Tag Archives: spiral dynamics

Would Our Developmental Models Withstand the Anthropocene?

Leave a comment

This post began as a response to comments made on the above image I posted which depicts the Spiral Dynamics model with the words: Burn your old ways of thinking. I had initially posted the image many years ago to my social media profile and decided to bring it back again today. In my opinion the tagline has become more relevant now in light of the planetary and societal collapse that only seems to accelerate with every passing day.

Meanwhile our community of practitioners continues to busy itself with the philosophical and intellectual underpinning of what our gurus taught us from the comfort of their air-conditioned, flood-and-fire-resistant bygone era called the Holocene ignoring any and all sense of urgency that defines our new reality. Most of the comments ask what happened to “transcend and include”? My question back to our community is “What if our sense of transcendence is way off?” Most of us, beginning with Wilber practice what I call “Transcend and ignore.” We have become an intolerant, elitist bunch with exclusionary behavior that can’t give a damn about inclusion unless those seeking it buy our seminars, come to our conferences, or speak our cultist language. 99.99% of the world has no clue as to what we do or how to use what we teach to affect real change.

Nowhere is this behavior of exclusion and ignorance more apparent than at the very top when Wilber in a reluctant way eulogized Beck a few months ago in a four-line statement, where he twice repeated “let’s not forget that his contribution was only to a values line”. The bruised and fragile ego of a far smaller man who couldn’t transcend the Red stage of being the Wyatt Earp of consciousness going all the way back to 2006. Where’s the transcendence, where’s the inclusion? Beck wasn’t much better in transcending and including much of what fell outside his worldview as well. This might sound like a harsh criticism for those who we admire, but their pre-occupation with their models that “explained everything”, left out that which requires a far greater degree of explaining; how to train our minds and our species to become an immutable part of nature again, and be in awe of her superior intelligence.

Our challenge TODAY is this: Can we transcend our teachers, add our own take on what they taught us, learn new existential models that factor in our new reality in order to help humanity NOW. Neither Wilber nor Beck spoke about how our models behave in the Anthropocene. Hint: We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature and her evolutionary process happens unconsciously and with utter moral indifference towards all species including the one that has been the most destructive, us. This reality will never fit on the Spiral or the AQAL models. Homo sapiens will become extinct as a function of Mother Nature adapting to a far greater system in collapse and as an automatic, unconscious way for her to reach balance. No Transcendence. No Inclusion. Sorry.

The idea for the word “burn” first came to me from Eastern philosophy. Rumi’s poem “I want burning” has more wisdom in it than anything Beck and Wilber ever wrote. It has everything to do with learning to die in order to live, an Eastern concept that is the polar opposite of what Western Civilization stands for. Are we ever going to start thinking for ourselves, or be in awe of the greater forces of existence, the mystery of life itself beyond any model the brightest human minds can create? Or will we always reduce existential challenges to whether we can fit them into our own unique understanding of our elitist models?

We are in an existential crisis and if we had “transcended and included” we wouldn’t be here in the middle of the Sixth Extinction. The dominant narrative that has defined who we are for the last 500 years is in collapse Will we ever create our own narrative that gives humanity a chance at surviving that collapse or will we remain wanna be armchair philosophers wondering if the next flood or fire will spare us because we’re special. Like Mother Nature I have an utter moral indifference about how special we are.

Like!
3

Spiral Swan Theory

Leave a comment

An earlier version of this work appeared in January and February 2022 on Medium. Below is the link to the fully developed concept of Spiral Swan Theory with endnotes.

Here’s the Abstract from the paper. Please feel free to download and give proper citation to my work should you decide to use it.

ABSTRACT

In today’s global complexity the intelligence that classifies risk into different categories comes from a very thin layer of human values that leaves out much of the psychosocial structures that have defined the evolution of the mind. This paper focuses on the most popular classifications of risk as described by the popular Black Swan theory and offers a wider view on the values the incase today’s risk models and their limitations. It takes statistical modeling out of its sterile and often reductionist nature and places it into the totality of value systems that define our human journey. Using the Spiral Dynamics and MEMEnomics models, this paper demonstrates how systemic risk becomes less systemic and a lot more predictable when there is a functional balance between all the known stages of human development. Using the totality of value systems from both models this paper reclassifies the rare Black Swan into the knowable Orange Swan once the Black Swan is observed from a higher level of psychosocial development. It also sets forth the narrative on how the appearance of Orange Swans in perpetuity contributes to the Dead Swan phenomenon, a rare event that rewards systemic risk that has historically ended in catastrophe. This paper puts forth the hypothesis that we’ve been on the road to a Dead Swan for over a decade. Click here to view or download the full paper.

*****

Like!
1

When China Sneezes, the Global Economy Goes to the Hospital

Leave a comment


This is a story about China’s centrally planned Too-Big-To-Fail economy and the impact that has on our future

When I was in business school, there used to be a saying that pointed to the strength of the US economy that went something like this: When the US sneezes the world catches a cold. A lot has changed since and China has become the driver of much of what happens in the global economy today. This is all due to a very odd mix of a centrally planned economy (what we in Spiral Dynamic call the Blue-Absolutistic value system of governance) with a mix of strategic and highly manipulative objectives to take over the world (Orange in Spiral Dynamics), while using Red/Purple values and tactics (oppression and tribal manipulation) to employ slave labor and engage in other subversive practices. This rare form of governance has allowed China to bully the third world and control its resources and undermine intellectual copyrights and global trade covenants. It has condoned the abuse of human rights at home while enriching the few elite members of the Communist Party of China (the CCP). The Western world has overlooked all this as it continues to feed its insatiable appetite for endless consumption and focusing on cheap production costs while increasing the profit margins of big Western corporations on the back of cheap Chinese labor.

In order for any true free-market economy to succeed, Blue central planning must remain a transitory phase that builds the physical economic infrastructure (highways and ports as well as robust institutions) then it must be relegated to maintenance and support as Blue responsibilities become those of a government responding to Orange innovation and its effective regulation. This is not the case with China, as it continued building cities that have remained empty for years through its absolutistic Blue leadership. Click on this link to an interview I gave to Newsweek Magazine a while ago which warns against China’s sudden transition from Blue to Orange.

Blue/Red men in Orange suits

Well, like any other closed Blue system of governance run by closed system ideologues, China remains unaccepting of ideas on how to give up control without having to instate major reforms that threaten the very existence of its brave experiment. Cracks in the system are beginning to show as the transitory Blue economic policies have been exhausted beyond their useful function. These are signs of the deeper tectonic plates the plague the Chinese economy. The canary in the coalmine is its real estate sector with 100’s of development companies teetering on the edge of collapse as they owe 100s of Billions to Chinese banks. The first hint of the forthcoming collapse of this sector recently came from property development giant Evergrande, warning that it might not be able to meet its debt payments to its lenders. The news sent shockwaves through global financial markets as analysts began to speculate as to what this could mean. Evergrande in the largest real estate development firm in the world and holds a world record of $300 Billion in debt; a sum that is larger than most counties’ annual sovereign debt. As the Chinese Communist Party tries to grapple with these upcoming existential economic crises, there could only be one of two outcomes:

  1. Stop the blind drive-at-any-cost to become #1 and transition to a free market economy. This will necessitate the long-awaited upward movement in governance and values to an entirely different set of metrics, which will bring the long awaited, market-driven price discoveryto a $16 Trillion a year economy that will now be based on market forces of supply and demand not the will of a few people in the National People’s Congress claiming to know what’s best for their people and the world while becoming Billionaires and rarely if ever being transparent.
  2. Continue with the Blue-centrally planned economy that blindly seeks becoming #1 while hiding much of the corruption and abuse that remains hidden from the eyes of the world.

If I were a betting man, I’ll put my money on the latter. This will likely be the path that the CCP will take while seeking to increase its geopoltical influence through its repressive Red-Blue policies. Change will not likely come anytime soon to China since it holds the biggest Ace in the hole that the West has chosen to ignore. Part of it’s hidden wealth is in a 200-year reserve of resources and raw material that it has accumulated from around the world over the last few decades. While the West was preoccupied with outsourcing everything, falsely believing that China shared their advanced Orange capitalist values such as improving stockholders’ bottom line, the endless pursuit of lean manufacturing and the inexhaustible obsession with the global supply chain, China was focusing on how to exploit this Western naiveté for its long-term strategic advantage.

Once the West wakes up to China’s drive to create a global resource monopoly, they will be forced to reassess their ill-thought preception of global trade and begin to focus on resources as a national security matter. This is the new geopolitical divide the awaits the world: China and resource-rich third world counties on one side, the West and its allies on the other. In my work, I call this the New Global Axis of Values: Red/Blue v Orange/Green. Click here for a full explanation of what these values stand for. My long-term bet is on the West since it has long been established in the values of the Orange system which has the mandate to uncover the secrets of the universe through scientific discoveries, quantitative analysis and research and development.

We in the West must reinvent ourselves as the undisputed global leaders in research and development in energy and in new sustainable, carbon-neutral resources , especially when the alternative is China’s carbon-heavy pile of natural resources that will surely continue to destabalize life on our planet.

Like!
2