Featured artist, Patrick Woodroffe
When we're speaking about evolution we have to understand that nature develops in what can be seen as stages. Many people, and perhaps they well should, have a strong aversion to what we call dominance hierarchies. Generally when we hear the word hierarchy, this is what people are talking about. It is important that we are able to distinguish between dominance hierarchies and growth hierarchies. Growth hierarchies on the other hand are natural and healthy. To use an obvious example, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. We cannot say that a butterfly is better than a caterpillar or a caterpillar better than a butterfly. Both are necessary stages in the process of evolutionary development. Another example might be that scientists suspect that reptiles at some point developed feathers and eventually wings. It's not that reptiles are better than birds or birds better than reptiles, it is just that this is how growth hierarchies work in an evolutionary process. When speaking about psychology, these growth stages can easily be pointed out, albeit less visible than the butterfly and birds analogies. For example, a child as an infant identifies with 'mother'. At its next stage of evolutionary growth it develops an independence from its mother and identifies with the family and even with toddler peers. And as this evolutionary process continues it develops an identity with itself at around 3 to 5 years old, a personal identity we call ego. This process continues through to many developmental stages even through adult aging.
There is a system developed in the '70s that helps us to visualize and understand how individuals and societies develop in their evolutionary process. This system we call Spiral Dynamics or Integral Theory.
The Spiral Dynamics system developed by Dr Claire w Graves and further developed by Don Beck, Christopher Cowan and later, Ken Wilber, is a rather simple system to learn that helps us understand the complexity of social and psychological evolutionary development. It uses a simple code of colors. There are six primary levels of development that exist in each individual and each society. Some levels remain dormant until the individual or society is capable of expressing from that level. However all levels are extant in each individual and society. So let us begin with an explanation of each of these six colors. We can alternate between examples of individual development and examples of social development.
First we have Beige. This is a basic survival level of development in individuals which we see in the infant child who identifies with the mother's breast. We can also see this in some rudimentary cultures such as the aboriginals of Australia and the Kalahari bushmen. This level can be expressed in unhealthy ways as well that we might see in cases of untreated schizophrenia or perhaps in the homeless person that we might see living in survival mode in an urban setting, in which they are talking to themselves out loud while they dig in the trash.
Secondly we have Purple. This level of growth we find expressed when an individual learns that it is a social organism and begins to identify with family or peer groups. In social evolutionary development we find a society evolving from the hunter-gatherer survivalist level at Beige to the tribal social structure at Purple.
The third level of growth is expressed with the color Red. In an individual this is where we see the development of the ego. This social evolutionary developmental stage is where we find individuals who branch off from the tribe. We see this most obviously expressed in the past through feudalism and characters such as Genghis Khan. Today we see it expressed through radical fundamentalism or the KKK. Another more healthy expression of this level can be found in the martial arts of the East.
Fourth we have the color Blue. At this level of development we find solace in a larger collective identity wherein we no longer identify with our tribe or village, but with all villages under a collective umbrella. Within this collective umbrella we could historically call the kingdom under the rule of the king and today we call this nationalism for nationality. We can also see this level of development in the advent of organized religions.
Fifth we have Orange. At the Orange level of growth we begin to question our government and religion to discover ourselves again as individuals. Here on a social level we will find a society evolving into an understanding of scientific reductionism and economic free markets. Historically we might find the Royal Society as being that moment when the Blue level of development in English society made that step into Orange with Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and others.
The academic culture we find in universities and financial institutions open to public participation such as Wall Street are good examples of Orange.
Finally we have a Green level of growth. It is at Green that we have left behind the nationalism and piety of Bue as well as the individualistically driven financially motivated Orange, for a globally aware need for equality and ecological justice. At the green level of development the individual is drawn towards ecological sustainability, equal rights, social responsibility, and is motivated to build strong and healthy local communities; "Think globally, act locally".
The system itself is rather simple as we can see. However there are a few things we can learn to add to the complexity while also adding to a deeper understanding of ourselves as social beings. It is important to understand that each of these levels identifies with its particular level and even though it has perhaps grown through a previous level, no longer identifies with its previous levels and in fact will refute them and perhaps see them as barbaric or antiquated. It is not until we break free of our green identity that we begin to understand that we are all inherently rainbows. So essentially, after reaching the understanding of the green level, we all realize our rainbow nature. Once we conceptualize our rainbow nature so to speak, we say that we are 'second-tier'.
Another interesting note is that each level alternates from an individualistic perspective to a group perspective. An 'I' perspective, and a 'We' perspective. Beige, being 'I', Purple, being 'We', Red, returns to 'I', Blue, again 'We', Orange, back to 'I', and finally Green, an all encompassing 'We'.
There are other very useful tools we could add here that are well known and integral theory and not directly related to spiral dynamics; Transcend and Include, Pre-Trans Falacy, lines, States, etc. And we will save those for writing at a later time. For now this has been a very basic introduction to the color system of evolutionary growth and development called Spiral Dynamics. We can use this system to observe ourselves, individuals, and societies to make better sense of these rapidly changing times.
It has been said that it is difficult to teach a system that predicts people will not understand it. The primary reason that people have a difficult time understanding spiral dynamics is because, as mentioned before, we sometimes overlook the growth dynamic and only see the dominance hierarchy. So as we grow through our evolutionary process, we can use Spiral Dynamics to better understand whole systems, social systems and individual development in an effort to diminish and overcome dominance hierarchies in our world.
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