one!

I would say that Shakespeare is early Orange, with a lot of Blue (inspiration from Chaucer and late medieval literature) and even Red/Purple (pagan morality) hanging over, and some anticipations of Green (love of perspective, fetishism of human relationships, relativism). Later English authors like Dickens more or less continue this trend towards Green, though in certain ways Victorian morality constituted a last strong gasp of Blue.

Moby Dick and most other American literature is much more solidly Orange, with admitted glimmers of that weird form of intense Blue which you get in the uprooted and desecrated land which is the USA.

 There could also be different "lines" of development we're looking at within writings like Homer's Odyssey and Think and Grow Rich.   Like, maybe you have a point in regards to the Odyssey being higher in terms of spirituality, perhaps even morality (though I dunno).  But maybe Think and Grow Rich is more developed in terms of economics, personal development, cognition, language or something of the sort.  

Also, perhaps development is more of a stepwise thing where one stage leads to the other (I'm not totally 100% bought into this idea that development occurs only in a stepwise fashion), such that, even though one may value one stage over another, the point is that A leads to B leads to C.  Such that, even though, yes, the Odyssey may contain some profound and great lessons and truths, it formed the bedrock with which later, more developed/complex/loving/all embracing, or w/e adjective you want to use, books and ideas like Think and Grow Rich could emerge out of. 

We may also get used to books written in our generation and view them as trivial since we're so used to them.  So when we see books not of our generation, like Homer, we see them in an idealized fashion. 

Spitballin here.  

In the end, it's probably wise to hold these models and ideas of hierarchy and development loosely and not rigidly cram things into their boxes too much.  Like, I'm sure there's far more complexity, subtlety, and nuance happening within all these books and ideas than we can see; let alone that one model can see.  

I view the SD model as a pretty broad and rough categorical and explanatory tool, similar to how we distinguish between animals, reptiles, and plants.  But, as we all know, there's a plethora of diversity within each of those super broad categories.  Could be similar for humans and human development (though maybe not as rich... though could be richer... dunno).