Why I think Spiral Dynamics is wrong.

[max duewel]

7 minutes ago, Jwayne said:

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga is far a more serious and rigorous attempt to explain the evolution of consciousness.

As far as I understand his model deals more with the transpsychological stages of consciousness that's not really the deal of spiral dynamics. Also, I also find other integral models much more precise than spiral dynamics but they have all a similar taste. I'm interested in someone giving a great argument in why the hierarchical structure of all these models is flawed.

[max duewel]

1 minute ago, Jwayne said:

'Human psychological evolution' is itself an ideological claim. It takes its subject matter for granted rather than examining whether it is so. Also, as if, we are now penultimate observers looking at it from outside rather than living within it as we speak. Also, as if we are more evolved than those intellectual systems which oppose this worldview. It is not established why this ascendency occurs in this order but merely asserted. Like I said, all of its claims are taken for granted and not substantiated in a philosophical manner.

Do you believe humans do not evolve psychologically?

[Jwayne]

1 minute ago, max duewel said:

As far as I understand his model deals more with the transpsychological stages of consciousness that's not really the deal of spiral dynamics. Also, I also find other integral models much more precise than spiral dynamics but they have all a similar taste. I'm interested in someone giving a great argument in why the hierarchical structure of all these models is flawed.

The hierarchical model is based on what exactly, if not the current liberal worldview of present New Age Western culture?

[max duewel]

Just now, Jwayne said:

The hierarchical model is based on what exactly, if not the current liberal worldview of present New Age Western culture?

Its based on sentence completion tests

[Jwayne]

3 minutes ago, max duewel said:

Its based on sentence completion tests

The hierarchy is based on a value system.

[max duewel]

Just now, Jwayne said:

The hierarchy is based on a value system.

I don't understand please elaborate

 

[Jwayne]

9 minutes ago, max duewel said:

Do you believe humans do not evolve psychologically?

Where's the evidence for 'psychological evolution'? Hegel tried to demonstrate this and concluded that Napoleon was the greatest man and the Prussian State was the peak attainment of Spirit. It is obviously ridiculous today. But he argued it is a matter of objective evolution. Spiral Dynamics is a universalist claim just like that.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jwayne

[max duewel]

Just now, Jwayne said:

Where's the evidence for 'psychological evolution'? Hegel tried to demonstrate this and concluded that Napoleon was greatest man and the Prussian State was the peak attainment of Spirit. It is obviously ridiculous today. But he argued it is a matter of objective evolution. Spiral Dynamics is a universalist claim just like that.

`it's quite obvious that you develop psychologically lol, I don't need Hegel to make some thought gymnastic. I just have to look at my life experience

[Jwayne]

1 minute ago, max duewel said:

`it's quite obvious that you develop psychologically lol, I don't need Hegel to make some thought gymnastic. I just have to look at my life experience

'Quite obvious' is an appeal to "common sense", which is an academic term you might to consult before taking ideas for granted.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jwayne

[max duewel]

Its as obvious as your fingers touching the keys of your computer.

[Jwayne]

Just now, max duewel said:

Its as obvious as your fingers touching the keys of your computer.

So that's the argument in a nutshell, right?

We don't need to lower ourselves by doing philosophy and having intellectual standards because our truth is 'obvious'.

Imagine if everyone in the world talked that way...

[Jacob Morres]

Yeah though idk if that is a problem of the model inherently, and rather the way the people on the forum use the model 

Idt the original model inherently implies hierarchy. I've also seen it described nonheierarchical in some summaries and descriptions of the model 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jacob Morres

[Jwayne]

7 minutes ago, Jacob Morres said:

Yeah though idk if that is a problem of the model inherently, and rather the way the people on the forum use the model 

Idt the original model inherently implies hierarchy. I've also seen it described nonheierarchical in some summaries and descriptions of the model 

Doesn't the word 'spiral' connote a hierarchy? As do the words evolution and progression.

A non-hierarchical model would have more intellectual integrity as it is less flippantly arrogant.

[Lila9]

If you don't find it useful or it doesn't make sense to you, don't use it. You don't have to.

It's just one way to interpret the reality around you and make sense of it, in my opinion SD is one of the best tools to interpret human consciousness development. For me it's fascinating to see that for each stage there are very spesific values that they are guided by and it's universal.

For example, stage blue people in one part of the world remind stage blue people in another part of the world, they share the same values, even though they have never met. Those cultures might even never heard about eachother. Yet, they are similar in their values. Why? I find it fascinating.

If I receive a model that explains to me: why people act the way they act, why they think the way they think, why they are concerned about this particular thing and not another, why this particular thing is provoking them and not another, why they are drawn to this particular thing and not another, how to communicate with people on their level, how to develop myself and more, I would gladly embrace it and use it.

It might be not perfect and I'm sure there are a few things that are unclear and unexplained or even inaccurate, still I can use it with various models, which is always recommended because there in no one perfect model for everything.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Lila9

[Jacob Morres]

@Jwayne

Hm, i don't think so, at least inherently.

The word 'pyramid' could also be considered hierarchical no? But in Maslows hierarchy of needs, some are above others, but all the parts of the pyramid are important for healthy well being. 

Though even for this model too I've seen leo talk about self actualization as the pinnacle 

and in the book, they explicitly point out the model isn't hierarchical and that no stage is "above" one another. There's a page or two on it

Let me be clear tho, there could be a hierarchy, but not in the sense of "I'm better than you". Like a boss has leadership with her employee, but she's not above the employee. 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jacob Morres

[Jwayne]

23 minutes ago, Jacob Morres said:

@Jwayne

Hm, i don't think so, at least inherently.

The word 'pyramid' could also be considered hierarchical no? But in Maslows hierarchy of needs, some are above others, but all the parts of the pyramid are important for healthy well being. 

Though even for this model too I've seen leo talk about self actualization as the pinnacle 

and in the book, they explicitly point out the model isn't hierarchical and that no stage is "above" one another. There's a page or two on it

Let me be clear tho, there could be a hierarchy, but not in the sense of "I'm better than you". Like a boss has leadership with her employee, but she's not above the employee. 

If we don't look at it hierarchically - meaning, not to wield it as a political weapon against other cultures (as Leo does) - then I see no serious danger in it as a intellectual framework of limited application that many apparently find helpful.

All of the danger enters in by taking it as a color coded hierarchy of values and asserting you have ontologically-spiritually ascended higher than others. There are many dire consequences that follow immediately from that.

I mean, imagine telling that to your family and friends ("I am at a superior level of psychological development than you") and see how harmful it will be to your relationships. And now imagine extending that at a global scale of international relations...

[Consept]

1 hour ago, Jwayne said:

All of the danger enters in by taking it as a color coded hierarchy of values and asserting you have ontologically-spiritually ascended higher than others. There are many dire consequences that follow immediately from that.

I mean, imagine telling that to your family and friends ("I am at a superior level of psychological development than you") and see how harmful it will be to your relationships. And now imagine extending that at a global scale of international relations...

With any idea that can be taken as hierarchical obviously people may take offence if they see themselves at the lower parts, but that doesn't mean the concept is not valid or closer to reality. 

For example if you time travelled back to aztec times with the ideas that are common place in our time, the aztecs won't think you're advanced, they will most likely think you're crazy and sacrifice you but that doesn't mean that you're not more advanced than them. This happened a lot with Greek philoshopers who were executed for their advanced ideas many of which we still hold in high regard today, which would suggest they were more advanced than their fellow citizens. 

Spiral dynamics was actually developed and used to help groups of people at different levels to work together and find a way to bridge differences, it wasn't designed for people to be able to feel superior to others. 

But of course humans will use it for this as hierarchy is still important to us especially stages below yellow. The problem is I don't see how you can create a model that doesn't have some kind of ascension model, how would that look?

At its bare bones SD is just a widening perspective of your integration of the world. At a starting point you may be self-centric then you move to ethno-centric, then world- centric, then universe-centric. Someone at self-centric may argue that his perspective is just as important as someone at world-centric but that's only because he can only see his perspective. The world-centric perspective also incorporates the self-centric so it's just a wider view. 

[ValiantSalvatore]

9 hours ago, vindicated erudite said:

I do not like the way this forum talks about spiral dynamics because I do not believe it's an accurate representation of reality. Spiral dynamics is a unilinear and hierarchical way of looking at the evolution of humanity. It creates a grand narrative of the progress of history and can only acknowledge one value set as valid. 

When you look at how evolution plays out in the real world you'll realise that there is no hierarchy to the process of evolution. Organisms diverge into niches in order to handle the challenges in it's environment. To put it into other words, there are no linear hierarchies in nature. 

The model of spiral dynamics is cultural relative to the unique environments it was invented in. Why can't you put stage orange above stage yellow or stage blue above stage green? I understand that each stage is supposed to build upon the last but evolution can involve the lose of traits as well as the addition of traits. Why is stage turquoise the peak of known human evolution? 

If you don't understand my point yet here's an example:

Let's say that that person A and person B meet each other for the time. Person A is stage red and person B is stage green they're both going to believe that they are more evolved that the other person because their values are culturally relative. What allows spiral dynamics to say that person B is in fact more evolved than person A? 

Most likely the complexity of the response, spiral dynamics is not as good as Wilbers model imo who goes more into the depth of holons and how evolutions is nested within smaller and larger holons, the higher can't exist without the lower. The point is there is also ego development and spiral dynamics is about values mostly. Ego development is more of a hallmark than value development generally speaking and is independent of what makes a full grown actualized beign in that sense. 

Spiral dynamics is an enactment of internal values, and life conditions foster them. Person B for example is more evolved than Person A as he/she recognizes the relativity and importance of the earlier stages like an adult realizes the validatity of a perspective of a child, when I hold a blue ball and the child can't developmentally comprehend that I see the world differently than it (red egocentric stage) and he/she tells me it's blue and I tell her no it's orange, it can't realize that I tricked it. Till the next stage occures where group-thinking and perspectival higher/later thinking occures. Fundamentally the distinction is based on perspectives the n'th perspective of smth. will include all previous perspectives. Hence why it's later/higher.

Stage turqouise is not the peak of evolution there is third tier. This evolution is still happening just most don't do it and it's not enforced in a massive scale. Academics will be cognitively Turqouise/Yellow mostly, yet they can't go beyond as third tier is transcendental thinking, conventional thinking interconnecting etc is just different here. For example when I had a taste of what consciouness is (absolute discernment) it just is, it's not an ordinary state of consciouness. Distinctions and space became clearer and clearer. 

That is also only cognitive, not emotionally and morally, omfg that is abhorrently regressive imo. Most academics are according to O'Fallon on stage orange/blue of spiral dynamics if you dovetail models.

Edited May 1, 2023 by ValiantSalvatore

[Carl-Richard]

I've been through this exact line of thinking. The way out of it is to think of the stages as levels of complexity, and that it's not modelling a strict developmental sequence, but rather developmental altitudes. But still, it's the case that individuals are statistically more likely to start out from a stage of lower complexity and then move upwards through stages of higher complexity, but that this process is of course not 100% linear, as Spiral Dynamics involves the interplay between individual and culture, and that this dynamic is a bit more open for variation than say the stages of growth within the womb or the growth of a plant.

It's also true that the model was conceived in a largely Western context, based on empirical data from Western individuals and conceptual constructs from Western science, which means that the particular stages might not apply in a non-Western context. But this is not just a problem with Spiral Dynamics, but all of Western social science in general. We base almost all of our findings on "WEIRD" study populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic), and even worse than that, it's mostly just university students. That is of course very limiting, but it's a truly pervasive problem that won't be fixed anytime soon.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[ryandesreu]

16 hours ago, Jwayne said:

Spiral Dynamics is highly ideological, liberal universalist gibberish. It's childish, reductive and pseudo-intellectual. It's a kind of intellectual-spiritual degeneracy that reaffirms the ego of its ideologues that their personal ideals are higher than everyone else who has ever existed. It's incredibly arrogant and also quite violent, in that respect. A kind of blind, authoritarian cultural-epistemic imperialism.

I'm wondering what color you might see yourself.