Excerpt: Summary of Spiral Dynamics  by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan
by Steve Dinan, Esalen Institute

(The following excerpt is provided as a reference to a responsive comment I made in my last Pomo post.)

"Beck and Cowan use something like a fulcrum model to describe the shift to a new worldview. In the alpha condition, the vMeme ably fits the predominant life conditions. As this changes, the beta condition emerges in which the old vMemes begin to be inadequate to deal with changing circumstances. This is a time of uncertainty, questioning, and doubt. From here, there are two possibilities: Reform (an evolutionary change) to create a new alpha fit with more sophisticated vMemes or Revolt (a revolutionary change) that generally stems from a slow initial reaction to change. Revolt emerges from something they call a gamma trap, a zone of frustration and hopelessness. If people are fortunate and savvy, a transformational pathway emerges (called the delta surge) to the next alpha fit. If not, regression occurs, or the organizational structure dissolves. Within this basic fulcrum of development model, they see seven main options, two horizontal, two oblique, and three vertical . The horizontal options are to 1)fine tune and 2) expand out, neither of which alters the fundamental vMemes of the organization. The oblique alternatives (stretch-down and stretch-up) involve accessing higher or lower vMemes on a temporary basis to deal with pressing circumstances. The vertical alternatives are 1) Break-out, which is revolutionary but runs risk of regression 2) Up-shift, which is an evolutionary shift to the next level, as with delta surge 3) Quantum, which is when a number of vMemes are shifting simultaneous. This kind of change is integral to success in nation-building and functioning in a global marketplace, and is seen in era shifts like the Industrial Revolution.

Leadership promotes positive change and the health of all levels of the spiral and involves a sensitivity to meet where people are at. First, this involves seeing whether people are Open (capable of change), Arrested (change potential is present but hindered), or Closed (frozen in a vMeme). Rather than trying to dynamite arrested and closed individuals, the savvy Spiral Wizard (a great term he uses) tailors interventions and motivations to meet people where they are at. The optimum leadership style for open individuals is ½ step ahead of their center of gravity. For example, an ORANGE population mass is best led by a ORANGE/green or perhaps an  orange/GREEN leader who can subtly lead them further while instinctively appealing to their fundamentally ORANGE worldview. Individuals who are more closed respond best to management and leadership that reflects their same level (i.e. fundamentalists listen best to other die-hard fundamentalists)."

vMeme = "The vMEME (or superscript ^vMEME) term is an effort to show the connection between (a) the ideas carried in memes and (b) the underlying 'V'alue Systems (better called valuing systems), thinking, worldviews, coping systems, Spiral colors, or what Dr. Clare W. Graves'also called levels of psychological existence. Some people confuse the two domains by calling the content (memes) and the containers (^vMEMEs) by the same name, an approach which dilutes and muddles the significance of both. The term vMEME was created with the writing of the book, SD [Spiral Dynamics], and postdates Dr. Graves' death by a decade, his active work by two." (See, http://www.spiraldynamics.com/SDtheory/memes.htm)

(I encourage reading of Dinan's entire summary as it is quite thorough and explains the individual value memes nicely.)

  9:47:09 PM    comment []

Preservationist or Footprint Leaver?

Recently, I was forced to buy a used book for a class; no new books were available.  The on-line bookstore swore this was a book in very good to excellent condition.

Poppycock.

The book is riddled with pencil and pen underlining throughout.  Marginalia written in same hand, but in two different languages -- English and something that looks to be Slavic.  I can't read a single paragraph without disruption, like someone whispering their own thoughts in my ear while I'm trying to read in the peace and quiet of my home.  Agh, and not even in one comprehensible tongue, like having an eastern euro-discussion throughout my learning experience!

Levenger asks in their "How Successful People Work" column whether you're a preservationist or footprint leaver.  I'm a preservationist all the way, not a single blemish will appear in any of my books, unlike a footprint leaver who'll consume (abuse?) a book and use marginalia and underlining to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in their forest of reading.

However, I'm an enormous fan of tape flags and Post-It notes.  Tape flags are especially great for cookbooks, earmarking favorite frequently made recipes.  Post-It notes are so much more flexible than marginalia; I can pull out the note and put it on my computer or in a notebook if I need to research a note further. 

Maybe I'm a third category: Litterer.  My books are littered with flags and Post-Its.

What about you?  Preservationist, Litterer or Footprint Leaver?

  4:52:52 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants: To pomo or not to pomo, that is the question...

 

You may want to check yesterday's post on postmodernism (pomo) below if you're coming into the middle of this on-going meta-blog.

 

Dear Raven --

 

As I said last night in my comments, I’m so sorry, but I must admit to bursting out in a fit of laughter after that anti-pomo diatribe!

 

First, postmodernism is the progeny of all before it.  It no more rifles through previous knowledge than any named heir needs to steal his estate.  Pomo is the result of the previous generations of thought, a swing of the spiraling pendulum of development that swung one direction over traditionalism, the other over modernism, then to post-modernism.  It is still debated whether postmodernism is not merely ultramodernism or hypermodernism; if it is still not clearly to some a separate state, how can this mode be thieving as you imply?

 

The evolution of human consciousness is also not a series of landings, wherein humanity is clearly in one state or another.  There is a distribution curve along a continuum; within that curve, humans move from state to state freely (albeit somewhat predictably).  Wilber’s model of a four-quadrant matrix of development actually serves as a more complete model; we maybe elevated in one quadrant, depressed in one or more of the others at any time.  Being pomo is not an all-or-nothing proposition – but then applying the same model, being modernist or traditionalist is not all-or-nothing either.  Perhaps this model can also explain how postmodernism is heir to previous states; they’re all in the same plane, just at levels which build upon others.

 

What is new about pomo is that it is inclusionary, the synthesis of all that has gone before it.  It’s that simple.

 

And it is not the end, any more than Newtonian physics was the end of physics, or quantum mechanics the end of physics again.  There are now fields of physics at both ends of the scale, beyond the scale of Newtonian and sub-quanta; there is no reason to believe that there will not be more.  We still use Newtonian physics in its framework even as we use quantum physics.  There is no reason not to use modernism or traditionalism when applicable; there is no reason to believe that consciousness evolution will end with pomo and its inclusionary integration of past and present.  What of the future?

 

Now, on with the much-needed fisking! 

 

…I don't think postmodernism is a cause worth defending. [Of postmodernists]: "They’re not confined by traditionalist mono- or tribal culturalism, or by modernist universal absolutism. But that's really the point I'm taking here, that a rejection of pomo bookburnings necessarily defines one as absolutist (or anything else).

You lost me completely on pomo bookburning.  Are you sure you’re talking about pomo and not absolutist traditionalists?

 

Frankly, I wasn’t defending pomo.  It needs none, it simply is.  My point is that we’re already in pomo up to our necks (like it or not) and that our time is better spent on looking to the future and to that which will improve the lot of humanity or yield to and explore post-humanity.

 

…It's outrageous, really, to posit that only postmodernists have a multifaceted perspective on the meaning of artistic expression. In fact, cross-cultural, cross-class, and cross-gender views in this regard have been well explored since the 1700s and probably earlier - a lot earlier - than that.

Your claims about cross-culture. -class, -gender are interesting, but not entirely valid.  For the most part, any one of culture, class, gender may have been crossed with another, but not all at the same time occurred until recently.  An example: we’re still dealing with issues of discrimination today – even now we struggle to transcend them.  Survival of oppressive exclusionary practices suggest that even now we may not be as fully pomo as a society; previous societies and cultures were certainly no less exclusionary (in my opinion, more exclusionary across the board).  We still have many opportunities to improve our inclusionary and multi-lateral practices for the betterment of civilization; our predecessors certainly left much room for improvement.

 

I can certainly cite the western canon's promotion of Enlightenment values as ameliorative in this respect, but I'd also lean toward philosophers like Wittgenstein, Russell, and Sarte, probably Huxley, and a slew of others whose exploration of meaning and perspective ties in with the insights of general relativity to the extent that the very notion that anyone could be even partially familiar with these ideas, and yet also deadlocked into a unidimensional system of valuation, is not only the height of hubris but precisely the sort of finger-pointing pedantry that's given postmodernism its current patina of Procrusteanism.

I’ll take the first two cited philosophers and stop there, to prevent this from becoming more of a treatise than it already approaches.

 

Wittengenstein’s seminal work, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, was an exercise in a universal answer to philosophy; that’s rather absolutist in itself.  Because it appears to be a reductionist or minimalist exercise does not make it pomo.  Wittengenstein sought a single answer to the big picture; his work may have been important, but there is no single answer since a singularity of reality is highly questionable.  Is his work perhaps late modernist, or an example of ultramodernist/hypermoderist thinking?

 

Likewise, Russell was a reductionist, but not necessarily pomo; he could very well have been manifesting late modernist consciousness in his pursuit of “one great question”.  Again, another universalist query.  Same as Wittengenstein: pomo or no? late modern, ultramodern, hypermodern?  Highly questionable.

 

Both have come and gone and still we have many questions – their search for a single question and a single answer did much to improve the quality of our queries, but little in the big picture to improve the lot of man.  Russell’s personal anti-war protests may have had as much or more merit towards the furtherance of mankind than his work on “one great question”.

 

The search for “one great question” or “universal answer” was not limited to philosophy or math alone; look at Wittengenstein’s and Russell’s contemporaries working in physics.  They worked diligently towards a unified field theory (the universal answer in physics), yet we’re still finding new vistas before us, decades later.  Is the pursuit of a unified field theory modernist, late-modernist, ultra or hypermodernist, or pomo?

 

The point bears restatement: postmodern values are simply a re-naming and philosophical hijacking of the last 3 to 4 hundred years of critical thought, with a concomitant wholesale ejection of the broadmindedness painstakingly developed over generations of scholarship. No, the fact that politician X, or congressman Y, or professor Z appears to be operating from a dichotomous perspective does not by any means reinforce postmodernism, nor does it imply that anyone not subscribing to postmodern hoo-haw is necessarily a cultural chauvanist. That is, if postmodernism claims to endorse alternative definitions of knowing, it does not, nor has it ever, been able to claim exclusionary possession of those insights - rather, they rifled them out of the common heritage of humanistic thought.

See paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 above.  Rifling not necessary when one owns the house, lock, stock and barrel.

 

As I’ve asked before, if one is in a particular state of consciousness (meaning, perceiving and experiencing reality in a particular way), can one “see” and comprehend a state of consciousness that’s not a subset of their own reality?  Can we truly comprehend a state of transcendence or universal consciousness from our current level of consciousness, assuming these states are not subsets where we are?

 

If it is not possible to do so, would it not be a natural response for a modernist to reject postmodernists?

 

Will not postmodernists reject what follows for the same reason?

 

Whatever you feel, think, reason the answers to be, I’m never surprised when postmodernism is rejected.

 

  12:22:32 PM    comment []

Cold and snow again...

The snow crunches beneath your boots; the hairs inside your nose tingle.  Dammit, means it's close to 0 degrees outside.

I should be happy, I'm told.  It's a bright and sunny morning.

Yah, sure, they'll be able to find my frozen carcass readily in the snow.

Just when I thought we'd turned the corner, too; it had been warm for a couple of days last week, a balmy 40+ degrees.  I saw my first robin this weekend, when the temperature was around 32 degrees.

Wonder where his frozen carcass is today?

  10:27:28 AM    comment []