Tier 1 vs. Tier 2

[Carl-Richard]

52 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

First I'd just like to say, please bear in mind that I was never into self-actualization and am not particularly studied in SD theory or history or terminology. What I know about it is mostly from Leo's videos and how it matches up with my own experience. So I may very well be getting some of the finer academic points wrong.

That's completely fine. It has sort of been a mission of mine lately to ground my understanding of Spiral Dynamics in a more general understanding of developmental psychology, and I understand that this is not necessarily required to reap most of the benefit you can get from the model from a more general self-understanding point of view.

 

52 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

That said, you're trying to maintain distinctions that don't hold up. I know this for a fact, not because I've read something somewhere. Also I just noticed that you've been having this exact discussion before, with @thisintegrated in his journal. He's been pointing out all the same things to you, likewise from his own experience (and I would add that he is clearly more qualified than either of us). But there as well, you're just not having any of it.

He is simply championing the self-taught, intuitive approach that you and most people hold. That is the norm. I, like Leo, used to think that Turquoise was the non-duality stage, until Don Beck copyright striked his Turquoise video for making that exact mistake. You also don't need to go far into academia to get some solid verification of what I'm saying. Just listen to this short 3 min clip of Ken Wilber's Growing up vs. Waking up distinction:

 

52 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

You're undoubtedly well-read on the subject, but at the end of the day you are speaking from theory, and you're not willing to take any pointers from people who can actually tell you about it first hand. We could continue discussing this and I could address all your points, at least insofar as my own experience goes. Probably not to your satisfaction, but all the same. But I honestly don't know what you're even hoping to get out of it, if you're not in this to learn but just to assert.

I was just pointing out where I think the source of our disagreement was. But yes, I would really much like somebody to just tell it to me straight what Turquoise really is. I'm fine about conceding my idea that Tier 2 can maybe be divided on something other than values, as long as it doesn't contradict what I know about developmental psychology in general (unless I'm wrong about that as well).

 

52 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

What do you want me to say, that you're right? Ok, you're right.

I don't know if that solves it for you. You seem to have burning questions about yellow vs. turquoise and yet you keep rejecting all the answers because you think you already know. ?‍♂️ Are you willing to consider the possibility that you actually don't? Because as far as I'm concerned, that's the only way forward in this conversation.

No!  I'm not satisfied with my understanding of Turquoise. I actually think your point about proxy criteria and actual values is probably right, but I don't know how exactly. I don't know in what way Turquoise values differ significantly from Yellow, or what kind of generalized principle we should use to make that distinction. On that note, Wikipedia has a decent summary of the Spiral Dynamics book, and you can take a look and tell me what you think:

[thisintegrated]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

No!  I'm not satisfied with my understanding of Turquoise. I actually think your point about proxy criteria and actual values is probably right, but I don't know how exactly. I don't know in what way Turquoise values differ significantly from Yellow, or what kind of generalized principle we should use to make that distinction. On that note, Wikipedia has a decent summary of the Spiral Dynamics book, and you can take a look and tell me what you think:

You'll never be satisfied.  This is a real struggle for Te users, but you won't find a satisfying answer written in some book.  I've given you plenty of examples of what it often looks like, and that's as close to a concrete answer as you'll ever get.  It's not non-duality, but it's also not "Yellow but smarter and more intellectual".  

Also, forget about using ideas of collectivism vs individualism to help understand the differences.  Green is collective, yet has close to zero collective characteristics.  Veganism has nothing to do with sitting in a circle with a group.  Weed is an extremely introverted experience for almost everyone.  Yet these things are very strongly associated with Green.

Similarly, the things Turquoise is known for aren't at all about community.  Green and Turquoise can be very individualistic, it's just that their level of awareness naturally tends to include things bigger than themselves.  Be it concern for animals, conspiracy theories, or existential matters beyond the ego.

Edited August 5, 2022 by thisintegrated

[AtheisticNonduality]

@JoeVolcano I agree with how you emphasize the "experience" or "waking" aspects, but that is not the only measure of development. It also does not have to do with ego-less-ness. The psyche will identify with something higher than the human self (mind / emotions / body: a definition drawn from here), and we may call that the Self; though it will (should) still recognize and remain understanding the lower aspect. The whole "the self is an illusion" is nonsense. Either what that statement means is that the self is just one object among others and no longer recognized as a subject, in which case the self still exists but just as an object; or it means the self is part of "Maya" or "the lie" or the illusory nature of all of reality, in which case the statement is nonsense since it applies to all other possible options besides the self (and is therefore relatively meaningless). Or otherwise, what you mean is you keep the self in its current recognition and add to that the higher sense . . . etc. . . .

[AtheisticNonduality]

1 minute ago, JoeVolcano said:

From a developmental standpoint, none of this has anything to do with illusion or metaphysics, but with the functional configuration of your psychosomatic system. So we can safely skip that whole line of argument.

In that case, I'd say what you're advocating could directly cause psychosis.

 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

That's not championing a self-taught intuitive approach, that's having actual first-hand verified data to base your claims on. It means you've actually gone through the process. It means you're a live, walking experiment and the results are in. It means you're an actual source of actual authority. Which, I can't stress enough, you aren't.

Obviously. I wouldn't be trying to intellectually derive what Turquoise is if I was already there. I would just say what it is. In fact, I wouldn't even entertain the model at that point.

 

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

Yeah what he calls waking up, I don't call waking up at all. He's talking about having an experience. I agree this has nothing to do with your SD stage. But by the same token, it also has nothing to do with your baseline level of awakeness. What I called lucidity/clarity before. Which is simply the natural result of flushing egoic fog from your system. Which is the only real measure of human development/integration (or rather un-segregation). You refuse to accept that your SD stage and baseline awakeness are essentially the same thing.

I don't care what you call it. All I said is that there is someone named Ken Wilber who calls something "Waking up". You're indeed talking about something else, and I actually mentioned that Wilber might call that specific thing maximizing Waking up + Growing up + Cleaning up. However, I also mentioned that SD is not that thing either.

 

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

I don't know whether you're wrong about your more general understanding of developmental psychology. But I have zero confidence that general developmental psychology has any purchase on the higher stages of human development. Did you seriously expect to find any of this out from the books of a developmentally retarded child race?

I get the sense that you're almost making the models about yourself. I don't care if the person who made the model was somehow low consciousness by whatever biased metric I have. I just try to represent what they were actually trying to convey to the best of my ability. It's not my model, it's not my terminology, so it's on me to try to represent it as accurately as possible, and that is as much as I expect from these types of things, despite how flawed or corny they might be. That's why I wanted to learn about developmental psychology in general.

[AtheisticNonduality]

1 minute ago, JoeVolcano said:

That's gonna be the fear-mongering of the entrenched child ego. No offense.

No, there are definite positives to be found in the psychotic, like an unraveling of all of "the lies" (as you would say) in society. But it is a limited experience, even if it is transcendent (but all transcendence is relative).

It is not of an "entrenched ego" since I don't really have an ego anymore by your standards, but by my standards, I do, since the existence or nonexistence of the ego according to particular states is a problem of terminology---these problems of terminology are too common here because of inadequacies in certain Wilberian "lines of development".

Your model of your enlightenment-type experiences is really awful. That's basically the point I'm trying to make. It's all based around Absolute-relative obfuscations and hypocrisies.

[AtheisticNonduality]

2 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

@AtheisticNonduality i get that you're very particular about hypocrisies. But that's like saying it's all illusion.

I think removing all that removes all our disagreements.

But in more generous phrasing . . .

I'd say I'm more inclined to differentiate various developments. The way the ego is described seems to throw too many phenomena together, when really they are separate. Obviously I'm not speaking in an Absolute sense.

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

You'll never be satisfied.  This is a real struggle for Te users, but you won't find a satisfying answer written in some book.

You won't find Spiral Dynamics written inside your brain either, or at least nobody except you would call it that. You might not care about that, but then you're perpetually stuck under a glass ceiling of idiosyncrasy.

[Carl-Richard]

3 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

What did you think SD is a study of...

If SD is the map, what do you think is the territory...

Idk, but it seems like you're trying to pull the territory out of the map ?

[AtheisticNonduality]

5 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

I think the point here is that all those different phenomena can all be traced back to a very specific mechanism. 1001 symptoms, one underlying cause. 1001 proxy criteria going every which way, one actual process going in one inevitable direction.

Differentiation > simplification for this. I don't subscribe to the notion of waging a war against the ego or trying to burn it to the ground and free yourself from it. That seems intuitively like a waste of time to me, though I could see if somebody had a really narcissistically intense sense of self how it'd be worthwhile.

The way I'm thinking about it is that there are different levels or segments: 1. there's the physical environment "out there" that is separate from our body 2. there's our body 3. there's our body's emotions 4. there's our mind's emotions 5. there's our path into a deeper part of the mind 6. there's our subconscious 7. there's our intellect 8. there's that which is above the intellect, "the supraconscious". Not all issues that might happen with these eight levels have to stem from an egoic issue. Usually the ego means our body up to and including our intellect. Anything above or below that is either post- or pre-ego. But from another point of view, the ego could identify only with one level, so only the intellect or only the mind's emotions or only the body; dissociating from and allowing problems to ensue with the other levels. The Jungian view here is for a greater Self to arise out of a blossoming individuation to make all the parts work properly without damaging any of them, unconscious and conscious unified into functioning.

[hyruga]

Edited August 5, 2022 by hyruga

[Nilsi]

On 8/3/2022 at 11:41 PM, JoeVolcano said:

 

The only thing I could see turquoise being, is something like construct awareness, where you can now take a 5th-nth person perspective on the ego that's integrating all these prior stages instead of being the ego that's integrating. So you could create ever more complex thought structures and nth order integrations. I don't know if that's not just yellow on steroids though, but it would limit egocentrism (or at least make it more inclusive, considering that you're integrating all those prior integrators) thus maybe create this "global village" flavor or whatever.

I could definitely see a world in which people that constantly take a n+1th person perspective on their own perspective could create amazing complexity and harmony; but this is also how I imagine an AI to think; and this kind of thinking is basically the trickster archetype, which would take us to mystics again. Aesthetically that would definitely track with Leo's and Beck's conception of turquoise and it feels intuitively right, but we're not there yet anyways, so it's really just speculation.

The turquoise MEMEplex would then look something like (complexity, self-transcendence, mysticism, artificial intelligence, hive mind, trickster, transpersonal...). I'm not sure this feels right now that I look at it, but maybe there is something here that helps.

What's also interesting is, that it seems like turquoise should be way more complex than yellow (which felt kind of counter intuitive at first, considering the usual stereotypes); yellow creates a simple integral framework, which turquoise blows up into this complex ever-expanding thing. This feels more like Schmachtenberger etc. again.

This is probably 99% gibberish but maybe someone can build upon something here.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Nilsi]

8 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Yeah that sounds like some conception of yellow on steroids. Everyone is trying to extrapolate turquoise from yellow,  because yellow is all the mind can access. But you can't extrapolate from it. Turquoise is not just a continuation of all the same shit that came before. It's an actual paradigm shift. Yellow isn't.

The only thing special about yellow is the awareness of itself. About damn time. That's what tier 2 means, as far as I understand the theory.

In fact I'd say that is probably exactly what ends up blowing the whole thing out of the water as you move on to turquoise. Self-awareness destroys self-deception. You don't "advance" from yellow to turquoise, you drop the whole mess like the burning poison alien invader with acid for blood that it is.

On 8/3/2022 at 11:41 PM, JoeVolcano said:

 

Yellow is definitely a profound paradigm shift. You see all these aspects of yourself for the first time and realise that they are all valid and need to be satisfied somehow. 

It's a theory of cognitive/ego development after all, so saying, the mind cannot access turquoise, means that whatever you hold as turquoise is not it either.

[Nilsi]

4 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

It is profound, but it's not a different paradigm.

I don't want to split hairs, but if your Tier 2 "awakening" (I don't even know how this is originally called) is not a paradigm shift, then I don't know what is.

My original point was that I don't even buy the idea of turquoise at all so I'm with you on that.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Nilsi]

1 minute ago, JoeVolcano said:

That's right, you don't know what a different paradigm is until turquoise.

So your claim is that you are at that stage? Why can't you then give a phenomenological account of what it is like?

[Nilsi]

21 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Lol because it's a different paradigm. You can talk about it all you want, but you can't convey it.

If you've read and understood Jed McKenna's stuff about Human Adulthood, imo he's already said pretty much all there is to say about it. If that doesn't do it for you, I certainly couldn't say it any better.

After that, all you can really do is do the work. Make the journey. You can't dictate it, it's going to be a process and you have very little actual control.

I'm not familiar with McKennas work. It's been mentioned here so much, I'll check it out for sure (I guess his "Theory Of Everything" will do?). From the quote's I've read, it seems like he is just talking about awakening, not some developmental stage, am I wrong in that?

Every stage I'm aware of would be quite easy to explain, so it's kind of sketchy that the one that nobody seems to really agree on, is also the one that apparently can't be explained. But yeah, good for you, if you're that developed.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Florian]

I think one key difference, or the key difference, between the two tiers is that in tier one you believe your values are absolutely right in everything, so if someone else from another stage has different values he is wrong, since your values are absolute for everything. And in the second stage you can make the distinction between two different systems, that are independent from each other, which means your values have nothing to do with the other system and theirs have nothing to do with you.

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, Nilsi said:

This is probably 99% gibberish but maybe someone can build upon something here.

You're using neologisms without explaining what they mean.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

You can measure values, you can't measure level of awareness directly. Values are just the observable data points from which the model was derived, but the observable data points reflect a hidden variable. That hidden variable is the missing ingredient in all this talk.

Cognitive complexity.

[Nilsi]

38 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You're using neologisms without explaining what they mean.

They are not really mine. I got the thing with nth person perspective from Cook Greuters models. But yeah, this wasn't really high quality, I just wanted to get my thoughts out and thought maybe someone can pick up on something in there.

I will sort my thoughts on this and lay it out more clearly. I dont have any profound insight into this myself, but maybe something can emerge from it.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi