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Integral people, or Integral tendencies?

Posted August 24th, 2010 by Jonathan Cobb in Spiral Dynamics

One common tendency in the Integral world is to describe people as being at Orange, Green, Teal, Turquoise, etc. However, as Chris Cowan points out, Clare Graves never intended for his model to be used in such a simplistic, typological manner. The spiral is not about different types of people. It's about different ways of thinking. Nobody is "at" Orange, Green, Teal, etc. We simply gain access to these modes of thought as we grow into them. I recently got into a heated argument with Federico in which I accused him of engaging in first-tier thinking on the subject we were discussing. He took it to mean that I was calling him first-tier. But I was merely pointing out that the perspective he was expressing on the issue at hand struck me as first-tier. I'm quite positive that he, and pretty much everyone here, has access to second-tier modes of thought, but I'm also quite certain that none of us engage in those modes of thought at all times. Ken Wilber has attempted to clarify this by introducing the idea of developmental lines. But the lines simply measure the highest stage that we have access to. It still does not guarantee that we will always think and act from that level even within a particular line. We might even have different beliefs or habits within a line which are at different stages. I recently saw a discussion in which the Dalai Lama was described as being at Amber because of his position on the Dorje Shugden followers. But even if his particular position on that controversy has Amber motivations, that does not mean that he is at Amber, even on the spiritual line of development. Indeed, I think he's shown himself quite capable of Orange and Green modes of thought. In summary, I think we should be wary of thinking of people as Integral, and focus more on Integral thought and behavior.

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people

Posted August 24th, 2010 by stefano

It is a good point and it is important. Basically, the structures are structures, which means, a concert pianist is a concert pianist. Saying concert pianist is just a behavior should't negate that the concert pianist has a skill that has taken decades to develop. So he is a concert pianist, it is part of his being, it is not just a tendency, it is not just something that he does and yet somehow isn't as part of his being. The two go together, the skill and the behaviour.

Having said that, Ken has said that the stages are not fixed in the sense that a person behaves with orange skill 100% of the time. The way the tests are done, someone merely has to score 50% at orange, 25% amber, and 25% green, for them to be scored as having their centre of gravity at orange. So when we say someone is at orange, or are an orange person, we bear in mind the caveat that what this means is that their centre of gravity is orange, and still they may sometimes be higher or lower, but on the whole, the middle average is orange.

Further compexity comes, in that we have multiple skills or developmental lines, and we have multiple sub personalities or parts that are split off. The parts that are split off, however, are all at previous stages. Someone who is, on average or at their highest, around about orange or green, is not going to have a part split off that is turquoise. They are not going to suddenly act turquoise, as if a person who has no musical skill suddenly peak experiences being a concert pianist. So the structures are prety fixed in that sense. There are no shortcuts. Regardless of how we phrase it, people have a centre of gravity.

So in the case of the Dalai Lama, if his values line or his cognitive line says that, "gay is a sin," then he is amber, in that, he is using a core intelligence at amber to decide an issue of great importance. It is not just a tendency, unless you count a major well thought out and carefully considered authoritative edict, just something he said by accident on an off day. It is a behaviour, but it is a strong and fixed behaviour. It doesn't much matter if we say he is behaving amber or if he is at amber or if he is an amber person -- the end result is the same; he as spiritual guide says that homosexuality is sinful.

I think the important thing is to remember that people have multiple intelligences, skills, stages. So it is not as simple as saying "amber person", but it is still useful to say "amber person" in as much as it is generally correct to say that I am located in the UK. You can go into it in more detail, but broadly the statement is true.

Incidentally, Spiral Dynamics tends to assume that it contains all other lines and skills and intelligences. So even though they seem to say that you can't call a person orange, they don't seem to allow in the other developmental lines, so they commit a form of absolutism of their own. In Integral we are free to go into it in more detail, and draw a psychograph as detailed as you like. You can then see where the centre of gravity is located, or if the lines are imbalanced. You can also step back and just use the pertinent parts, and say, Dalai Lama has amber morals and uses those to issue religious edicts, he is basically amber. You can say that the Nazis were basically red, and that was the core that was driving them, it wasn't just that Hitler was feeling a bit annoyed for a few days. Basically, use as much complexity as needed, but not so much that you lose the bigger picture.

I guess what you are highlighting is that a person may have a tendency to behave amber 80% of the time, or a tendency to behave amber 5% of the time -- and what I'm adding is that if they tend 80% amber then it is OK to just call them amber, and if they tend 5% then we don't call them amber.

Either way we're not expecting someone to be amber 100% as people are not robots.

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Required Reading, Still...

Posted August 24th, 2010 by Robb Smith

Please see my

reply here

that has an attachment that should be required reading for this community.

Robb Smith

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Yes

Posted August 24th, 2010 by Stanley

I agree with this: "I think we should be wary of thinking of people as Integral, and focus more on Integral thought and behavior". It is my understanding that Claire Graves thought of levels as our responses to our current life circumstances. This was also true for Abraham Maslow. If our more basic needs are met we might be fortunate enough to be able to temporarily dwell in the land of integral. If we find ourself starving to death we will function like most starving beings and be mostly interested in finding food now. What this means to me is that if we find our self being able to be interested in things integral we should be very grateful and humble.

I am also reminded of the teachings of a Zen teacher who said there is no such thing as an enlightened being; only enlightened activity.

I looked over your profile and noticed that you are also interested in integral Christianity. Christianity is the religion of my childhood and I agree with Steven Levine that we never lose this. Have you found much fulfilling here?

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reason

Posted August 25th, 2010 by stefano

Jonathan, I'm curious why this issue seems important to you?

What sparked this post?

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Relevance

Posted August 25th, 2010 by Jonathan Cobb in response to reason

I see people frequently making the error of using Spiral Dynamics as a ranking system. I've made the same mistake before. And when Green criticizes SD for this, they are partially correct in doing so(but only insofar as many Integral people misunderstand what SD is about). Furthermore, I think there's a tendency to think that because you're "at" Orange or Green or Turquoise, you're "past" Red, Amber, etc. But the more we deny these parts of ourselves, the more they become part of our shadow. And it becomes easy to deny that we have some of the negative qualities of these other stages have. For example, someone might say to themselves, "I'm at Turquoise, therefore I can't be racist/sexist/xenophobic/etc." And you may not be racist or sexist in the straightforward way that someone at Amber might be, but that doesn't mean you don't still have some shadow elements around those issues. It's only in recent years that I've done some serious shadow work on these various forms of bigotry, and I still have more work to do there.

Furthermore, I think there is an unfortunate tendency to think of higher stages as "better" than lower stages. While it may be true that higher stages have greater potential for good, every stage can make the Darth Vader move. If we denigrate Green, for example, it becomes more difficult to differentiate healthy Green from dysfunctional Green. From my own perspective, I have a keen interest in economics, but find that mainstream economics suffers from the Mean Orange Meme(it was a healthy Orange back in Adam Smith's day). But there have been several heterodox economists such as Herman Daly who've helped drive it in the direction of a very healthy Green. But if we denigrate Green altogether, we can't learn from it. We need to understand and value what each stage has to teach us if we are to become more Integral. Just because you've "passed" a stage doesn't mean you've learned everything that stage has to teach us.

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errors of context

Posted August 25th, 2010 by stefano in response to Relevance

Ranking, shadow, suitability to environment, these are all parts of the theory and aspects of how it can be misused. So I agree with your view overall.

But a lot of problems can just be due to people not specifying the context for their judgements. When people criticise green, they usually have something specific in mind. Likewise, when people say that somebody or some culture is amber, again there are certain things which they have in mind. But unless they spell all those things out, it sounds like they are overgeneralising and just making simplistic judgements.

Likewise, when we say that higher stages are better than lower stages, again, there are certain reasons for this. It is like if I say, "I like Italian food", does that mean I have to always add the caveat that the food has to be cooked properly? I like Italian food made by good chefs who are at their best and have not made any mistakes and have great kitchen hygene and don't overcharge and have good table service...

There is always a context implied, and basically it comes down to whether people have a reasonable appreciation of the theories and what they are based on. I think it is just part of online discussions that, especially when we don't know each other, we have to spend a lot of time getting an intuition about the sort of context that each person has when they make statements. So if I say that teal is better than green, it may not be obvious that my context is that I really aspire to one day having my centre of gravity at teal. If I say someone is amber, there will be certain specific things that I interpreted that way, but unless I specify what those were, it could mean all sorts of things. Maybe the specifics are that the person was stood on a street corner handing out free chocolate easter eggs as a service to their religion and as a blessing to strangers, to remind them of Jesus.

Onlime discussions can be long but I figure they are even longer when people don't make explicit the context of their comments. I mean, you gradually get to know people and then what they say makes more sense, as we get to know their context better. But without context a lot of what people say can sound objctionable off the bat. People may complain about mean green, which may sound simplistic, but with context, it probably doesn't.

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Good

Posted August 25th, 2010 by Stanley in response to Relevance

" ...value what each stage has to teach us ..."

I would be comfortable saying that valueing each stage would be a good definition of what integral behavior is.

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My Reason

Posted August 25th, 2010 by Stanley in response to reason

I would like to express my reasons as to why I am interested in this topic if that would be O.K. I believe that the main reason for development and transformation is to come to extent more and more care and service to ever expanding circles of beings and existence. If we find that we need to believe that we or our group are integral we open the doors wide open to the potential of arrogance. Arrogance tends to be unhealthy and is at odds with a purpose of development explained above. This would explain why we have not yet done too much to serve this suffering World as a group yet.

Humility and gratitude are good antidotes to arrogance. We are more likely to be humble when we realize that we will always include earlier stages within us and can return to those stages given unfavorable life circumstances

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beautifully put

Posted August 26th, 2010 by stefano in response to My Reason

Yes, it is service to all that is the point of it all.

But I also think we can label arrogance as bad a little too easily. I'm thinking in particular of Ken's description of the Western Enlightenment, when philosophers championed reason and attacked the church and its myths. In Integral Spirituality, Ken says that this caused the spiritual line of intelligence to be frozen at amber, and it was for two reasons, generally: a) myths were just dogma and were rejected, and b) reason did not accept anything higher than reason, so it in effect said, no more ascent, no more striving for anything higher, no more false pride in being superior!

Pride was considered a sin, because you were (by being spiritual) trying to be something higher than the average person (whom are all to be considered equal, and all to be considered as people to be educated to the level of reason and no further), so no more ascent, no more striving for spirit, for God -- all of that was just pride and arrogance.

As moderns living in the modern West, we may all still be suffering from that conception of sin. It puts people who want to grow spiritually in a double bind because to grow further is to become better than other people, whether one carries that humbly or not. Nobody can reply, "I am better" without sounding arrogant.

So, as with everything, we need to discern between good arrogance and bad arrogance.

I wonder, maybe false arrogance is simply assuming one is higher than one is, whereas good arrogance is people who are genuinely higher and more open and more evolved, being honest about it and being honest that, hey guys, hey professors, hey world leaders, y'all need to stop and pay attention. Big ego, in service. Probably doesn't look humble, in the slightest, but the humble approach might be entirely ignored.

Unless of course a spiritual leader is using humbleness as a PR move to gain millions of supporters, thereby making his voice a real force in the world. But if they do that in service, then that could be a big ego's arrogance using humility to gain power to serve the world... and if it does help the world then what is wrong with that?

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Higher or lower

Posted August 25th, 2010 by kbd2005

A lot of people on these forums talk a lot of yellow and turquoise, but I don't think a whole lot of them actually LIVE there. There are always part of ourselves that can be repressed into the dungeon and they don't come out until there is actually someone that will LISTEN to their CRAP.

I think it's a great thing having these labels. They help us understand who is who and why they act. And if you can understand clearly why they're acting that way, you may be in the second tier. IMO

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