Leo Gura

Spiral Dynamics Stage Yellow Examples Mega-Thread

1,196 posts in this topic

A lot of the examples in this thread are mistaken. People seem to either mistake stage yellow for "stage green plus spirituality" or mix up yellow with orange. It is neither. Yes, yellow contains some spirituality, but not in the way greens think. It is also a return to individualism and thetefore (from the perspective of green) "selfishness". Yellow is a new tier of systemic thinking, meaning it does not rely on the social engineering solutions of tier 1. If someone wants to social engineer things and the world (e.g. believes in the left or environmentalisml, he is most likely still tier 1, no matter what he fancies himself. The problem is that when you dont get it you dont get that you dont get it. You dont understand systemic solutions, so you disregard them and think youre wiser or more compassionate than people who propose systemic solutions. A good example of stage yellow is free market environmentalism or Rothbardian anarchism. If you think these are "selfish" or just over-zealous versions of orange, then youre stuck in green and need to read up on them. If youre green as an adult, you most likely wont make the switch, but your kids have a chance if you at least keep yourself from joining the mean green meme.

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@Taylor04

I think you are right about most post here. Many of them are orange and green. Yes.

But declaring Rothbard Yellow isn't justified at all. Just because it's some kind of extrem capitalism and "self centered", it isn't automatically transcended from orange.

It can't be. It has the same values at core as orange does.

Tier 2 thinking is something entirely different. It is first of all recognising and accepting all stages from Tier 1 and it is realising that all of these stages are valid. Rothbard and free market capitalism, or even voluntarism and so on are actually the exact opposite of that. This worldviews are forcing themselves upon others, which is typical for Tier 1.

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Yellow is generally in favor of more social engineering, not less. Yellow just wants to do it in an integral, Spiral conscious way, using a systems theory approach.

All stages basically want to socially engineer society to fit their values. Yellow wants to socially engineer society to accomodate the entire Spiral, recognizing the value each stage offers and the need to help people grow through all stages up to Yellow.

Don Beck and his work trying to teach Spiral Dynamics to Israelis and Palestinians is the epitome of stage Yellow social engineering efforts. It's really eye opening to read about.

My work to integrate science, spirituality, and Western philosophy is also very Yellow.


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

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6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yellow wants to socially engineer society to accomodate the entire Spiral, recognizing the value each stage offers and the need to help people grow through all stages up to Yellow.

If Yellow recognizes value in each stage, might Yellow engineer society such that some healthy Green, Orange and Blue remain?

If everyone evolved to Yellow it would be a form of extinction, since there is no retrograde evolution. Grey and Purple are nearly extinct. Perhaps Blue and Orange will go extinct as well.

On the other hand, as more people reach Yellow, we may make many more Yellow distinctions and need to divide Yellow into six new stages. There wouldn’t be any loss of diversity and there would still be continuing spiritual development up the spiral.

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18 hours ago, Sockrattes said:

@Taylor04

I think you are right about most post here. Many of them are orange and green. Yes.

But declaring Rothbard Yellow isn't justified at all. Just because it's some kind of extrem capitalism and "self centered", it isn't automatically transcended from orange.

It can't be. It has the same values at core as orange does.

Tier 2 thinking is something entirely different. It is first of all recognising and accepting all stages from Tier 1 and it is realising that all of these stages are valid. Rothbard and free market capitalism, or even voluntarism and so on are actually the exact opposite of that. This worldviews are forcing themselves upon others, which is typical for Tier 1.

Yes tier 2 does accept the other stages. But as a value judgment. That does not mean it has to be ok with everything green does. Tier 1 memes want to force themselves on everyone. Voluntarism is the negation of force. It the sense that it wants to abolish force, it is not compatible with green. Example: green wants high taxes. Thats force. You are not allowed to opt out. Voluntarism is agains that, so it does not agree with green. It wants to get rid of forced taxes. If you want to, you can form a green high tax commune in a yellow society. But you cant force it on everyone. Green is exclusive and wants to force itself on everyone in the sense that youre not allowed to be yellow in a green world.

Voluntarism seems self-centered from a green perspective, because green does not appreciate the systemic effects that yellow relies on. Green does not understand them, so it disregards them. Green only sees the non-nystemic part of yellows argument. Which look very orange.

One reason why yellow is a new tier, and why its so hard for greens to move up, is because they have to give up on all that fluffy self-congratulation and become seemingly selfish to get there.

Remember that the stages oscillate. Its a fourth and back between individualism and "caring about society". Green was collectivist, so yellow goes back to individualism again. Yellow is self-centered in the sense that it is a return to individualism, but without stepping on anyone else (as orange is willing to do). Yellow appreciates systemic win-win situations, which appear win-lose to (non-systemic) green. Therefore green says: " oh, you want someone to lose, youre just like orange". But what yellow is really saying is that there is a systemic effect that nobody has to lose.

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yellow is generally in favor of more social engineering, not less. Yellow just wants to do it in an integral, Spiral conscious way, using a systems theory approach.

All stages basically want to socially engineer society to fit their values. Yellow wants to socially engineer society to accomodate the entire Spiral, recognizing the value each stage offers and the need to help people grow through all stages up to Yellow.

Don Beck and his work trying to teach Spiral Dynamics to Israelis and Palestinians is the epitome of stage Yellow social engineering efforts. It's really eye opening to read about.

My work to integrate science, spirituality, and Western philosophy is also very Yellow.

Helping people is not the same as social engineering. Beck is engaged in direct private charitable engagement, not social engineering. The difference is that one gets his hands dirty and the other deals i  abstractions.

Systemic thinking is precisely the antithesis to social engineering. Social engineering relies on direct (non-systemic) effects. Systemic thinking sees the bigger effects that whtever you do, you are likely to mess up more things then you are helping. This is hard to explain, because as I mentioned, if you dont get it then you dont get that you dont get it. Non-systemic thinking: We move a brick there, now theres one more brick there. We use one less plastic bag a hundred times, now a hundret less plastic bags are used. Nothing happens between the sum of parts and the whole. Systemic thinking is different. You force people to use fewer resources, you made them poorer and actually caused more use of resoures overall. Environmentalism has largely been counter-productive, because it relies on non-systemic thinking. Resource finiteness  and sustainability are prime examples of non-systemic theories. Tier 1 people never understand these kind systemic effects. They think if they move bricks for long enough, eventually all the bricks will have been moved. In reality theyre creating more bricks on the first pile than they are moving. Another way to say "systemic" is that one has realized that social engineering doesnt work. Systemic thinking and social engineering are mutually exclusive. Pre-systemic (social enineering) thinking says that things only change in the direction that we make them change. Systemic thinking means you appreciate that you cant engineer the system, you have to wait for it to rectify iself. It happens by itsef, and the best thing you can do is not wreck things, thereby delaying progress. Thats stage yellow thinking. Matt Ridleys latest book is a great example of this line of thought.

Yellow wants society to fits its values, but it does not want to social engineer it. Most greens are entirely misunderstanding what stage yellow is. You think its a more sophisticated version of green, which adds spirituality and has a finger in a systems theory textboox. But reading books is not the same as understanding it structurally. As I said above, the stages oscillate and yellow goes towards individualism again. (A good indicator that voluntarism is yellow is that green hates yellow, and you hate voluntarism.) Green already contains those aspects. Why do you think its a new tier thats so hard to get to? Because greens are unwilling to give up their belief structures. (And because systemic thinking is very hard, its not emotional like stage green thinking.) They want to move up but take the green beliefs with them. Sorry, not possible. (Metaphorically you could say that yellow is lighter than orange and green because it needs to lose a bunch of darkness.) Its more of a letting go process than a sucess you achieve if you try hard enough.

Its also typical of green spirituality to see it as a thing to achieve, some state to get to. They think its like the orange chase for excellence: be good in school, be the best, then God will love you/you get rich. They just replace earning Gods love or getting rich with "achieving enlightenment".

It is typical for tier 1's to confuse their beliefs for reality. Green is especially bad at this. They assume that every stage must believe in these narrow green beliefs such as social engineering and environmentalism because they are reality. But yellow largely gives up green beliefs such as social engineerd environmentalism. It relies on market forces to do the job. Social engineering is a tier 1 thought structure. I think many people really want tier 2 to be versions of green in order to not have to leave the comfort of green. (The entire culture is green, its very rewarding.) Ironically, the more they try to progress upwards, the deeper they dig themselves into stage green. To become yellow, you ancually kind of have to be willing to be a bit more orange for a while.

Your work is impressive, but it is stage green.

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On 9/8/2018 at 11:17 PM, Leo Gura said:

My work to integrate science, spirituality, and Western philosophy is also very Yellow.

Actually, green already blended eastern philosophy into a western scientific framework a long time ago. Using the word "integrate" about it doesnt make it yellow. If green already did it, why would yellow be more of the same? Remember, the stages oscillate and tend to rebel against the one that came before it. We can expect yellow to at least disagree as much with green as green did with orange. Even more, since its a new tier.

This is just a friendly warning. Greens misunderstand what "integrative" and "systemic" means. It refers to being able to conceptualize or at least theoretically deal with emergent properties. One good test of this is whether free market economics seems plausible to you. F.A. Hayek's talk about society being guided by unseen order is a good example of this. If you dont resonate with this much, then your mind is still green. Tier one minds resonate with non-systemic explanations, such as statism. Green beliefs such as government environmentalism are unlikely to come from a integrative yellow mind, now matter how much seemingly yellow verbage you slap onto it.

Greens tend to interpret the spiral from a distinctly green perspective and confuse variations of green for higher tiers. The book Spiral Dynamics even warns of the "green talking turquoise" type. This is to be expected, because greens crave social acceptance, and talking tier two makes one impressive to other greens. But keep in mind that we cant skip stages, and yellow is individualist. When were these supposed turquoise people individualist? They think they can skip yellow. But a lot of the sophistication of turquoise comes from having gone through "selfish" yellow.

The jump to yellow is harder than you think. We are unlikely to move more than one tier up in a lifetime. Best case. People born into orange or green can be yellow at best. Talking turquoise is too far. And as I mentioned in my previous post, to get to yellow, greens have to be willing to give up on green beliefs, not dig themselves further into them. That requires a willingness to seem "uncaring" and give up a lot of peer confirmation. Alex Epstein is a yellow thinker who could aid this transition. The best chance you have is reading actual yellow content like libertarian econ, which your green mind unfortunately wont resonate with much. Thats why its so hard to move up from green, greens are not drawn to yellow systemic solutions. Being insulated in a green culture, that confirms green non-systemic notions from all sides, youd have to go out of your way to shut out green content.

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Quote

@Leo Gura

Yellow is generally in favor of more social engineering, not less. Yellow just wants to do it in an integral, Spiral conscious way, using a systems theory approach.

All stages basically want to socially engineer society to fit their values. Yellow wants to socially engineer society to accomodate the entire Spiral, recognizing the value each stage offers and the need to help people grow through all stages up to Yellow.

Don Beck and his work trying to teach Spiral Dynamics to Israelis and Palestinians is the epitome of stage Yellow social engineering efforts. It's really eye opening to read about.

My work to integrate science, spirituality, and Western philosophy is also very Yellow.

 

Is this what you're talking about? :)

Edited by petar8p
Learned to use the forum better ;)

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For those of you who've watched Doctor Who, I think you'll find him a Yellow thinker.

If you don't agree please tell me so we can discuss why.

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On 9/7/2018 at 4:52 PM, Revolutionary Think said:

Yellow with a small hint of Turquoise? 

  

Seems to me Green with several Yellow elements. Not Yellow with Turquoise. I say Green because this guy promotes a lot of equality and love ideals.

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On 7/22/2018 at 3:25 AM, Brittany said:

Scandals that resulted in people moving from Orange to Yellow:

Julien Blanc

Julien is a RSD pick-up-artist who had a huge scandal. After his scandal, he released a great yellow/turquoise video below called "What is happiness?".

Michelle Phan

Again, another person had a scandal and became yellow. Michelle Phan quit youtube and went on the sage path for a while.

This is her last video on youtube- which was quite yellow and shows her journey towards truth.

Quote from her video: "It wasn't happiness I was looking for, it was the truth".

 

I've watched Julien's content and I can almost certainly say that he is green. If you see the progression in his content you'll probably find that he was Orange and that he is now reacting against Orange and displaying Green values. Most of his ideas about happiness are from spiritual books from Eckhart Tolle and other gurus. His spirituality is at the level of Green, not Turquoise. Also, Julien was (I don't know if he still is) a vegan.

I watched Michelle Phan's video and browsed her channel. This also seems like a strong reaction against Orange and a shift towards Green. Although she is not fully immersed in Green - her prime motive is her own happiness; there's no emphasis on loving and caring for others. Again, her spiritual pursuits are at the level of Green.

Neither of the videos present systemic thinking and and multi-perspectival thinkiing. Also, even though I don't quite understand Turquoise very well, from what I do understand about it, Julien doesn't embody such deep values. That's just Green thinking.

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14 hours ago, PetarKa said:

I've watched Julien's content and I can almost certainly say that he is green. If you see the progression in his content you'll probably find that he was Orange and that he is now reacting against Orange and displaying Green values. Most of his ideas about happiness are from spiritual books from Eckhart Tolle and other gurus. His spirituality is at the level of Green, not Turquoise. Also, Julien was (I don't know if he still is) a vegan.

[...]

Neither of the videos present systemic thinking and and multi-perspectival thinkiing. Also, even though I don't quite understand Turquoise very well, from what I do understand about it, Julien doesn't embody such deep values. That's just Green thinking.

I'm inclined to agree, but Julien doesnt seem like the typical Green either. For one, he doesnt strike me as progressive left, which is the social manifestation stage Green resonates with. In the typical orange to green switch, people do stop chasing their own material wealth, but then they start craving self-congratulation in the form of "caring about society". I dont see that in Julien.

The dutch spiral dynamics site phrases Greens motto as "I sacrifice myself now to be accepted by the group”. This sounds very much like what Julien did before his crisis; he craved social validation on a massive scale, like a green. Then he snapped out of it and what he says now is more about work for the sake of engagement. Sounds yellow-ish.

My theory is that, while he probably displays a mix of the three, the transition from green to (some) yellow often goes through a retrogression via orange. Simply because our mostly green culture only knows two stages: green (the left) and non-green (the right). So when you disassociate with green, you assume you must be non-green, i.e. orange for a while, before you find out thats not you either and you refine into yellow. Thats why you may see orange.

Veg*anism seems like clear cut green, but many may only do it because green had a virtual monopoly on dietary folklore and they were convinced its healthy.

To be honest, I somewhat perceive his teaching as systemic. It's not traditional green "creationist" spirituality. And its only vaguely inspired by Tolle, who is green, but not overtly imo. For instance how we arrive at some condition by going in the seemingly opposite direction or how we get in state (if you 've seen his videos, you know what I am talking about) is something that sneaks up on us, we cant effort it. Not all spirituality is green. Not all high-achiever efforting is orange. Yellows do that too. To quote Julien "its not what you do, but where its coming from". Yellow does it for the right reasons. You say you see no systemic or multi-perspectival thinking in him. What would be some examples of this, if it were present? I find RSD quite multi-perspectival, as far as I interpret it, with their talk of nuanced truths (ie.not one sided) and often quite strong focus on both sides of an issue,such as understanding where feminists come from. RSD often sounds very diplomatic rather than classic orange. That would be yellow - its still "selfish" efforting, but for the right reasons (being engaged rather than material gains) and without so much willingness to step on others throats.

Edited by Taylor04

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Pierre Grimes

I think this guy is legit at the edge of yellow in the direction of turquoise. He has a great understanding of enlightenment, Buddha, consciousness, meditation, hierarchies and so on, however, he lacks the embodiments of these concepts, he is very cerebral and left brained dominant. But at the same time, he is also very close at pushing yellow to its capacities. He was great friends with Alan Watts, which I think is also someone deserving of the yellow title given how non-judgemental Alan Watts. Pierre is also very meta unlike the other examples, you can notice this meta energy within the first 2 minutes of the video. I don't want to be a party pooper but a lot of the other examples are not really yellow imo. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manly Palmer Hall

Founder of the philosophical research society, giver of thousands of lectures, written 150 volumes of work, written The Secret Teachings of All Ages which popularized mythology, the occult, and other esoteric topics in America. The same as Pierre Grimes he knows about all kinds of topics and is able to combine them holistically, for example, he has lectured about intuition, tarot cards, astrology, drugs, mysticism, pineal gland, hermeticism, mythology, finance, language, enlightenment, and so on. He combines these topics beautifully. He is also very big picture oriented and genuinely concerned about the entirety of humanity. He some very interesting novel lectures about the chakra and the mind. And also some complex and nuanced lectures about what thinking is. I think Manly is significantly higher than Pierre Grimes since he also has some siddhis like a photographic memory. People say-- and you can confirm this yourself by watching a video lecture of him-- that when he spoke his eyes moved from left to right as if he was reading from his mind. I'll dare you to find him say "uuhhh" one single time in his lectures that are hours long!  Another interesting characteristic of Manly P. is this one: Clean content, concentrated information, which is very prominent in his lectures.

Edited by Lelouch

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On 7/8/2018 at 0:57 PM, molosku said:

Random question not worthy of its own thread. 

I see the importance of not trying to rush or skip stages. I find evaluating myself as any color difficult, but I can say that I see the limitations of green quite brightly, even though I cant say I have transitioned "trough" it as a "phase". 

I deeply resonate with the idea of "seeing reality as it is, not as I think it is", which could be one way to summarize yellow in one sentence. I have some green ideals, but I'm not passionate about them in a way that would make me join a protest or an activist group. 

How to succesfully transition stages without building an identity out of the ideas and perspectives of that particular stage first, just to see the limitations of that stage and start deconstructing that identity? Am I already stage yellow but confused? Do I have to become and SJW just to see that it does not make me happy or change the world? :D

As a contribution: in my opinion the BEST documentary ever made. Very highly yellow. A must see for every self-actualizer. Consciousness, existence, humanity, the eco-system, highly different cultures and customs, world problems and the systems where those problem sprung out of, all displayed beautifully from a non-polarized perspective. As a film enthusiast I find this documentary pure art.

 

I actually have the same issue as you. I think this shows the limitation of the SD model when we take the individual point of view, I think SD works great from a macro perspective but lacks nuance from the micro perspective. 

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@Taylor04 Green is not truly integral. Green's mixing of East and West is shallow and flaky.


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

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If anyone of you played the game ‘Detroit: become human’ i think Connor is the perfect example.

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Interesting observation: In the movie The Matrix, the matrix font is which color? Green. And the sequel says that this is the sixth iteration of the matrix. Seems to me like an analogy for spiral dynamics.

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I am coming to the conclusion that almost no one really get the SD model. There is a facebook Integral SD group where some dudes claim to be Turquoise (some even Coral) that are flatearthers, pro-trump, libertarians.

That showed me the danger of tier-1 vMemes deluding theirselves to think they are second tier. Of course, there is a specific warning about this in Beck / Cowan's work, but it's kinda scary to see how far it might go.

Egos doing ego stuff...

Do you guys honestly think that there might be a tier-2 person that is Libertarian, for instance?

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