Tier 1 vs. Tier 2

[Nilsi]

9 minutes ago, Artsu said:

Turquoise is at least 1% of the population, maybe 3%.

 

There are 8 levels above Turquoise so that's when it gets really rarefied.

9 minutes ago, Artsu said:

 

That's just complete intellectual anarchy. Even the concept of turquoise is ambitious at best. What exactly are these higher stages supposed to represent?

Edited August 3, 2022 by Nilsi

[Artsu]

2 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

That's just complete intellectual anarchy. Even the concept of turquoise is ambitious at best. What exactly are these higher states supposed to represent?

I made a thread about it called The Thematic Hierarchy.

[Nilsi]

14 minutes ago, Artsu said:

I made a thread about it called The Thematic Hierarchy.

25 minutes ago, Artsu said:

 

Sounds like gibberish to me. What makes Spiral Dynamics so powerful, is, that it is grounded in cultural, as well as personal development. You are just making shit up and I don't see any use in it. If you want to create a model purely based on aesthetics at least put some work into it, so others can actually comprehend it.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Nilsi

[Artsu]

3 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Sounds like gibberish to me. What makes Spiral Dynamics so powerful is that it is grounded in cultural as well as personal development. You are just making shit up and I don't see any use in it. If you want to create a model purely based on aesthetics at least put some work into it.

You people fail to recognise genius.

[Nilsi]

1 minute ago, Artsu said:

You people fail to recognise genius.

This is just massive overfitting. It may be coherent to you, but nobody else will ever comprehend what you are trying to say. So no that's not genius, that's being on the spectrum.

[Artsu]

Just now, Nilsi said:

This is just massive overfitting. It may be coherent to you, but nobody else will ever comprehend what you are trying to say. So no that's not genius, that's being on the spectrum.

It would be nice if there were more people on this forum who were at The Now and above.

 

That's my spectrum.

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, Nilsi said:

I may be overfitting at points but my main point is that you can not compare Sadhguru and Game B nor should you throw spirituality and cognitive development in one bucket.

I specifically don't equate spirituality with Turquoise. That is sort of the main implication I had in mind while writing it (it actually came to mind while discussing this exact topic). So yes, SD is about mapping the contents of the mind, while spirituality is about going meta on the contents of the mind; two distinct things which may synergize, but are nevertheless still separate. Despite Sadhguru being primarily known for spirituality, he is still a good example Tier 2, especially Turquoise. His various projects are grounded in systems thinking, deep ecology and holism, just like the Game B guys, but the plurality and the scale of his approach is much more mature. He has been working within a Tier 2 framework for multiple decades, and it shows.

 

On 2.8.2022 at 6:52 PM, JoeVolcano said:

I think it's tricky to judge someone's spiral stage by their outward accomplishments only. You can be turquoise and have a major impact, but not having a major impact does not mean you're not turquoise.

I'm saying that a person at Turquoise needs to be fairly massive, and that includes possessing massive capital and a sphere of influence. That is how you make true collective change. If you don't know how to do that yet but you still have your Tier 2 vision, then you just need to work on yourself, which means you're still mainly at the individualistic stage of Tier 2 (Yellow).

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

Despite Sadhguru being primarily known for spirituality, he is still a good example Tier 2, especially Turquoise. His various projects are grounded in systems thinking, deep ecology and holism, just like the Game B guys, but the plurality and the scale of his approach is much more mature. He has been working within a Tier 2 frame for multiple decades, and it shows.

@JoeVolcano

That's where I would disagree. It's fundamentally a different approach and not comparable. The level of analysis that people like Schmachtenberger and Hall apply to complex systems is way above Sadhgurus paygrade and to such an extend, that it is not just a difference in degree, but also in kind. Sadhguru may very well be a lot more wise and mature in his approach, but Game B is really a unique and (at least to me) fascinating and compelling approach and I wouldn't rule it out so fast; time will tell if it can actually create meaningful results or if it's just way too ambitious and up in the clouds.

I think one huge point that tends to be overlooked is that Game B is consciously banking on using exponential tech to facilitate their endeavor, while Sadhguru tends to be largely oblivious to these realities. It's a bold new world were heading toward and Game B might just be bold enough to help us navigate it.

Also Game B is was less ideological that Sadhgurus foundation; Game B basically just stands for "the thing we have to do to not blow ourselves up," so it's quite platonic in that sense; it basically tries to optimize for the ideal Civilization without really specifying what that means. In a world of insanely powerful AI, I can see this actually working. What we need is the kind of dynamic set of specifications that an algorithm can optimize for without fucking shit up and that's a very delicate and complex (and so far rather theoretical and dry) endeavor.

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Nilsi

[Nilsi]

10 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I specifically don't equate spirituality with Turquoise.

I'm aware of that; I was trying to make the case against having turquoise in the first place and since I don't see why yellow wouldn't care and act in service of all, the only thing left for turquoise would be some kind of spiritual claim.

[Carl-Richard]

22 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

So my whole point is that's exactly the bullshit. You want to judge cognitive development by what you imagine the fruits or requirements or vision or influence or whatever else to be, instead of just judging it by the actual development itself. You're elevating a proxy criterion over the actual thing being judged.

If you hadn't noticed, that's always the first thing all seekers do, they bait and switch the criterion of truth for some other criterion. Like practicality, or happiness, or ability to levitate, or having a rainbow body. Anything but actual truth itself. Notice any pattern there?

Btw. the opposite of individualistic isn't "save the world". The danger of using proxy criteria isn't just that it's a different criteria, but that it always veers off into fantasy land when you don't actually know what you're talking about.

How you would you explain the distinction between Yellow and Turquoise? Especially the individualist vs. collectivist aspect.

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, JoeVolcano said:

@Carl-Richard Yellow and turqoise are worlds apart, how would you even confuse them.

How so?

[Carl-Richard]

21 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Also, please point me to Nisargadatta's massive capital.

I don't generally consider non-duality to be an aspect of Turquoise.

[Carl-Richard]

@JoeVolcano 

The interpretation of Turquoise is obviously a hotly contested issue, so I'll admit that this is speculative without blaming myself too much . I'm firstly in the "growing up ≠ waking up" camp, so equating non-duality to Turquoise is a no-no. Other than that, I used to agree with the Nordic metamodernists that Turquoise is an unnecessary stage, because it's not really a new value system, or it doesn't seem to differ in any significant way from Yellow.

However, we know that Tier 2 works differently from Tier 1, and that therefore maybe the progression from Yellow to Turquoise also can work differently, i.e. it doesn't have to be a new set of values. So given this assumption, maybe a good place to start would be this: by which criteria should we divide Tier 2 into an individualist and a collectivist component?

Now, since it's no longer about a difference in values, what is left other than a difference in maturity, emphasis and focus? Can we also not make the case these can reflect differences in cognitive complexity (i.e. still following the same backbone of cognitive development)? For example, a Daniel Schmachtenberger could probably write a stellar article that lays out the blueprint of a post-rivalrous civilization, but does that make him on the same level as a Sadhguru who is arguably already laying the groundwork for that? Probably not.

So yeah, this is basically a roundabout explanation of why I choose to conflate what you call proxy criteria vs. actual development, because again, there is imo not much else you can do if you want to chop up Tier 2 into multiple segments  

 

21 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

How about Nisargadatta.

The Tobacco man? Probably not

 

(btw I deleted everything I wrote by accident, so it took me more than twice as long to write it )

[Artsu]

If you're going to talk about Tier 1 and 2 given what the spiral dynamics model describes, then either green has to be tier 2 or else tier 2 has to start at coral.

 

Yellow and Turquoise represent intuition, whereas red and blue are sensing, orange is thinking and Green is feeling. Coral is The Now, back to sensing.

[DocWatts]

I guess I'll be the odd one out and posit some of the limitations I've noticed with Spiral Dynamics, which have less to do with the model itself and more to do with how easy it is to misuse.

Spiral Dynamics is best used as a sociological model which maps out the dialectics behind meta-paradigms shifts within human societies. It really shouldn't be used as a model of personal development.

Precisely because Spiral Dynamics is a meta model it becomes very easy to apply it in a reductionist way as a form of sociological bypassing that explains away its subject matter. In this way it's not all that dissimiliar to taking the insights of someone like Marx into a class reductionism that's used to explain away multi-faceted problems.

[Carl-Richard]

22 hours ago, Nilsi said:

That's where I would disagree. It's fundamentally a different approach and not comparable. The level of analysis that people like Schmachtenberger and Hall apply to complex systems is way above Sadhgurus paygrade and to such an extend, that it is not just a difference in degree, but also in kind.

The fundamental values are the same: a house divided against itself cannot stand. The main difference is that the Game B guys are mostly academics, which means they're more analytically rigorous.

[Artsu]

2 hours ago, Fearey said:

Trying to describe each Spiral Dynamics stage with a single word is a strong indication that you don't know the model very well. To then add MBTI into the mix verifies that.

MBTI and Spiral Dynamics have very little in common.

I've had good luck with studying myself in the system.

I'm not going to write definitions/descriptions at this point.

You don't understand how powerful my model is.

This site should be praising it.

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

The fundamental values are the same: a house divided against itself cannot stand. The main difference is that the Game B guys are mostly academics, which means they're more analytically rigorous.

Its different in the sense that one trys to understand the problem as exhaustively as possible and the other tries to act on whatever limited understanding is available currently. I dont think transcendent wisdom and knowledge can solve multipolar traps and coordination breakdown; it might in theory, but how are you going to distribute it to everyone, which would be neccessary in a world, where one bad actor fucking shit up with some homegrown supervirus or whatever, is enough to end this whole endeavor prematurely? I welcome both and I think they are both doing tremendous good. Of course you can find some meta issue that they are both addressing, but I dont think thats helpful for actually understanding what these movements represent.

Game B trys to find a definitive solution or way forward in a world where one mistake could mean the end, which may or may not be possible; Sadhguru comes from a place of faith in the Good, which may or may not be wise (from the POV of humanity wanting to continue; which is a whole can of worms in itself). I would rather have faith in the process of finding a solution, than have my solution be a process of faith.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

22 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

Cognitive development ≠ cognitive complexity. The eyes-closed mind loves complexity because it can get completely lost in it and tell itself that it's going somewhere, and not just spinning its wheels. What you need is simplicity.

I think this is the crux of our disagreement.

Firstly, cognitive complexity is not about the mind liking complexity as a sort of masturbatory exercise. It's just that complex problems require complex minds to solve them. The problem might be complex, but the solution might be simple (arguably, that is what a solution is on a fundamental level: a reduction in complexity). So cognitive complexity is the ability to solve complex cognitive problems.

What is cognition? Firstly, cognitive complexity is what underlies Spiral Dynamics and all the other stage theories within the Western paradigm of academic developmental psychology, and since it's a construct of Western psychology, it deals with the concept of cognition that ascribes it essential qualities, or "content" (e.g. thoughts, feelings, perceptions). So in this sense, cognitive development means an increase in complexity of the contents of the mind (which is what Ken Wilber refers to as "Growing up"). 

On the other hand, non-dual awakening is about "Waking up", which I would describe as going meta on your own cognition. So unlike cognitive development, it's not about an increase in the complexity of contents, but it's about being able to take a step back and distinguish between contents (thoughts etc.) and the context of the mind (consciousness/awareness). "Cleaning up" is just a synonym for psychotherapy; uncovering trauma and fixing neuroses, i.e. the contents of mind that are generally hidden from view.

Now, you mentioned Jed McKenna's model, which I can appreciate, however, you're then expanding the idea of cognitive development and stepping outside the realm of academic developmental psychology. McKenna's "Human Adulthood" seems to take the end result of Growing up, Waking up, and Cleaning up and smash them all into the same construct, which makes sense, because that is also what Wilber would consider the peak of human maturity. However, that is not what SD is doing, so equating Turquoise to Human Adulthood would be a mistake.

[Carl-Richard]

58 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Of course you can find some meta issue that they are both addressing, but I dont think thats helpful for actually understanding what these movements represent.

I'm not saying the Game B guys aren't special. I'm just saying that Sadhguru shares their values. You don't have to be a nerd who uses a word from game theory every sentence to qualify as Tier 2.