APN71 - Spiral Dynamics

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. This is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.

Spiral dynamics. Ever heard of spiral dynamics? Here's the quick overview. But people and cultures go through different stages of development. The spiral guys like to color code them to make it easier to keep track. It goes something like this. First we've got red. Think terrible twos. I'll blow you up if you piss me off. Yikes. And then Blue, Think Ten Commandments, Fundamentalist anything. Rules are paramount. Literal interpretations of the Bible are absolutely correct. Then Orange think Wall Street. Academia, science and ambition are key here. Then we move on to green. Think environmentalism, pluralism. All is one nonviolent. So the idea is that we evolve through these different stages of development. All of those stages above that I just mentioned are part of what they call the first tier. Here's the funny thing about those perspectives. They're all convinced they're 100% right. It's a big food fight. Green looks at Orange and says, you greedy capitalists. You're good for nothing and totally destroying our planet. And my non violent self hates you. Orange looks at Green and says, you tree hugging New Agey hippies, get a job and contribute to the economy, will ya? And quit gazing at those crystals. Blue looks at everyone and says, you're all going to hell because you don't believe in Insert favorite God here. While Red looks at everyone and says, you don't agree with me, Fine, I'm blowing you up. Everything is either or. No one can see the validity of the other perspectives. Not so good. The ideal. Let's consciously evolve as individuals and as a culture to a second tier level of consciousness. Here, for the first time, we can hold multiple perspectives. We can see that in Ken Wilber's words, no one is smart enough to be 100% wrong. Love that. What's that look like? Well, we can see the truth in the need to take care of the environment and the need for a powerful economy and the need for rules and regulations and the need to take aggressive action when the situation demands it. Every stage has a partial truth. To embrace the whole, we need to transcend and include and start saying yes and a lot more than either or powerful stuff. Little footnote here. Spiral dynamics equals very cool stuff integrated into Ken Wilber's work and developed by Don Beck and Chris Cowan from the work of Clara Graves. That's a mouthful. Hope you enjoyed.

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