Tag Archives: Clare Graves

Spiral Dynamics Conference on Understanding Chaos & Change

Today humanity finds itself at one of its biggest crossroads in history. Predictable patterns of cultural evolution have given way to unpredictability and chaos. Human civilization is mired in breakdowns and clashes of historic proportions. Strong nations are being weakened internally, while weak nations are collapsing into disorder.

Climate change is becoming increasingly irreversible requiring unprecedented levels of global cooperation to insure our survival. Revolutionary technologies have knocked down the walls to much of the organizing structures we’ve taken for granted in the past. The rapid rise of the digital age continues to make a mockery out of our understanding of change and the forces shaping our future.

Are all these dynamics a part of the chaos that precedes humanity’s Momentous Leap into the more inclusive values of the Second Tier, or did the Gravesian and Spiral Dynamics models underestimate the influence of technology, globalization and other unforeseen factors disrupting our evolutionary journey?

If these are questions that you’ve been asking yourself, then the upcoming Spiral Dynamics Summit on the Future might provide some of the answers for a possible road forward.

Six Days of Spiral Dynamics in Dallas

The week of April 15, 2018 will be full of Spiral Dynamics activities in Dallas Texas. We are happy to announce an added activity to the already exciting line up of events for the week. Participants can choose to attend just the 3-day conference, the Level 1 training, or both.

SPIRAL DYNAMICS LEVEL 1 TRAINING & CERTIFICATION

For those who have been waiting to be trained in Spiral Dynamics, we are happy to announce that there will be a Level 1 Spiral Dynamics Training and Certification in Dallas 3 days before the start of the conference. This will be led by Dr. Don Beck and some of his closest colleagues and will run from Tuesday April 17 to Thursday April 19. For a more detailed description of the training and to register please click here. There will a special discount for attendees who participate in both the training and the conference.

THE CONFERENCE

This conference will be taking place at the newly renovated conference center at The Embassy Suites Hotel in Grapevine, Texas. It is a familiar place to many of us who have been to any of the annual Spiral Dynamics Confabs in the last 15 years. The event is a one-of-kind Summit on the future that is packed with 3 full days of events highlighting 3 major milestones in the continued evolution of Spiral Dynamics and the Gravesian Model.

1. Three days of powerful presentations made by some of the most prominent practitioners of SD from around the globe in different area of specialty. For a detailed list of topics and speaker profiles please click here

2. The official US launch of the long awaited book Spiral Dynamics in Action: Humanity’s Master Code. Participants will be able to purchase singed copies of the book and other books written by other speakers at the event. For Publisher Preview of book on Amazon, please click here

3. We will honor Don’s legacy and his contributions to humanity at a dinner event on Saturday night. It will be held at the banquet room at the hotel.

For full details on the the 6 days in April, please visit the event website; Spiral Dynamics Summit on the Future

Other links:

  • To purchase tickets to the event: please click here.
  • The Embassy Suites has set aside a block of rooms for the event at substantially discounted rates. Bookings are under the Spiral Dynamics event. You must call the hotel directly at 972-724-2600 (not central booking). Rooms must be booked before March 30th to be elegible for the discount. You can also book online www.embassysuitesdfwnorth.com and use group code SPD.
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God Help the World if Integralists are in Charge

This post is in response to a Ken Wilber interview by Raquel Torrant that took place in October 2016, and the reaction of the integral community after the election of Donald Trump.

The more I read about Wilber’s perspective on so called Second Tier, the more I realize that Integral Theory is mostly philosophical/Intellectual and out of touch with political, economic and social reality. Its elitist views are rarely applied to solve problems in a First Tier world. The only exception, of course is if we believe that individual advancement and shadow work are ways to save the world from impending cataclysms. To me those pursuits are representatives of a very narrow and unhealthy expression of both the Orange and Green systems of the First Tier. Because of their thin, elitist, and personal growth focused nature they can easily become closed systems that only embolden the very shadow they’re trying to come to terms with. Well, it seems that the shadow of most of the integral movement has broken and it’s manifesting in very unflattering ways. The universe couldn’t have picked a more befitting event than the election of Donald Trump to show how un-integral the movement is.

My assessment could be somewhat subjective and I must say that I was shocked by Trump’s election for a few days. While I have since regained my stratified Spiral view of the American electorate and refrained from engaging in polarizing conversations, I have not seen the same coming from the integral community, or my blindly liberal-progressive friends. If they were really centered in Second Tier values, we wouldn’t be experiencing the visceral anger and hate coming from so many online integral groups worldwide. What has helped me regain my perspective is the reminder of what was instilled in me over the last 15 years, that it’s always about Value Systems.

My primary gripe with Wilber’s followers is what they were taught about Second Tier values, and more specifically how vastly different they perceive the Yellow system than the original Spiral Dynamics theory does. Wilber has naively overlooked the important work that the Seventh Level of development has to do in aligning the healthy expressions of all the systems in First Tier. Yes, systemic Second Tier consciousness is not going to appear magically, nor would it appear by us passively waiting for more people to become Second Tier thinkers. We have to role up our sleeves now and fix the damage that the First Tier systems have done to our planet. This is half of the mandate of the Beck-Graves Yellow system that rarely appears in integral consciousness.

The work is not just environmental or psychological. It’s cultural, political, and economic. We have to design healthy habitats for tribal Purple in rural America, for egocentric Red gangs in inner cities, for nationalistic and patriotic Blue in white suburban America, and enterprising and scientific Orange and humanitarian and egalitarian Green in big cities and urban locales.

The problem with integral practitioners is that they have relegated this entire Gravesian conception to a “values line”, which again shows the closed system views of the elite and explains their post-election suffering and dysfunction. To solve problem in the age of Trump, followers of Integral Theory have to acquire a deep understanding of an essential part of the Gravesian model called Life Conditions. To put it in language integralists understand, we call it the functional quadrant.  It implies that you start in the trenches where dynamic change is taking place. You study the challenges facing people at every level of development mentioned above. Then you begin to design solutions commensurate with that particular level of development. This is what was meant by “transcend and include” that is at the heart of both frameworks. Sadly, it seems that the integral crusade has unconsciously moved into a psychology of “transcend and ignore.” That’s where the healing begins, not with the integral community suddenly realizing their shortcomings and begin to hastily consult the Gravesian model to get a quick intellectual fix that will be relegated again to a “line” on an elitist and out of touch model for development.

 

 

 

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WE ARE GRAVESIANS, Reflections on 2015

Happy New Year to all who are reading this post and particularly to the members of the online community of the Beck-Graves Facebook page. Whether we’re known as Spiral Dynamics, or SD Integral is irrelevant to the content of what we discuss or to the nature of the work that we do. I created the page for the purpose of promoting the work of my friend and mentor Dr. Don Edward Beck and to preserve the legacy of his friend and mentor Dr. Clare W. Graves. When I added the term integral to the name of the page, I wasn’t pandering to the followers of Integral Theory. I truly believe that Grave’s framework stands on its own as a superior developmental model worthy of advancement. So as many people do this time of year, I spent the holidays reflecting on 2015 and on the interactions that took place on that page and whether or not they facilitated the advancement of knowledge through our framework.

Graves FinalLooking back at 2015, I was amazed at the group’s ability to intelligently articulate subjects ranging from challenges to economic and political systems around the world, to how to deal with the European refugee crisis. But the year wasn’t all roses as I was the recipient of many personal attacks from the people who love us the most, Ken Wilber’s followers. I’m still flabbergasted by the number of unsolicited verbal assaults I received from so called integralists when the discussion turned to the hierarchical nature of our solutions. God help the person who makes the same mistake I made in saying something like “Blue is what’s next for the Middle East.” Apparently practitioners of integral theory, who live privileged lives in places like Newton Massachusetts, and Northern California, think that lower systems are something for them to victimize so they can feel better about being armchair healers. The shear fact that our framework calls on solutions to be stratified in accordance with Levels of Existence, and prevailing Life Conditions has been an unending source of vitriol to our integral colleagues. We must have triggered some unresolved issues worthy of this level of contempt.

Even criticizing President Obama’s blind spots subjected me to many personal attacks from known leaders in the integral community. Imagine a place where exercising my right to hold accountable the man I voted for twice, can trigger such visceral hate. To me that place is far more dangerous to democracy than anything the likes of Donald Trump can ever give us. We all know Trump is a clown who will disappear at the ballot box, but to believe that Obama cannot be challenged as if he’s a God is essentially the definition of dictatorship albeit at a much higher and more dangerous level of existence.

This past year, after being urged to extend an olive branch to our community, many in the integral camp did so by arguing that their work includes “levels”. To me, this has become the Integral movement’s standard statement for pacifying the Beck-Graves framework and wrongfully absorbing it into theirs. To me their claim meant they identify with all levels, especially the First Tier where 95% of the world’s problems come from today. However, instead of continuing to react to these statements, I decided to do some research that will exonerate my integral colleagues and set the record straight. So, during the holidays, I took it upon myself to scan through the papers that were submitted for the 2015 Integral Theory Conference, which I received as a paid attendee.

I was in search for those levels and for references to people, groups and cultures addressed through language that is characteristic of levels differentiation. In some of the documents, I even entered search words that are descriptive of different first tier behaviors, but the results were disappointingly low. Most of the 47 papers, dealt with either spirituality or a specialized segment of psychology that deals with shadow work. Integral practitioners like Mark Gafni submitted a paper about “outrageous love” and how “we are one” and the spiritual ramblings of a sexual predator avoiding having to deal with his own ugly shadow, who was welcomed back to a community that is so evolved, it shelters him from repeated allegations of statutory rape. There was nothing I could find that dealt with social psychology. To be fare, there were few mentions of terms that hint at the existence of first tier like post-modernism, but in passive, dismissive ways.

I still couldn’t figure out why our highly evolved colleagues would be so condescending towards our work. Then it came to me. At the time I created the Beck-Graves FB page, I failed to check on who owns the word Integral. Apparently, it was none other than Ken Wilber filing a trademark application in 30 BC the minute he heard Eudoxus use it. This has to be the only rational explanation that permits so many integralists to be so abusive with such certainty. So on the behalf of Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibnitz, my high school calculus teacher, and all the scientists and mathematicians who wrongfully used the word integral for all these centuries, I apologize for the copyright infringement. Expect that all who continue to use the word to be subjected to the wrath of this dangerous posse that loves us the most.

Meanwhile, I will continue to honor Dr. Beck’s wishes and keep integral as part of the name. Not as a subsumed part of the integral community, but as a result of a complicated court decision in a case brought by Dr. Beck’s past partner that limits his use of Spiral Dynamics in public only to the term Spiral Dynamics integral. As I look to 2016 and beyond, I want to start the journey with the few brave people who understand well the Levels of Existence Theory  and Don Beck’s  Large-Scale Psychology. We want to bring the work of these two geniuses to a permanent home where it can be whole on its own again. Happy 2016.

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