Resource: The rise of Xi Jinping, explained

[zazen]

On 19/04/2025 at 11:16 AM, zazen said:

I think Spiral Dynamics can start to choke on its own framework when used too rigidly. The map is not the territory - and that territory we call life is highly complex and layered.

Doesn’t Wilber present the values of each stage as if they’re locked in some historical sequence? Like we’re on a civilisational staircase. Perhaps it’s directionally correct that there are dominant paradigms (stages) but that doesn't mean exclusive access to values within those paradigms, and exclusively at certain time periods in history.

For example, thinking that green values like compassion and equality didn't exist before the 1960's, or that rationality and inquiry didn't come ''online'' (as Wilber says it) till the enlightenment era. This is very western centric framing and historically myopic to non-Western civilisations that did exhibit such values before. 

Wilber frames these developments as “beginnings” that suddenly come online, as if they were entirely absent before certain points in time. That framing makes it seem as though development flows outwards from Europe - as if the world evolves according to the West’s timeline, with the West naturally leading the way. It presents Spiral Dynamics as if it spirals around a distinctly Western arc of history.

Development seems to be more contextual and fractal, rather than universal and linear. In reality, it doesn’t seem to unfold like a baton passed down a historical relay race. Can’t it emerge in parallel pockets across different times and places? After all, it is spiral, not ladder dynamics - which means values can and do exist simultaneously, not sequentially in linear progression.

This also means we don’t have to identify with any one “stage”. For example, thinking we have to hustle first in our orange phase before we care about the environment by choosing a EV over a diesel. Or thinking we can’t tap into red rage when being burgled because we fear flirting with warrior energy is toxic masculinity and will ruin that mornings turquoise meditation session. Life isn't like picking a Power Ranger colour to operate as.

The problem with Spiral Dynamics trying to map entire political systems to one color - is that its treating structure as proof of consciousness level. For example, Western democracies are assumed to be Green or Yellow because they’re pluralistic, but often function in service of elite Orange capitalists. Conversely, China is dismissed as “Blue” because it has a one-party system, despite the fact that it produces outcomes aligned with Green (social up-liftment, green investment) and Yellow (systems thinking, long-term planning).

Defining China’s governmental centre of gravity as blue because its centralized oversimplifies it.  It can be argued that’s it’s more like a Yellow-led integration of Blue governance, done with Orange execution, to produce Green outcomes.

- Confucianism provides the ethical spine (BLUE): order, hierarchy, duty, social responsibility.

- Capitalism with Chinese characteristics unleashes achievement, productivity, and scientific innovation (ORANGE).

- Collective well being, harmony, poverty elimination, ecological restoration and sustainable energy are clearly (GREEN) values, just not liberal Green values.

Western goggled Spiral Dynamics often mistakes stylistic differences for the absence of values. Just because China doesn’t wear Green on its sleeve or wave the pride flag, doesn’t mean it’s not practicing Green. It’s largely achieving Green results despite the virtue signalling of Green rhetoric common in the West.

This framing confuses progress with packaging, and mistakes Western aesthetics for higher development.

If we’ve been steeped in liberal gravy like a dunkin donut our whole life, it’s natural to misread China’s use of Blue tactics as proof of a Blue ethos. But what looks like Blue isn’t always Blue in spirit - it can be Yellow in function, using Blue strategically to hold a complex system together that governs over a billion people.

What looks regressive from one lens may be deeply adaptive from another. The problem is, it doesn’t look like Yellow in Western terms - it violates the Green moral aesthetic of expressive freedom and pluralism, even while achieving Green level goals like ecological balance and collective welfare.

 

On 19/04/2025 at 11:30 AM, Leo Gura said:

China is not Green. Don't kid yourself.

I think a state can operate and orient at a different level (''stage'') than it's society. Especially if the political structure is designed to vet and bring the best of society to those positions of leadership and governance. That doesn’t mean the society lacks those values altogether - they simply don't dominate peoples day to day lives and are peripheral rather than central.  A society recovering from poverty and a ''century of humiliation'' are naturally inclined to prioritize stability (blue) and economic opportunity (orange).  Just because something isn't prioritized doesn’t mean it isn’t valued.

The way Wilber speaks of the values of green is as if other societies are alien to these values. These values only ''came online'' lol. As an example, when I was visiting a friend in Vietnam and went hiking - local Vietnamese very much cared about ecology and the community affects of the Mekong River being dried up due to China using those resources. Obviously they will care more for where their next meal is coming from due to that being a more immediate demand.

Green values have universal appeal because these are human values, and we are more similar than different. They just manifest differently and to a different extent in each society depending on material conditions, geography, cultural and moral foundations. Perhaps the flaw in Spiral Dynamic interpretations is in assuming Green must look a certain way - based on Western aesthetics and concerns - but every society has different histories, peculiarities and concerns. Which is why I wrote they can represent and even achieve green values (ecological/social harmony, human well being) , just not ''liberal - Western'' green values (radical relativism, identity politics, de-construction). Liberal green gets conflated with universal green. And societies lacking any liberal manifestations of green are dismissed as lacking development.

A lot of Green seems to be treating the excesses of the previous value sets in the other stages. But the issue is that the green prescription the West is undergoing, uses that prescription as THE definition for green itself, and for others as well. It takes its particular green prescription for a universal green definition.

The West came off the back off colonialism, racial stratification and hyper individualism from the Enlightenment. Green values manifest as identity politics, radical relativism and a polarized pluralism - a civilizational therapy session to heal those past wounds. Other countries have different wounds so will have a different therapy. How Green manifests across the world generally tracks the historic divide between the colonialists and the colonized. A lot of these countries are lumped into the term ''Global South'' and in most of these countries colonialism was suffered, not imposed, and the individual wasn't elevated to god-hood status through Enlightenment philosophy. 

Their healing is less about recovering from self-created internal chaos and more about restoring continuity (before being interrupted by outside forces). They want sovereignty (BRICS and de-dollarization) dignity (not to be bullied by the West), and internal coherence (which is why they don't get hard ons for Democracy). Green will show up as collective restoration, not self-fragmentation through de-constructionism. The Western manifestation of Green is largely about breaking down the systems that broke others - and that broke themselves in the process due to its excesses. The imperial core was hollowed (culturally, spiritually, economically) just as much as the imperial periphery (other nations) were destroyed and disrupted of their own trajectory.

Civilizations grow forward according to the shape of their roots. Not every tree grows the same way, even under the same sun.

China doesn't require identity politics when its people largely share one deep rooted identity (Han). They also don't require excessive fragmented pluralism and challenges to hierarchy and authority when they are largely cohesive and have been for 5'000 years - with much of Confucian influence making up their civilizational DNA.

The West are taking the green prescription for their particular society, as THE universal definition of green, that other societies should aspire to. When those countries fail to look identical, which is highly improbable, they are thought to be behind or incapable. But if (maybe when) China surpasses the West in poverty elimination, ecological balance, technological innovation, social stability, and global influence - and does so without liberal identity politics, relativism, or the constant need to deconstruct itself - will we still say it's not “Green” or “developed”? If so, then that reveals more about our ideological biases than about China’s development.

I don't think one green is better than another, they just evolve differently from different soils. Perhaps the best grass is Green on both sides - it just grows in different gardens.

Edited April 29 by zazen

[zazen]

 

[Thought Art]

On 2025-04-16 at 9:17 PM, Leo Gura said:

I will post a steelman of China on my blog soon.

China is doing some very impressive things that we should be openminded to. Especially given how badly America has been mismanaging itself over the last 25 years. It is no longer tenable that the American system is the best way of doing things.

Did you do this?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Thought Art said:

Did you do this?

Not yet

[Staples]

 

If you're interested in intelligent geopolitcal discussion about US-China relations that go read Kevin Rudd's book.

[AerisVahnEphelia]

On 4/17/2025 at 10:17 AM, Leo Gura said:

I will post a steelman of China on my blog soon.

China is doing some very impressive things that we should be openminded to. Especially given how badly America has been mismanaging itself over the last 25 years. It is no longer tenable that the American system is the best way of doing things.

I've been calling for a dictator in France just cause one idiot is probably less idiocy than 300.