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[LordFall]

There are differences between integrating lessons from a stage and transcending it. 

Gabor Mate was not a psychiatrist he was a physician. He's now working on building his own systems and working with different organizations. He's actually  successful entrepreneur with a few best selling books, an international speaker and a private consultant.

He's actually a great example of my point, he has transcended it. 

Edited yesterday at 01:02 AM by LordFall

[Valach]

17 hours ago, LordFall said:

There are differences between integrating lessons from a stage and transcending it. 

Gabor Mate was not a psychiatrist he was a physician. He's now working on building his own systems and working with different organizations. He's actually  successful entrepreneur with a few best selling books, an international speaker and a private consultant.

He's actually a great example of my point, he has transcended it. 

I think this is where our disagreement actually lies.

You seem to be using external achievements (business ownership, financial independence, influence, entrepreneurship) as the criteria for having transcended Orange.

I'm not convinced that's what Spiral Dynamics is describing.

Couldn't those simply be expressions of healthy Orange (and I am not even sure about that) rather than evidence of having moved beyond it?

For example, imagine two people:

One builds a very successful business but is still primarily motivated by achievement, status and winning.

Another is a physician or teacher who embodies competence, rationality, autonomy and responsibility, but whose primary motivation has shifted toward understanding, service and consciousness.

Why would the entrepreneur necessarily be considered to have transcended Orange more than the physician?

I'm genuinely asking because this seems to be the assumption underlying your argument, and I don't see why external success should be the defining criteria rather than the values and motivations driving the person.

In other words: If someone spends their life as an employed physician, scientist, monk, professor, or therapist but clearly embodies Yellow values, would you still say they haven't transcended Orange because they aren't financially independent?

Or if @Leo Gura for some reason decides to quit his work around actualized.org and goes back to game development, does that mean he regressed back to orange?

Edited 7 hours ago by Valach

[LordFall]

Thinking the values and embodying them in reality are different things. In the spiral dynamics video I think on Stage Orange mention that you can be a dude that cares about people but working as an aerospace engineer at RTX Corporation making missiles that kill people. In my opinion your thoughts are cool but you are mostly the impact that you have on the world. So if you can't build your own personal power then you can't really move past stage orange no matter how many cool Stage Turquoise mystical experiences you've had. You're gonna sober up, have to get back to work and do whatever your boss tells you to do or choose to exist outside the system like a homeless guy or an amish guy or whatever other model people come up with.

In my opinion the power of the model lies in how it describes both people and societies. If we do not move the whole world towards better systems then doesn't matter how many people with a superior perspective there are, it will still be materialistic and violent. How you change the world starts with how you spend your time each day and then eventually what organization you build around yourself to scale your impact. 

> Or if @Leo Gura for some reason decides to quit his work around actualized.org and goes back to game development, does that mean he regressed back to orange?

If he's stuck by the confines of money then in a sense yes. You can become very financially free with game development and make games that impact people towards powerful change and to improve their lives and not just rince them of their money and time. I don't see why you can't be a stage yellow and above game developper. I'm trying to do this with my own game Legend of the abyss, check it out here! 

One of my core concepts with this project is that web 2 entertainment companies trade the money and time of their viewers for money. I think with a web 3 approach you can help empower people and give them financial abundance from playing your game. As well as having some learning elements in the game that are based on real history and our real reality instead of learning about Mordor or the Galactic Empire. 

Edited 6 hours ago by LordFall

[Valach]

2 minutes ago, LordFall said:

Thinking the values and embodying them in reality are different things.

Absolutely.

If someone spends 20 years talking about compassion but is incapable of helping anyone, there is a disconnect.

4 minutes ago, LordFall said:

In my opinion your thoughts are cool but you are mostly the impact that you have on the world.

I think that's a valid philosophy, but I'm not sure that's what Spiral Dynamics itself is describing.

My understanding is that Spiral Dynamics is primarily a model of evolving value systems and motivations. Those values should absolutely be embodied in reality, but why should the embodiment necessarily be measured by entrepreneurship, financial independence or organizational power?

Couldn't a teacher, physician or therapist embody higher-stage values through the work they do without ever building a company?

Likewise, couldn't someone build a highly successful company while still being primarily motivated by achievement, status and winning?

 

Where I think we still disagree is what counts as embodying higher-stage values.

For example, I have a friend who used to be a pickup coach. He is highly competent, disciplined, independent and socially skilled, so I would say he has integrated many healthy Orange capacities. Today, he has consciously shifted his priorities. His life revolves around reducing suffering—animal rights and helping women who have experienced domestic abuse.

He earns just enough to comfortably pay for food and rent. Not because he lacks the ability to earn more, but because he deliberately chooses to spend his time differently.

Would you say he hasn't transcended Orange simply because he chose not to maximize money or build a business?

 

[Yimpa]

 

[LordFall]

@Valach If he can live according to his values and impact the causes he care about then yes sure I'd say he has fulfilled his stage orange needs in the business and impact areas of stage orange. 

Someone who is Stage yellow is continuously self-improving and building systems that allow his or her to have an impact on the world. They can use the tools of Orange to do so. 

I think a good litmus personally for stage yellow is when one does not judge the stages above it or has a strong reaction to them. The pickup part of stage orange is to me a great way for a man to bridge his gap between a stage blue dating system with the people he has organically met through his life and then when you learn to go out attract people independently of that that's more like orange, when you do it with integrity and looking for win-win situations thats stage green and when you build your own systems to work for yourself and others then that's stage yellow. 

Thinking about those ideas is one thing and actually living them in a day to day is another. Different people have different visions for their goals and what people they wanna align with to make that happen so it looks different for different people. 

[Valach]

8 minutes ago, LordFall said:

@Valach If he can live according to his values and impact the causes he care about then yes sure I'd say he has fulfilled his stage orange needs in the business and impact areas of stage orange. 

Someone who is Stage yellow is continuously self-improving and building systems that allow his or her to have an impact on the world. They can use the tools of Orange to do so. 

I think a good litmus personally for stage yellow is when one does not judge the stages above it or has a strong reaction to them. The pickup part of stage orange is to me a great way for a man to bridge his gap between a stage blue dating system with the people he has organically met through his life and then when you learn to go out attract people independently of that that's more like orange, when you do it with integrity and looking for win-win situations thats stage green and when you build your own systems to work for yourself and others then that's stage yellow. 

Thinking about those ideas is one thing and actually living them in a day to day is another. Different people have different visions for their goals and what people they wanna align with to make that happen so it looks different for different people. 

I think this is where I'm still confused.

Building systems doesn't seem unique to Yellow. Orange builds incredibly sophisticated systems too—companies, financial markets, logistics networks, marketing funnels, social networks.

So what makes a system specifically Yellow rather than simply a very advanced Orange system?

Is it the fact that it's a system, or is it the values and motivations that shape why the system exists and how it operates?

To me, systems thinking is a hallmark of Yellow, but building an organization around something doesn't automatically make it Yellow.