Tag Archives: levels of development

The Coronapandemie – A disastrous collaboration of the memes

A consideration based on the levels of personal and collective development 

The colors beige, purple, red, blue. orange, green and more represent distinct levels of development of individuals and societies, following “Spiral Dynamics”, a theory elaborated by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan on the initial findings of Clare Graves.

How the levels express in the present crisis

What have the levels of development to do with the present Corona situation? I don’t want to waste too much time in explaining theoretically the characteristics of each of these levels, referred to by the above colours. I hope you will unterstand it while I am discussing the topic.It appeared to me lately that the levels explain a lot of what is going on right now.

What are the characteristic players in the game? 

There are people who use a lot of energy and power to fight for what they believe to be true. Depending on the objects, the intentions, the goals and the ethical majurity of the respective players, this trait can be very helpful or disastrous.

Other people feel alive and safe only in a setting which is highly reliable. They need law and order, rules and guidelines which are not to be questioned. The 10 commandments of the bible are an attempt to provide such a orientation framework. The individual is free from taking personal responsibility, because the rules are authority and to be followed, even when the resulting actions are harmful, unethical whatever. Today these are the rules of the government and the bible is represented by the mainstream media.

Galilei refused to believe in the doctrines of the church and opened up the world to scientific inquiry. Going out into the world with curiosity, question, what you find and look for even better solutions and explanations, never allow beliefs stop you from searching after truth! This gave rise to the materialistic science which observes measurable things, interprets the findings and discusses it with other findings in order to get to best possible answers.

This truth was looked for in the objective world. Our human inside world was not only neglected, but dismissed as irrelevant. We intuitively know that this is not true and new ways of looking at the world arose which not only included our feelings and personal experiences, but put them on the throne of the only way of knowing the truth. 

As we know by the work of Ken Wilber: every step into the next level leads us into denying the previous level as an error, but when settled in the new mindset, a successful development would embrace the valid findings and views of the previous levels. When this doesn’t happen, the development is unhealthy and leads to all sorts of complications and absurdities. I will talk about this below as it is a characteristic of our present moment.

How the levels operate in the corona crisis

In the following I won’t talk about where the virus comes from, if it is real or if there is some special agenda behind all that. I am only interested in the question, which sort of mindset leads to which behaviour, where mindsets enhance or hinder each other and how a solution could be found by understanding the limits of each mindset and how the disaster comes about when one or the other is believed to be the absolute truth.

What happened

In January 2020 we heard about a strange illness in China. China is far away and we would not have imagined that it could be relevant to us – except some scientists who immediately got curious and started their respective activities around the “new Coronavirus”

In March we were told that the most dangerous virus has entered Europe, especially Italy, where I live. People started to become fearful and they looked for information. In the last decades we had developed a sensitivity towards our health, we had promoted healthy food, exercise, vitamins and more to keep us healthy. We wanted to face the new illness by understanding it and knowing what we could do.

We relied on newspapers and official television channels to give us good information. Soon some of us got aware that our concerns were not satisfied by seemingly good explanations but ever increasing fear was induced throughout the population. Psychologically effective photos were published which heated up the fear because the real context was not given. They were used for propaganda – but what for and for whom? Only a few of us understood that right away, I didn’t at that time. 

We hoped for science to give us good insights, explanations and suggestions on how to deal with the situation. Very many scientists in the world started their relentless research. Soon we could see that only a handful of scientists were heard and their message spread in public media. Other specialists with long experience in the relevant fields were not heard or considered at all, they were not invited by our governments to collaborate in finding the best answers. They didn’t get a platform in our official media and soon they were ridiculed and cancelled in social media and elsewhere, one after the other.

Unhealthy memes – when development is incomplete

But how? Isn’t science a way of finding solutions by discussing the findings and improving them on the way? Science once was understood as a practice where you propose a theory and then try to falsify it. As long as you couldn’t do that, the finding was assumed as “true” – until a better argument came forth and was agreed upon. But now a different concept of “science” had gained precedence. It was alive before, but with the Corona situation, it showed its full distortion of understanding. This is a consequence of the “green meme”, prevalent now in western societies, which emphasis the relativity of “truth”. In short: “What I see as truth, is true, nobody has a better truth than mine”. Now you can call yourself a scientist if you went out to collect arguments for something which you have planned to prove. You are not inquiring to find out, you already “know” and fish for good rationalisations to convince others that you are right.

This is exactly the opposite of what real science is. It is open ended und curious what will come out when you apply the method. Now somebody – even our governments – asked scientists to find good enough arguments to “prove” that a lockdown is needed, for instance. (As was revealed in Germany) The official “scientists” avoid discussions with serious scientists who have come to different conclusions.  Why is this happening? Despite continuous invitations of alternative media to the “leading scientists” who direct the government decisions, they never show up to discuss their position. And in mainstream media hardly ever anybody is invited who has come to different results than the ruling opinion.

The developmental memes in play

Now coming back to the colors of “Spiral Dynamics”. The scientific method and good investigative journalism are expressions of the “orange meme”, of the modern mindset which is driven by curiosity. Post-modernism (green) has introduced the dogma that subjectivity is of more value than objectivity, and that there is an innumerable way of seeing and interpreting things, and therefore none is more important than any other. “Truth doesn’t exist” is the conclusion, and therefore what I personally think is as important than the interpretation of any other person. Scientist or not, expert or not. There is no difference. There is no hierarchy in the appropriateness and usefulness of ideas and strategies. Therefore I can do whatever I want, it is right, anyway. And to make it seem acceptable to those who still believe in science, I can find somebody who claims to be a scientist and ask him to support my truth.

We live in a disastrous clash between the orange and the green meme, or better between the healthy orange meme and the unhealthy green meme, the “mean green meme”, n expression coined by Ken Wilber in his book “Boomeritis”.

It is impressive how much power the “mean green meme” has gained in our societies despite the fact that not all of them have fully embraced it. But Germany has, as well as other western countries, especially the US and Canada, but also Australia and others. Its terminologies and practices have invaded most countries of the world to a certain degree, despite the fact that they, as societies, are not yet there. If the do it by free will or by pressure through the dominant countries is another question. Italy for instance, is still struggling with reaching the “blue” level (except the northern parts of the country where “orange” is dominant). The Corona measurements enhance this step into the blue level This explains why Italy is a willing player in this unholy game.

How can the nightmare end?

The “blue meme” is the mindset where following rules and obedience is most important. People rely on what they are told and are faithfully doing what they are told, even if it is to their disadvantage. When there is trust in the government, all people are likely to follow the rules and there is no reinforcement needed, as we have seen in Sweden during the past year. In Germany, where the population is in huge parts embracing the “orange” and “green” mindset, trust is only possible when reasonable, reliable explanations without contradictions are provided.

If there is transparency, and when it includes scientific findings of a whole variety of researchers, Every incongruence and censoring is a sign for them that something is going wrong, that they are subject to manipulation and they stand up to express there reasonable concerns. With every contradiction they detect in the official statements, their feeling to be deceived grows and the inner need arises to search for truth and fight for it. Then the state uses reinforcement of its rules by demanding absolute obedience and threatens with punishment. This works well in totalitarian states and generally in societies who have not yet developed beyond “blue”. It doesn’t work in more developed societies – and that is the only hope we have to end the present nightmare!

Again: the levels are the key

A society which has its center of gravity in “blue”, in the conformist stage of development, people have no major problems with following the given rules. That is their modality and the find relief in the fact that they don’t have to think for themselves and that others lead them the way. 

Societies on the modern (orange) level of development cannot just follow rules which in their own thinking don’t make sense. Individuals on this level need evidence and very good reasons before they adopt ideas and behaviours and they need permanent research for better reasons and solutions. They cannot accept rules which have no proven foundation in reality, and the more courageous and moral ones have the need to stand up against falsity and manipulation.

People in the green level of development have the sincere intention to care for others. When they are told that their grandma could die because of them not wearing a mask, they enter into emotional arousal, into a sense of guilt and shame, and therefore follow the first best idea they are offered in the sincere hope to be a useful member of society. They are not aware that the scientists they rely on are not working within the rigorous codex of how science needs to be done. They don’t notice the difference between modern and postmodern science, between the research for reliable facts as opposed to finding confirmation for ideas. So they proclaim “follow science”, but actually they ask us to believe those who manipulate or invent results in order to satisfy other agendas.

When people develop through the levels, they have incorporated the mindsets and principles of the previous ones, if they are aware or not. Now it depends on the way they have included their previous stages in order to express their latest stage in a healthy way. 

As I said before, scientists of the modern stage won’t easily follow the rules, given by the previous stage, unless they can fully understand their reason and usefulness. In the postmodern stage, people think that they are “better”, because they have compassion with people who suffer etc. And they have their own ideas about how the suffering in the world would be diminished without looking at reality, without even asking the actual people whom they pretend to care for what they want and need.  They arrogantly believe to know it better.

Those in the green stage who have not integrated well the “red” stage of development, which explores personal power, are very likely to refer to this unhealthily integrated mindset. “What I feel and think is right”, is the basic position. And if you don’t agree with me, then you are wrong, dangerous, my enemy (the “red” level is that of the warrior which is based on the distinction “right-wrong”).

Understanding better the present situation

From what I said about the stages, we can now look at the present situation in the western world and more easily understand why things are happening as they are. We see a clash of mainly three memes, the traditional, the modern and postmodern, with the insertion of “red” (the egocentric stage) in a decisive number of individuals in all of them.

Governments, or better the people who constitute governments love to use the power which hey have to pursue their tasks. This is ok as long as they use it for the benefit of their people, but when used to manifest their ideas and fantasies, it becomes a huge problem. The “red” drive in the single powerful individual is self serving, it uses the people for their own purposes. They might get suggestions, incentives or even pressure by other more powerful entities who want them to rule in a certain way ( the uncontrolled red drive of super rich individuals in the world). In order to satisfy the demands they are likely to promote rules which they believe to be useful for their goals. Here the conflict arises between climbing up the ladder and accepting immoral ways to do that on one side and on the other side wishing to serve the people of their country. Depending on their personal level of development they will chose to align with the evil or stand up against it which entails huge risks for their personal lives. We have not many heroes of this sort in the world, but fortunately there are some who feel the need for personal integrity and do what is needed to be done by taking the risks. “The heroes are the ones with the arcs in their backs”

The blue and orange stage

In a country like Germany there is a huge number of people located in the “blue” mindset, therefore they have no problems with following the rules and might not even question them. “Wanting to know” is not yet a constituent of their structure. 

But there are also many people in a modern mindset (orange) who need to understand, who want to know the truth. People in “blue” cannot understand their eagerness in questioning and trying to find out, in protesting against missing evidence because they sense of what is going on under the surface. Traditionally oriented people (in “blue”) put the truly “orange” – minded people in the corner of “dissidents”. “conspiracy theorists” and even more heavy offences. This is understandable from their point of view, but absolutely unfair towards those who happen to have different, but equally valuable  basic values.

The green stage

Many people in a genuine and healthy “green” mindset (Not to be confounded with any “green party or movement!!) are the driving forces in the protests. They intuit the danger of a totalitarian state, they want the best life for everyone, their values are love, understanding, good relationships and cooperation. They are deeply concerned about the direction our societies are going, driven by the unhealthy orange and blue mindsets. They are engaged in personal and spiritual development and they have “better” values than all other stages before. 

The green meme in its healthy form is the most advanced mindset in the world where quite a number of people are already in. There are two problems here: In their unhealthy form, green-driven people become fundamentalists and even use power over others to force them into their own ideas. This is definitely a regression into previous stages and very dangerous, as they are already more sophisticated than those who are genuinely expressing those stages.

Why all these levels cannot resolve the problem

But even the healthy expression of green cannot really resolve the problems for which they are a decisive motor. They, as any previous stage, are caught in the conviction to “know it all”, to be better than the others and that they consequently have to oppose and fight the others. With this attitude they contradict their own belief system and cannot succeed, unless…

Unless they do the jump into the next stage of development, where they would be able to see the bigger picture and to discriminate. They could recognise the value and usefulness of certain ideas and practices of other memes and use them in a constructive way. No fighting against others, but collecting every important perspective and trying to find the best practices possible in the given moment, always ready to adjust when better insights arise. With the basis of respect, care and in a loving attitude with no exclusion a better world can be enhanced.

The solution comes with a shift in consciousness

Yes, we still have to stand up against the excesses of power and indoctrination of previous memes, but mainly we have to work on the shift of individuals into more advanced levels of their personal development, into the opening of their mindsets into more complex and reality based understanding of the world, into giving up fundamentalism, power games, impotence and victimhood, and arrogance and hubris. We need to come to the very basic understanding of the interconnection of everyone and everything. 

I have faith that this will happen, some day. Until then there might be much upheaval and suffering in the world. I do hope that the birth process will be as smooth as possible, the pain tolerable and the joy over-boarding when we are born into the beauty and the miracle of life, of our planet and of existence itself.

 

 

Why Racism Doesn’t Exist

The Postmodern predicament

Racism, Political Correctness, Freedom of Speech (or it’s negation) and even “anti-bias training” are the key-words of post modern society. But they are grounded in error which I will explain using the topic RACSIM. Racism, as we see it today, has two origins. One is the biologically innate fear of “The Other”, the second is a confusion of certain attributes of people, like skin color, with their value systems which is shaping their behavior.

In the following I want to give you a short introduction about why it is not racism when people fight against all sorts of “others”, like immigrants or blacks or whites or whomever. Then I will share two videos. One explains the human drive to violence and the other the value systems of humans and how they develop.

 

The innate fear of the OTHER

4 figures, tribal context
living in a tribe

From the beginning of time humans’ main concern in life, besides looking for food, was the desire for safety. Most creatures are less safe alone than when they form groups for mutual protection. Humans built tribes as the first form of living together more than 10000 years ago. In the Tribal Stage humans felt safe inside the group and they radically fought everyone who appeared at their “doorstep” who definitely was “the Other”, which was the same as “the Enemy”, an entity which needed to be killed. Tribes provided safety for the members but they prevented individuality. Everybody was confined to the habits and requirements of their specific tribe.

Hero kills the dragon
The Hero kills the dragon

Later on, new ideas emerged: the hero appeared who leaves home to become a successful individual – or to fail and perish. This is the Egocentric Stage where the own individuality emerges and is expressed in the world, often in quite violent ways.

Then the necessity arose to contain the egocentric manifestation of men who oppressed their people with tyranny. They fought bloody wars in the pursuit of their personal power with those who were guided by some other tyrant – which was the Enemy. When this way of being in the world became intolerable, rules of living together were established in specific groups of individuals, and then the members of those groups cared for each other by following the rules and recognising a higher purpose in human life which was not anymore confined to survival or power. This was the conformist stage. Safety was found, again, in the group which then was an ethnic community or even a nation. Enemies are all those who don’t belong to the specific ethnicity or nation.

Many countries in the world are still arrested in the first 4 stages of development, while many western societies have climbed up two more steps.

Please watch the video below which explains “Spiral Dynamics Integral”, the research on the evolution of societies and the development of individuals which is connected to the evolution of values and worldviews.

Introduction to SDi 1

 

What we call RACISM today has nothing to do with RACE

From the very short outline which I gave you above you can see that in different stages of human development safety is found in different ways and the definition of “the ENEMY” varies accordingly. While in early times the enemy belonged to another tribe, in the egocentric stage the enemy is EVERYBODY WHO THREATENS MY POWER. In the conformist stage the enemy is EVERYBODY WHO DOESN’T BELONG TO MY NATION or ethnic group.

The present USA was formed by many immigrants from Europe starting from the 1500’s. During the centuries they amalgamated to a rather homogeneous population. Their differences in culture and development were small from the beginning; they could reach a common understanding quite easily and grew together to the next stages. The egocentric behaviours of the first times were tamed and a sufficiently united nation arose.

Tribalism meets conformists

Then the slaves came to America. Yes, they were black, but first of all they came from a purely tribal background into a country which already had grown out of tribalism for some time. The differences in behavior and worldview were clearly visible – and they were also the reason why the “white Americans” were able to exploit the black slaves in the way they did. Belonging is the main need for tribal people, not fighting against power. So they accepted their role as slaves belonging to some master, naturally.

Slowly the consciousness arose that dominating others is not morally right and the slaves were freed – not always to their immediate advantage as they were not used to stand up for themselves as mature individuals, due to their tribal identity. As a response to the changed life conditions black people in America grew into the egocentric stage, also called the “warrior stage” and in time single individuals had the chance to grow into higher levels of development when they met the right conditions in their life, as for instance individual help in education or living in a surrounding which encourages growth and development.

Racism in USA – a clash of value systems

Racism against blacks or Mexicans actually has not much to do with the skin color of people or even of the geographical provenance. As outlined above, many blacks in America belong to the warrior stage or below – and so do Mexicans, Africans or other third world populations. Missing differentiation creates the appearance that the problem is “the Blacks” or “the Mexicans”, but it is their OTHERNESS which creates the refusal to recognize them as peers. They are not peers because they live within another worldview, within a different value system which the Americans refuse to recognize as still valid. They in their majority have gone through that period already. They are also rather dismissive of the subgroup of their own population which is still caught in the egocentric stage – which finds expression often in criminal activity. So criminality is easily equated to Blacks or any other ethnic or social group from “outside”.

You don’t need to have different skin color or to be born in a different nation: A new form of racism against home born Americans is coming through these days by the stigmatisation of “white males” as the oppressors of minorities like “black women” or LGBT’s. It is brought forth by postmodern activists who – instead of embracing the positive values of post-modernism – fall back into previous developmental stages and fight for their own power on the backs of those who they pretend to fight for. They ignore the rules of society and intend to destroy the structures which they believe to be oppressive and totally arbitrary and without intrinsic meaning. And doing so they throw the baby out with the bathwater and celebrate their fall back into previous stages of development with the credo of a stage, the post-modern “green” stage (in terms of “Spiral Dynamics”), on their lips which actually would be the most advanced stage in our western societies if it had been reached in a healthy way.

Violence – a biological ingrained trait in humans

If humanity had indulged in violence as expressed in the egocentric stage of development we probably wouldn’t be here today to talk about the situation in the world. We would have annihilated our species with much probability if we hadn’t found a way to tame the destructive emotions of the individuals. Religious beliefs emerged and with them a guidance of how to live our lives properly. Rules were established on how to treat each other and those who didn’t obey the rules were marginalised, imprisoned or killed – mainly the same mechanisms which we still find today.

The emergence of this stage in our development, the conformist stage, made it possible for humanity to stay alive and avoid self-extinction.

 

Are we able to handle our challenges today?

Today we are again at a similar moment where self extinction is a possibility, due to the same egocentric drive among individuals in “leadership” positions. But actually it is more complicated than that as we have to deal with two more levels of development in action, modernism and post-modernism which both add their pathologies to the mix and make it even more explosive and dangerous than medieval killings with sticks, knives and swords.

Listen to the explanations of Dr. Jordan Peterson about the history of violence and you will get some important insights why the new-age ideas of mere positive thinking as a remedy for everything is just not enough – and even dangerous when we adopt those thoughts as our idea of existence. We are naive when we ignore the deeper reality – and we are easy prey to malevolence and evil.

A History of Violence:  an interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson

 

Conclusion

Conflicts arise all the time when humans live together. Whether people can handle conflicts and even transform them into growth and development depends on their personal growth, their level of resilience and, at least partly, on their level of development. Lower levels, especially the warrior stage, encourage confrontation and destruction, while higher levels, the “green” stage, encourages love and compassion in the case of interpersonal problems. Unfortunately, even the green level has not yet all the means to really step out of the treadmill and see the bigger picture where all conflict is seen as an expression and clash of worldviews whose members believe they possess the one and only truth and all the others are wrong. Such a position cannot lead to understanding and peace by its very assumptions: “only WE are right”.

Humanity must grow as a whole and leave behind the first 6 stages of development before they really will be able to create peace on earth.

At least a certain percentage needs to be there and those individuals need to learn a language with which they can reach those on lower levels of development and gently – or not so gently, depending on whom they are dealing with – bring them to a new and better understanding about what really matters in life.

Is Western Society Heading Back to The Middle Ages?

Heretics burning at the stake
Heretics burning at the stake

We made it about 400 years ago: the separation of church and state. It took many centuries of fight and suffering, thousands of “heretics” burnt at the stake, loosing their lives for our benefit: For us to be able to say whatever we want without ending up imprisoned, tortured, stoned or burnt. Are we now heading back to the Middle Ages?

Funny enough – or better: tragic enough, it is the leading edge of modern societies who is pushing us back into that state where we lose our freedom of speech, where we have to bite our tongue if we don’t want to be denounced and tried for what we say: If not as in the Middle Ages, but certainly as in the “east-block” countries. I grew up in Germany, fortunately in the West, but I had relatives in the East and I know how they were continuously threatened and had to be very careful or pay dearly if they said something about a certain group or the practices of the state.

The Levels of Development – evolution in healthy and unhealthy forms

The Levels of Development (Ken Wilber)
The Levels of Development (Ken Wilber)

The unhealthy form of the”green” level  is  expressed in an aggressive  fundamentalism (see the levels of development in “Spiral Dynamics” or as outlaid by Ken Wilber). It is nothing better than any other fundamentalism, only the target changes. Western Societies have recently been governed mostly by people with a “green”- postmodern – mindset. In their attempt to protect minorities and to see everybody as (literally) equal, they see the necessity to create laws to protect THE FEELINGS of certain members of certain minorities. 

Who is Responsible for Your Feelings?

Face in hands - expressing sadness or any negative feeling
Negative Feelings

Modern psychology has clearly stated that we are responsible for our own feelings, we alone, nobody else. Yes, we can be triggered by what other people do or say, but how we react to the trigger, that is exclusively our own choice. With the new laws in Canada this gets completely turned around. People’s feelings are considered subject to criminal deeds done by others. This is the perfect form of victimism which is appropriate for little children, but not for adult citizens in the world. It reminds me of my mother’s saying with which she tried to teach me responsibility for my actions: “It’s too bad for my mother that I froze my fingers; why didn’t she give me gloves?”

So, whose feelings would be eligible to be protected by law?- and whose not? Apart from the fact that it is absolutely beside the point for the above reasons, it is a bottomless barrel. We will end up staying silent, all the time, for fear of being accused and “burnt at the stake”. Hello Middle Ages!

White ghostly figures walking over meadow
Do we want such an atmosphere?

We will end up in a totalitarian state – from which most of the present refugees are trying to escape by flooding into the Western world. Will we give up our achievements in our societies and allow practices of previous levels to govern us again? Do you want to live in constant fear and repression because someone believes that you have violated THEIR rules?

Man with bended mouth
Freedom of Speech?

Do you want THEIR rules to take over our countries? Think about it and get clear about the consequences for yourself, your family, your country and the world. And if you decide that your freedom of speech is more important and also the freedom in your personal life altogether, then stand up and fight for the principles of our constitutions and watch out for all the hidden or open attempts to re-establish values which we had overcome with so much sacrifice during the past centuries.

Is This a Picture of Mohamed? – what can you say and what not?

Here you can experience what we are heading toward – if we don’t pay attention: Jordan Peterson brings it to the point in this short video. Feel into it and observe yourself: would you like to live with the fear of saying the “wrong” words?

Let me know what you think about it . now, after you have watched the video!