Flourishing Today

Spiral Dynamics

In theory, we are all human. We all live on the planet Earth, and unless we decide to go off and live in a cave, we have to deal with one another the best we can. Recently I was talking to a friend who advocates public health care, and couldn’t understand why some people “got it” and the others strongly rejected her ideas. Her experience left her wondering: what’s wrong with them??

Over drinks, we sat down and I explained Spiral Dynamics, a theory of human development introduced in the 1996 book Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change by Don Beck and Chris Cowan and was based on the theory of psychology professor Clare W. Graves. It was used highly in Apartheid South Africa to help create understandings that don’t trivialize experiences and cultures to a black and white understanding, but raise an awareness that different people exist with different values based on the environments they are in — just as a child who raised in a zen monastery might be in a different place in how they relate to life than a kid of the same age, surviving in the streets of New York. Each experience is valid – they simply look differently at how to relate to the world. Don Beck, states that these stages of social development and cultural dynamics “spark violence, spread prosperity, and shape globalization.”

As the environments change, we are forced to adapt and meet those changes with new values, while bringing along the things we’ve learned from before. The hotshot gunslinger who is getting old, realizes that he is no longer the fastest gun in the West, and comes to realize we might want to have some community rules around here. To make it even more complicated,  people in the same value system might have greater acceptance or rejection around other systems. One green might reject the gunslinger attitude of a red, and see the orange as only a slightly more civilized red. Where as another green might also reject the values of the red, but see the orange as a potential partner for spreading a philosophy. On top of that, none of these are solid, but instead a dynamic system depending on life situations and stresses. Someone who might ordinarily hang out in a green value system, might find themselves turning to the lessons learned in a beige or orange system in order to survive. And it is theorized that each person is a breakdown of a primary 50%, 25% and 25%.

The late Professor Clare W. Graves, Union College, New York said it best:

“At each stage of human existence the adult man is off on his quest of his holy grail, the way of life he seeks by which to live. At his first level he is on a quest for automatic physiological satisfaction. At the second level he seeks a safe mode of living, and this is followed in turn, by a search for heroic status, for power and glory, by a search for ultimate peace; a search for material pleasure, a search for affectionate relations, a search for respect of self, and a search for peace in an incomprehensible world. And, when he finds he will not find that peace, he will be off on his ninth level quest.”

So why do I bring this up? Whether you’re in business or looking to connect with people around you, the planet is inhabited by people who are operating in these systems whether they know it or not. It makes it a lot easier to live with them, and enjoy the eccentricities around you, when you realize: It’s not personal. It’s people.

Riding the flow..
Kaye

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