Boethius

Where are the "previous" traditions today?

I think the desire to single-handedly "save" the world (or to think such a thing is even possible) is more indicative of stage Green ego than of stage Yellow functioning. I mean, it's a cliche that people who take up Social Justice activism with reckless abandon end up burning out -- their stage Green idealism lacks the tempering force of stage Blue discipline, which people tend to recover as they move into the more holistic functioning of stage Yellow.

This is what I would pay attention to, if I were in your shoes. Maybe they are smarter than you, maybe you are smarter than them, maybe you and them just have different views... in any case, it seems worth investigating from a place of non-judgmental detachment as it could produce quite a few insights for yourself!

This feels like a contemporary version of the millennia old question about whether or not God knows what we are going to do before we do it (I'm thinking here, in particular, of his reference to "some guy, some evil genius, in another room typing in my instructions to my completely determined and coerced brain").

What is up with the Boomer generation? I don't ask this as a way of "dumping" on the Boomers. More I have in mind some of the difficulties I feel in relating to Boomers in conversation. I often feel like they talk "over" me and make all sorts of assumptions about me or about where I'm coming from, and that trying to "correct" them on these assumptions generally feels like such a waste of time that I just don't bother. I don't sense this sort of interpersonal dynamic at play when speaking with younger people (especially when speaking with those 25 and under) since it seems like they have a better sense that what is true for them may well not be true for others. Can this sort of thing be explained by Spiral dynamics -- perhaps many Boomers are still centered at Orange whereas a lot of young people have already been forced into the more multicultural Green stage of development? Or maybe this is all just in my head and I'm projecting too many things onto the Boomer generation. If it helps I am a 36 year old Millennial. Thoughts?

A good introductory video for Christian mysticism:

I figured this would be a good thread since we have had recent threads on journeying from Green to Yellow and from Orange to Green. So how was your journey from Blue to Orange, around what age did it occur, and what do you miss from when you were centered at Blue (if anything)? I would say I was centered at Blue up until I was 15 or so, and then by the time I was 18 I was solidly centered in Orange, though this was a super difficult transition for me. I came from a dysfunctional family that has a lot of problems with substance abuse, untreated mental health issues, domestic violence, poverty, etc. So for me really embodying the values of Blue (hardwork, discipline, delaying gratification) was essential for avoiding what felt like the trap that had been set for me from the day I was born. The transition away from Blue was necessary, however, since I knew myself to be gay in the 90's when (most) Christianity was saying that it was a sin. So wanting to be a *good person* while knowing that the larger society would never consider me as such -- on the basis of something that I intuited was basically morally neutral -- required that I delve very deeply into my belief system. And as an INTP that of course meant thinking very critically about religious epistemology. But it was really uncomfortable stepping so far away from mainstream society, though it did help being able to adopt the "counter culture" label that had been floating around the US for some number of decades. In college I ended up adopting a libertarian political belief system, in large part because it enabled me to feel justified in not feeling responsible for helping my parents (who continue to make terrible life decisions even to this day). I do miss the clarity around what it means to be an adult that I felt like I was receiving during my Blue stage, but that clarity certainly came at the expense of individual freedom, and so I'm glad I took the chance in becoming my own person.

What would a "solution" even look like to you? With any type of crime there are guilty people who go free and a (probably a much smaller) number of innocent people who are convicted. It seems to me that the key movement towards reform in today's society concerns the fact that so many men who are in fact guilty of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sexual coercion never face any consequences for their actions. In fact, the entire MeToo movement, for example, provided a plethora of examples of men acting badly. Is it the case that taking a "tougher" prosecutorial stance on these issues is likely to lead to an at least marginally greater likelihood that innocent men are acquitted, either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion? Yes, of course. The same would be true of an effort to be tougher on drug use, on property crime, on white collar crime, etc. But again the issue is of the tradeoffs involved. The calculation society is making, which I personally agree with by the way, is that sexual crimes against women have been so grossly under-reported and under-prosecuted that it is worth the risk that some (again, probably small) number of men are deemed to be guilty when they either aren't as guilty as they have been deemed or are possibly even innocent. Lastly, one huge intention of all of these movements is to shift our cultural understanding of consent. The idea is that many of these sexual violations of women occurred because our pre-existing ideas around consent are toxic, unfair, put the onus on woman, or are simply murky. By raising the standards around consent we can expect fewer violations by men, a greater sense of empowerment among women, and more prosecution of sexual violations.

I had been highly competitive in high school (valedictorian) and undergraduate (3.9 GPA), which helped me get into a good grad school (UChicago). After a couple years there I still felt pretty competitive, even with my friends. But it was silly too since I knew I wasn't the most brilliant grad student or anything (I had experienced the classic journey of being big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond). And I started to feel like I was being a bit of a dick in how I related to the people I called my friends. So I decided to just ease up on "proving" myself. It helped that there were a lot of grad parties where I could go and get drunk on some wine and shoot the shit about things that were not related to my thesis research. So alcohol really helped pave the way for my transition into Green (even if it ended up causing problems later in my life). This paralleled my movement away from libertarianism (I hated how people like Ron Paul wanted to see the '60s civil rights actions repealed) toward more moderate liberalism, an increased interest in social justice and issues of privilege, a desire for the US to be more of a "community" than merely an arena for competitive capitalism, an exploration of the gay male community where I finally felt free to be my whole self, and a tentative openness toward spirituality (the sort of spirituality found in movies like The Tree of Life & The Fountain). It's strange to me to think that a great many people never make the transition from Orange to Green, though I do expect that a significant portion of us from the Millennial/Zoomer generations do in fact make that transition. What I've described is what it looked like for me about 13 years ago when I was in my earlylish 20's.

It wasn't until I was 32 that I started to give a shit about socializing skillfully with other people. Until then I thought socializing (what I referred to as "schmoozing") was mainly about either subtly manipulating people or trying to win any number of different social games. With my exploration of spirituality, however, and the idea of everyone on this planet as a brother or sister, I started to think that I should probably start to learn how to be less awkward around people and more skillful at things like small talk, empathetic listening, sharing emotions, etc. In that time I've done A LOT of work on myself, in reading books about exploring emotions, developing interpersonal relationships, handling conflict productively, practicing mindfulness, being at ease in the present moment, etc. And then in addition to reading/studying these issues I've also just put myself out there in interacting with people from all sorts of different walks of life and in all different sorts of social contexts. I would say that I've made interacting with other people skillfully into a large part of my daily "practice". Thankfully, I'm getting to a point where I feel like I can start easing up on the "seriousness" of this practice and start being a bit more playful and care-free. Which isn't half bad for an INTP math guy! By the way, if anyone wanted a book recommendation on some of the things I've been looking into, I'll include the link below: https://www.amazon.com/Relational-Mindfulness-Deepening-Connections-Ourselves/dp/1614294135/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=relational+mindfulness&qid=1617469994&sr=8-2

I've been slowly reading through this book https://www.amazon.com/Where-Buddhism-Meets-Neuroscience-Conversations/dp/1559394781/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=neuroscience+of+buddhism&qid=1617307505&sr=8-5 that explores these questions among neuroscientific researches and Buddhist leaders (including the Dalai Lama). Suffice it to say that these conversations are very complicated and subtle and that there's probably no final "resolution" in understanding the issues involved.

Any given society is basically forced to level up into the next stage whenever its functioning at a given stage is insufficient to meet the challenges of its environment. So a Purple society faced with the threat of a neighboring Red warlord must put forward its own Red warlords to meet the challenge. But a society packed with warring Red warlords (say the Arabian peninsula during the time of Muhammed) must consolidate its warring factions in order to become a more orderly Blue society (which in the case of Islam then became a very powerful caliphate). One thing we know from history is that the age of empires (i.e. competing societies centered at Blue) lasted for thousands of years. The transition to Orange coincided (roughly speaking) with the stabilization of the various Blue spheres of influence, and the transition to Green and above corresponded with both WW2 and the development of the atomic bomb. Now that the threat of nuclear annhilation is in many ways "hanging over" the head of humanity, we can no longer afford to fuck around with warfare and violent means for settling disputes. So Green, Yellow, and Turquoise as necessary developments in preventing Armageddon. If it were not for all of the technological developments of the 19th and 20th centuries, there's a good chance we'd all still be centered at Blue/orange. So it's not that we humans have all of a sudden gotten much smarter than we had been before, so much as we've been forced to get more serious about handling conflict productively and engaging in complex systems thinking. One last point I would like to make is that every human being carries the entire spiral around with them. That is, each person advances in their own personal life from beige (infant) to purple (baby) to red (toddler) to blue (child) to orange (teen) to green (young adult) to yellow (adult) to turquoise (mature adult or elder). When society was centered at blue there wasn't any pressure or incentive for a person to develop to higher stages (or to activate the energies of the higher stages, depending on how you want to look at it). And in fact lots of people in our current society at "stuck at" lower stages like blue or orange. In any case, there is probably some natural limit around how quickly any given person can develop -- you can't expect a 15 year old to be centered at Turquoise, for example, and if they were it would make for a rather maldeveloped person. So at some point probably this century, absent genetic engineering or the aid of artifical intelligence, we're probably going to have access to the full spiral of human development. In fact, a country like the Netherlands might already be there. So really the exponential growth of the Spiral can be thought of as producing fully developed human beings, and it's going to be super interesting seeing what sorts of challenges the species faces once our people have reached the practical limits of human development.

OK. I will experiment with the sort of advice you've provided. Thankfully I don't feel like I'm living my life (personally) in a way that's subordinate to the assumptions that so many Boomers tend to posses. More it's been something that arises when I am in a mixed-generation group of people -- the Boomers always have the loudest voices in the room and hence seem to be the ones who set the course for the group at large. Anyways, thank you for your insights!

Man, I hate doing this. I can't help feeling like a child talking back at his parents when doing this, lol. I find it's easier to just "accept" whatever assumptions the person in question is making about the situation and then respond to those. But of course that means I'm almost accepting the role of being a child, instead of acting like the adult that I am.

WestWorld definitely had more complicated themes than Green's motto of "let's have respect and empathy for everyone". I'm thinking, in particular. of its explorations of loopiness and how loopiness when combined with encounters with the self can lead to the emergence of higher levels of understanding and order. The scene (included below) where Maeve upgrades herself pretty well captures the general idea. This show was hugely influential in my own spiritual journey as I was watching it during a vacation abroad where I was experimenting with mindfulness very intensely, having what were for me out of the "ordinary" experiences of the present moment (no surprise given how ridiculously in my own head I had been up to that point), and culminating with a committment to mindfulness as a way of life. So it felt like a profound synchronicity between the show and what I was experiencing, and for that reason WestWorld will always hold a place in my ❤️

I started following him because of his videos on Spiral Dynamics (which is not something he invented, of course). I came to the forums to engage in discussions around SD. I've found wisdom in some of his videos about interpersonal communication and dynamics, but I haven't gone down the rabbit hole regarding his views on the "higher level" topics like consciousness or reality. Not sure I'm greatly interested in doing as much, in all honesty.

@Blackhawk You might enjoy reading the 19th century classic Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, as he develops a similar idea (maximizing human happiness) in a great amount of detail and nuance.

Oh ok, I see what you mean. So what we're talking about then is trust, no?

Isn't this at its heart an argument for following a more traditional path? Like joining a Buddhist lineage or a Christian church, for example. I mean, if you're looking for wisdom from a living teacher you need to accept that not everything he/she does, says, or teaches is going to be perfect.

It says in Deuteronomy that homosexuals should be stoned death. It also says women who falsely presented as virgins before getting married should be stoned to death. Christians who are not biblical literalists or fundamentalists would say that none of that talk about stoning applies today, it's all a part of God's covenant with ancient Israel. Of course, the larger issues around Christianity and homosexuality are ridiculously complicated and contentious, with entire denominations being ripped apart over these very issues. Hence the controversy over a music video like Montero.

As a gay man, I find it very hot! Especially when he's grinding his bootie against the devil's crotch at 2:30. That is a depiction of gay male sexuality we almost never see in mainstream society, and it's sure to scandalize straight people, so I love it!!! That being said, as a Christian, I believe allowing oneself to be seduced by the devil, or attempting to seduce the devil, is unutterably foolish and injurious to one's soul. So hopefully no one takes this video too seriously.

Why do you care? Not that I'm granting the legitimacy of what you're saying, but even if what you're saying were true, why would you care? What is it to you? You said before " his contents will make you confuse about reality and waste your time". Well, OK. I'm sorry you feel you have wasted your time following his material. Truly. Now why don't you go somewhere where you find more knowledge, wisdom, insight, compassion, etc? A lot of us find wisdom on this forum, which is why we are here, but of course to each his own...

Leo says things you disagree with and no one in this forum (Leo included) feels accountable to you, personally, in explaining the reasonableness of his ideas. And so you conclude that he is a cult leader and everyone here is a part of his cult. Is that about right?

Fair enough. I guess I was talking "past you" on this topic. You said you're trying to be a good person, so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Based on what you've written, it seems that when you're talking about race/racism with a Black person your idea of appropriate conversation is to prove to them that you're not racist. That you're *trying* to not judge them based on the color of their skin. I wonder why you think they do, or should, give a shit about your attempts to be not racist? Let's try this thought experiment: if I told a woman that I try my best to not call women b*****s, but that otherwise I don't really care about "women's issues" (equal pay, sexual harassment, access to affordable abortions) how would you, as a woman, feel about that? Would it lead you to think that I was a "good man"? If you want to talk with POC about what you two are watching on Netflix, then the colorblind approach is perfectly workable. But if you want to talk with POC about issues of race/racism, then they probably don't want to hear about your attempts to be not racist. To make a big stink of your struggle with not being racist is IN ITSELF the height of white fragility, which of course is the focus of this entire thread in the first place.

It's funny how I read both books on INTPs (my type) by Dr. A.J. Drenth without seriously questioning the value of MBTI in the very first place. I guess it just felt inline with my experience of myself and of my interactions with other people. Maybe the lay reader interacts with these models in a similar kind of way, taking what they want and need and forgetting the rest? I'd also point out that in the article https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201402/the-truth-about-myers-briggs-types?amp it is written at the end that "Perhaps the best use for the MBTI is for self-reflection. If used as a starting point for discussing how people vary in their personalities, and emphasizing tolerance for individual differences and taking others’ perspectives, then it can be a useful tool. However, it is important that the test administrator caution against over-interpretation of the results, and discuss the limitations of the instrument." So there's a lot of nuance in this conversation around MBTI (probably more than is required for this particular thread, in all honesty). Anyways, thanks for responding.