I'm almost finished reading Ken Wilber's "Theory of Everything", and for the last few chapters this has been on my mind. Wilber speaks of green's desire to destroy blue at any cost, which, without knowing, is self-sabotaging (as it cuts those in that level and below off from reaching Green); but in teaching tier one thinkers the model of spiral dynamics, are we not doing something similar? If integral thinking is introduced prematurely, I wonder if this would interrupt the natural progression through first tier stages where pluralist, rational etc worldviews are supposed to be present in a pre-integral framework. If we are supposed to progress through each stage naturally and absorb the entirety of its content, is yellow any different? If, for example, (somehow) a racist stage blue person suddenly understood and embraced spiral dynamics completely, he would no longer have any reason to be prejudiced to different races or cultures. Is this even possible before green? Whatever the answer, this person will have begun thinking in stage yellow without having even set foot in either orange or green. This is undoubtedly unhealthy for the spiral. While resources on various models of cognitive development and internal theory are freely available online, these are mostly relegated to upper class academia and those of us deeply interested in self-actualization. Still though, I'm sure many of us have had an influence on some friends and family with our talks of spiral dynamics. What are your thoughts on this? Thank you for reading.
