Introduction to the Stages of Consciousness
AUTHOR:Grey Lindley | DATE: 11 Sep, 2008 | CATEGORY:Stages of Consciousness
This is the first in a series of articles I will be posting about the Stages of Consciousness - a fascinating way of looking at the emergence of human culture and consciousness over the last 100,000 years and a means of contemplating present challenges and possible futures of our species.
The stages of consciousness is a perspective based around the understanding that human culture and human consciousness has emerged, and is still emerging in a distinct series of waves or levels of development that can be observed in entire epochs of human history. It is also a way of looking at the development of consciousness in individuals, including yourself! Once understood, it is a powerful perspective that helps interpret and understand cultures and events in human history as well as many issues in current global affairs.
It is a perspective that has been developed through several different academic approaches and subsequently synthesised into extraordinarily useful systems of thought like Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber's integral philosophy. The best known system describing these stages of development is Spiral Dynamics
Spiral Dynamics
Spiral Dynamics (SD), described as "the theory that explains everything", is a truly extraordinary perspective that has the potential to radically augment one's entire outlook on human life, culture and consciousness.
Initially developed by Clare Graves ( a contemporary and friend of Abraham Maslow), the heart of the theory was published in The Futurist, April 1974, in an article titled: "Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap." Two of his students, Don E. Beck and Chris C. Cowan, subsequently published the essence of his research along with their own contributions to the theory in the book, "Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change" (Blackwell, 1996).
"The psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man's existential problems change".
-Clare Graves
The stages of development as described in Spiral Dynamics are adaptive intelligences or value systems that allow individuals to pragmatically navigate their present life conditions. In the same way that natural selection is an adaptive process through genetic evolution to life conditions, the stages of consciousness identified in Spiral Dynamics are looked at as adaptions in human systems of values, morality, cognitive capacities and subsequent culture to the life conditions in culture and the environment.
SD uses the concept of the Meme, developed by Sir Richard Dawkins. A Meme is like a Gene, but in the form of information only. So for example if tell you a joke, and you then tell it to somebody else, this joke could be viewed as surviving as a distinct entity, a Meme, using us as hosts. As the joke travels across cultures it may be translated into different languages and have some lines changed to suit the culture, so over time it mutates, etc. Spiral Dynamics developed the concept of a vMeme or "Value Meme". A vMeme is Meme - a standing system of information and concepts - but existing at a distinctly less transient and much more fundamental level of perception. vMemes are conceptual frameworks, paradigms, worldviews, core intelligences, deep-level decision systems or mindsets from which emerge the surface memes or little memes as defined above.
First Tier vMemes
Subsistence or Survival vMemes
Beige vMeme
SurvivalSense
Automatic state of existence driven by physiological needs, and based upon instinctive intelligences and heightened sensory systems. Staying alive through access to Food Water and Safety is the primary value.
Emerged: 100,000 years ago
Typical Governing Structures:
Survival bands, Clans
Examples in history: Early
humans
Current examples: Kalahari
Bushmen, Street people, Survival emergencies
In individuals: ~0-2 years
of age
Population: ~0.1%
Power: ~0%
Purple vMeme
Kin Spirits
Created through population pressures due to success of previous memetic, populations started to compete for resources and territory, and these new pressures facilitated the development of tribal affiliations and identities.
In the Purple vMeme, the world becomes a magical, mystical place, with new capacities for emotional attachment to places and objects a new capacity in the subject-object relationship allowing new connections to be drawn to events and natural phenomena. Spirituality is characterised by magical beliefs, superstitions and fear/worship of nature spirits. Sense of time is very different - and sense of timeless coexsistence with ancestors spirits who inhabit the world - good and evil. Ancient grudges are remembered for hundreds of years.
Emerged: 70,000 - 35,000 years ago
Typical Governing Structures: Tribal, Clan
Examples in history: Pagan tribes, Druids
Current examples: Australian Aboriginals, Astrology, Cargo Cults (Video) (Purple vMeme meets Orange vMeme)
In individuals: ~2-7 years of age
Population: ~5%
Power: ~1%
Red vMeme
PowerGods
Again combined with the success of the previous cultural wave and in response to the collective enclosure and eventually suffocating unindependant nature of tribal exsistence, a new individuated sense of self emerges - impulsive, heroic, and egocentric. Characterised by displays of power and prestige (e.g. now:Bling, historically:huge overindulgent feasts) Enjoys self to the fullest without guilt or remorse and will go to great lengths to avoid shame or embarrassment. Values power and might and rewards loyalty and ability.
Historically, the Red stage of development seemed to rise in conjunction with new military technologies and/or strategies like bronze age weaponry, horse and chariot warfare. Suddenly old tribal boundaries didn't need to be acknowledged. Powerful individuals could just step out and take control.
New kinds of Gods with individuated personalities (unlike nature gods) and a passion for war. - E.g. the Norse gods - are associated with this memetic.
Emerged: 10,000 years ago
Typical Governing Structures: Cheifdoms, Warlords, Feudal Empires, Ghengis Khan practiced Meritocracy
Examples in history: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, The Vikings
Current examples: Hip-hop and Gangsta rap, African warlords
In individuals: ~8-15 years of age
Population: ~15%
Power: ~5%
Blue vMeme
TruthForce
A collectively oriented stage of values and thinking and the fruit of the axial age. Usually developed in reaction to the violence and havoc created by Red. Blue introduces a sense of absolutistic and transcendant meaning and purpose, introducing concepts of right and wrong, and capacity to feel guilt, which did not exist before this meme. Values order and stability through hierarchy and obedience. Introduces codes of conduct, sense of honour and chivalry. Introduced other capacities such as compassion for others - "Do to others as you would have them do to you"
New capacity for transcendant thought as monotheistic Gods become abstract all encompassing beings separate from the world - as took place in Judaism and Islam and other faiths.
Emerged: ~5000 years ago? I'm
using the SD version of events here, however as I understand it the
very first known version of this stage appeared in the mind of Zoroaster,
an Arayan priest around abouts 1200 B.C.
Typical Governing Structures: Nation
state, bureacracy
Examples in history: Zoroastorism,
Judaism, Roman Empire, Christianity, Confucian china
Current examples: Fundamentalist Christians, Totalitarianism, extreme patriotism and ethnocentrism
In individuals: Adults (Generally high school and onwards)
Population: ~40%
Power: ~30%
Orange vMeme
StriveDrive
Resulting from a desire to get away from the conformity and dictates of blue values. Orange is again individualistic, innovative, entrepreneurial. Concerned with achievement and trying to improve things through ingenuity and the belief that humans can create their own future and a better world by controlling and manipulating it.
Amazing developments like the invention of empirical science, capitalism, the industrial revolution and democracy came from this new stage of values. Orange tends to be materialistic and rationalistic and reductionist.
New found respect for individual freedom, as expressed in the American Constitution.
Emerged: ~450 years ago, though
it could seriously be argued that it first emerged with the Ancient
Greeks and was lost.
Typical Governing Structures: Corporate
state, Multinationals, NGO's, Meritocracy, Democracy
Examples in history: Colonialism, Copernicus,
Galileo, Christopher Columbus
Current examples: Bill Gates and Microsoft, Sir Richard Dawkins
In individuals: Adults (Generally college and onwards)
Population: ~30%
Power: ~50%
Green vMeme
HumanBond
Success in Orange creates a greater pool of wealth and standards of living. New individual freedoms allow a collective concern for community and multiculturalism to emerge. Green worldviews are marked by pluralism - the ability to see that there are multiple ways of seeing reality. Green is also strongly anti-hierarchical - a trait that tends to become quite a destructive factor from the point of view of Spiral Dynamics, (the mean Green meme - more on this in subsequent articles).
This stage of development has a heart and soul for humanity that tends to be missing in Orange, promoting a sense of community and unity. Green has given birth to civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements, as well as environmentalism and a new ecological sensitivity.
Green meme refreshes spirituality, bringing harmony and aims to enrich the human potential. Green spirituality is about unity and is nondenominational.
Emerged: ~150 years ago
Typical Governing Structures: Consensus,
Reconciliation, Democracy, NGO's
Examples in history: Martin Luther King
Current examples: Postmoderism, animal rights, ecofeminism, political correctness, human rights issues
In individuals: Adults (Generally college and onwards)
Population: ~10%
Power: ~15%
Second Tier vMemes
Human "Being" vMemes
A very important thing to understand about the first tier vMemes, is they don't understand each other, and actively reject any other mode of values that is not their own. This has amounted to no less then the greatest Cold War that ever existed - 1st Tier Warfare. Most of us are unaware of it, as these distinctions about waves and stages of consciousness and values have been invisible until only recently. More on this later (Part III).
Towards the end of his research,
Clare Grave identified what seemed to be a new cohort of individuals
who were thinking in entirely new ways. The most marked difference was
a distinct absence of fear which marks all of the 1st Tier
memes. Graves described the leap to 2nd Tier as a "momentous
leap". In this new stage of consciousness, human beings are able to
perceive and cognise in completely new ways. There is an understanding
the essential role that all the different 1st tier memetics
play, whilst grounded in a new set of values for human "being" and
a cosmic context, rather than the animal and social needs of 1st Tier survival.
Yellow vMeme
FlexFow
The Yellow worldview develops the insights of the green worldview, pulling them into a larger context that perceives hierarchies, systems and paradoxes and is based around a concern for magnificence of existence. Values Flexibility and functionality, natural flows and natural orders.
Emerged: ~50 years ago
Typical Governing Structures: Chaordic, hotdesking (hotdesking?... er - Yes, Hotdesking - the cutting edge
of 21st century governance!)
Current examples: Chaos Theory, Complexity
Theory, Integral Philosophy, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela
Population: ~1%
Power: ~5%
Turquiose vMeme
GlobalView
Holistic, intuitive thinking in this stage sees everything as connected in a mesh of ecological relations, social and biological and spiritual. Unites feeling with knowledge with multiple levels woven into on conscious system of values. Self is distinct and also part of a larger whole.
Emerged: ~30 years ago
Typical Governing Structures: Holonic hierarchies in flexible collectives? Formal structures of global governance, distinct from any nation or group of nations?
Current examples: Integral practitioners?
Population: ~0.1%
Power: ~1%
Global uniformity in the Spiral
An extraordinary thing to note about the emergence of these systems is that they can be seen to follow the same path to complexity in many different, culturally and geographically isolated parts of the world. E.g North and American Indians independently moved from Purple to Red, Chinese/Asian culture moved up the spiral from Purple to Red to Blue, quite independently to the West and had it's own axial age whilst the west had it's axial age simultaneously,
This points to an important point: each stage begets the next through need and natural growth in complexity. For example: It is not possible to leap from Purple to Blue without the crucial developments of Red values, Red thinking, indeed Red brain wiring, first. The entire Spiral is like this. These are waves of culture and values, living and dynamic systems of consciousness that have a natural growth pattern as they move through to greater and greater levels of complexity and sophistication. Each stage builds upon the developments of the previous stage to provide the foundations for its' emergence.
Instrinsic value of the stages
Despite there being a very distinct hierarchy of complexity in SD, each stage has a unique validity and importance in it's own context. For example, Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, in "Spiral Dynamics", mention that Kalahari Bushmen, considered by them to be one of the very few remaining examples of ethnic culture still living at Stage 1 (Beige) are reported to have 26 different senses. On the Kalahari, a bushman can look at a couple of bushes and a patch of sand and tell you almost exactly what happened there over the last three days. I'm sure anyone reading this would most definitely not be able to do that. Another example I have heard Don Beck provide is of Muhammed Ali. His famous call, "I am the greatest!" is the quintessential essence of Red vMeme values, and in it's own right beautiful, elegant as it's own complete expression. When he said that, he really was, and we all knew it! All the more fascinating in that, at first glance, it would seem that the Red vMeme level of development is very gross and without redeeming features. This is something I came to understand listening to Dr Don Beck speak about the Spiral. His heartfelt style of speaking conveys his passion for the vMemes and his reverence for the value of each one.
This distinctions of intrinsic value becomes important in 2nd tier as the previous stages become appreciated and re-understood.
Each stage is transcended and included.
That is to say, when a new stage emerges, the previous stage doesn't vanish or become irrelevant. It becomes subsumed by the new higher order of consciousness. The next new level is very much based upon the successes of the previous vMeme, but is also usually a reaction or response carrying new solutions to the new problems faced and/or cultural conditions created by, the previous vMeme. The previous level remains intact and available and will come into play in the appropriate life conditions. For example: If you throw a bunch of Orange/Green vMeme characters on a plane and have it crash deep in some remote snowy mountains some people will, in due course, fall back to the lower vMemes, if not all the way to Beige/Stage1 and start eating old friends and other nice things. Green vMeme values and morality don?t help much when you start starving to death in the middle of nowhere. OK, not a very nice thought experiment, but there are real life examples of this!
Why is it called Spiral Dynamics?
There is a distinct oscillation at each new stage between individual values and collective values. For example, the Purple vMeme is a collectively orientated tribal systems of values, where as the next stage, Red, is a very individualistc egocentric system of values that breaks out of the confines and restrictions of the tribal identities. Subsequently again, the next level up, the Blue vMeme seeks to contain the rampant violence and ego of red in a new collectively orientated absolutist and moralistic stage of values, and so forth. Each new level is more complex than the previous, and very much based upon its? predecessors developments, while oscillating between individual and collective values. As a result, the entire system can be seen to be having a spiralling dynamic.
These systems only exist in individuals
For all intensive purposes in understanding SD, despite there being collectively oriented stages, all of these stages of values exist in the minds of individuals only. Interestingly, the collective stages all seem to exhibit collective or communal phenomena, but the fundamental developments take place in the minds/hearts/brains/bodies of individuals.
Cross over zones
In the original work on Spiral Dynamics, the cross-over areas were held as very significant and visible by distinguishing characteristics. As I understand it, this was a criticism that Chris Cowan has had of Spiral Dynamics Integral, the system that Don Beck and Ken Wilber forged together from SD: that these cross-over areas were not explicitly described, whereas they were considered significant in the original work by Graves?
I suspect that in trying to interpret historical events and cultures, an understanding of the characteristics of these crossover zones is very helpful. E.g. I suspect the Roman Empire started as a Red-Blue crossover then moved through to Blue. Communist China: Blue-Orange? Etc.
So isn't this amazing!? We are so lucky to be able to look from here back over 100,000 years of human culture with this extraordinary perspective. Thank you to Clare Graves, Dr Don Beck and Chris Cowan for this remarkable insight on human culture and consciousness.
I think the most remarkable thing that becomes apparent when you look over the development of the Spiral, is that we are not the same Humans were 3000 years ago, even 400 years ago. As the spiral evolves so does our very capacity for consciousness itself.
I am avidly interested in these viewpoints, but will always be a learner and am very interested to hear any comments. If you are looking for resources yourself, I have posted some below:
References and Recommended resources:
"Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change" (Blackwell, 1996)
A Theory of Everything by Ken Wilber
The Never Ending Upward Quest - An Interiew with Dr Don Beck
What is Enlightnment? Magazine, ISSUE 22 FALL/WINTER 2002
The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future by Don Back and Graham Linscott
Articles by Don Beck on Spiraldynamics.net
http://www.clarewgraves.com/