ColeMC01

Stage yellow analogy for spiral dynamics

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Hey everyone. I have been watching Leo videos on spiral dynamics and i find the subject itself very interesting and fascinating. I would like to get your opinion about an analogy which i came up with to explain stage yellow and tier 2 in general to someone who is unfamiliar with spiral dynamics. Imagine every stage of tier 1, so red,blue,orange etc is an island which speaks a specific language. The people that live in that island only think of language as the language that they speak themselves. The whole concept of language in their minds is the language that they speak. So imagine french, English, German etc.  Stage yellow would be someone that does not only understand french, german etc but that understands language itself. How the dynamics of language work, how languages operate, their similarities etc. So it is not understanding of french or German for example but understanding of the concept of what language is. My explanation might be a bit bad because i am not native English speaker and it is very difficult to articulate thoughts on text. What do you guys think? Would love to hear your opinions :)

Edited by ColeMC01
grammar stuff

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Tier 1 is when you believe that English is the only language that exists, and you keep trying to speak English to non-english speaking people, and you think the reason they don't understand you is because they just can't speak English. The reason you don't know that they're even speaking a different language is because you're not actually listening to what they're saying in the first place. You also believe that English isn't merely useful for communication, but you also believe it's "the truth".

Tier 2 is when you realize that English is just one of many languages, and you start to learn to communicate with people in their language. You learn to listen instead of talking all the time. You also stop hating people for being less familiar with a certain language. You recognize that different languages belong to different parts of the world and that they're only useful tools for managing different situations (they're not "absolute truths"). In short, you basically turn into a high school foreign language teacher xD


Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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Below is how I would have thought of it. I also agree with the above analogy.

Blue = we know other languages exist but we should all speak this language because we believe it's the best

Orange = They have words that we want. We should trade. Let's learn enough of their language to do that

Green = we should try to understand their language so that we can better connect with them as people

Yellow = we know there are no "should"s that always apply but we also understand that many people think that there are 

 

... or something

Edited by Dan502

Profound Familiarity
An Audio Journal

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Yeah nice analogy, I think it sums it up quite well. I would just add that fully integrating each stage is essentially learning that language, so when you bypass a stage it means that you have no clue how to speak that language which would then make it harder to reach tier 2, even though you may feel your development is of a high level. 

I like the idea that you learn the mechanics behind language in yellow, rather than just the content of language that's a great part of the analogy as well. 

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