Sidebar C: Orange and Green: Levels or Cousins?
At one point, Mark Jefferson gave a quick sidebar on the relation of orange and green. From
Kim's notes:
"Many of you know about an important disagreement that Jenny Wade has with Spiral
Dynamics, namely, whether orange and green are two different stages of development or whether
they are two different paths through the same stage of development (see her book, Changes of
Mind ). Both Don Beck and Jenny Wade are members of IC, so it's an in-house friendly
disagreement. Also, this discussion is a little bit technical, and demands a general grasp of what
we call a phase-4 model--'all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states'--but I'll go through it
briefly for those who are interested.
"Jenny points out that one of the first things that happens when people study Spiral Dynamics is
that many of them say, 'This model sounds very good, except I don't think I ever went through
green. I don't have a green bone in my body!' And it's true--many people who are clearly second
tier just don't seem to possess much green--not as SD defines it, that is. This fact, among other
things--Jenny is a consummate researcher, and her suggestion is also based on her interpretation
of a considerable amount of research--got Jenny thinking that maybe green isn't a strict stage
after orange and before yellow; rather, maybe green is simply one of two ways that a person can
develop from blue to yellow, with the other way being orange, so that we would actually have
this scheme: a person at blue (conformist) can develop forward in one of two basic ways: if they
are more individualistically oriented, they develop from blue to orange, which Jenny calls the
achievement stage, and then go to yellow from orange; but if they are more communally
oriented, they develop from blue to green, which Jenny calls affiliative, and then from there to
yellow.
"Of course, no wave theorist--and certainly not Jenny or Don--views this development as being a
rigid ladder-type thing, with a person simply being AT one stage, then a linear clunk to the next
totally discrete stage, then a shuddering clunk again... although it is very entertaining to read
some critics' mirthful account of this nasty 'linear' development. No, all sophisticated
developmentalists recognize that nobody is ever simply AT a stage; there are admixtures,
meshes, swirls--and of course, there are actually waves and streams and altered states, with all
sorts of nonlinear events happening. But the important point here, if we may nonetheless
summarize in a clunky fashion, is that at blue there is a fork in the road: the more individualistic
folks travel from blue to orange to yellow, and the more communalistic travel from blue to green
to yellow. So, for Jenny, there are THREE stages or levels here, as opposed to Spiral Dynamics,
which has FOUR stage/levels from blue to yellow (with orange and green being two real levels).
"Now, I am going to suggest that both Jenny and SD are half right and half wrong on this issue.
Jenny is right, I believe, in that there are indeed equivalent paths of agency and communion
involved at various stages; but I believe she is wrong to collapse orange and green into one stage
(so that there are only three stages from blue to yellow). I believe SD is right in that there are
indeed four major stages from blue to yellow, but incorrect when it describes green as
necessarily or essentially communal. The model that I will present thus honors Jenny's basic
insight (namely, you can indeed get from blue to yellow without going through a communalgreen stage), but it also honors the SD claim that there are four major stages from blue to yellow.
I hope, therefore, that this model will preserve the best of both approaches.
"To begin with, let us look at the number of major stages from blue (conformist) to yellow
(integral). Jenny suggests three stages, SD suggests four. Of course, how we divide and
subdivide stages is often a matter of simple convenience, and there are many, many legitimate
ways to divide levels; but within the parameters of the debate at hand, I believe SD is correct:
there are four major levels of development from blue to yellow. I will call these major levels:
concrete (blue), formal (orange), pluralistic (green), and integral (yellow). Now I am NOT
claiming that these levels have the exact characteristics that SD claims (for that is one of the
issues on which I will side with Jenny); am I simply saying that SD is correct when it claims four
major stages here (and that Jenny has unnecessarily collapsed two of these stages into one stage
in her otherwise correct attempt to redress some problematic definitions of the orange and green
stages made by SD--see below). The other stages (beige, purple, red, etc.) are basically
uncontested by both parties (except that Jenny, rightly I believe, includes some higher or
transpersonal stages, but that is not the issue here, so we will not discuss that).
"As for these four stages, the majority of developmental researchers tend to agree. If you look at
the charts presented in Integral Psychology , you will find at least a dozen theorists who present
evidence for four, not three, stages, going from concrete (conop) to formal (formop) to pluralistic
(relativistic) to integral (holistic). The author of that book even comments on the general
agreement about these four stages: 'There is a general agreement that... growing beyond abstract
universal formalism (of formop), consciousness moves first into a cognition of (postformal)
dynamic relativity and pluralism (early vision-logic), and then into a cognition of holism,
dynamic dialecticism, or integralism (middle to late vision-logic), all of which can be seen quite
clearly on the charts...' (p. 26-7). Thus: concrete, formal, pluralistic, and integral.
"Now, in the model that is presented in Integral Psychology , the cognitive structures--as the
closest thing we have to levels of consciousness (see Sidebar B)--form a type of backbone,
skeleton, or (to lapse into that crude metaphor,) a ladder which forms the substrate that the selfsystem then identifies with (think of them as the 7 chakras through which the self will journey in
a fluid and flowing manner; the self does so by successively identifying and then dis-identifying
its center of gravity with a particular chakra/level of consciousness). That identification of the
self with a basic level/wave of consciousness, among other items, generates various types of selfrelated stages, such as self-identity, morals, needs, and values (which are simply the
characteristics of the self when it is at a particular level/chakra). Clare Graves and Spiral
Dynamics technically are reporting the levels of values (value-Memes or vMemes). But I am
first referring to the deeper or basic structure/levels of cognition-consciousness that support
those values (research continues to show that cognitive development is necessary but not
sufficient for the self-stages), and there is little question in my mind that those cognitive
structures move from something like conop (concrete) to formop (systemic) to pluralistic (metasystemic) to integral (paradigmatic, integrative)... to yet higher waves. As the self identifies with
those basic levels of consciousness, the results of this shifting identification are the levels of selfneeds, self-morals, self-values... and that is where SD and Wades' models especially enter the
picture (and specifically, is it best to think of three or four levels here?). Not only do the
cognitive researchers tend to agree with those four general levels (e.g., Commons and Richards,
Jan Sinnott, Patricia Arlin), so do many of the researchers of the self-related lines (Jane
Loevinger, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Blanchard-Fields, Kitchener and King, Deirdre Kramer,
Cheryl Armon, etc. You can see all of these on the charts in Integral Psychology ).
"Again, these types of questions are always somewhat relative and conventional. But in this case
I believe it is very important to recognize four levels here--at least cognitively, and, I believe, in
the self-related stages as well. Let me remind you about some of the important characteristic of
these four basic levels or basic waves of consciousness (in these examples I will mix cognitive
stages and self-stages, as long as we understand they are technically distinct).
"The concrete level (conop, conformist, mythic-membership) is noted for its unreflexive,
concrete-literal nature--and hence is generally ethnocentric. This is a big step up from
preoperational consciousness (egocentric), but it still cannot reflect on its own operations and
thus it is caught in 'my country, right or wrong' and a 'good boy, nice girl' mentality.
"With the emergence of formal operational consciousness (formop, reflexive, abstract-universal),
a person can begin to 'norm the norms,' to reflect on society's rules and roles and thus rise above
them to some extent--which moves consciousness from ethnocentric to worldcentric, from
conventional to postconventional. This is the great and grand advance that the western
Enlightenment brought on a large scale, even if it did not always live up to that bright promise.
"But the formal stage is certainly not the highest stage of consciousness. Beyond it lie postformal
developments, the first of which is the pluralistic-relativistic wave. Where formop can grasp the
nature of a truly universal system , that system tends to be conceived in a static and monovalent
fashion, and also as something of straightjacket into which all local color is dissolved. The
abstract-static nature of formalism has often been commented on--rather negatively, which is
certainly understandable.
"This is where postformal developments are so important. For the pluralistic stage takes
formalism and differentiates it into numerous, multiple systems, each with its own wonderful
richness, color, local context, and diverse backgrounds. This is, of course, the major wave behind
multiculturalism, the diversity movements, and postmodernism in general. It is responsible for
being able to take multiple perspectives and appreciate all of them with sensitivity and care.
"However, as so many researchers have pointed out, if the pluralistic wave succeeds in
differentiating the many cultural systems into numerous meta-systems, it cannot yet integrate
them. This is why postmodernism tends to end up in mere fragmentation, alienation, and despair.
Only with the next wave of consciousness development--that of the integral or holistic wave--are
the numerous differentiated systems brought together into an integrated tapestry that, while
honoring their important differences, sets them in an integrated context that finds unity and
wholeness as well.
"Okay, from concrete to formal to pluralistic to integral--that development is a main topic of this
seminar, and you have already seen many examples of it. The self (or the sense of self-identity)
that moves through those four major levels naturally has four major stages here, each of which is
generated when the self identifies with one of those four levels of consciousness; these selfstages are called, respectively (to use the important research of Jane Loevinger): conformist
(concrete), conscientious (formal), individualistic (pluralistic), and autonomous/integrated
(integral). You can see all of these in fig. 4-1. And notice, Loevinger has four levels here. The
conscientious and individualistic are not two different paths through the same level, but are two
very different levels--giving four altogether.
"So those are the four main basic structures, or basic stages, or basic levels moving from blue to
yellow: namely, concrete, formal, pluralistic, and integral (by whatever names). So this is the
part where I believe SD is correct.
"But let us now focus on the claim of Spiral Dynamics that the stages of development alternate
from individualistic to communal (or from self-asserting to self-sacrificing). As many of you
know, according to SD, the successive stages alternate from a 'hot' or agentic stage--which
accordingly is given a 'hot' color (red, orange, yellow)--to a cool or communal stage (with cool
or soft colors: purple, blue, green, turquoise). According to SD, a major reason for this
alternation is that one stage tries an individualistic approach to the world, eventually finds that
there are things that only collectives can do, and so it develops to a collective or communal
stage--only to find out that there are things only individuals can do. And thus the Spiral of
development swings from an agentic stage, to a communal stage, to an agentic stage, to a
communal stage, and so on. Of course, for SD, these stages or memes are adaptive intelligences
brought forth by Life Conditions; nobody is ever AT a stage but rather displays a complex
admixture of memes in various circumstances; and individuals can move through the Spiral with
a constant emphasis on the hot or the cool colors; but still, the structure of each successive meme
alternates from hot to cool, from agentic to communal.
"Now I believe that such is often the case, but it is not necessarily or inherently the case. I
believe the evidence strongly suggests that any stage can take on an agentic or a communal tone.
If we look at the four basic structures we are talking about--concrete, formal, pluralistic, integral-there is nothing about those stages that says, this stage inherently must be agentic and this one
must be communal. So here is my suggestion: every stage can be experienced in either a
relatively agentic or communal fashion . And that means that green can exist in both hot and cool
tones--there is both agentic green and communal green. In fact, it appears that whether a
particular stage is agentic or communal depends on factors in all four quadrants . Let me give
some quick examples:
"In the Upper-Right quadrant, a major contributing factor is whether you are a male or female. If
you are a male, then you are more likely to experience most stages of growth with a relative
emphasis on agency. When you go through the concrete stage (blue), you might be a John
Wayne--a strong defender of traditional communal values, but carried out in a very strong
agentic fashion! (Because SD incorrectly insists that blue is communal by nature, it is forced to
say that John Wayne is 'dipping back into red' for his agentic tilt; but that is exactly what John
Wayne's screen character is not : his character is humble, self-facing, never takes credit, just does
his duty, fights for God and country, never complains, never draws attention to himself: he has
so little red it's pathetic! What he is, is strong agentic blue , a fact SD can't account for). Of
course, if you are a man with a more communal personality, then you will experience blue in a
more communal way. Likewise a woman with a more agentic personality will be more
individualistic at this stage, and so on. There is no biological determinism here, it is simply that
biological factors in the UR quadrant have a significant hand in determining how the stages will
be experienced, and that means that, on average , males will experience stages more agentically
and females more communally (probably testosterone and oxytocin, but that's another topic). The
point is that each stage can tilt toward agentic or communal, depending on various factors in the
UR.
"Likewise, of course, with factors in the Lower-Left quadrant: one's cultural background will
have a very strong say in how individuals experience the stages of development. I was talking
with a friend from Japan just yesterday, and he said that his countrymen just do not have any
stage that is highly agentic; it would kill most males or females to be highly individualistic. 'We
have a saying: the nail that stands out, gets hammered down.' This is often thought to be why the
Japanese receive so few Nobel prizes--which demand individual, creative initiative--but are so
good at taking other inventions and perfecting them. Well, the point is simply that, in Japan, all
of the stages tend to have a strongly communal tone to them. Put it this way: orange in Japan is
as communal as blue in America; moreover, according to my friend, the social herd pressure at
orange is just as strong as it is at blue--there is very little 'alternating' going on here because the
LL quadrant is so powerful in Japan.
"Look now at some of the factors in the Lower-Right quadrant: the social system itself--and
especially the techno-economic base--can exert a profound influence on whether a stage will be
experienced agentically or communally. Foraging, herding, industrial, and informational bases
select strongly for agency; horticultural, agrarian, and maritime, more for communal.
Horticultural red is actually very communal, herding red is flamingly agentic.
"Well, perhaps you see my point. I do not believe that there is anything inherent in the cognitive
basic structures of a stage that says this stage must in all ways be agentic or must be communal.
The relative strength of agency and communion at every stage is a product of factors in all four
quadrants--intentional, behavioral, social, and cultural.
"Now this implies the following: because of factors in all four quadrants, the pluralistic stage in
this country has been largely experienced as a communalistic stage, and SD has described that
stage fairly accurately as the green meme. HOWEVER, many people--I would say, based on
deductions from Paul Ray's research, about 40% of those who go through the pluralistic level-experience that pluralistic level in strongly individualistic terms. In other words, they don't go
through a communal green-pluralism but an agentic green-pluralism. Not cool green, but hot
green; not self-sacrificing but self-assertive; not politically correct, but politically individualistic.
Both agentic and communal green are still pluralistic (they both share the same basic level of
consciousness, which is postformal pluralistic-relative), but agentic is individual-emphasizing
and communal is group-emphasizing. These agentic folks are exactly the second-tier people who
read SD and say, 'I don't have a green bone in my body--I did not go thru a green stage!' These
are the folks that led Jenny to question, correctly, whether the green meme--as described by SD-is a real stage (and she's right: no, it isn't. But the pluralistic stage is . In other words, cool green-which is the ONLY green for SD--is not a universal stage, because there is also hot green. Thus,
everybody goes through green, but it can be either cool or hot, depending on the four quadrants.
The pluralistic green wave is universal, but neither cool green nor hot green is. So you can
indeed get to second tier without ever going through cool green.)
"But then Jenny attempted to correct the half-wrong part of SD by introducing her own halfwrong solution: she collapsed formal and pluralistic--making them two alternatives at the same
level--in order to get around SD's previous mistake of making it a necessity for people to have a
pluralistic communal stage (and she's right, you do not have to go through a green communal
stage--you do not have to go through cool green, because you can go through hot green), and
thus she collapsed the four stages into three in an attempt to get around that very real problem.
But she can get around the basic problem by keeping the four stages and seeing that people can
experience each of them in an agentic or communal fashion. This fits with all the other research
that sees these four stages as being very real; but it avoids the basic problem of claiming that the
pluralistic stage must be communal/affiliative, when in fact many people--including Jenny and
me--went through the pluralistic stage in an agentic fashion. That is, we did not go through cool
green, we went through hot green. And it was not that we went from orange to yellow and
'quickly dipped into green' as defined by SD--no real stage conception can work like that (see
Kegan's In Over Our Heads ). When you are developing the competence of a particular wave,
you have to really develop it --there is no mere 'dipping.' (SD is forced to resort to the notion of
'dipping' because it mis-defines the deep structures of the pluralistic/green wave in the first place
as being necessarily cool, and thus anybody who does not experience cool green is said to be
merely dipping into it during a fast rush past it--but it just don't work that way! Moreover, you
cannot escape this difficulty by backing off the claim that the vMemes are stages and asserting
instead that they are adaptive intelligences that can be lit up in various admixtures by different
life conditions, because if that is so, then they are not stages and that claim must be dropped: you
can't have it both ways: you cannot say an organism can use its atoms and use its cells but not
use its molecules. The fact is, the vMemes develop in stages that can then be used as adaptive
intelligences, and as for the stages themselves, you cannot skip stages--you cannot 'dip' into
green.)
"I would add that, in fact, most of the second-tier people I know went through the pluralistic
stage in an agentic fashion (they went through hot green), for the simple reason that if you go
through the pluralistic stage in a more typically communal fashion--cool green--then in this day
and age you almost always get caught in the herd mentality of politically correct thinking, the
mean green meme, and the epidemic of boomeritis, and therefore you never make it to yellow,
because cool green, accounting for probably 60% of green, dominates the cultural and academic
scene.)
"So when I continue to refer to these four stages as blue, orange, green, and yellow, I mean in the
more general sense of the values, the morals, and the self-senses correlated with the four basic
structures or basic levels of concrete, formal, pluralistic, and integral waves of consciousness.
"So it is absolutely not the complete truth when many second-tier people say: I did not go
through green! What they mean is, they did not go through communal green; but they did go
through agentic green, agentic pluralism. Of course they went through a pluralistic stage-- of
course they can take multiple perspectives, of course they are sensitive to multiple cultures and
diversity issues, and of course they do not want to marginalize or oppress anybody. Jenny, for
example--who is fond of saying 'I don't have a green bone in my body'--is actually one of the
most culturally sensitive people I know--she went through agentic green, not communal green.
"I mentioned the chakra system. You all know the chakra system, yes? You've heard of it? It's
probably the most archetypal psychospiritual model ever devised. In the chakras, there are seven
main levels of consciousness--the seven chakras--but what is most interesting is that at every
chakra, there are also two energy currents: ida and pingala, or masculine and feminine, or solar
and lunar, or agency and communion, or hot and cool. Each level of consciousness is said to
have access to both agency and communion , and how that level is experienced depends on the
individual in question.
"Now the view I am proposing is very similar to the chakra system, in that each level can be
experienced along a continuum from almost purely agentic to almost purely communal,
depending on factors in all four quadrants. No level is merely or intrinsically agentic or
communal. So the next time you see a Caduceus--the staff with two swirling serpents
representing agency and communion at each level--you can think of this model....
"Well, what I am saying is that the approach I am suggesting can accommodate the four stages of
SD (blue, orange, green, yellow), IF it is understood that none of them are intrinsically agentic or
communal, and therefore Jenny is quite correct when she claims that communal or cool green is
NOT a necessary stage (it isn't, because there is agentic or hot green--that is, agentic pluralistic).
But nobody gets to yellow/integral without going through pluralistic (nobody gets to second tier
without going through green in the most general sense of pluralistic relativism, whether hot or
cool). This is why we say that is only through green that second tier emerges--only after
pluralistic can you find integral.
"And boomeritis can strike either agentic green or communal green, hot green or cool green-which is why, either way, boomeritis is still the great roadblock to second-tier, integral
consciousness."
KW Note:
After I wrote the above sidebar, I gave Don and Jenny a chance to respond. Here is the overall
exchange:
Hi Folks,
See the following for don and jenny's responses to my endnote on orange/green. Basically, they
both stand by their positions and reaffirm them.
On the two major issues of contention, I agree with Jenny that cool green is not a necessary wave
or meme of development--and thus there is little evidence that cool green is a universal part of
any spiral mesh, admixture, etc.; and I agree with Don that, over the ground we are covering,
four general stages best fits the preponderance of evidence. I therefore still believe that my
compromise stance best fits the data.
Who's Right? You decide! Love, Ken
Don Responds:
Agency-driven
AN Beige
CP Red
ER Orange
Communal-focused
BO Purple
DQ Blue
FS Green
G
T
Y
e
l
l
o
w
I
V
HU Turquoise
C
o
r
a
l
(See page 63 in the book Spiral Dynamics for a depiction of the admixture profiles.)
I fear you are missing a critical component within the SD theory that I really need to address.
Graves' research does show the DQ-ER-FS-GT sequence as each of the value codes addresses
the issues/challenges/problems generated by the previous systems within the Life Conditions.
Since this is a complex, adaptive intelligence framework, one must always keep an eye on the
Life Conditions. I don't find this same focus in other developmental theories. In his research,
when DQ "changed," it did so to ER; when ER changed, it did so in the direction of FS.
Second, the eight systems identified thus far are themes, codes, and ways of thinking. They are
not people, cultures, or societies. People are not at a level, nor can they be defined by single
world view stereotypes. Your discussion of "lines" fits this theoretical model since one may be
thinking/acting in different vMeme codes in different areas of life. So, a person does not climb a
linear staircase, developing a full measure of the entire repertoire on each level. [Agreed,
although some stage lines do show a much more strictly linear developmental sequence, and they
need to be included in any integral psychology--kw]
Further, the brain research shows, especially in the reticular activating system, that humans do
not begin at the same point ZERO. In fact, we tend to be tilted at birth toward the expressive or
communal side of life. Only in a text book case would a human ascend the staircase with equal
exposure to each level, before moving to the next etc. I've never met that human being. So, a
person with high levels of agency, would tend to stay on the warm color I:ME:MINE side with
short excursions into cool colors to gain just enough to ratchet up to the next warm color. CPRED would need to experience enough DQ-BLUE (sacrifice self, now, to obtain later) to
suppress the impulsivity and acquire a directional compass. The difference between RED
diamonds-in-the-rough and ORANGE risk taking entrepreneurs is the BLUE capacity to play the
game "within the rules." Likewise, a strong ER-ORANGE subsystem may, when the dot.coms
crash, regress back and re-visit the BLUE search for meaning and purpose and get born again.
OR, that same ORANGE may explore emerging GREEN (Is that all there is, Alfie?) by
experiencing enough of the FS system to finally get rid of RED in the subsystem and "tame the
wild beast within" before sliding into the softer individualistic tones in GT-Yellow. There will be
a GREEN experience but it will not be the full load of communal thinking.
A communal BO-PURPLE would need to experience enough RED to break free from the strong,
powerful containment in ritual and the way of the elders to emerge as "a person." There will then
be a major shift toward the next cool color system, DQ. This person will be more attracted to the
WE:US:OUR pole probably during his/her entire life.
For years I was involved in selecting young Zulu mine workers to move into a foreman position.
We would not pick the loyal, trustworthy, ritualistic Purple -- even though they worked hard
without complaints. Rather, I would pick the union stewards in the National Union of
Mineworkers ..i.e. heavy RED knowing that I could build ORANGE leadership skills on that
strong self concept. We would expose them to enough of the BLUE regimentation to (2) subdue
impulsive RED and remove them from the Zulu "tribe" so they could discipline "the brothers"
but also manage workers from other tribes. We would often have to transfer them to a different
region in South Africa so they could live far away from their "tribe."
So, a person with a heavy sacrificial bent would, indeed, move from DQ-BLUE through just
enough Orange to separate from ideology and become an autonomous person. We are seldom
able to get a full measure of Orange out of this person but will anticipate that GREEN will be
next. I suspect the up-ratchet would just touch the base of Yellow before centering in Turquoise.
From this strong BLUE base a person will discover enough of "self" in Orange before shifting
into GREEN. We often find two people who score high in the Green zone but one will have a
strong ER subsystem while the other has a weak version. The first will sell you crystals; the
second will give them to you.
This, I think, explains why Jenny created the dual pathway. She is picking up on these divergent
trajectories along the Major/minor sequence. A person with strong agency will ,beginning in
Beige, develop Major chords in the warm colors but minor chords in the cool colors. They will
not bypass the cool colors. A person with "sacrifice self" orientations will have major chords in
the cool colors (purple, blue, green, turquoise) but minor chords in the warm color sets.
A person, then, will have BOTH a form of agency and communalism within their vMemetic
make-up but there will be a ratio-of-sorts. When you identify agency and communalism at a
level, you are actually reflecting this warm color/cool color ratio that is contained in a personal
vMeme repertoire. This is the reason folks have scores in multiple systems in the Values Test
and Form "A" instrument. In doing organizational audits of the DNA codes, we look for BOTH
the dominant warm color and the dominate cool color.
Yet, the over all evolutionary stream in terms of the themes and codes will follow the DQ-ERFS-GT sequence. A person's vMeme repertoire will be multicolored...same goes for an entire
society. The Bush culture is dq/ER the Democrat Party culture is ER/fs. So, "conservatives" will
stress guilt and original sin which DQ recognized; "liberals" will embrace external causes and
LR solutions since all humans are noble but have been oppressed by society. The Taliban are
caught in the CP-DQ axis which explains the harsh, non-forgiving, and even brutal expression.
Other comments:
1.I question the use of male/female labels for the agentic/communal distinction. [Actually, I
suggested this only as a general tendency, with men and women being mixtures of both--kw]
You really mean expressive/gyroscopic with the locus of control within and sacrificial/radar with
the locus of control outside the person. This also reflects the RAS tendency to either move
against nature or move in harmony with nature. Agency refuses to be contained by
boundaries/barriers and moves against them; communal learns to live within the established
boundaries as the self concept is built from the outside, in.
2.Yes, Japan is very communal -- which goes back to their agricultural background and the
population strains from living on an island. But they will be able to "see" the Japanese with
heavy ORANGE -- such as the new Prime Minister.
3. John Wayne in BLUE will have a strong RED subsystem in him; Billy Graham in BLUE will
not have. Jerry Farwell is Blue with heavy Orange commercialism.
4. The swing between 'hot' and 'cold' poles, at least thus far, has been the case since each
addresses the excesses of the previous pole. But that is simply the flow of the codes...a given
person will not ride the pendulum on the full swing..Those with a heavy WARM bias will hop
off just as the pendulum passes the midpoint, and will then catch it on the way back to the warm
side. A person with the COOL bias will move toward "individuality" but will retreat to the next
COOL color when he/she gets scared.
5. Paul Ray's research will, indeed, identify folks with a strong individualistic tone within their
pluralistic perspective...ORANGE within GREEN...but they will be different from those in
GREEN who lack that strong sense of self or personal achievement. I just re-discovered the book
"If you are an egalitarian, why are you rich." California ER/FS is almost a type unto itself.
6.. Green is communal...other than self...altruism...concern for society-at-large rather than one's
bank account. The experience of Green will soften ambition, stress social causes over individual
fame, but embrace sensitivity rather than personal achievement. The initial Green experience is
to explore SELF, revisit the hidden child, seek after freedom of expression, and become "a whole
person." OR, it make take a heavy external form with more of a focus on altruistic outcomes
where self is subdued, almost non-existent. I view pluralism and the resultant fragmentation as a
byproduct of communal thought that "deconstructed" the BLUE/ORANGE hierarchy and
declared all experiences of life to be "equal" with all others.
7. These are belief STRUCTURES or containers...they are quite different from the CONTENT
that is attached to or embraced...so while you might be hearing GREEN content from a person..it
may well come out of BLUE ideology..so you have to always ask the "why" question.
Summary: I sense that you are thinking steps & stages rather than admixtures, blends, and
mosaics...and that individuals (and societies) will have warm and cool color components within
their vMeme stacks. [Again, Don, that is not totally correct. Jenny and I are claiming that the
research does not support a universal cool green meme as a necessary component of any stack,
mixture, swirl, twirl, or dilly bar. :-)--kw]
We exist in the tension zones between systems on the decline and systems on the rise. Each
person's momentary world view will contain elements of both warm and cool colors, rather than
pure types. The key is to search for HOW people are thinking rather than WHAT they are
thinking. I found for years that college students are labile in that their vMeme priorities fluctuate
as they are trying to figure out who in the hell they are...and only when they become serious
(marriage, jobs, kids, mortgages help) will the patterns sort themselves out. Even then Life
Conditions will continue to hit them between the eyes.
As you point out, under any of the perspectives that you described the Boomeritis virus is still
real. I define it as a dysfunctional hang up involving bizarre combinations of warm and cool
colors. The differences that appeared to spawn this "debate" are so minor I wonder why anybody
is really interested in exploring them further. [Because it's fun!!!!--kw] They most often reflect
personal vMeme profiles of the principals as well as the geographic/cultural research base
involved in the theory building.
Don
Jenny Responds:
First, any disagreement I've had with Don over this has been taking place purely out there in the
ether as he and I have never even had a discussion or even a friendly conversation about it;
there's certainly been no debate between us.
Second, my point of view has considerably more foundation than the face validity of people's
casual self-report of their remembered and recognized developmental history, and I'd certainly
like to see that reflected in anything that is published. Not to do so diminishes the strength of my
conclusions in ways that also seem to cast doubt on my scholarliness. I'm sure there was no
intentional slight, but what I'm saying is not merely an opinion based on a few conversations;
rather it is a reasoned attempt to bring order to a lot of data, as indicated in my book.
Basically the foundation for my conclusions is this:
Sex and hemisphericity, which is related to sex, appear to make a substantial difference in world
view after the conformist (blue) stage. Data derived from male subjects tend to support the idea
that the next stage concerns independent achievement via the manipulation of an externally
perceived world of objects, as reflected in Kohlberg's, Piaget's, and Perry's work. Data derived
from females support the emergence of a socially connected orientation related to sustaining an
interpersonal world of relationships, as shown in Loevinger's work and the Belenky et al.
research. Often distinguishing characteristics of single-sex samples have been promoted by
researchers of the same sex as their samples. Moreover, female researchers, such as Loevinger
and Wessler, Gilligan, Belenky et al. point out that cultural pressures in most Western societies
reinforce and select for the adoption of the achievement track (orange) by women in a variety of
circumstances. More recent studies that take this now commonly recognized bias into account
have not necessarily gone back to re-validate classic studies done years ago. Cross-cultural
studies of some theories away from Eurocentric cultures have not been undertaken systematically
(or retain many flaws, as Kohlberg's critics maintain), but researchers in related fields have found
culturally dependent differences along dimensions that may affect the construction of
consciousness.
Both achievement (orange) and affiliative (green) typologies have substantial empirical backing.
Developmentalists mainly differ over the ordering of their emergence rather than the validity of
the stage identification, so there is no consistency in the research about which comes next,
particularly in light of the above. It is true that Kohlberg and Loevinger do not accord
achievement and affiliative consciousness equal status as stages, and that their models contradict
each other. Their reasons for ranking one stage above the other concern their notions about the
sequence of emergence and theoretical derivations now questioned for sex bias. It is difficult in
examining the content of their stages to find evidence that one is more complex than the other.
Researchers of mixed sex populations like Maslow and Graves contradict each other's order for
emergence. Gravesians Flowers and Heflich, and women researching women (Belenky et al.)
support the same bifurcation and equal level of complexity that I do--and given the
contradictions and difficulties in the other research, this seems a warranted conclusion.
In conclusion, all I'd like to say is that social conditions, sex, and hemisphericity (which also has
no known developmental sequence) tend to shape what emerges after the conformist (blue) stage.
The research does not support an invariant developmental sequence to either affiliative (green) or
achievement (blue) in any convincing way. Nor, given thedifferent things the researchers were
looking at, is there conclusive evidence that one stage is more complex along a majority of
dimensionsthan the other; in fact, they seem rather equal, as noted, once sequenceis not
considered--and it must be remembered that the heart of developmental theory is increasing
complexity over time, not the mere sequencing of events. Descriptions of these stages differ a
great deal in kind, but these distinctions don't necessarily reflect a difference concerning
complexity the way other stages do.
I'd also like to add that there is considerable anecdotal evidence for people's moving from
affiliative (green) to achievement (orange) and vice versa rather than moving "up" to authentic
(yellow) when they reach a transition point, for reasons explained in my book: it's not always the
path straight up (or up the spiral). See Changes of Mind for further thoughts on these issues.
Ken:
On the issue of whether a cool green meme is a universal component of the Spiral, Jenny says: "I
definitely agree with you that nobody HAS to go through affiliative (or achievement). Just look
at all the conformists who became hippies and then when that couldn't sustain itself went to law
school or joined the corporations in the 80s. Or the ones who went into corporations instead of
becoming hippies, got tired of the rat race and became do-gooders. And then you've got the ones
who just moved on up to authentic/yellow without detouring through the other. You and I may
not agree on this in its entirety--but it would be a fascinating study for I-I to sponsor!"
Yes, it would be fascinating to sponsor such. Let me just add that both Don and Jenny have their
considered reasons for their carefully thought out positions. And Don is right that this is a
relatively minor matter, given the large amount of agreement between all of us.
What this dialogue reminds me most of is a point I tried to emphasize in Integral Psychology ,
namely, that it is extremely important not to reify any of these stages, waves, memes, levels,
lines, etc. They are just conceptual constructions. They are all snapshots of the Great River of
Life, no more, no less, and are useful only if they serve us, and not vice versa....
All best, Ken