As an addendum to Chris' summary of Spiral Dynamics (SD), the green meme has been labeled 'boomeritis' by Ken Wilber, who has taken the original SD model, which was a model for human psychological development and projected it into systems/organizational thinking. I do believe that systems develop in a parallel to human development so it is a good use of the SD model, IMHO. But somewhere along the line, Wilber has mushed human, system and consciousness together and his followers often, at least IMHO, jumble the model to suit their individual beliefs/memes/consciousness.
As Chris wrote, the green meme is the 'highest' level of first-tier human development. It can be roughly illustrated by thinking of the many social movements that emerged in the sixties. Green meme folks embrace concensus, collaboration, civil rights, egalitarianism but they have not quite grasped that there are higher levels of consciousness that might allow them to see solutions in completely different lenses. Wilber coined the phrase 'boomeritis', which is actually the name of Wilber's only novel, to suggest that many liberals get stuck in the green meme, thinking that their level of 'enlightenment' is just fine. As Chris pointed out, most 'first tier' people think their meme is the only meme. According to Wilber's view of the green meme, many well-intentioned liberals get 'stuck', they develop 'boomeritis'. Wilber has backed off from using the phrase boomeritis and you don't hear Integral/Wilber acolytes using the phrase 'boomeritis' but most Integral/Wilber followers get the derision behind Wilber's denigrating choice of labeling the green memes as stuck/ill-with-an-itis. I am not a serious student of either SD or Wilber's work. I've subscribed to IntegralNaked.org from time to time. I've read lots of SD and Wilber books. But I have never read that Integral/Wilberites acknowledge that the SD model is a model, an educated guess. They seem to think it is an accurate description of reality itself. Neither have I heard Wilberites acknowledge that all human beings move in and out of levels of development, levels of consciousness and levels of understanding. I might be green about social issues, orange about art (orange is second tier, above green) and red about homophobia in the same moment. Few human beings live frozen, stuck in just one way of being for all issues in life. As a workplace meeting takes place, for example, participants might move in and out of memes like shifting sands. Most folks, once they become familiar with SD, seem to readily conclude that they are second tier, ABOVE the green meme. It is self-serving to place oneself in the second tier but I have rarely seen SD/Wilberites that acknowledge that seeing themselves as more evolved than other people is not exactly second tier thinking. When they start judging and tagging other people, as Steve Bell did in the article Peggy shared with us, these putative second tier people are not acting like second tier people. We're all beings in process. Even Ken Wilber. * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
