gengar

Spiral Dynamics Debunked

16 posts in this topic

Spiral Dynamics is a model ignorant of so many dimensions of psychology and society.

It's typical "game 2" / Schmachtenberger slop - stuck in a liberal/materialist paradigm with an "integral" sauce plastered on top.

An example that debunks most of it is:

Why do people who regress from green, mostly regress to blue? like new-age hippies who suddenly become christian. Why wouldn't they regress to orange first?

There are countless examples of new age people who went christian. The link is that it was mostly because of their spiritual beliefs changing. Spiral dynamics has value, but is highly overvalued, especially in this forum.

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SD is limited. Use it loosely when it helps to make sense of things. If it fails, use other ideas.

Don't get hung up about it.

Yes, it is not a perfect model of human behavior because humans are wild motherfuckers that follow no logic.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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48 minutes ago, gengar said:

Why do people who regress from green, mostly regress to blue? like new-age hippies who suddenly become christian. Why wouldn't they regress to orange first?

The spiral is not as simple as new age = Green and Christian = Blue.

You could have Green Christianity or new age done in a Blue fashion.

What matters is not content of beliefs, but things like core values, ontology, circle of concern, capacity for perspectival thinking, relationship to rationality, metacognition and construct-awareness.


"Finding your reason can be so deceiving, a subliminal place. 

I will not break, 'cause I've been riding the curves of these infinity words and so I'll be on my way. I will not stay.

 And it goes On and On, On and On"

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To be fair, a Spiral is a line.


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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SD does imply that people move up the Spiral in a linear sequence.

It is not like people are born Yellow and become Red with old age. That's not a thing. So in this sense SD is linear. But it is not 100% linear. Maybe like 80%.

The complicating factor is that people are born into cultures which are at a different level of development than the born person.

You can be born into a Green culture but be Red as an individual for personal reasons.

Also, cultures are not homogenous. There is no geography that has a 100% Green culture.

This makes SD very messy.

Edited by Leo Gura

You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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Makes sense to me that advancing stages is linear and regressing may not be. It depends heavily on the situation. Maybe you are a green hippie but you are enlisted to a war and you become a stage red psycho in order to survive. Also, it is my understanding that no one  is "pure green" or "pure blue", we stretch across a few stages, specially when you reach second tier, you may go "back" to previous stages to polish some aspects in order to become balanced. Imagine a stage yellow thinker who lacks stage blue discipline or stage orange ambition or stage red aggressive grit. 

I myself am going through this process.

I a somewhat yellow but I have many aspects to work on that I didn't from the previous stages. Right now, my country is in the middle of an important election and I am getting triggered as a classic stage green. 

It's an amazing model to make sense of the world. 


From Brazil

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7 hours ago, gengar said:

There are countless examples of new age people who went christian. The link is that it was mostly because of their spiritual beliefs changing. Spiral dynamics has value, but is highly overvalued, especially in this forum.

Who said they approach christianity from Blue? An approach to a religion can be more and less mature, more flexible and elevated or more dogmatic and compliant. Sometimes people need an anchor in life, and it filles the role that mindfulness could have filled for another person.

Edited by Nivsch

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7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

because humans are wild motherfuckers that follow no logic.

That make sense 😂 

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6 hours ago, aurum said:

You could have Green Christianity or new age done in a Blue fashion.

I follow a couple of peoplez mainly women on IG that sound like new age godess priestess, liberation Queens and still use God and Yeshua in their Aesthetic. When asked if she was Christian she say she Alling more with Mysticism,Esoterics yadayada. For me make sense. I imagine some Christians in transition or ex New Agers that could see the Gain in appeling to some Christian Audience. Many New Agers are Delusional and after going on circles with them one feel the ungroudness and go back to more Christian Values or the sense of Community in the Christian Circles that some abandon. 

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What is the difference between someone in stage Green who gets help from Buddhism, and someone who seeks it in Christianity?

Edited by Nivsch

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10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This makes SD very messy.

What’s your take on Susanne Cooke Gs model of ego development? I find that it’s a bit more clean that SD

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14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You can be born into a Green culture but be Red as an individual for personal reasons.

@gengarLeo has a good point,  so a person could be mindlessly conforming to their stage green culture, yet the person is in the level of stage blue conformity. And when they they "revert" to Christianity it's their true Blue self coming through. 

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16 hours ago, gengar said:

An example that debunks most of it is:

Why do people who regress from green, mostly regress to blue? like new-age hippies who suddenly become christian. Why wouldn't they regress to orange first?

This could be easily explained like this: a stage blue person is mindlessly conforming to their stage green culture and when they "revert" to Christianity , it's really their true Blue self coming out. 

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16 hours ago, gengar said:

Spiral Dynamics is a model ignorant of so many dimensions of psychology and society.

It's typical "game 2" / Schmachtenberger slop - stuck in a liberal/materialist paradigm with an "integral" sauce plastered on top.

An example that debunks most of it is:

Why do people who regress from green, mostly regress to blue? like new-age hippies who suddenly become christian. Why wouldn't they regress to orange first?

There are countless examples of new age people who went christian. The link is that it was mostly because of their spiritual beliefs changing. Spiral dynamics has value, but is highly overvalued, especially in this forum.

They were never green, blue can use new age or woke, or socialism as a religion, blue doesn't mean Abrahamism.

The thing I see people on here conflating the most is that if a society is orange then the average person there is orange, but it just means the leadership is orange, same with new age, the leaders are green(not teal swan leader, but the creators of the movement), most followers are blue. Most people are parrots that don't understand what they preach, look at all the alpha bros that talk non stop about success but do nothing: they're red. A lot of 'religious' people are red, many are purple. Some new age people are orange, like the charlatans that try to lead.

Edited by Elliott

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