Why I think Spiral Dynamics is wrong.

[vindicated erudite]

I do not like the way this forum talks about spiral dynamics because I do not believe it's an accurate representation of reality. Spiral dynamics is a unilinear and hierarchical way of looking at the evolution of humanity. It creates a grand narrative of the progress of history and can only acknowledge one value set as valid. 

When you look at how evolution plays out in the real world you'll realise that there is no hierarchy to the process of evolution. Organisms diverge into niches in order to handle the challenges in it's environment. To put it into other words, there are no linear hierarchies in nature. 

The model of spiral dynamics is cultural relative to the unique environments it was invented in. Why can't you put stage orange above stage yellow or stage blue above stage green? I understand that each stage is supposed to build upon the last but evolution can involve the lose of traits as well as the addition of traits. Why is stage turquoise the peak of known human evolution? 

If you don't understand my point yet here's an example:

Let's say that that person A and person B meet each other for the time. Person A is stage red and person B is stage green they're both going to believe that they are more evolved that the other person because their values are culturally relative. What allows spiral dynamics to say that person B is in fact more evolved than person A? 

Edited May 1, 2023 by vindicated erudite

[vindicated erudite]

I believe that Spiral Dynamics does have to potential to lay down the foundation for the construction of a universal or world culture. However the SD model is something that needs to be willingly adopted as a way to unite each other and not seen as a tool to project onto individuals, groups, societies. 

[Buck Edwards]

Spiral dynamics is about intellectual evolution and not biological evolution. 

Here you're comparing apples and oranges. 

 

[vindicated erudite]

Just now, Enlightement said:

Spiral dynamics is about intellectual evolution and not biological evolution. 

Here you're comparing apples and oranges. 

 

I am not, even though there's not much difference between the two.

[Buck Edwards]

Just now, vindicated erudite said:

I am not, even though there's not much difference between the two.

There is. Indeed. Biological evolution can be random genetic mutation. Intellectual evolution is not random but curated through different experiences and much suffering and learning. It needs a growth mindset. That's why stage orange acts as a nexus. Through stage orange you slowly realize that materialism is not healthy overall and the need for spiritual expansion begins to grow and proceeds through green to turquoise. 

One has to reach the pinnacle of productivity to then branch into something more meaningful and beyond and this happens only with maxxing out at human materialistic bullshit. 

Spiral dynamics is the most excellent model to study the evolution of consciousness in humans. 

 

[Jwayne]

11 minutes ago, vindicated erudite said:

I do not like the way this forum talks about spiral dynamics because I do not believe it's an accurate representation of reality. Spiral dynamics is a unilinear and hierarchical way of looking at the evolution of humanity. It creates a grand narrative of the progress of history and can only acknowledge one value set as valid. 

When you look at how evolution plays out in the real world you'll realise that there is no hierarchy to the process of evolution. Organisms diverge into niches in order to handle the challenges in it's environment. To put it into other words, there are no linear hierarchies in nature. 

The model of spiral dynamics is cultural relative to the unique environments it was invented in. Why can't you put stage orange above stage yellow or stage blue above stage green? I understand that each stage is supposed to build upon the last but evolution can involve the lose of traits as well as the addition of traits. Why is stage turquoise the peak of known human evolution? 

If you don't understand my point yet here's an example:

Let's say that that person A and person B meet each other for the time. Person A is stage red and person B is stage green they're both going to believe that they are more evolved that the other person because their values are culturally relative. What allows spiral dynamics to say that person B is in fact more evolved than person A? 

Spiral Dynamics is highly ideological, liberal universalist gibberish. It's childish, reductive and pseudo-intellectual. It's a kind of intellectual-spiritual degeneracy that reaffirms the ego of its ideologues that their personal ideals are higher than everyone else who has ever existed. It's incredibly arrogant and also quite violent, in that respect. A kind of blind, authoritarian cultural-epistemic imperialism.

[Buck Edwards]

1 minute ago, Jwayne said:

Spiral Dynamics is highly ideological, liberal universalist gibberish. It's childish, reductive and pseudo-intellectual. It's a kind of intellectual-spiritual degeneracy that reaffirms the ego of its ideologues that their personal ideals are higher than everyone else who has ever existed. It's incredibly arrogant and also quite violent, in that respect. A kind of blind, authoritarian cultural-epistemic imperialism.

I never looked at it that way. I always found it deeply meaningful. 

 

[vindicated erudite]

3 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

There is. Indeed. Biological evolution can be random genetic mutation. Intellectual evolution is not random but curated through different experiences and much suffering and learning. It needs a growth mindset. That's why stage orange acts as a nexus. Through stage orange you slowly realize that materialism is not healthy overall and the need for spiritual expansion begins to grow and proceeds through green to turquoise. 

One has to reach the pinnacle of productivity to then branch into something more meaningful and beyond and this happens only with maxxing out at human materialistic bullshit. 

Spiral dynamics is the most excellent model to study the evolution of consciousness in humans. 

 

There are problems with your thinking here, people come up with new ideas through trial and error and focus the ideas that work whilst ignoring the ideas that do not work. 

Also who determines what peak productivity shouldn't somebody like Jeff Beezos be stage green or does some transfer to stage green once they feel like they've reached this stage of peak productivity?

[Jwayne]

2 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

I never looked at it that way. I always found it deeply meaningful. 

 

I agree its meaningful. But being meaningful is not the same as being an objective ('scientific') description of reality with universalist application (i.e. "excellent model to study evolution of consciousness").

How about we agree its one attempt to do such a thing while acknowledging its in-built ideological biases?

[vindicated erudite]

4 minutes ago, Jwayne said:

Spiral Dynamics is highly ideological, liberal universalist gibberish. It's childish, reductive and pseudo-intellectual. It's a kind of intellectual-spiritual degeneracy that reaffirms the ego of its ideologues that their personal ideals are higher than everyone else who has ever existed. It's incredibly arrogant and also quite violent, in that respect. A kind of blind, authoritarian cultural-epistemic imperialism.

[Buck Edwards]

@Jwayne it could suffer some cultural biases here and there but mostly universally collateral. 

[Jwayne]

4 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

@Jwayne it could suffer some cultural biases here and there but mostly universally collateral. 

From start to finish it has an ideological bias, not only politically, but also linguistically and culturally. Not acknowledging that context, and remaining unaware and blind to itself, makes it pseudo-intellectual.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jwayne

[Jodistrict]

Spiral dynamics is looking at the world with the implicit values of a modern, capitalistic society.   It’s a spiral with a direction moving upwards implying that the “higher” levels are better than the “lower levels”.   In my opinion, it is psuedo science.  But the “red, green, orange, blue” categories seem to be a semi useful shorthand explanation for the purposes of facilitating discussion.  But do these catagories trivialize the complexity of society? 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jodistrict

[Jwayne]

4 minutes ago, Jodistrict said:

Spiral dynamics is looking at the world with the implicit values of a modern, capitalistic society.   It’s a spiral with a direction moving upwards implying that the “higher” levels are better than the “lower levels”.   In my opinion, it is psuedo science.  But the “red, green, orange, blue” categories seem to be a semi useful shorthand explanation for the purposes of facilitating discussion.  But do these catagories trivialize the complexity of society? 

Anything color coded is obviously trivializing, unless its directing street traffic. Its reductiveness is a symptom of a degrading intellect and growing illiteracy of the audience. People today expect easy bite-sized portions and sound bites. They don't want to read The Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. They want the sparknotes version.

Yet they then turn around and also believe to have systemized the ultimate hierarchy of consciousness that has ever existed. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you want to claim an objective absolute knowledge of consciousness you need to weigh all the doctrines, traditions and mysticisms together. And not merely a New Age synopsis of what they are, but actual scholarship in native tongue of how they describe themselves .

[vindicated erudite]

28 minutes ago, RebornConsciousness said:

Spiral dynamics is about the evolution of an individual and societal consciousness. You can clearly be more conscious or less conscious, therefore some stages are superior to others. It's not about survival nor biology, but about the worldview of each stage, how conscious it is of reality and how close it is to the truth. Some stages are better for pure survival, but survival does not equal truth and understanding.

I don't know how else to say it. You can clearly see the differences between the consciousness and inteligence of an animal versus human. Why would you assume there are no such differences between humans as well?

This is biased thinking in favour of humans. 

[Jwayne]

1 minute ago, vindicated erudite said:

This is biased thinking in favour of humans. 

The first objection should be its blindness, or lack of self-awareness, to its own political, linguistic and cultural biases.

Next is its ensuing categorization of those biases into a universalist claim to objective knowledge rather than a model for instrumental ends and specific purposes (i.e. shorthand convenience within the ideological frame).

Lastly, would be a critique of the actual contents. But that would take as a given the above mentioned ideological assumptions as a desireable standard and I'm not willing to grant that because I think it is flawed there too.

[vindicated erudite]

2 minutes ago, RebornConsciousness said:

Which animal do you think is even close to humans in it's consciousness and ability to understand reality and inteligence? Pandas, shimpanzees? LOL

Each animal species and subspecies does have it's own unique inteligence in a way it survives in this world. But they are not conscious of it. That's my point. They are operating mostly on primal insticts. And this is obvious when you compare human brains versus animal brains. Human brains are incredibly large in comparison to human bodies, compared to the ratio of animal brains to animal bodies.

What do you mean by understand reality and intellgence?

[max duewel]

Just like Darwin's model of evolution, or the scientific narrative of atoms, to molecules, to cells, to organisms. Or fish, to rodens, to mammals, to apes, to humans. Spyral dynamics is an attempt to differentiate and integrate human value systems into a grand narrative. Obviously, the narrative is just that. A great story. However, this story in my opinion allows a less judgmental, and more effective interaction with the world at least in comparison to all other narratives I had before. 

Please go ahead if someone has a better way of explaining human psychological evolution in a left-brain approach. I doubt someone here will come up with something better tho

[Jwayne]

26 minutes ago, max duewel said:

Please go ahead if someone has a better way of explaining human psychological evolution in a left-brain approach. I doubt someone here will come up with something better tho

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga is far a more serious and rigorous attempt to explain the evolution of consciousness.

[Jwayne]

37 minutes ago, max duewel said:

Just like Darwin's model of evolution, or the scientific narrative of atoms, to molecules, to cells, to organisms. Or fish, to rodens, to mammals, to apes, to humans. Spyral dynamics is an attempt to differentiate and integrate human value systems into a grand narrative. Obviously, the narrative is just that. A great story. However, this story in my opinion allows a less judgmental, and more effective interaction with the world at least in comparison to all other narratives I had before.

'Human psychological evolution' is itself an ideological claim. It takes its subject matter for granted rather than examining whether it is so. Also, as if, we are now penultimate observers looking at it from outside rather than living within it as we speak. Also, as if we are 'more evolved' (i.e. superior) than those intellectual systems which oppose this worldview. It is not established why this ascendency occurs in this order but merely asserted. Like I said, all of its claims are taken for granted and not substantiated in a philosophical manner.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jwayne