Do not approach women

[Ulax]

3 hours ago, something_else said:

, but most stage green people are not like that.

Bro most green are ass at orange

[LordFall]

3 hours ago, something_else said:

I think you're stereotyping green a bit. There are plenty of stage green people who try to find solutions for problems. Don't forget that in order to properly integrate green you have to go through orange, and orange is very solution oriented. Yes, some stereotypically stage green people resent orange, but most stage green people are not like that.

Awareness, open discussion, and community are usually the mechanisms by which green tries to solve problems, and those are not terrible solutions for the problems green likes to grapple with. It's limited, but to say that green never provides solutions for problems is a touch strawmannish.

I find that 80% of people with a Stage Green mindset I see online or encounter don't see to have Stage Orange properly integrated at all. Do you really know a lot of activist minded people that have a solid grasp of business and the economy and have plans that make sense to further the cause they champion? Most people I see that point out social problems and seem really passionate about them, once I start to ask questions about how do we solve this go silent or say stuff that makes 0 sense. 

@Ulax Straight up. It's realistically more like 95% than 80% that seem to have not much inkling of Stage Orange or Stage Yellow in their perspective. Of course it depends which subset of Stage Green people you interact with. If you go to an ecoengineering convention then I would assume that the attendees would be much more solutions oriented than the average activist. 

Stage Green people almost always throw the baby away with the bathwater in terms of their Stage Orange perspective and start to view everything as oppression and fall straight into the victim mindset trap. They rarely are able to band together and do anything productive and at best will go to a protest(but not one that they organized themselves.) 

You could also view it as people coming from Stage Blue and wanting to build an identity outside of the mainstream and once they get to Stage Orange and they look at the mountain of productivity required to actually become an independent being in modern society, they bypass it and adopt Stage Green talking points and start blaming billionaires for their problems.

It's hard to say but either way it leads to the same result of people complaining a lot about the injustices of the world without doing much to build a skillset that would give them the leverage over the marketplace necessary to impact their own life and society as a whole. 

3 hours ago, Majed said:

@something_else @LordFall I feel like you guys love to use spiral dynamics a lot. Honestly i feel like it isn't always concrete, and if you focus more on giving insights without necessarily anchoring it in the spiral dynamics model, i think this would be better for the development of your mind. 

It's like the way Jordan Peterson for example love to see the world through a Christian lens. Now i think he's somewhat cognizant of that. But still any lens you use is just a lens, a map and not the territory itself. Be it christianity or spiral dynamics. 

I find that it helps me tremendously in understanding where the people I'm talking to are coming from and seeing what type of advice might actually help their perspective.

Otherwise I run into the problem of offering some piece of advice that seems very reasonable to me and the objections that I got made no sense until I filtered them through spiral dynamics then it started to make so much sense and I've been able to understand the mental blocks of the individuals I'm dealing with.

Edited Wednesday at 08:20 PM by LordFall

[something_else]

@LordFall @Ulax You’re both stereotyping green as activist hippies or like the stereotypical SJWs of old. Most people with a centre of gravity in stage green just come across as fairly normal well-educated people with careers, hobbies and goals like everyone else. The average left leaning westerner is firmly stage green, but most are not activists.

Think of Scandinavian countries for example, they’re some of the most stage green places on earth yet it hardly makes sense to say “Scandinavian countries are useless at coming up with solutions to problems” because it’s simply not true. One look and you can see that they’re some of the most effectively run countries in the world, yet they would be classified as having a centre of gravity that’s firmly green.

The way you’re applying spiral dynamics is quite flawed to be honest, you’re using it like a personality test instead of a developmental model.

[Ulax]

7 minutes ago, something_else said:

@LordFall @Ulax You’re both stereotyping green as activist hippies or like the stereotypical SJWs of old. 

I'm confused. What makes you say that?

[Thought Art]

 

[something_else]

6 minutes ago, Ulax said:

I'm confused. What makes you say that?

More LordFall than you, to be fair. But “most green are ass at orange” conveys the same sentiment indirectly.

[LordFall]

29 minutes ago, something_else said:

@LordFall @Ulax You’re both stereotyping green as activist hippies or like the stereotypical SJWs of old. Most people with a centre of gravity in stage green just come across as fairly normal well-educated people with careers, hobbies and goals like everyone else. The average left leaning westerner is firmly stage green, but most are not activists.

Think of Scandinavian countries for example, they’re some of the most stage green places on earth yet it hardly makes sense to say “Scandinavian countries are useless at coming up with solutions to problems” because it’s simply not true. One look and you can see that they’re some of the most effectively run countries in the world, yet they would be classified as having a centre of gravity that’s firmly green.

The way you’re applying spiral dynamics is quite flawed to be honest, you’re using it like a personality test instead of a developmental model.

Scandinavia is actually a great example here, but it proves my point. In fact, you could argue the Nordic model is operating at a Stage Yellow level because it doesn't reject Orange at all and fully integrates it in its many efficient systems. 

Instead of treating Stage Orange market dynamics as a "necessary evil" to be moralized against or constrained, which is how First-Tier Green operates, they take a Second-Tier Yellow approach and intentionally harness market mechanics as the foundational energy engine that makes a complex high-stage social safety net possible.

Sweden, Denmark, and Norway rank among the most free-market, pro-business, and high-innovation economies in the world. They don't bypass Orange productivity or bash enterprise; they built massive, efficient market engines specifically so they can actually afford a Green social safety net. Synthesizing Orange economic reality with Green human values into a functional machine is literally systemic thinking.

My critique wasn't about productive citizens in social democracies who contribute to a high-output society. I'm talking about the super common trend of people using Green anti-system talking points as an ego defense and often using "the system is evil" as a cope to avoid doing the hard work of building a useful skillset, discipline, and leverage in their own lives.

I don't think the average left leaning westerner is firmly Stage Green with a well integrated Stage Green. I think they are exactly the Blue/Orange/Green hybrid monstrosity that you call a stereotype. Meaning being mostly talk and virtue signalling and not very effective people. 

Edited Wednesday at 09:10 PM by LordFall

[Ulax]

2 minutes ago, something_else said:

 But “most green are ass at orange” conveys the same sentiment indirectly.

How so?

[Ulax]

1 hour ago, LordFall said:

I find that 80% of people with a Stage Green mindset I see online or encounter don't see to have Stage Orange properly integrated at all. Do you really know a lot of activist minded people that have a solid grasp of business and the economy and have plans that make sense to further the cause they champion? Most people I see that point out social problems and seem really passionate about them, once I start to ask questions about how do we solve this go silent or say stuff that makes 0 sense. 

@Ulax Straight up. It's realistically more like 95% than 80% that seem to have not much inkling of Stage Orange or Stage Yellow in their perspective. Of course it depends which subset of Stage Green people you interact with. If you go to an ecoengineering convention then I would assume that the attendees would be much more solutions oriented than the average activist. 

Stage Green people almost always throw the baby away with the bathwater in terms of their Stage Orange perspective and start to view everything as oppression and fall straight into the victim mindset trap. They rarely are able to band together and do anything productive and at best will go to a protest(but not one that they organized themselves.) 

You could also view it as people coming from Stage Blue and wanting to build an identity outside of the mainstream and once they get to Stage Orange and they look at the mountain of productivity required to actually become an independent being in modern society, they bypass it and adopt Stage Green talking points and start blaming billionaires for their problems.

It's hard to say but either way it leads to the same result of people complaining a lot about the injustices of the world without doing much to build a skillset that would give them the leverage over the marketplace necessary to impact their own life and society as a whole. 

I find that it helps me tremendously in understanding where the people I'm talking to are coming from and seeing what type of advice might actually help their perspective.

Otherwise I run into the problem of offering some piece of advice that seems very reasonable to me and the objections that I got made no sense until I filtered them through spiral dynamics then it started to make so much sense and I've been able to understand the mental blocks of the individuals I'm dealing with.

Yes. The key to helping stage green is stopping them getting stage fixated. 

Stage green will always run into failure, unless extremely lucky. Which is a feature not a bug of the stage. If there is no fixation, then the negative feedback ought to prompt them to ascend to yellow.

I agree with Leo's point in a recent blog post, that the left (aka green) can fall into the bias of just treating every failure as evidence that the solution wasn't left-wing enough. That is a big fixation point for green.

[something_else]

13 hours ago, LordFall said:

Scandinavia is actually a great example here, but it proves my point. In fact, you could argue the Nordic model is operating at a Stage Yellow level because it doesn't reject Orange at all and fully integrates it in its many efficient systems. 

Instead of treating Stage Orange market dynamics as a "necessary evil" to be moralized against or constrained, which is how First-Tier Green operates, they take a Second-Tier Yellow approach and intentionally harness market mechanics as the foundational energy engine that makes a complex high-stage social safety net possible.

The moment you see healthy + effective Green you reclassify it as Yellow, because it doesn't fit your conception of Green. But every stage can function effectively. Post-war America was a highly effective expression of Orange, just as great historical empires like Rome were effective expressions of Blue. Why should Green be the exception?

Spiral Dynamics describes overlapping value systems with a centre of gravity, not rigid categories. Rome had elements of Red and Orange, and post-war America had elements of Blue and Green. Likewise, Scandinavian countries have Orange and Yellow characteristics, but their centre of gravity is distinctly Green.

This is a developmental model. Healthy Green doesn't need to reject Orange's achievements. It can retain markets, productivity and individual competence while prioritising equality and collective well-being. Using Orange mechanisms to serve Green values doesn't automatically make a society Yellow.

Quote

My critique wasn't about productive citizens in social democracies who contribute to a high-output society. I'm talking about the super common trend of people using Green anti-system talking points as an ego defense and often using "the system is evil" as a cope to avoid doing the hard work of building a useful skillset, discipline, and leverage in their own lives.

I think you're overlooking the value of those Green "talking points". Awareness, empathy, fairness, dialogue and community aren't substitutes for development, they're developmental achievements in and of themselves.

Orange emphasises individual achievement and action. Green recognises that many problems are systemic and require collective solutions. Raising awareness, changing public attitudes and building shared understanding are part of how Green produces change through democracy and collective action. What you dismiss as "just talking" can actually be the groundwork for societal progress.

And without that expanded awareness of different cultures, perspectives and systems, how could the genuinely systemic thinking of Yellow emerge?

Of course unhealthy Green can get trapped in moralising, virtue signalling and endless discussion. But that no more defines Green than corporate greed defines Orange or authoritarianism defines Blue.

Quote

I don't think the average left leaning westerner is firmly Stage Green with a well integrated Stage Green. I think they are exactly the Blue/Orange/Green hybrid monstrosity that you call a stereotype. Meaning being mostly talk and virtue signalling and not very effective people. 

Most left-leaning Western people centred at Green are ordinary, functional people with careers, relationships and responsibilities. They're not all stereotypical online activists. And if the people you're criticising aren't even centred at Green, why use them as evidence of Green's dysfunction?

Ultimately, my question to you is this: If you classify Green as ineffective whenever it fails, but reclassify it as Yellow whenever it succeeds, what would healthy, effective Green actually look like to you?

Edited yesterday at 10:49 AM by something_else

[Valach]

51 minutes ago, something_else said:

The moment you see healthy + effective Green you reclassify it as Yellow, because it doesn't fit your conception of Green. But every stage can function effectively. Post-war America was a highly effective expression of Orange, just as great historical empires like Rome were effective expressions of Blue. Why should Green be the exception?

Spiral Dynamics describes overlapping value systems with a centre of gravity, not rigid categories. Rome had elements of Red and Orange, and post-war America had elements of Blue and Green. Likewise, Scandinavian countries have Orange and Yellow characteristics, but their centre of gravity is distinctly Green.

This is a developmental model. Healthy Green doesn't need to reject Orange's achievements. It can retain markets, productivity and individual competence while prioritising equality and collective well-being. Using Orange mechanisms to serve Green values doesn't automatically make a society Yellow.

I think you're overlooking the value of those Green "talking points". Awareness, empathy, fairness, dialogue and community aren't substitutes for development, they're developmental achievements in and of themselves.

Orange emphasises individual achievement and action. Green recognises that many problems are systemic and require collective solutions. Raising awareness, changing public attitudes and building shared understanding are part of how Green produces change through democracy and collective action. What you dismiss as "just talking" can actually be the groundwork for societal progress.

And without that expanded awareness of different cultures, perspectives and systems, how could the genuinely systemic thinking of Yellow emerge?

Of course unhealthy Green can get trapped in moralising, virtue signalling and endless discussion. But that no more defines Green than corporate greed defines Orange or authoritarianism defines Blue.

Most left-leaning Western people centred at Green are ordinary, functional people with careers, relationships and responsibilities. They're not all stereotypical online activists. And if the people you're criticising aren't even centred at Green, why use them as evidence of Green's dysfunction?

Ultimately, my question to you is this: If you classify Green as ineffective whenever it fails, but reclassify it as Yellow whenever it succeeds, what would healthy, effective Green actually look like to you?

That was an amazing write up brother, thank you for that!

[LordFall]

@something_else My main issue is people using Stage Green talking points as an ego defence to justify their own lack of efficiency. I think you've made good points around classifying those people more as Stage Blue people grasping at Stage Orange rather than actually Stage Green. I think that leads to idealism and their points although perhaps having a surface of validity are fundamentally naive, inefficient and shallow. 

Healthy Stage Green would look like an individual with a productive relationship to the economy that uses his extra time to help social causes. If we're looking in terms of an organization it would be one that changes its goals from being about profit motive to now being about productive betterment of mankind. Perhaps like a Soup Kitchen or an engineering firm focused on sustainable energy. I would say both the individual and organization cross into Stage Yellow when they are able to use powerful societal systems to bring massive leverage to their cause and decouple their output from mere human energy.

In other words actually developing the tools to fix the problems as opposed to just identifying them and voicing them out or crying about them if you wanted to be less charitable. 

If we are to bring it back to Communism since we talked about it before, it would make sense to classify it as a movement with Stage Green ideals but that failed to get past Stage Blue due to its rejection of Stage Orange. It thus got nowhere close to the Stage Yellow efficiency that would've been needed to transform society to the degree that they were aiming at. 

Edited yesterday at 01:33 PM by LordFall

[something_else]

26 minutes ago, LordFall said:

My main issue is people using Stage Green talking points as an ego defence to justify their own lack of efficiency

Do you have examples of people doing this? I don't doubt it happens, but the 80-90% figures you were quoting earlier don't match up with my experience.

Quote

In other words actually developing the tools to fix the problems as opposed to just identifying them and voicing them out or crying about them if you wanted to be less charitable. 

Again, identification of systemic problems, discussion, and awareness are a large part of healthy stage green. They are a feature, not a bug. Perhaps it bugs you because you're so oriented towards individualism and the individual solving their own problems, but that is not really what stage green is about. It's a collective stage.

It seems like inaction when everybody is just sitting around complaining and talking about issues without necessarily doing anything, but this still collectively improves the development level of society over time.

Most issues Green feels strongly about are not things an individual can do a whole lot about anyway, it requires large scale mindset shifts in society to fix those problems, which is achieved largely through awareness, identification of problems, open discussion, and yes, crying about them.

Edited 23 hours ago by something_else

[LordFall]

I really like this model and I think it breaks down victim mindset so well. It's taken from the corporate world but it can apply to an individual's life and society as a whole.

Most Stage Green people operate in level 1 and maybe in level 2 but rarely above. If we map it to Spiral Dynamics I think you only start to touch Stage Yellow with 3 and above because you really need to do a lot of work researching the world and getting work/business experience to start to understand what a possible solution would look like. 

6 hours ago, something_else said:

It seems like inaction when everybody is just sitting around complaining and talking about issues without necessarily doing anything, but this still collectively improves the development level of society over time.

Most issues Green feels strongly about are not things an individual can do a whole lot about anyway, it requires large scale mindset shifts in society to fix those problems, which is achieved largely through awareness, identification of problems, open discussion, and yes, crying about them.

Listen man if you find people that complain a lot but don't take action towards fixing their problems and others problems valuable then I mean good for you. I think it's very surface level way to live life and at best you're pointing out problems that you wish somebody else would fix.

We'd have to get more specific at to which subset of people we are talking about but my grievance are mainly with people in 3 main buckets:

- People who complain about the economy and cost of living but don't research and learn new skills in terms of personal finance and business.

- People who complain about the government but don't similarly don't take any action to join or create an organization that can help their community or country and never make effort to build a relationship with their elected officials. 

- Men and Women who complain about the state of the dating market but don't take much strategic action towards solving their problems and instead blame the other sex for their lack of success. 

[Ulax]

Justice for my UK bros who can't see imgur images

[something_else]

14 hours ago, LordFall said:

I really like this model and I think it breaks down victim mindset so well. It's taken from the corporate world but it can apply to an individual's life and society as a whole.

Most Stage Green people operate in level 1 and maybe in level 2 but rarely above. If we map it to Spiral Dynamics I think you only start to touch Stage Yellow with 3 and above because you really need to do a lot of work researching the world and getting work/business experience to start to understand what a possible solution would look like. 

Firstly, most people operate in level 1 and level 2. It's not specific to Stage Green.

Secondly, you are applying a Stage Orange value system to a strawman of Stage Green and wondering why Stage Green doesn't hold up. This is vaguely analogous to someone who is Stage Red using number of people killed to qualify somebody at Stage Blue. Yes, Stage Blue is often fine with violence but it wants the violence to serve a higher collective purpose and so it doesn't really value the act of dominance and murder in and of itself.

The same is true of Green, it may climb the corporate ladder or achieve personal success, but personal success is not at the pinnacle of its value system anymore and so it is somewhat unfair to qualify Green strictly on Stage Orange values. One of Green's fundamental tenets is "it's not about you".

14 hours ago, LordFall said:

Listen man if you find people that complain a lot but don't take action towards fixing their problems and others problems valuable then I mean good for you. I think it's very surface level way to live life and at best you're pointing out problems that you wish somebody else would fix.

We'd have to get more specific at to which subset of people we are talking about but my grievance are mainly with people in 3 main buckets:

- People who complain about the economy and cost of living but don't research and learn new skills in terms of personal finance and business.

- People who complain about the government but don't similarly don't take any action to join or create an organization that can help their community or country and never make effort to build a relationship with their elected officials. 

- Men and Women who complain about the state of the dating market but don't take much strategic action towards solving their problems and instead blame the other sex for their lack of success. 

I don't disagree with you on this. People like this can certainly be annoying, depending on how much they complain and how little action they take.

But I think you're overlooking the value of collective awareness itself. An individual becoming aware of systemic flaws in their government or society can contribute to societal development without taking extraordinary personal action. When millions of people undergo the same shift in perspective, the resulting change in the collective zeitgeist can be enormously powerful. An entire country becoming dissatisfied with its government can create the conditions for far greater change than even a particularly effective individual could achieve alone.

I think there's a tension here between your personal values and Spiral Dynamics itself. You seemingly place enormous value on individual achievement and personal responsibility, all of which are characteristic of Orange. But Spiral Dynamics doesn't inherently regard someone who excels according to those standards as more developed than someone whose primary concerns have shifted towards collective welfare.

In fact, somebody who lives a relatively unremarkable life by Orange standards but who has developed a collectivist worldview could be considered further along the spiral than an exceptionally successful Orange individual. My sense is that this frustrates you because you're evaluating developmental progress according to the standards that Green exists specifically to transcend.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by something_else

[LordFall]

@something_else I think you're being quite naive and idealistic. Spiral Dynamics operates on the principle of "transcend and include," not "transcend and bypass."

You make a common mistake on this forum of trying to bypass and invalidate the value and virtue of Stage Orange. A shift in the collective zeitgeist is merely potential energy; if the frustration at the status quo is not channeled by an individual or organization with specific goals and the competency to achieve them then the status quo will remain. We saw this in real time in December 2025 with the Iranian protests that gathered millions of disenfranchized people but that ultimately were unsuccessful in doing much against the regime since there were no functional process to achieve change apart from venting protesting and "collective awareness". 

The Pyramid of Responsibility isn't an "Orange corporate value system," it is a system that breaks how change happens vs staying in victimhood. Level 1 is a victim mindset that's basically crying about the unfairness of the world and Level 4 and 5 is where all the people that have made massive change to mankind live. 

2 hours ago, something_else said:

In fact, somebody who lives a relatively unremarkable life by Orange standards but who has developed a collectivist worldview could be considered further along the spiral than an exceptionally successful Orange individual. My sense is that this frustrates you because you're evaluating developmental progress according to the standards that Green exists specifically to transcend.

I'm evaluating it based on what actually produces positive change in the real world. Having Stage Green ideals without competence is 90% useless. 10% is useful in terms of introspecting on what the world needs but the other 90% is action taking. 

@Ulax Can you see the graphic? I didn't realize Imgur was blocked in so many regions, I gotta find another image uploader. The forum's limit on image size makes most uploads directly to it quite hard. 

[Ulax]

8 minutes ago, LordFall said:

@something_else@Ulax Can you see the graphic? I didn't realize Imgur was blocked in so many regions, I gotta find another image uploader. The forum's limit on image size makes most uploads directly to it quite hard. 

Here is what I see

[LordFall]

This one should work!