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The Evolution of Motivation

Posted March 16th, 2009 by Kristian

Here's my attempt to structure motivation vertically. Please note that these are just notes. :-) Someday I may find time to write some sort of article about it. I think that motivation is intimately linked to identity, so this is pretty much inspired by Susanne Cook Greuters work on ego development. Maybe it's useful for someone. Anyway, here we go:

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Level Motivations, drives

Red

Aggression, power, dominans

Amber

Duty, obligations, social pressure, belonging, moral, musts, submission, meaning (religious)

Orange

Outcome – reward, focus/determination/self disciplin (free will), Invests discomfort now in order to recieve a reward later, Competition/instinct to win, impact/self confidence/significance, Has the life in his/her own hands – creates his/her own destiny,which is a great kick!

Reaction against amber oppressing dogmas for the benefit of the objective truth.

Green

Disarming all previous drives:

Disarming Red: Believes in justice and non-violence.

Disarming Amber: Social hierarchies, as well as duty and religion, are claims to power that oppresses the individual. Moral, meaning och group identity are social constructions, Vi have been domisticated by the civilization to adaptation. There are no musts or have-tos! Meaning is a subjective entity, I decide my own meaning!

Disarming Orange: Competition is never fair (e.g. feminism, multi culturalism), Success is always on someone elses expense, Outcome – measureble objectives often have consequences (e.g. environmental-), The measureble objectives are
never objectively choosen! Who’s truth? All claims on the truth or objectivity are claims for power.

Life is not about achieving and aquire material welth! Life is about feeling good, happiness – here and now!

We have everything we need – we don’t have to chase a lot of success.

Self esteem is about expressing oneself,

Affirmations, by consumption and experiences, and in the same time, criticism agains that.

Justice (but doesn’t do much concrete about it)

Creativity and curiosity, maybe from earlier stages that are acknowledged.

Else, don’t do much… but not much really has to be done!

Integral (teal/turquoise)

Compassion and responsibility (but now also results oriented),

Truth seeking – questions, even one self,

Creativity

Integrates the earlier stages and can hold the paradoxes and critique, mostly from green

Takes into consideration the own needs (e.g. according to Maslow) and lays energy on appropriate things.

Ego-transcending

Longing for ultimate truth

Love – unconditional, self sacrificing with no expectation on own outcome or reward.

Calling – deep sense of meaningfullness, meaning is what is greater than the self.

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The last parts are speculations, cause frankly, I have no clue...

Kristian

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4 out of 4 members found this useful.

Great!

Posted March 17th, 2009 by David Marshall

Kristian, I think this is superb.

This is one of my favorite lines, and I think you really nailed it.

I think it's so important, and I also think it is one that often gets neglected and/or misunderstood in enlightenment discussions.

Of course a lot of the misunderstanding there has to do with the difference between states and stages.

In any case, the only thing I would add to your list is probably a few distinctions with Green.

For one thing I think we can have different types of Green, say masculine or agentic Green and feminine or communal Green.

Usually healthy Green is described as very communal, but what about Green activists?

And then there would be unhealthy and healthy versions of each type.

Unhealthy communal Green would be excessively narcissistic and self-indulgent, while unhealthy agentic Green would have a tendency to be mean (mean Green meme), as well as narcissistic in its own way (in both cases Green infected with Red or Green with Red shadow).

I also think you got the ego-transcending motivation pretty well, and it's great that you included it.

~David

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Thank's!

Posted March 17th, 2009 by Kristian in response to Great!

Thank you for your comments, David!

I agree to your distinctions about Green. I think Amber and Orange are pretty straight forward in comparison, so I had to give a lot of more space to Green in order to try to capture at least some of the many nuances, e.g. your distinctions of communal and agentic.

Also, I think that the appearance of Green varies with the context. I think that in the US, Green has to struggle more with getting things done and fight for it's causes, e.g. environment and human rights. It have to be agentic to achieve something.

In Europe, or at least here in Sweden with center of gravity in Green, I guess it leans more to the communial side. However, there's an individualistic side to it also (Cook-Greuter calls the ego-level corresponding to Green altitude individualistic) that I see as an alternativ to both communion and agency. I see a lot of that here, and that's where narcissism thrives. I hope to address this topic in more detail later.

Further more, I see Green as more of a process rather than a fixed set of values or beliefs. So it's hard to define (as is postmodernism). But I think it is the most important and interesting of the stages on the road to integral, and mapping it out is important in order to help people grow into 2:nd tier.

I really appreciate your input! :-)

Kristian

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Green, autonomy, communion

Posted March 18th, 2009 by David Marshall in response to Thank's!

Thank you, Kristian.

Yes, Green is siginificantly more complex than Amber and Orange, isn't it? I imagine we will have to devote even more space to Teal and Turquoise once they get more firmly established and we get to know them better.

I really liked your "disarming" section, by the way, and the phrasing there.

Yes, Wilber said that the Mean Green Meme is a largely American phenonomenon--it may be, as you suggest, because Green in the U.S. has to work harder and has larger forces up against it. I'm not sure, but I think he has said that such things occur when one meme feels the need to defend itself against others. I think this is why the Bush administration, and neo cons in general (neocons defined as unhealthy Orange) sunk to Amber or didn't rise up to Orange in certain instances--they felt threatened by Red abroad and by Green at home, at the U.N., elsewhere.

That's interesting what you say about Susanne Cooke-Greuter and inviduality. I just glanced at one of her papers, and it struck me how relativism and pluralism give rise, paradoxically, to the individualism that you mention. Wilber has mentioned that as well, but it just struck me in a particular way this time, how the two fit together.

I think it's also true that as we go higher on the spiral, generally speaking, there is greater capacity for both autonomy and communion.

All the best,

David

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