Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Random Thoughts on Spiral Dynamics

[This is from WIE?, you can click to see the full image, click again to enlarge.]


I've been thinking about Spiral Dynamics Integral of late, probably because I have started reading Wilber's Integral Spirituality and he is skewing the model again to look non-integral.

I think that one of the things missing from the original book was an acknowledgment of types. Many people reduce the stages of SDi to types of people -- Blue people, or Yellow people. What I mean is personality types.

Chris Cowan and Natasha Todorovic have actually addressed the enneagram in relation to Spiral Dynamics. They make it a point to be clear that the enneagram talks about types of people (personality types) while SD looks at how people evolve in a dynamic way in response to life conditions.

The enneagram, I'm sure, is a nice model that works for some people in helping make sense of their lives. However, SD has built into it a system of types that is represented in the color coding. This is how Cowan presents it:
Among the problems caused by each level, we find the individual/collectivity dialectic. One system favors the expression of the Self and the next system sacrifices the Self to the needs of the community. Too much individualism creates problems that human beings try to solve by fitting into a group. After some time, that creates frustration and difficulties and the pendulum switches back to an individualistic level.
This works well at the cultural level, but individuals are less easy to pin down. Rather than self and group, we might better distinguish between agency (self-preservation) and communion (self-adaptation). The warm colors in the spiral (red, organge, yellow, coral) are agency-based stages. The cool colors in the spiral (purple, blue, green, turquoise) are communion-based colors. (Beige is too bogged-down in survival needs
to exhibit either agency or communion.)

[Speculation: at second-tier agency might become thantos (self-dissolution) and communion might become eros (self-transcendence). I could be totally wrong on this -- haven't thought it through.]

Don Beck mentioned in the SDi training I did that some people move through the spiral in mostly the warm or cool colors, barely touching down in their opposites. For example, I might be primarily a warm color person, focused in agency, and as I move up the spiral I might only touch down in the cool colors long enough to create the necessary dissonance to propel me into the next warm color.

From this foundation, we could easily see how the nine types of the enneagram would each move through the spiral in a different way. The Jungian typology (Myers-Briggs) would also produce varied styles of progression through the spiral.

Adding in types would make SDi even more integral.

***

One last point: Wilber makes a point of saying that no amount of study of SDi will produce satori. Damn, who woulda thunk it? Well, no amount of studying AQAL or IMP will produce satori either. Dumb argument.

Wilber's new IMP model claims to allow for an inside and an outside view of a holon for each of the quadrants. He says SDi does not:
Meditative understanding involves preeminently a methodology of looking at the "I" from the inside (using phenomenology); Spiral Dynamics involves studying it from the outside (using structuralism). (page 38)
True, but partial. In the same way that meditation allows for a look at holons from the inside in AQAL and IMP, it can do the same in SDi. There is no reason I cannot sit down using the Big Mind process and look at "being green" from the inside. Wilber's argument is false.

Once you drop SD into the quadrants, all the methologies of IMP can be applied to SDi.


7 comments:

lxr23g56 said...

hi there

OK so i am little lost are you saying that wilber is distancing himself from SD as part of IT? if so can you dummy down the explanation a little for me.

be well?

william harryman said...

Wilber has been distancing himself from SDi for a couple of years -- he tends to refer to it as a values line rather than an integral system. My feeling is that SDi, through its exposure in What Is Enlightment? and Wilber's books -- was getting more popular than AQAL, so he had to denigrate the whole model. This has been going on for some time, but it got ugly when he said harsh things about both Cowan and Beck in his Wyatt Earpy posts a while back (do a google search for Wyatt Earpy).

That's the story.

Peace,
Bill

lxr23g56 said...

Interesting, thanks i will look into it. whatever it turn out to be i just wanted to try keep focused on how things work together and not get locked into anything sectarian. know what i mean, lose site of the forest for the trees.

JMP said...
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JMP said...
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JMP said...

I don't claim expert knowledge of Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi). My understanding is limited to the book, the SDi public websites, a few articles in WIE, and Wilber's presentations. I once attempted to join Chris Cowan's Yahoo! group on SD and received such an unfriendly and dismissive email in reply that I knew I would not be welcome there (how could I have known that mentioning that I first encountered SD in Wilber's Theory of Everything (TOE) book would transform me into an untouchable in Cowan's eye!--no Wilber lovers would be allowed entry into the sacred confines of his email group without first disavowing their allegiance to the King!) In any event, I feel I know enough to speak of SDi but always have room for learning more.
I'm relatively unbiased with regard to any "sectarian" issues that might arise between the AQAL camp and the SDi camp; however some might say that my friendship with Wilber skews my opinion. I don't think so as I criticize my friends' opinions all the time. And if I got to know Beck, perhaps he and I would eventually become friendly too, which would have nothing to do with any criticisms I might make of his work. But I mention this in the spirit of transparency... and since you, WH, shared your view of Wilber's self-centered motives (Wilber's protecting his turf) ... and in the IS book Wilber shared his view of Beck's self-centered motives (Beck is protecting his turf) ... and WH, you have previously mentioned on your blog that you have studied for certification in Spiral Dynamics, a significant investment of your time, energy, and money that might become less valuable if SDi is discredited or falls out of fashion.

That said, WH, allow me to make a few comments on your post. I hope these disagreeable remarks are nevertheless seen as friendly. :-)

1. I disagree that Wilber is "skewing [SDi] again to look non-integral." I see Wilber as sharpening the delinations he has used in print since first discussing SDi in TOE. He is pointing out its limitations only. As he says in IS, these criticisms have been out there for several years now and the SDi folks have refused to make changes in their model. Wilber doesn't have to "skew" SDi; but after seeing him simply list his criticisms, SDi looks skewered! Personally speaking, SDi certainly seems far less complete and comprehensive than AQAL. What does SDi say about incorporating the truths of postmodernism? What practical guidance does SDi give for reaching higher levels of integration in body, mind, soul, and spirit (e.g., ILP?) What can it say to help me understand spiritual states? Or higher levels of spiritual/human potential? Much less than AQAL, it seems to me. If SDi is a less popular choice than AQAL in the marketplace of integral ideas, it seems obvious that consumers are making a choice based on the merits.

2. On types: I have no doubt that SDi can add types to its analysis if it wants to. If it does so, it would be a step closer to AQAL Integral. I hope they do, as having great alternatives to AQAL is, I think, in everyone's best interest. The remarks from Cowan and Todorovic on types as included within the "color coding" of stages and the remarks by Beck on people "barely touching down" in warm/cold colors seem really strange to me. Frankly it seems like they're offering a confused model. Firstly, the notion of people skipping stages after a brief touch down runs counter to mainstream developmental theory (and, to my mind at least, is just goofy). Secondly, it is confusing to symbolically link types such as agency and communion with specific levels on lines. Even evolutionary astrologers don't make that confusion (as if Aries = beige and Pisces = turquoise), and astrologers are not exactly known for being on the cutting edge of post-postmodern theorizing. Is the green vMEME = communion, but the orange vMEME = agency? Such questions seem nonsensical or vacuous to me, like asking if postmodernism is Dionysian and modernism Apollonian?

My view is that each level on each line grows in ways that are holonic--e.g., including agentic and communal modes. Most men develop with an agentic voice; most women with a communal voice. Individuals will navigate stages through their own "different voice." These other speculations seem, as I said, profoundly confused. With its emphasis on warm/cold colors, it even has undertones of being "magical." I hope SDi isn't turning into some sort of Tarot deck; no offense to Tarot readers! Wilber, in contrast, quite clearly differentiates types and stages and explicitly makes room for both. Therefore his reasoning on this point seems much more sound.

3. On SDi being a Zone #2 methodology lacking Zone #1, I think you and Wilber are in agreement--you say, "True, but partial." And you and Wilber (and I) would probably agree that SDi could open up to the other 7 Zones as well. Great. So why hasn't it done so? Why does Spiral Dynamics seem to insist that its system of thought going back decades from Graves is definitive? SDi seems locked into the Gravesian analysis and doesn't seem to be expanding its awareness very far afield from that heritage. (Moreover, speaking of the methodologies employed by SDi, I have qualms about any system (whether it be Spiral Dynamics or AQAL) that bases its theories on original research and then retains such research for its private collection available only to select and qualified researchers. I have a hard time defending any system when the answer to the question, "Where's the beef?" is "Trust Don Beck and Chris Cowan. They keep it locked in their safe." But I digress.) If SDi as a Zone #2 methodology opened itself up to the other 7 zones, might it not look something like AQAL? I suspect so . . . to continue with the Capitalist metaphor, what do I as a consumer of integral theory when faced with a choice between SDi (which looks quite partial) versus AQAL (which effectively shows the limitations of SDi)? Which organization--Becks, Cowan's, or Wilber's--is better suited to promoting its ideas and therefore ensuring its survival in the marketplace of ideas?

(And to WH: I don't follow you with "Wilber's argument is false," since Wilber never asserts that SDi can't incorporate a Zone #1 perspective, what's there to be false about? Yes, I think you're right that SDi can be plopped into the quadrants. However, it seems to me that Wilber's writings in IS were advising users of the systems on potential Integral Operating System compatibility issues. I've been aware of most of Wilber's criticisms of SDi since reading the footnotes of TOE, so none of them surprise me. I've used SDi in my writing in the past and may do so in the future as well. I am leaning towards standardizing my own terminology with that of I-I and Wilber-V, however, since that seems to be the direction of greatest promise and potential for gaining widespread currency, as I see it.)

That's enough. Thanks for reading along.

Anonymous said...

That's quite a comprehensive response from Joe Perez. Wow. He said a lot of things that I was thinking.

There definitely seems to be an air of secrecy and closedness around the SDi and AQAL due to these types of turf battles that you and Joe have mentioned.

The other thing that comes to mind that I wanted to mention briefly is tension between groups and networks as described by eLearning theorists.

Stephen Downes elaborates more here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4126240905912531540 &