How Your Developmental Stage Shapes Your Investment Philosophy - Educational Resource

[Bjorn K Holmstrom]

I've been working on the educational project Spiralize a bit, exploring how Spiral Dynamics stages influence our approach to money and investing. It resulted in this new page that maps out investment philosophies from Beige through Coral: spiralize.org/insights/investing

The Core Framework:

Red: Unconstrained power maximization (pump & dump, predatory behavior)

Blue: Constrained maximization within sacred rules (faith-based investing, rigid discipline)

Orange: Single-objective optimization (pure profit maximization)

Green: Value-driven constraints on profit (ESG screening, ethical filters)

Yellow: Multi-objective system optimization (balancing profit, planetary health, social equity)

Turquoise: Holistic system transformation (actively changing financial infrastructure)

Coral: Paradigm-breaking through market interventions

What struck me during development was how quick Claude was to warn against Red's predatory tactics while treating Orange's systemic destruction (climate change, inequality) as "business as usual." I had to tell him explicitly to add the Orange disclaimer. The water we swim in makes Orange's harm less visible despite arguably greater aggregate damage.

Educational Focus: This isn't investment advice but a developmental lens on how our values shape capital allocation. The most actionable insight according to Claude seems to be the Green→Yellow transition: moving from black-and-white ethical screening to nuanced systems thinking about leverage points and emergent solutions, while I'm personally mostly interested in integrating stage Turquoise and evolving our systems for planetary well-being.

The page includes mathematical optimization frameworks for each stage, showing the evolution from simple constraints to complex multi-objective functions. Also covers the "stage inflation" risk - people identifying with higher stages without having genuinely developed the cognitive complexity. Creating this was nice throwback to my optimization background (I have worked with development of applied mathematical optimization software).

Has anyone else noticed how their investment approach shifted as they developed? Or found themselves caught between stages, like wanting Yellow systems thinking but defaulting to Green either/or thinking under pressure? Creating the page reminded me of attempting 'conscious investing' ten years ago. While looking back, it was mainly adopting a stage Green framework, and I quickly however fell into the temptation of just investing in single stocks to maximize profit short term.

I welcome feedback on how to improve the page and website in general.