What are the odds that you, an average dude, is Tier 2? Not very high.

[Carl-Richard]

I might have slightly overstated my case here in the original post. It's not that being Tier 2 or any stage is only about what your life is or what it looks like from the outside. It's that once you learn about Spiral Dynamics and Tier 2, it becomes truly impossible to tell what your stage is, because humans are the mimicking animal. We ape after what we find fascinating and valueable (and the highest SD stage we can conceive of). And we are so extremely good at it that we even fool ourselves. And that is why we need other methods to reliably determine what our development is.

Only after a very long time of deeply involved mimicking, you might actually become the thing you are mimicking. But then again, if we take the "official" words of the authors of these models (which you can doubt, but then there are also many more things you should doubt), even this might take decades. Or to be honest, this has as far as I know not been studied at all (i.e. the effect of taking in knowledge and values from higher SD stages). But if this forum is any proof, I don't think it makes very much of a difference 😂 (I'm of course partially joking with you guys 😉😋).

So my point in a nutshell is that once you have learned about SD, any claims about your own SD development become so unreliable as to be essentially invalid. If you want to get anything resembling a reliable estimate (and even then it's shady at best, giving that humans are also the bullshitting animal), survey yourself from before you learned about the model.

Edited April 17 by Carl-Richard

[blackchair]

On 4/13/2025 at 5:25 PM, Elliott said:

Bro, he already fits YOUR tier 2 criteria. He makes movies to positively influence society, he's been green for 20 years.

He's dating children for that past 20 years, you can't be tier 2 and be with someone who's only starting his/her self development journey, I'm turquoise/coral and single for 9years, for a reason..... there's chart of compability of colors in relationships, yellow is opposite and equal, turquoise is interbeing.....and yes I look/dress like homeless guy....

[blackchair]

[blackchair]

And English is my second language so I can't be efficient in intellectual and deep conversation needed of Yellow (p.s learn Croatian lol) , but I made a little "test" for turquoise, can you unconditionally love pedofile and be best friends with them whole life?. 99% people can't. Now will children on this forum jump for me, but I honestly don't care.....

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, blackchair said:

He's dating children for that past 20 years, you can't be tier 2 and be with someone who's only starting his/her self development journey, I'm turquoise/coral and single for 9years, for a reason..... there's chart of compability of colors in relationships, yellow is opposite and equal, turquoise is interbeing.....and yes I look/dress like homeless guy....

Describe Coral and how it differs from Turquoise.

[Ramanujan]

@Carl-Richard are you in yellow

[Carl-Richard]

On 18.4.2025 at 11:32 AM, Ramanujan said:

@Carl-Richard are you in yellow

I think I'm good at pretending that I am. But I care much less about pretending now than before.

Edited April 19 by Carl-Richard

[blackchair]

On 4/17/2025 at 10:26 PM, Carl-Richard said:

Describe Coral and how it differs from Turquoise.

Znači, Beck je došao do koralne "master chaos" pogledaj sliku/piramidu na internetu, rušim vlade diljem svijeta, u mom susjedstvu prvo, Srbija pada, i pala je Sirija. S druge strane je Ken Wilber opisao koralnu 1999.g u svojoj knjizi One Taste, i na YT prošle godine je izašao isječak iz te knjige, proguglaj,  i doslovce je svaka riječ, emocija, stih, stanje savršeno opisala moje stanje uma, tijela, duše, i voditeljica se rasplakala poslje tog citata.....eto ga....

P.s Google translate will fuck you up.....

[SwiftQuill]

I'm willing to grant actualized.org viewers are likely higher on the SD scale than average. That being said, I'd say 95% of people here are stage green.

 

I have zero issue considering myself stage yellow, regardless of the bald man having called me stage orange multiple times. "Stage orange" is this forum's favorite enemy, equivalent to how feminists call men "misogynists" or how right wingers call others "communists". It has become a thought terminating cliché.

Edited yesterday at 03:44 PM by SwiftQuill

[Lyubov]

9 minutes ago, SwiftQuill said:

I'm willing to grant actualized.org viewers are likely higher on the SD scale than average. That being said, I'd say 95% of people here are stage green.

 

I have zero issue considering myself stage yellow, regardless of the bald man having called me stage orange multiple times. "Stage orange" is this forum's favorite enemy, equivalent to how feminists call men "misogynists" or how right wingers call others "communists". It has become a thought terminating cliché.

Stage Orange is neglected here and even by me. I’m starting to make my life more coherent, cutting out naiveness. You go to the life purpose section and few people here have really built anything for themselves, most are in college or not really doing anything profound with their lives except meditating. The most financially successful person here is Leo. This is not an ideal community to learn about how to actually live life, but I can see people are working a lot on their relationships here. I think you get a very specific type of demographic here, young men who are decently educated aged but not hustlers, who have work to do on socializing, I was part of this demographic.  People are just discussing or pointing out the marvel of consciousness or their extreme shifts in state/perception brought on by psychedelics, the community itself isn’t so mature and hasn’t realized there’s more to life and spirituality than peak experience / exploring god conscious states. Not hating, just noticing the blind spots here. People here are trying their best, just wonder how they are supporting themselves financially. 

[SwiftQuill]

@Lyubov you make a great point summarizing the sample of this community.

But the way I see it, you don't have to be fully financially successful to be outside orange. I think it's mostly mindset.

I can look back at a few years in the past (ages 18-22) when I feel I fit the definition of stage green perfectly. In fact, when I first watched Leo's video on stage green, I cried. I teared up during the part of the video where he lists the stage green values.

But the past 5 years I went through a lot. I became somewhat financially successful. I also found my life purpose. I gained a lot, and I also suffered more than most people my age. I also became a lot more open minded. I used to demonize centrists and right wingers but now I can steel man them. And I discovered a serious, really dangerous side in various stage green perspectives. Stage green has a self righteousness problem. And it lacks open mindedness.

I would not say I embody yellow 100%. Perhaps I'm 50/50 green/yellow. The biggest reason I consider myself yellow now is not because I've acquired more beliefs. It's because I've explored green a lot and dropped many of its lenses.

The spiral dynamics model is fantastic. But I worry people misuse it a lot in this forum. Especially Leo. The act of calling any criticism directed at stage green and refer to it as "stage orange" misrepresents spiral dynamics.

[SwiftQuill]

On 17/04/2025 at 3:22 AM, Carl-Richard said:

I might have slightly overstated my case here in the original post. It's not that being Tier 2 or any stage is only about what your life is or what it looks like from the outside. It's that once you learn about Spiral Dynamics and Tier 2, it becomes truly impossible to tell what your stage is, because humans are the mimicking animal. We ape after what we find fascinating and valueable (and the highest SD stage we can conceive of). And we are so extremely good at it that we even fool ourselves. And that is why we need other methods to reliably determine what our development is.

Only after a very long time of deeply involved mimicking, you might actually become the thing you are mimicking. But then again, if we take the "official" words of the authors of these models (which you can doubt, but then there are also many more things you should doubt), even this might take decades. Or to be honest, this has as far as I know not been studied at all (i.e. the effect of taking in knowledge and values from higher SD stages). But if this forum is any proof, I don't think it makes very much of a difference 😂 (I'm of course partially joking with you guys 😉😋).

So my point in a nutshell is that once you have learned about SD, any claims about your own SD development become so unreliable as to be essentially invalid. If you want to get anything resembling a reliable estimate (and even then it's shady at best, giving that humans are also the bullshitting animal), survey yourself from before you learned about the model.

According to you, anyone who studies psychology loses the ability to self reflect. Because their knowledge of psychology clouds and distorts their self perception. It's an extremely reductive conclusion to arrive at.

[Insert here more references to the bald man's videos as evidence to my bad conclusion]

[UnbornTao]

@blackchair English-only, please rewrite the post. Thanks.

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, SwiftQuill said:

According to you, anyone who studies psychology loses the ability to self reflect. Because their knowledge of psychology clouds and distorts their self perception. It's an extremely reductive conclusion to arrive at.

Not at all. The claim is that when you learn about something valueable, you will mimick it, and you will be unable to know if you are merely mimicking it or if you have the true understanding. Because things can be simplified, things can be co-opted and made into a lower resolution picture, and you cannot verify it by stepping outside your own limited perspective, because that would obviously make it not limited. Studying psychology might help you with identifying and working with your limited perspective, but you never fully overcome it. Because it's a fact of life.

Edited 17 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[SwiftQuill]

@Carl-Richard i just beg to differ. I think if you have a decent level of self awareness you can look at the model and assess yourself relatively accurately. This is like a personality quiz. I won't pick "highly agree" on the question "I clean my room frequently".

As for the suggestion of assessing yourself from before you learned of the model, I don't think that works with people like me who have learned about it years ago and in the meantime gone through transformations.

My biggest criticism on this model really is people overuse it in this forum. Not everything should be analysed should this lens. Not all individuals, events, actions, groups of people should be analysed through this. It's still just a limited model.

[zurew]

Would be interesting to check who is completely unfamiliar with the model but still think and live according to tier 2 patterns (whatever that is)

This would rule out mimicking with a good chance.

Cause yeah, especially in this environment, where that behavior is highly rewarded by most users - it makes sense to mimick it if you want to earn social credit from certain people. 

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, SwiftQuill said:

@Carl-Richard i just beg to differ. I think if you have a decent level of self awareness you can look at the model and assess yourself relatively accurately. This is like a personality quiz. I won't pick "highly agree" on the question "I clean my room frequently".

But you will pick "I approach life from a highly aware meta-perspective which sees the value of all perspectives while simultaneously distinguishing between them in a systematic way".

When the questions of the "personality test" become highly value-laden, people tend to pick the valueable options even if they might not be fully reflective of their personality. You see this with MBTI and types like INTP and INFJ.

 

3 hours ago, SwiftQuill said:

As for the suggestion of assessing yourself from before you learned of the model, I don't think that works with people like me who have learned about it years ago and in the meantime gone through transformations.

You have memories. Maybe it doesn't seem like a very attractive prospect if you are in your early twenties (hint-hint). For example, did you have a concept of "the spiral" or adult developmental stages before you learned about SD?

Edited 16 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[SwiftQuill]

14 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

But you will pick "I approach life from a highly aware meta-perspective which sees the value of all perspectives while simultaneously distinguisning between them in a systematic way".

When the questions of the "personality test" become highly value-laden, people tend to pick the valueable options even if they might not be fully reflective of their personality as a trait (because of e.g. social credit or it aligns with their aspirations). You see this with MBTI and types like INTP and INFJ.

 

You have memories. Maybe it doesn't seem like a very attractive prospect if you are in your early twenties (hint-hint). For example, did you have a concept of "the spiral" or adult developmental stages before you learned about SD?

It's not about being attractive or not. It's about being accurate to the person I am today. I'm not going to pull up a maths test I did in highschool and use it as point of reference to see if I'm good at maths. Not if I took maths in college a year ago.

I get you want to dismiss everything past the point of knowing the SD model. I get it. And I simply disagree that using the period from before knowing it as a good point of reference. I personally have evolved a lot in the past 5 years. 

As for the SD personality test bullshit:

- "Are you a pluralistic thinker?"
There is no such SD quiz. There are some quizzes but they're not too good in my opinion.

My opinion is you just read the model, or watch Leo's videos, and see what resonates to you most. And if you insist on using the past as a point of reference, I can clearly distinguish a long period when I fit the stage orange, and a long period when I fit stage orange. And unlike Leo insists - no, I have not regressed from green to orange. The fact I've learned more things, suffered more, and introspected more, doesn't mean I've regressed.

I can write a whole book on why stage orange is problematic. Not just out of theory, but out of lived experiences. Same with stage green.

So in my case in particular, since I 100% don't fit into orange (way past it) and I've also exhausted green (perhaps not 100% but most of it) I would feel comfortable saying I'm yellow.

By the way I don't care about competition. This attitude of "I'm going to bullshit myself into believing I'm yellow because my ego likes it" no I honestly couldn't care less.

I rather be a healthy, functional, successful stage Blue, than a toxic, ideological, self righteous stage green (or above).

[Carl-Richard]

52 minutes ago, SwiftQuill said:

And I simply disagree that using the period from before knowing it as a good point of reference.

It doesn't tell you much about where you are today in itself, but it tells you a lot about where you were, and you can extrapolate based on that.

 

57 minutes ago, SwiftQuill said:

I personally have evolved a lot in the past 5 years. 

If you have evolved a lot in the past 5 years, imagine how much you will evolve in the next 10 years.

 

48 minutes ago, SwiftQuill said:

There are some quizzes but they're not too good in my opinion.

They're garbage, useless.

 

59 minutes ago, SwiftQuill said:

And unlike Leo insists - no, I have not regressed from green to orange. The fact I've learned more things, suffered more, and introspected more, doesn't mean I've regressed.

Perhaps you were always in Orange. It's possible to download a simplified version of a stage from the culture also (e.g. Green). That is what I believe teenagers do all the time with leftist ideas or in colleges (and even spiritual ideas), while in reality, they are expressing mostly stage Red and Blue.

 

1 hour ago, SwiftQuill said:

So in my case in particular, since I 100% don't fit into orange (way past it) and I've also exhausted green (perhaps not 100% but most of it) I would feel comfortable saying I'm yellow.

Did you by any chance exhaust Green before or after learning about SD?

[SwiftQuill]

@Carl-Richard

I understand you insist that I've "likely" mimicked green or yellow after being exposed to the SD model I get it. That it's a concern you have about people who learn about the model.

That said, I don’t feel it applies to me in this case. I’m not claiming any stage to boost my ego or self-image. I genuinely don’t care about appearing ‘Yellow’ or ‘advanced.’ I’ve simply gone through a number of internal and external transformations over the past five years that make Orange a very poor fit for where I currently am. At the same time, I’ve seen enough of Green to recognize its limitations, and I’ve moved beyond it for the most part. Not just in theory, but through lived experience.

Also, I’m 27 now. The years between 20 and 30 are often some of the most foundational in a person’s life. First serious job, living independently, taking on real responsibilities, maturing emotionally, forming (and ending) relationships, rethinking values, etc. That’s been very much the case for me. So yes, I’ve changed. Not because I read SD and want to brag about being yellow. But because I’ve lived. The model just helped me make sense of that process.

If knowing Spiral Dynamics makes all self-reflection invalid, then the entire model becomes useless. Just intellectual gatekeeping dressed up as theory. No one passes your purity test. I’m not here to play mental gymnastics. SD is a tool for insight, not a cult filter to discredit lived experience.

Edited 16 hours ago by SwiftQuill
To end the bullshit discussion