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The Never-Ending Upward Quest A WIE Editor Encounters the Practical and Spiritual Wisdom of Spiral Dynamics An interview with Dr. Don Beck by Jessica Roemischer
IF THERE EVER WAS THE PERFECT GREEN EXISTENCE that simultaneously answered every First Tier need for security, I had found it at forty. In the "Green Mountain State" of Vermont, no less, surrounded by organic farms and neighborly folks! After spending ten months driving forty thousand miles, literally, all over the state, looking for the perfect place, my partner and I bought it: a magical, quintessentially postcard-perfect New England farm, complete with a country farmhouse, barn, maple sugar house, pond, fields, and 180-degree views of Vermont's magnificent mountains. The soil was so fertile that everything in the compost pile took root. A photograph from the 1940s showed a farmer standing next to the barn with a fifteen-foot corn stalk. Our plan was to start a small organic farm, to create a haven for life, including our own. And as if that wasn't enough—through my partner's inheritance, I would never again have financial concerns or have to worry about making a living. What could be better...?
Well, spiritual transformation—my own. As the flush of our new farm wore off, I was haunted. In fact, I had been haunted long before we bought the farm, but had gone ahead with it anyway. (First Tier dies hard.) I still thought I could find what I was looking for in personal relationship—a decision ideologically justified by the eco-driven dream described above. (GREEN and relationship get another chance.) So I raked, I mowed, I weeded, I tried to find ultimate meaning with my partner, but nothing seemed to appease this inner restlessness. One afternoon, I drove to Boston to hear spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen speak. The haunted, restless part of myself rejoiced at what was revealed: a higher purpose and untold possibility. And back at the farm, I became even more unsettled. One morning, I was standing in the kitchen next to the maple syrup cans and had a vision: a funnel of pure energy was pulling me headlong into it. I looked out at the trees. Nothing could be more beautiful than our new farm. But no matter how pristine was my own small corner of paradise, no matter how wonderful were the personal Life Conditions I had created for myself, the world was in desperate shape, and those larger Life Conditions seemed to be generating an undeniable calling, a higher purpose that was coming from way beyond all my GREEN ideas, from way beyond my relationship, from way beyond the maple trees, and from way beyond the mountains. No matter how beautiful this place was—and it sure was beautiful—it simply wasn't enough. Having turned forty, my midlife crisis took the form of an inner imperative: I had to follow this calling, for the sake of life itself. When, a month later, I decided to leave to pursue spiritual transformation for real, my dad was surprisingly even-keeled. A seasoned philosophy professor, he remarked lovingly, "Jess, of all my kids, you're the one who makes me glad that I'm a philosopher." An evolved response if ever I heard one, which made it just that little bit easier to take the leap to Second Tier. The Leap to Second Tier WIE: Your colleague, the late Clare Graves, had a prophetic sense of the evolutionary transition we would be called to make. Thirty years ago he said, "Humans must prepare for a momentous leap.... It is not merely a transition to a new level of existence but the start of a new 'movement' in the symphony of human history." Can you speak about the transformation that is required for us to survive our current Life Conditions, and evolve to Second Tier? DB: In the late 1970s, Graves began to find, in his research and through observations, thinking patterns that he could not explain. He began to observe, in certain people he was testing, an extraordinary quality and complexity in decision-making and other aspects of cognition. They seemed to have different kinds of minds. They could find more solutions more quickly. They seemed not to be driven by status. There was the dropping away of fear, which is perhaps the most significant marker. Fear seemed to have vanished. Now caution didn't, but fear did. Tribal safety (PURPLE), raw power (RED), salvation for all eternity (BLUE), individual success (ORANGE), and the need to be accepted (GREEN) all diminished in importance. Instead there was a growing curiosity about just being alive in the expansive universe. WIE: The dropping away of fear would certainly signify an enormous shift in human consciousness and in the motivations that shape our human existence. Did Clare Graves find any other indications of this approaching evolutionary transition? DB: I believe he had early evidence of minds that were becoming aware of the problems we are facing today, long before these problems became visible to the rest of us. He used to tell me that he felt that probably one in ten thousand brains is produced with different biological features and frequencies. And those individuals don't conform to the norms of society because their minds are already set for a different paradigm. He finally came to the conclusion that something unique was happening here that didn't appear to be just the next step up from the GREEN level. It seemed to be a new category. Life Conditions that would require this new thinking complexity that he observed three decades ago have finally appeared on the scene. But his observations were way before the microchip, before the end of the Cold War, and before the discovery of DNA and molecular biology. So Graves sensed that a change of a profound nature was occurring, one that was beyond the sum total of the first six memetic systems combined. Now that, of course, was a theory. But as we look at the extraordinary complexity we are facing, this theory seems to gain more and more credibility. Because now we can see the planet from the moon, and now we have these wonderful scanning devices and satellites that can even penetrate beneath surfaces, and for the first time we can begin to understand the planet itself as a total ecosystem in a way that was never possible before. Together with that, the world in which we now live is struggling with the appearance of all of the memetic cultural expressions at once—ethnic tribes, egocentric warlords, both dangerous and redemptive "isms," a whole plateful of opportunists and materialists-in-the making, and a host of postmodern egalitarian political, religious, and professional structures—oh my, it makes a grown man want to weep. What do we do? WIE: Right—that's the big question. How will the leap to Second Tier answer this question? DB: At this point, all of the old memetic systems have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting. While the full display of the YELLOW meme, the first level of Second Tier, is years in the future, keep in mind that the ultimate texture and capacity within this next memetic level must match and/or exceed the complexity of the Life Conditions that it confronts. It must sense the big picture and the interconnection of everything. So YELLOW will have an enhanced vertical perspective with the ability to transcend and include and value what came before, and also to anticipate what will be next. I believe that the eighth meme code—TURQUOISE— will rise in conjunction with the seventh, YELLOW. You could think of YELLOW as "left brain with feelings" and TURQUOISE as "right brain with data." TURQUOISE will focus on the larger waves and energy flows and will work on behalf of the Life Force itself, in its many manifestations in life-forms on the planet. The Second Tier thought structures will combine elements of YELLOW and TURQUOISE in searching for the quality and depth of thinking that can deal with complex problems. And with this is the recognition that the whole spiral itself is spiritual and that we're on this upward ladder of human emergence. That's spirituality. But since memes are not types of people but forms of adaptive intelligences in people, YELLOW and TURQUOISE rarely exist in full measure in any person alive at this time. Different people possess different fragments, or components, or even versions, and this makes the formation of what I would call "creative brain syndicates" with insightful interactions and dialogues even more important. So it ought to engender some serious talk for the first time, and not just in isolated conferences where everyone does their own thing. It's going to require some deep dialogue. And whether or not, once again, humans can rise to the occasion is the existential question of the age. The Leap to Second Tier "The present moment finds our society attempting to negotiate the most difficult, but at the same time the most exciting transition the human race has faced to date. It is not merely a transition to a new level of existence but the start of a new 'movement' in the symphony of human history." Clare Graves "Like everything around us, we are in a state of constant motion. We are shaped by the Code of the Spiral. In short, we can change our own psychology. The brain can rewire itself. Society is not static. Today's problems are yesterday's solutions. Evolution and revolution are part of our nature. We are on perpetual treks of the mind. Many believe we are passing now through such a momentous transformation, a major turning point, a history-making sea change. A new and entirely different pattern of thought is beginning to emerge world-wide and in various fields of human activity. This surge into the Second Tier involves a shift into a totally new dimension of thinking, a new conceptual order. The supreme issue is restoration of the world so that life may continue—not just human life, but life itself. For the first time man is able to face existence in all its dimensions. grounded in a value system rooted truly in knowledge and cosmic reality instead of delusions brought on by animal and social needs. The mind is suddenly open for cognitive roaming over the entire human tapestry and up the evolutionary Spiral." Don Beck & Graham Linscott
The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future
MY LIFE FLASHED BEFORE MY EYES. It didn't matter that I had given up the farm in Vermont, become a student of a spiritual teacher, and joined a community of students who were genuinely dedicated to spiritual transformation. My GREENness hadn't gone anywhere. (Nor had the rest of the First Tier memes, for that matter.) Terri, a friend, said to me one day, "Jessica, you've been complaining about how we, as a group, are not environmental enough, but just look back on your own life. Despite your eco-image, you were consuming a lot more when you were living in Vermont than you are now!" It was true: My Audi was sitting in the driveway. Shopping sprees were infrequent. Living and working with many others, I was using less electricity, oil, gas, and water. If I let my GREEN self-righteous self-importance drop away for a minute, I had to admit that, objectively speaking, I was actually more environmental than I had ever been in Vermont. How illuminating, and ironic! And together with my long-held GREEN identity, all sorts of other ideas and ideals were exposed, and the First Tier memes fell out like a deck of cards.
In light of these new glimpses from a higher perspective, I now realized I really had been at odds with myself. My GREEN eco-consciousness was always in conflict with my ORANGE materialism. My RED independence was in opposition to my GREEN need for acceptance and communality, and the "Mean Green Meme" was hell-bent on pitting itself against Second Tier, luring me with its righteous idealism and narcissistic demands so I wouldn't have to meet the evolutionary challenge to trust, let go of fear, and actually transform. Now, getting back to enlightenment, well, as we've been finding, "Everybody wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change." But, to be honest, I didn't think that applied to me. I mean, I was spiritual. I was serious. I had made sacrifices. But somewhere deep down, evolution was evolving my perspective and I realized: Clare Graves was right, the leap to Second Tier is "momentous," because it's pointing to nothing less than the difference between inner conflict and profound inner resolution between all the parts of myself, all the memes. As Don Beck pointed out, it is the dropping away of fear. And that's no small thing. It means being completely at home in the universe. And in that shift in perspective, I discovered more: the whole spiral is necessary. It's what got me to where I am today, and to the iota of humility required to recognize that I really am part of the "never-ending upward quest" that Don Beck describes. And this is only the beginning. Because freedom from fear and irresolution means freedom to stand in awe of this miraculous, ever-ascending spiral of human emergence. And freedom to stand in awe of the cosmic order that creates it. As depths of insight and vast realms of consciousness glint from the upper reaches of the spiral, the real possibilities begin. Excerpts and supporting material used with author's permission from Beck, Don E. and Cowan, Christopher, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change (Malden, MA: Blackwell Inc., 1996); Beck, Don E., "The Search for Cohesion in the Age of Fragmentation," (article written for the 1999 State of the World Forum); Beck, Don and Linscott, Graham, The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future (Denton, TX: New Paradigm Press, 1991). Richard Dawkins quote from Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1989), taken from the website, www.unblinkingeye.com; Clare Graves quotes from Graves, Clare, "Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap," The Futurist (1974); Ray Kurzweil quote taken from the website, www.edge.org; Elisabet Sahtouris quote as told to WIE editor, Carter Phipps, Spring, 2002. 
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Fall–Winter 2002
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