The Mean Green Meme

[flume]

Felt like sharing excerpts from A Theory Of Everything by Ken Wilber that sums up greens eternal pitfall so well. Keep in mind the book is from the year 2001.

This is so unfortunate and almost painful to read, especially if you’ve been like that yourself. Super important thing to watch out for though.

“In fact, Beck and Cowan found that less than 10% of the world's population is at green (and almost all of that is in the Western civilization block, which is a massive embarrassment for the green multiculturalists, who champion everything except Western civilization).

As Beck and Cowan (and virtually all developmental researchers) constantly stress, the blue meme is an absolutely crucial, unavoidable, necessary building block of the higher stages (including green), and yet green does virtually everything in its power to destroy blue wherever it finds it. Green has introduced more harm in the last thirty years more than any other meme. The world at large- and much of America- is simply not ready for green pluralism.

When green dissolves blue, it cripples the spiral of development. It makes it absolutely impossible for purple and red to develop further, because there is no blue base to accept the development. Green is thus horribly damaging the overall spiral of human unfolding, here and abroad, and thus erasing much of the undeniable good that green can, and has, done on its own. On a sturdy blue and then orange foundation, green ideals can be built. No blue and orange, no green. Thus green's attack on blue and orange is profoundly suicidal. The more green succeeds, the more it destroys itself.”

[Leo Gura]

And today we see the opposite problem: Blue and Orange has demonized Green to the point of nearly ending democracy in America.

If Green is only 10%, then why is Wilber so eager to get to Yellow? How can society get to Yellow without embracing Green first?

I find it baffling that Wilber acknowledges that Green is only at 10% yet he says Green is so dangerous that we must jump over it to Yellow. If Green is only 10%, then clearly our task is to move the lower 90% to Green, so that we can eventually move beyond Green. But how can we move the 90% to Green when Wilber keeps telling us how bad Green is???

Wilber's a brilliant guy, but on this point he's so clearly wrong.

[electroBeam]

C'mon that's deeply unfairly biased at best, straight up fear mongering at most. How many greens actually want to destroy western civilization? How many greens are destroying western civilization? And even if there are a couple out of 10s of thousands out there, how the hell is western civilization going to evolve to greater levels if you can't deconstruct it a little(or destroy as the fear mongerers above put it). 

Most green people are engineers in google and atlassian and microsoft, and trust me, they know western civilization's greatest achievements way more deeply than the average blue or orange american. If there's anyone destroying western civilization its trump (destroying democracy). Green are simply just evolving it...

[ArchangelG]

1 hour ago, electroBeam said:

C'mon that's deeply unfairly biased at best, straight up fear mongering at most. How many greens actually want to destroy western civilization? How many greens are destroying western civilization? And even if there are a couple out of 10s of thousands out there, how the hell is western civilization going to evolve to greater levels if you can't deconstruct it a little(or destroy as the fear mongerers above put it). 

Most green people are engineers in google and atlassian and microsoft, and trust me, they know western civilization's greatest achievements way more deeply than the average blue or orange american. If there's anyone destroying western civilization its trump (destroying democracy). Green are simply just evolving it...

 

Wait until you guys reach Scandinavian levels of green. Completely ignoring practical reality in favor of idealism, and thinking that every problem can be solved by just "being a good person". 

Swedish green is in for GIGANTIC rude awakening in the 2020s when all that green hipocracy is catching up.

 

[ArchangelG]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

And today we see the opposite problem: Blue and Orange has demonized Green to the point of nearly ending democracy in America.

Yellow also criticize green since most of the current green expressions are toxic.

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

If Green is only 10%, then why is Wilber so eager to get to Yellow? How can society get to Yellow without embracing Green first?

 

10% green in 2001, now it's at least 30. The whole society won't probably go to yellow allat once, and it's not crucial to embrace toxic green to move to yellow

[electroBeam]

14 minutes ago, ArchangelG said:

Wait until you guys reach Scandinavian levels of green. Completely ignoring practical reality in favor of idealism, and thinking that every problem can be solved by just "being a good person". 

Hippies go a bit overboard with empathy, and their empathy blindsights them a bit, particularly in underemphasising the dangers criminals and psychopaths, and coming up with new ways of living like communism but saying that's equivelant to 'completely ignoring practical reality' is trump level exaggeration.

The dangers of idealism isn't limited to hippies. Idealism has been a problem since the ancient greek times. Lots of rationalists are deeply deeply stuck in thought and idealistic. Trump is hugely idealistic. His reality is all ideas, no facts.

Hippies are a piece of cake compared to traditionalists. Even if very toxic levels of hippies infiltrated the world and made a low standards of living communist society, that's still way nicer then what we have now. 

Edited November 13, 2020 by electroBeam

[Preety_India]

Such bias against green omg. 

There has been so much Demonization of the Green in the West that it's comical to the point that they're ready to embrace even Toxic Red and Toxic Blue. 

Western civilization lol. 

[Parththakkar12]

I will start off by saying I love Green people. I love them more than Blue and Orange people. (Yes Green people, I am biased, but in your favor )

Having said that, the fact that Blue and Orange demonize Green so much tells me that Green people are being called to move up to Yellow. This says more about Green's failure to solve the problems that they're so passionate about solving. Blue and Orange people don't particularly care about global warming or about race relations. That's the Green people.

When there's two sides that are unequal in levels of consciousness, the onus of building a bridge to higher consciousness for the side that's lower-consciousness is on the side that's higher-consciousness. This is because the higher-conscious side was once lower-conscious and sees the way to become more conscious, but the side that's lower-conscious has never been higher-conscious, by definition of consciousness. This is why I will always hold Green people/progressives to a much higher standard than Blue and Orange people.

The Green people, right now, are trying to implement their nice, utopian, idealistic vision. They love their vision of peace, love and light and they think it is an amazing vision (which it is, no doubt). Then, they try to bring the present-day world that's filled with Blue and Orange people into their utopia. When Blue and Orange resist it and can't handle it, then they demonize Blue and Orange!

This is not the technically correct way of going about it. It is understandable that you're making this mistake because you're at Green. A Yellow person would not do it like this! The problem with this way of going about it is that it ignores the reality that other people are not at Green, they're at Blue and Orange.

What would a Yellow person do? A Yellow person would integrate their awareness of the fact that so much of the population is at Blue and Orange and get more into Spiral Wizardry, making sense of the way collective egos behave and work on figuring out how to integrate the agendas of all these collectives at Blue, Orange, Green and create a more holistic and integrated collective agenda. The more conflicts you are able to resolve and the more you are able to unite the different warring collectives, the smoother the path to growth and expansion you'll have.

Nobody wants to hold on to a shitty status-quo. The most rabid conservatives do it out of fear of change. A Tier-2 person would understand this and integrate their agendas to create a more peaceful present-day world.

Edited November 13, 2020 by Parththakkar12

[flume]

1 hour ago, electroBeam said:

Most green people are engineers in google and atlassian and microsoft, and trust me, they know western civilization's greatest achievements way more deeply than the average blue or orange american.

Well, that might be true but I know other green circles to be fair

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

How can society get to Yellow without embracing Green first?

And how can a society get to green when not even green is letting people move up? Or when we don't put an emphasis on tier 2 thinking to take the edge off a bit? What he’s saying is that green shouldn’t stand in its own way by blocking other peoples development to green. Yes, all of tier 1 does that. And the above might be a minor problem in the US, but in countries with a larger green population, it’s definitely a problem. They basically encapsulate themselves by creating huge echo chambers... Quite literally a (top of the) first world problem, but an issue nevertheless.

You answered your own question here, he’s advocating yellow because it’s the only way to move people up to green in healthy way. Green can't see the validity of other stages yet, so less healthy development is possible. I don't see how your opinions are at odds.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

But how can we move the 90% to Green when Wilber keeps telling us how bad Green is???

To be fair, he talks about the many up- and downsides of all stages in the book. This just struck me as something really crucial where I’m living right now so I wanted to share it. Not real a ton of his work yet though, but I haven't noticed that he emphasises it so much...

1 hour ago, electroBeam said:

C'mon that's deeply unfairly biased at best, straight up fear mongering at most.

Weeeeeell, I agree that his language use can sound dramatic but calling it fear mongering might take it to an unnecessary extreme. I don’t think many people that aren’t ready for tier 2 would even make it 10 pages into a Ken Wilber book. The damage is probably very small 

[electroBeam]

26 minutes ago, flume said:

The damage is probably very small 

I didn't intend to defend green, just point out the factual claims are absurdly disproportionate to what's actually happening in reality and deeply conjectured to levels you wouldn't expect from professional academics. It doesnt matter whether anyone reads it or not, but surely no matter how many read it, you uphold honesty and restrain from unecessary exaggeration and conjecture out of principle. Doing the opposite sort of goes against intellectual honestly. 

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, ArchangelG said:

Wait until you guys reach Scandinavian levels of green. Completely ignoring practical reality in favor of idealism, and thinking that every problem can be solved by just "being a good person". 

Swedish green is in for GIGANTIC rude awakening in the 2020s when all that green hipocracy is catching up.

Comments like these makes me think that Wilber is basing his analysis on mostly a rough intuitional estimate, based on a summary of mainstream orange/blue reactionary sentiments. From the quotes provided in the OP, I don't see many clues that could separate a careful consideration of these sentiments from a right-out embrace of them. I would like to hear more of Wilber's arguments that could contest my concerns.

[Forestluv]

13 hours ago, flume said:

the blue meme is an absolutely crucial, unavoidable, necessary building block of the higher stages (including green), and yet green does virtually everything in its power to destroy blue wherever it finds it. Green has introduced more harm in the last thirty years more than any other meme. The world at large- and much of America- is simply not ready for green pluralism.

This is taking a few nuggets of truth and distorting it into absurdity. In general, green does not do everything in its power to destroy blue. Fro example, Green does not do everything in its power to destroy the below features of Blue. Green actually supports these blue features.

Hard work and discipline

Justice, stability, security

Meaning & greater purpose

Respect for elders

Honor, principles, moral codes of conduct

Good manners

Ceremony, rituals

self-control, restraint

Charity, giving back to my community

Loyalty

Building character

These are examples of blue features that positively serve as a foundation to move up the spiral. Hollow Green lacking these features is problematic. Yet there are also toxic aspects of blue that impede progress up the spiral. A frame such as “Blue is good and Green is bad for trying to destroy blue” is hyper simplistic to the point the framing has little value. It’s much more nuanced than that.

As well, blaming 10% of the population for the majority of societal problems seems irrational to me. Green has very little power in the grand scheme of things. Toxic red, blue and Orange are contributing much more to global problems such as wealth inequality, destruction of the earth / climate etc. 

Throughout history, brilliant people also had some really bad theories. Wilber is no exception. He is brilliant in many regards, yet also has a few warts. 

 

[bejapuskas]

14 hours ago, flume said:

When green dissolves blue, it cripples the spiral of development. It makes it absolutely impossible for purple and red to develop further, because there is no blue base to accept the development. Green is thus horribly damaging the overall spiral of human unfolding, here and abroad, and thus erasing much of the undeniable good that green can, and has, done on its own. On a sturdy blue and then orange foundation, green ideals can be built. No blue and orange, no green. Thus green's attack on blue and orange is profoundly suicidal. The more green succeeds, the more it destroys itself.”

Do you seriously think blue is in the danger of extinction anywhere soon? 

[TrustTheProcess]

lol, still crazy how someone like Wilber could have such a gaping blind spot. 

[Carl-Richard]

14 hours ago, ArchangelG said:

Wait until you guys reach Scandinavian levels of green. Completely ignoring practical reality in favor of idealism, and thinking that every problem can be solved by just "being a good person". 

Swedish green is in for GIGANTIC rude awakening in the 2020s when all that green hipocracy is catching up.

I might also add that the stereotype of Scandinavia (particularily Sweden) as being crippled by idealism is actually heavily influenced by conservative propaganda from mainly the US. If you've lived here, you wouldn't draw those same conclusions. If my experience of living in Norway all of my life is worth anything, I would say that Scandinavia still has a heavy orange cultural bent. When I was growing up, the social pressure to become an engineer or a doctor really messed with my head. There is a reason why there is a huge inbalance between manual labour and academic professions and why the college admission criterias just keep sky-rocketing. All of the universities here basically require straight A's to get into med school. Many people have to study abroad for that reason (I know a few in Poland atm).

[bejapuskas]

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by green hipocrisy

[Lyubov]

Every green city is super comfortable, fairly safe and very fun to live in. Give me a break about it being any sort of threat. People stuck in blue is far more of a threat given how unsustainable this stage is with massive populations.

[Forestluv]

8 hours ago, Lyubov said:

Every green city is super comfortable, fairly safe and very fun to live in. Give me a break about it being any sort of threat. People stuck in blue is far more of a threat given how unsustainable this stage is with massive populations.

Especially mid-size green cities with a University like Austin TX, Santa Cruz CA, Ann Arbor MI, Boulder CO, Eugene OR, Madison WI etc. Lots of people want to live there and it drives cost of living way up.