Spiritual Psi-Kology Podcast #25. Spiral Dynamics

Spiral Dynamics is a powerful and comprehensive system for understanding the world view and outlook of others, particularly people who are different from us. The system is based on years of psycho-social research and has important implications for human evolution and changing personal, business and social institutions. I can't wait to share this really practical tool for deepening and shifting how we understand the world.

Transcript

Welcome to Spiritual Psychology.

My name is Renee LaValley McKenna and I bring my 30-plus years as a recovering addict,

Ex-crazy person turned therapist and shamanic healer,

To bring you snackable teachings on psychology,

Spirituality,

And all things personal growth.

And today I want to talk about spiral dynamics.

I'm super excited about spiral dynamics and really looking forward to sharing this incredibly complex and helpful tool in understanding other people,

Particularly people that are different from us.

I was first introduced to spiral dynamics when I was in graduate school in the 90s through the work of the philosopher Ken Wilber and his book A Brief Theory of Everything.

And spiral dynamics has come back to me recently through this really interesting guy on YouTube called Leo at actualized.

Org and I'll leave links to all the different references that I make today in the show notes.

Spiral dynamics has become the lens I now see the world through.

And so what is it?

Spiral dynamics is a way to understand the psychosocial evolution of humans.

They divide these kind of different groupings or different worldviews into colors and they move along a spiral.

And the really interesting thing about spiral dynamics is that it has nothing to do with intelligence,

It has nothing to do with emotional development,

It's actually deeper than that.

I said that spiral dynamics is now the lens that I see the world through and each of the colors or memes or different segments on the spiral are a lens through which people see the world and we each have them.

So spiral dynamics is based on the work of Claire Graves.

He was a Canadian researcher who did decades of research looking at people's value systems and ways of processing and understanding their lives.

And this work has been expanded out and made practical by Don Beck and Christopher Cohen who were associates of Graves and applied these principles to business and corporate and even to top-level government.

Spiral dynamics was used to help transform South Africa out of race categories and it's been used in design organization and marketing systems for a wide range of industries and professional institutions and sports programs.

So one of the really interesting things about spiral dynamics is that all humans seem to move through the different memes or levels of the spiral.

There's kind of an order that we all go through and you kind of don't get to skip an order and it's about our human evolution and our development of our consciousness moving from our most base instinctual nature to our highest experience of the interbeing or interdependence of all things.

And as we move up in our own development we don't leave behind what we've already learned we incorporate it,

We include it and actually grow larger and wider and more complex,

More sophisticated.

So the very first rung on the spiral is beige and beige is kind of our animal nature.

It's just instinctual,

It's based on survival,

It's about food,

Water,

Shelter.

We all have beige within us.

Not a lot of people are operating on beige as their primary outlook in the world.

At this point in civilization people that are beige would probably be like the mentally ill,

Maybe really dysfunctional homeless people,

Certainly infants are beige,

Although again we all have these survival instincts within us.

So the next meme or rung on the spiral,

The next color,

Is purple.

Purple points to tribalism.

There's very little purely purple left so the view of purple is magic and mythic.

It sees forces of nature as the realm of spirits,

Tends to be very superstitious,

So there would be a very substantive belief in good spirits and bad spirits and maybe needing to placate spirits.

And the tribal view is really like hive mind.

There's very little individuality,

The survival of the group is the survival of the individual.

If we correlate it with human development we would probably be looking at the developmental worldview of a very young child who cannot survive without its parents.

Now that's not to say that tribal people are like little children,

This is more about worldview again than intellectual development or skill development.

But as civilization developed,

As we came up as tribal beings,

The experience of our ancestors was that the survival of the tribe was the survival of the individual and individualism was not important.

There was no science,

How people made sense of the world and birth and death and sickness and natural disasters was all very supernatural.

I had an art nonprofit for quite a few years and we used to support an art program in a girls school in South Sudan,

Africa which is in Central Africa and it's a pretty primitive place.

This is one of the places where spiral dynamics is really helpful because the girls lived in this boarding school and part of the impetus to get them into the boarding school was to stop them from being married off at age 12 or 13.

Part of the social welfare system that was in this still very tribal culture was that girls were basically almost sold into marriage,

Often to much older men,

And they got a dowry for that.

So a young girl could be worth 200 goats to her family.

That's actually the retirement plan for her parents and there was very little concern for the girls care in some of these family systems and at this school sometimes brothers or uncles would even come and kidnap the girls from the school to drag them back home to marry them off to a 50 year old man so that they could get the goats.

We can't even think about understanding that from our perspective but from a tribal perspective this is part of the way that things were done and they've been done that way for thousands of years and the idea that the girls had individual rights is just not even in their worldview yet.

That starts to come as we move further up the spiral.

So it's not that these people are stupid or crazy or mean,

Although they might be all of those things individually,

This is a worldview.

I'm not saying it's right,

I'm just saying that from the perspective of spiral dynamics it can be understandable.

So the next level up the spiral is red and one of the things that is interesting too is that the different memes on the spiral,

The different colors,

Tend to alternate from concern with individuality to concern with the group,

Back to concern with individuality and then back to concern with the group.

So we start with beige which is concerned with personal survival.

Purple is tribal concerned with group survival and red returns back to the individual again.

So the red tier is the emergence of strong leadership.

There's a lot of reward and punishment.

Red is the realm of heroes and mythology of superheroes and idealization of leaders.

A lot of the Old Testament is very red.

Comic books are very red.

Red can lend itself to very harsh rules,

Very clear rules,

And a willingness to fight to survive in spite of the consequences to others.

Red is very helpful when you require tough minded cold-blooded decision-making in times of crisis.

So red is very helpful in times of war or revolution and it really celebrates the feats of conquest and stories of heroes.

Red is very concerned with respect and honor and integrity.

So you can think of war heroes.

The Taliban is very red.

Terrorism if viewed from the terrorists point of view is very red.

The military has a lot of red in it as do revolutionaries and guerrillas.

Red is often more concerned with the individual power rather than the group power.

So evolving from the tribe and evolving into leadership of the tribe.

So Ken Wilburn,

His book A Theory of Everything,

Estimates that about 20% of the population is red.

Gangs and organized crime are very red.

Children on the playground can be very red where they're willing to hurt each other for dominance and certainly we can see red in the way we might argue with a spouse or corporate takeovers at work where we might be willing to harm someone else for our own benefit.

We all have this in us.

Don't kid yourself.

So the next tier up the spiral is blue.

Again we flip back toward group centered and blue is really focused on order and purpose and direction.

The idea that life has meaning and that there's a higher order or higher purpose.

There's generally a code of conduct based on right or wrong and if you violate these codes or rules they may have severe and even everlasting repercussions.

So religious fundamentalism,

The moral majority,

Patriotism,

There's a lot of us and them belonging to the group.

It's estimated that 40% of the population is blue.

Rally cries to make America great again.

Calls for law and order.

So blue is very hierarchical.

Certainly supports a patriarchy and has strong codes of honor.

Also supports charitable good deeds.

The ancient codes of chivalry would be very blue.

I find it interesting that police uniforms tend to be blue and a lot of trade unions use blue in their color scheme.

So blue is very concerned with fair treatment.

It appeals to traditions and again we have this idea of honor,

Service,

And loyalty.

Particularly loyalty to the group.

Blue people tend to work best when they're told how to do things the right way and this idea of doing things out of duty and being punished when you don't do that kind of gives meaning to life.

Blue works really well if it's got a cause that it's in service of.

Blue's often driven by a sense of guilt and obedience to authority,

Not questioning authority,

Things are divinely controlled.

Again the sense of purpose in doing what's right.

But doing what's right according to whatever the particular group they're aligned with.

And the next tier up the spiral is orange.

It's actually kind of a joke because Donald Trump is totally orange.

I was raised by super conservative parents who were extremely blue and that was the first time that I really felt the benefits of spiral dynamics.

I moved to San Francisco.

I'm politically liberal and my mother would be sending me all these totally conservative emails.

Made me crazy.

And my mother's a smart woman.

It was so helpful because I came to understand that she had a different worldview and the things that made sense to her didn't make sense to me.

And it's very interesting when you understand as I'm gonna explain orange from Donald Trump's point of view what he does and how he does it absolutely makes sense.

Again this isn't about right or wrong.

This is kind of the idea that people act from their particular place on the spiral,

Their worldview,

And people are most of the time doing the best they can with what they have.

They're actually making decisions and they are looking at things from a perspective that makes sense to them.

The hard thing about the different tiers on the spiral is that the only tier that makes sense to most people is the tier that they're at.

And so the tier above and the tier below tend to be demonized.

This is where we get into a lot of the really terrible discourse online rather than trying to understand each other.

It's just like what are you fucking stupid?

So and again this doesn't have anything to do with intelligence.

It has to do in some ways you could look at it it has to do with priorities.

What feels most important to a person.

So as we move into orange again we're gonna flip back into concern with the individual.

And orange is hallmarked by seeking success and material achievement and people wanting to be recognized for their achievements and being challenged for their own improvement.

Orange likes to display its individual and personal success.

So you can think of corporate executives who accrue massive amounts of wealth.

People they get you know fancy cars and big houses and talk about the prestigious colleges they went to.

Those are all very orange.

Symbols of success and material achievement that that's seen as the most important thing in life.

Certainly a product of industrialization.

Orange sees the world as full of opportunities and alternatives and is willing to test options for the greatest success.

It's moved beyond blues need for control and knowing exactly what's going to happen and what's right and wrong and orange is willing to push the edges to test the self.

People are motivated by achievement and material awards.

Very competitive and competition kind of improves their productivity and it fosters individual growth.

Now again the idea that we are all incorporating the memes before us so we all have aspects of us that are in these different memes depending on what tier we have developed up to.

And Beck and Cohen like to talk about people not as living just in one particular tier or meme on the spiral but almost as if people are musical notes in each tier on the spiral.

Each worldview is a different note and people tend to resonate as chords.

So there's a lot of different like I know I can be highly competitive which is very orange.

If you really challenge me I'll get really red and like want to fucking.

.

.

You want.

.

.

I have a real violent streak and if you really mess with me I can get pretty red and like you want to go at it?

Okay let's do it.

My desire for survival is tenacious but I also love to belong to a group.

I love to be part of a community where I feel like I'm serving a higher good and I'm also pretty magic and mythic so I you know I can easily see all of the different colors within myself and they alternate depending on the situation.

So orange is very concerned with analyzing and strategizing for prosperity.

Most business is orange.

So orange views the world is very rational like a well-oiled machine with natural laws that can be learned and mastered and manipulated for your own purpose.

That the world is ruled by laws of science and economy and human events like the world's a chessboard on which we play games and the winners gain preeminence over the losers.

And from an orange perspective it's totally reasonable to manipulate the Earth's resources for your own strategic games.

And Ken Wilber estimates that about 30% of the population is orange.

The next tier up the spiral is green.

It's so interesting to see where these colors land in logos.

So the Green Party,

Greenpeace,

Environmentalism is all very green.

Green again flips back into concern for the group,

Concern for the many and green's concerned with feelings and caring.

Caring for the Earth,

It's against hierarchy,

It's a lot of emphasis on dialogue and relationship,

Consensus,

Human rights,

Social justice is very green.

So certainly the worldwide outpouring for Black Lives Matter,

Concern with diversity and human rights,

Animal rights,

Multiculturalism and to free people from hierarchy.

Green recognizes that we live in a shared habitat both ecologically and with all humanity and that when we join in community we grow personally.

It's very concerned with everybody having the opportunity to grow.

So in green the well-being of people and building consensus gets the highest priority.

Whereas in orange the highest priority is on achievement and making things better for yourself.

And in blue the highest priority is obedience to authority and belonging to the group.

So green really calls us to grow in caring,

Being in touch with feelings and social responsibility to the community and everyone in it.

And Beck and Cohen divided the spiral into two tiers and so beige through green is the first tier.

And once we evolve out of green we move into what they call the second tier.

There's been a lot of talk in my lifetime about a new paradigm,

About massive change in humanity and that is the move from the first tier into the second tier,

The new paradigm.

And once you get into the second tier it's much more about systems thinking.

In the memes on the first six colors of the spiral whichever color you're in again you kind of demonize the colors around you.

So orange is fighting with green,

Green's fighting with blue,

Red's fighting with everyone and there's not a lot of mutual understanding at all.

In fact it's really challenging to understand how or why people could think the way that they do outside of your own color,

Outside of your own worldview.

And once you move up into the second tier which is a fairly undeveloped,

At this point there's only two colors on it and very few people reach this place,

The first color is yellow and in the second tier you start to be able to see all of the other,

You can see the whole spiral and the value in it.

That each worldview has something to offer to society as a whole and to each of us individually.

That there's healthy aspects of each,

There's also pathological aspects of each but there's healthy aspects to each that they're necessary.

And so yellow sees life as a complex system and explores ways of being responsibly free.

Yellow is also aware that there's a danger of collapse of the system.

Yellow is concerned with keeping the whole spiral healthy and the awareness that everything is connected to everything else.

Deep Buddhism is very yellow,

The idea of interbeing,

The teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh,

The Dalai Lama,

Of metaphysics.

Yellow people enjoy doing things that just naturally feel right to them and they're advocates for free access to information and materials which is also a little bit green.

Through the yellow lens life is an integration,

It's like a,

It's like a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies.

Yellow is very flexible and spontaneous,

The idea of function over form being a high priority,

That there's a natural flow of life,

It's also very Taoist.

Ken Wilber estimates that 1% of the population is yellow.

And the final tier that's developed so far is turquoise,

Which views the world as holistic,

That the universe is a holistic system,

That there are multiple levels interwoven into one conscious system,

That there is a universal order,

Not based on external rules like in blue but in a living,

There's a living consciousness and a grand unification.

Turquoise is a place of a new spirituality,

There's a reconnection with mystical forces,

Almost harkening back to purple but from a completely different perspective.

Turquoise thinking uses the whole spiral,

It sees multiple levels of interaction,

Again we get this harmonic,

Harmonic idea of people being cords using all the different colors on the spiral.

So Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were turquoise,

Highly evolved spiritual masters,

Again the Dalai Lama,

The idea of being enlightened.

And the spiral in my understanding is more like a verb,

It's a moving motion filled evolving thing and it's suggested that the spiral continues to evolve as humanity evolves and there are probably more colors to come.

I think there's a coral that's gonna come after turquoise but maybe the Dalai Lama is coral,

I don't know.

They don't even talk about it in the books.

But I want to offer you the spiral of spiral dynamics as you move out into the world,

As you move on social media,

As you listen to the news and our different political leaders.

I think it's a way to have compassion,

It's a way to have understanding,

It's a way to expand our own view to incorporate the possibility that other people actually are doing the best they can with what they have and that it makes sense why they would make the choices and believe the things that they believe from their perspective.

Now the work of all of us is to grow and evolve and rather than demonizing each other I think the best thing we can do is to have understanding for each other and to try to help each other to evolve up the spiral into greater complexity,

Into greater harmony,

Into greater awareness that we're all in this together.

That we each have a role to play and that wherever we are is valid even if it's challenging to understand and challenging ourselves to understand others is our own personal growth work even if we don't agree with them.

It's much easier to help someone grow and evolve if you actually understand them and can speak their language than if you're demonizing them and telling them they're bad or stupid because the colors on the spiral are beyond morality,

They're beyond intelligence.

So I may come back with more as I continue to learn and study the spiral of spiral dynamics but I hope this has been helpful.

I know it's helped me in being a more compassionate,

More peaceful person.

I get much less irate now when I understand oh that person's blue,

Oh that person's red,

Oh that person's orange that's why they do what they do.

So I hope that my little foray into spiral dynamics has been helpful and I wish you well as you explore your own world view in this intense and fast-changing habitat that we're in right now.

Blessings on your path.

Until we meet again,

This is Renee LaValley McKenna for Spiritual Psychology.