Spiral Dynamics
Welcome to the latest installment of Integral Explorations! Ha. Really though, this is going to be another Ken Wilber related post, so feel free to skip it if you’re getting Wilbered-out.
I just read a very nice little intro to Spiral Dynamics from the Fall/Winter 2002 issue of What is Enlightenment? magazine. Spiral Dynamics is a theory of human development that uses an evolutionary spiral to explain behaviors of individuals, societies and systems. Here are the six first tier stages of spiral development:
Beige - Instinctive. Survival is the only concern. Examples: bushmen, infants.
Purple - Magical. Keep the spirits happy. Examples: tribalism, New Age magic.
Red - Egocentric. Personal enjoyment trumps all. Examples: rebellious youth, epic heroes.
Blue - Authoritarian. Life has meaning and purpose. Laws enforce this purpose. Examples: religious fundamentalists, old school military families.
Orange - Achievist. Self interest, striving to get ahead. Examples: capitalists, Ayn Rand.
Green - Egalitarian. Inner peace, collective harmony. Examples: hippies, political correctness.
These first six stages make up the first tier and are separate from each other, although there can be a fair amount of overlap and regression. The second tier is made up of integral stages, which include and synthesize all of the first tier stages.
I’m not going to go into the second tier here, you can check out the article above or Wikipedia. What I would like to address here are applications and problems of Spiral Dynamics.
Laura and I have been discussing Spiral Dynamics for a month or so now. Our reactions to the theory are different. I find it very useful because I think spatially and it helps me visualize abstract ideas. Laura is uncomfortable with some of the possible implications its hierarchical structure. I think that both are perspectives are important.
In my work with foster youth, I have noticed a big disconnect between the children’s needs and the staff’s approach. I couldn’t articulate the issue very well until I put it into the context of Spiral Dynamics. Essentially, most of the staff is coming from a Green viewpoint while the kids are in Red. The staff expect the kids to jump to green, skipping over the vital Blue and Orange stages. The adults are constantly bemoaning the very system they expect the kids to buy into, like telling them the public education system is completely worthless and then expecting them to get up and go to school.
It might be impossible for people deeply entrenched in Green to advocate the Blue world view that the kids need to master in order to grow. I think the solution is to use a compassionate Green attitude to usher the kids into Blue so they can learn discipline and respect, which will help them to succeed in society.
Although, I’ve found Spiral Dynamics very helpful, Laura’s concerns about hierarchy are important to consider. Even Christopher Cowan’s (more on him later) official website notes:
Very well-meaning people are sometimes so highly ego-involved in preserving their high-status colors, even to creating an identity around ‘living the spiral’ just as others might organize.
Seeking “verticality,” fostering the belief that “higher is better” in all contexts, aspiring to the mythical “second tier,” following the “staircase” to enlightenment, are all examples of how people (especially when centralized around DQ (Blue) and ER (Orange)) can miss central aspects of a model and convert it into something entirely different. So this page is aimed at reinforcing a central aspect of SD which many superficial renditions overlook or dismiss: Graves’s concept of an emergent, cyclical, double-helix. The levels, however they be designated (colors, numbers, letter pairs, etc.), are the products of this interactive process. They are artifacts, not essence. Understand this principle and you begin to understand the theory, not just a model with handy color categories.
It is easy to get caught up in developmental self-congratulations or conversely paranoia about being stuck in the first tier. A clear head and grounded perspective are necessary for this kind of study.
But wait, there’s more! It seems that nothing Mr. Wilber touches can escape without controversy, so fasten your seat belts. Spiral Dynamics was introduced to the public in 1996 by Chris Cowan and Don Beck. Their work was based on the psychological theories of Dr. Clare Graves. Then what happened? The Kheper integral thought site says:
The foundation text of the modern Spiral Dynamics movement; introduces concepts like socio-cultural; evolution, business management, and that infamous vMEMES colour classification that has been so abused by the first generation of the Integral Movement sensu stricto movement (by which i mean Wilber & Beck and their uncritical followers) as a way of putting down everyone else (especially the hated “green”). Beck and Cowan had a falling out over this antagonistic first generation integralism, with Cowan arguing against Beck and Wilber’s “Mean Green Meme” and misinterpretations of Clare Graves original Spiral Dynamics. Wilber would in turn later split from Beck and reject the spiral in favour of a one-dimensional “altitude”. Nevertheless, this book, which dates to happier times, is an important foundation work in the modern Integral Movement.
This gets even more nasty. Not only did Beck file a lawsuit against Cowan, but Cowan and Ken Wilber had their own online mudslinging battle. This is all very convoluted, but the bottom line is that there are at least three versions of Spiral Dynamics with much bad blood between them. The only way to sort it will be to read more about each one.
And it’s another questionable incident involving Ken Wilber.
[...] also great to hang out with fellow Integral-heads. People actually laughed at my jokes referencing Spiral Dynamics! Love [...]
[...] There is an ongoing debate in SF about the skyline and new high-rises like One Rincon pushing poor residents out of the city. This puts “progressives” in a rather hilarious predicament, social justice or environmental pragmatism? Gotta love the Green meme. [...]
I’ve been at this SD inquiry for over 5 years now…with another 4 years of Wilberizing preceeding that. One problem hard to resolve is the appearance of what looks like many SD levels in one person, depending on many variables. So what is this developmental path if all the stages seem at least available at some times? I’ve worked out one possible resolution. Merlin Donald and others speak about atomatic subroutines. These are things like sentence structure, that is hard to learn and needs a lot of attention to do so, but when mastered they move into automatic subroutines that work pretty much on their own. (We do retain prefrontal cortex, agency freedom…we can interrupt subroutines, but can’t stop them from enacting.) This can apply to SD levels also. We can get the existential needs at an early level satisfied, i.e. routines established that eventually run on automatic. The earlier level needs do NOT disappear, they just get handled without our attention once we grow to a later level. Then there are conditions, states, impacting variables that kick us down, at times, into early stages (or kick us up temporarily). Thus we have all the prior levels available (and maybe future levels?), and either thru accident or intention we can enter earlier levels and live the life they are oriented around. And then for the wizards among us, we can jump right back up when we intend that. SD then is map of our epigenetic and established subroutines…a matrix to display the choices we have of what kind of being we want to enact in any context.
Its important to remember that human being is not an idea. Human Being is what it is and no idea can embody the whole of what it phenomonologically is. So our abstractions give us traction in creating our being, but they, by their very nature, can NEVER capture the reality of human being. SD is a convention, a construction, yes that appears to be pretty well grounded, but will never encompass everything about us. Conventions are windows on possibility, never meriting an attribution of final and complete understanding. We just will never KNOW what we are in a final sense. But we can get a handle on some stuff and SD is very artful in providing some handles.
I’ve introduced myself with a lot of verbiage here, so I will leave my comments about joint attention intersubjective event spaces for later. This is the space that within which we share SD levels with others, and within which our own SD levels are created by our cultural downloads. Mirrror neurons and our minds natural tendancy to imitate facilitate this downloading. Check out Tomasello, et al.
Be well - Tom C.