Spiral Dynamics

[Paladin]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Hi Mark.

Interesting stuff. I just skimmed the links, though. These kinds of theories based on hierarchical rankings of "spirituality" kinda rash me a little. It's not that it's inaccurate, but it leaves one with the notion that primitive survivalism, the bottom level, is somehow a thing to evolve away from, and that global consciousness and cooperation, the highest level, is some kind of supreme pinnacle of enlightenment.

It's kind of like saying one should aspire to exist only in the green through violet chakras. One should eschew all survivalist tendencies and just live in the light. Perhaps that's the path of enlightenment, but it leaves one vulnerable to manipulation by those whose focus is power. And, if you look at empowerment spirituality, like the current women's spirituality "movement", you see that what is being sought is a remedy to that loss of raw natural power, which is every woman's birthright. So there is this issue of allowing ourselves to get pansied out and emasculated to the point where we lose all connection to our real animal nature, whilst persuing an elitist conception of pussypants enlightenment which renders us vulnerable to power brokers of every sort.

Chris

Actually, the original model holds that the levels are "nested" in such a way that the higher you ascend the more of these memes are still within you. Here is the idea of Holon Heirarchy. Not "better than" or "less than" because you still may use or energize these other memes if you are in danger for example. And yes that is why I am still a PALADIN

[China Cat Sunflower]

Well, it's kinda like the kabalistic model. The sword and the serpent, ya know. It's not linear. Everything happens at once. There's no start and finish, it doesn't happen "in time." So, "as above" and "as below", both reaching in the same motion, set up a kind of whirlpool effect. Finger touching finger kinda thing.

Chris

[flowperson]

Chris Chris...you're on a roll big guy. Keep it goin'.

flow....

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,

interesting discussion. perhaps this will be of some interest.

in Japanese the term for spiral is "uzumaki" and, as you may imagine, it is taken to all manner of different forms in Japan. here's a link to a movie where spirals consume a small town and cause everyone to go crazy and kill themselves...

Uzumaki (2000)

the movie was based off of a Manga (form of Japanese animation) of the same name, here you can see some clips from the animation:

Uzumaki Videos

and last, but certainly not least, here's a link to a fantastic arrangement of uzumaki that move as you watch in an optical illusion:

http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/uzumaki.gif

metta,

~v

[bananabrain]

interesting stuff. seems to me it's not a million miles away from the WMT end of kabbalah especially once you start associating colours with levels - in fact in the wikipedia entry on spiral dynamics it says it's been influenced by hermetism, which isn't a huge surprise. other than that it comes across as a rather complicated version of abraham maslow's "hierarchy of needs".

i suppose the important thing to remember is that the "higher" levels are not "better" than the "lower" levels; both are important in their own level. this whole way of looking at things in terms of "levels" is quite misleading especially when imposed on a linear view of history as a "progressive" development from ignorance to knowledge and from darkness to light, from "tribalism" to "universalism". this is not a mistake that is made in the jewish mystical tradition proper; we understand that there is a need for the *particular* as well as for the universal. that's why societies based on free love and communal property have never worked to any scale or for any length of time, because the child's second word (after "mama") is almost always "mine!" - or, more importantly, that our major objection to any universalising "new paradigm": how soon before you tell us we've got to stop being jewish because it's "outmoded" and move onto the "new level" of Universal Human Consciousness, blah blah yada yada yada.

not that dawkins will approve of any mystification of what he regards as being the sole province of science, ho hum.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[InLove]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i suppose the important thing to remember is that the "higher" levels are not "better" than the "lower" levels; both are important in their own level. this whole way of looking at things in terms of "levels" is quite misleading especially when imposed on a linear view of history as a "progressive" development from ignorance to knowledge and from darkness to light, from "tribalism" to "universalism".

I agree with this part. I find many philosophies hard to swallow for this very reason. In order to subscribe to them, I must think in terms of climbing to so-called "higher" understanding, and I think that in this respect, we lose sight of ancient truths. It tends to unravel what is applicable, like burning books or destroying the perfectly genius water system of a great city because we don't understand it. Something like that....

I know I don't speak in scholarly philosophical terms very well, but I have been thinking along these lines. Maybe I misinterpret?

InPeace,
InLove

[ardenz]

Hi , I 'm just new here at CR and am checking out the various sections. I have read some of Ken Wilber on Spiral Dynamics several years ago. It is an interesting concept, but I found it difficult to accept the idea of categorising people and cultures.

[Tao_Equus]

Mandelbrot Set, Simple Zoom - Google Video

[marmalade]

I keep coming across cool older threads, and so I'm forced to resurrect another one.

I love spiral dynamics. I also love the book A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe.

As for spiral dynamics, I love integral theory where I first learned of it. It is presented in many of Ken Wilber's books. I've never read any of Graves original work.

Anodea Judith has a book that correlates spiral dynamics with the chakras:
Waking the Global heart

Erik Davis has a book similar to Judith's but in terms of technology:
Here is a description of the chakras of the Infosphere

James Whitlark a correlation of spiral dynamics with the archetypes of Jungian individuation:
The Sequence of Archetypes in Individuation