Healthy and Unhealthy Expressions of Each Stage

Each stage has both healthy and unhealthy expressions. Below are some of examples of healthy and unhealthy expressions of each stage.

Beige: Archaic Survival Values

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Less Healthy:

• People in war zone shell shock; post traumatic stress disorder

• Mental illness; senility

More Healthy:

• Sensitivity to intuition about impending harm

• Heightened physical senses and abilities

Purple and Red: Magic and Power Values

Less Healthy:

• Baseless superstitions

• The tribal mentality and loyalty of street gangs

• Tyranny, violent crime, dominator hierarchies, exploitation of the weak

• Indifference to the harm you inflict on others

More Healthy:

• A sense of familial belonging

• Awe at the mysteries of nature

• Rich imagination

• Personal empowerment and courage – the inner strength to overcome challenges and explore new territory

• The free flow of liberating, creative energy

Blue: Traditional Mythic Values

Less Healthy:

• Rigid dogmatism, close-mindedness

• Self-righteousness, judging others, intolerance, hypocrisy

• Unrealistic demands for perfection

More Healthy:

• Stability and order brought to chaos

• Service to a noble cause, having a higher purpose in life

• Fulfilling responsibilities and keeping commitments

• Honor, integrity, and self-discipline

Orange: Modern Rational Values

Less Healthy:

• Scientific materialism (denial of inner realities)

• Extreme competitiveness that damages relationships and/or the environment

• Manipulation and exploitation of others to advance one's personal success, unethical shortcuts

More Healthy:

• Healthy independence, finding your own voice

• Rational objective thinking and scientific discoveries

• Personal achievement and excellence

Green: Postmodern Pluralistic Values

Less Healthy:

• Hypocrisy: the exclusion of those who do not share pluralistic values

• Extreme relativism, the inability to make any value judgments or distinctions

• The tyranny of consensus, being a slave to "group-think" – the inability to take individual action when it is needed

More Healthy:

• Working for equality and the full inclusion of all, including the disenfranchised

• A commitment to the well-being of the environment and all forms of life

• Embracing diversity

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Yellow: Integral Values

Less Healthy:

• Arrogance

• Elitism

• Isolation and alienation

More Healthy:

• Mental and emotional flexibility

• The ability to perceive the whole and understand how all of the parts interact, big vision thinking

• The ability to accept, appreciate, and respect the values of all of the previous stages, the and people who hold them

The Pre-Trans Fallacy

There are stages of development before the orange or rational stage (pre-rational stages), and stages of development after the rational stage (post-rational or trans-rational stages). Pre-rational and trans-rational stages have something in common: they are both “non-rational.” Pre-rational stages are non-rational because the full capacity for rational thinking has not yet developed. Trans-rational stages can be non-rational because the ability has developed to move beyond rational thinking (while still retaining the ability to use rationality when appropriate).

If we do not understand the difference between pre-rational and trans-rational stages, we may make the mistake of lumping all phenomena and experience into two broad categories: rational and non-rational. We are then in danger of taking something that is pre-rational and attributing it to a trans-rational stage of development (as some aspects of the New Age spiritual movement do). Or, we might take something that is genuinely trans-rational and attribute it to immature pre-rational stages of development.

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Wilber believes that Freud had a tendency to attribute all non-rational phenomenon (both pre-rational and trans-rational) to infantile pre-rational stages of development, and that Carl Jung, on the other hand, sometimes attributed pre-rational impulses and experiences to trans-rational stages of development. Understanding the difference between pre-rational and trans-rational stages and phenomena can help us avoid this mistake.

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Hierarchy, Holarchy, & Holons

One of the characteristics of the green stage is that people at green tend to dislike hierarchy. When green looks at each of the previous value structures, it sees “dominator” hierarchies in which those at the top hold the most power and can oppress and exploit those below them. Extreme green thinking rejects all hierarchy, and in doing so can become uncomfortable with the idea of stages of development, believing that such a concept privileges those who are judged to be at higher or later stages of development. In other words, green is the first stage that may reject the notion of stages altogether.

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Making a distinction between “hierarchies” and “holarchies” can help to resolve this concern. Typically we think of a hierarchy as taking the shape of a pyramid or triangle, with a few privileged people sitting at the top oppressing those below them. Another way to think of hierarchy is as a hierarchy of inclusion, or holarchy. Instead of a pyramid, we can think of a holarchy as a series of concentric circles, with each larger circle including but also transcending the previous circles.
 

                                       Dominator Hierarchy                              Holarchy

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In a holarchy, each new stage of healthy development embraces all of the stages that came before, while also expanding beyond them.

The idea of a holarchy brings to mind the words of the poet Edwin Markham:

He drew a circle that shut me out —

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.

In The Eye of Spirit Wilber writes:

During the evolutionary process, that which is whole at one stage becomes a part of the whole of the next. Each and every thing in the Kosmos is thus what Arthur Koestler called a “holon,” a whole that is simultaneously a part of some other whole, indefinitely. Whole atoms are part of whole molecules, whole molecules are part of cells, and so on. Each is a whole/part, a holon, existing in a natural hierarchy, or an order of increasing wholeness and holism. – The Eye of Spirit, pg. 67

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In human language we can see a holarchy of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books.

Wilber writes the following in response to the green postmodernism concerns with the notion of hierarchy:

The hard part had to do with hierarchies. Granted, rigid social hierarchies are deplorable, and oppressive social rankings are pernicious. Postmodernism has fortunately made us all more sensitive to those injustices. But even the anti-hierarchy critics have their own strong hierarchies (or value rankings). The postmodernists value pluralism over absolutism – and that is their value hierarchy. Even the eco-philosophers, who abhor hierarchies that place man on the top of the evolutionary scale, have their own very strong hierarchy, which is: subatomic elements are parts of atoms, which are parts of molecules, which are parts of cells, which are parts of organisms, which are parts of ecosystems, which are parts of the biosphere. They thus value the biosphere above particular organisms, such as man, and they deplore man's using the biosphere for his own selfish and ruinous purposes. All of that comes from their particular value hierarchy.

Feminists have several hierarchies (e.g., partnership societies are better than power societies; linking is better than ranking; liberation is better than oppression); systems theorists have hundreds of hierarchies (all natural systems are arranged hierarchically); biologists and linguists and developmental psychologists all have hierarchies.   – Introduction to Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, pgs. xii-xiii

Wilber’s integral theory is, in part, an attempt to create a map of reality large enough to include all of these hierarchies (or holarchies), and show how they relate to each other – and how together they comprise a larger, systemic, evolutionary whole.

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Returning to the idea of a holon (a whole that is simultaneously a part of a larger whole), Wilber writes:

. . . that which transcends can repress. And thus normal and natural hierarchies can degenerate into pathological hierarchies, into dominator hierarchies. In these cases, an arrogant holon doesn’t want to be both a whole and a part; it wants to be a whole, period. It does not want to be a mutual part of something larger than itself; it does not want to share in the communion of its fellow holons; it wants to dominate them . . . Power replaces communion; domination replaces communication; oppression replaces reciprocity. – The Eye of Spirit, pg. 67

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Movement Through Stages

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The impetus to shift to a new value structure has been called “The Humpty Dumpty Effect.”  Humpty Dumpty has had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men (in other words, all of the resources available to us at our present stage) can’t put Humpty together again. Movement into a new stage begins when our present level of thinking is inadequate to solve the problems we face, when our problems can only be solved with a shift into a new way of thinking. This process repeats itself over and over as we move up the spiral, as changing times repeatedly demand new ways of thinking.

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Attempts to change how people think or what they do, while ignoring the stage they are at, are likely to be unsuccessful. Attention must be paid to the underlying stages that govern not just what people think, but how they think and what they value. 

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The following is a list of factors that can cause a person to be ready to move from one stage to the next.

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What Moves People from Beige (Instinctual Survival) to Purple (Tribal Magical): 

• Successful beige living permits curiosity about the larger world out there, and more awareness of the threats to safety and security that it holds. With time to think about why things happen, direct observations begin to link cause and effect.    

• Memories begin connecting now with then.

• New-found feelings bring attachments to persons and objects.

•  Social needs for belonging begin to emerge.

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What Moves People from Purple (Tribal Magical) to Red (Power Gods): 

• Greater exposure to the world reveals how baseless many of purple’s superstitions really are, challenging the credibility of purple leaders. Placating the spirits does not always work – they can be unreliable and whimsical. The spirits are not all-powerful after all. 

• The purple value structure begins to lose some of its fear-based control over people. 

• With basic safety and security needs met, the need for personal autonomy arises. People begin to think of taking individual action, apart from the tribe, and the individual ego emerges.

• There is a growing sense that a powerful individual can actually influence the world.

• As personal autonomy begins to assert itself, in order to keep people under control purple leadership pours on more and more control, stifling individual yearnings to break free of the clan or tribe. The chief takes on a new authority, that of a powerful leader of the pack.

•  When natural competition for resources pits purple groups against each other, those who assert themselves prosper the most.

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What Moves People from Red (Power Gods) to Blue (Law and Order, Higher Truth): 

•  There are some problems in the world that a tough individual alone cannot solve.

• When blue first begins to creep in, it is used to justify or legitimize red actions. My good fortune or privileged status becomes the result of God’s will. A higher divine order determines one’s station in life, and anoints the rule of the elite. 

• The have-nots justify their long-suffering with the hope that everything will be set right “in the great by and by.”

• Awareness of others begins to creep in, along with a growing understanding of consequences, and how our actions affect others. Other people begin to be seen as relevant beings with inherent worth and rights.

• Guilt and doubts about unbridled desires and impulsive acts begin to emerge.

• Energy begins to be put into rationalizing one’s actions.

• Formal rules (not personal whims) begin to appear, and prescriptions for righteous living replace the arbitrary demands of the ruling elite, and transcend classes of people. At first, these new blue standards are enforced with red force. Higher laws are forced on the masses by the ruling elite “for their own good.”  [This is what the Taliban and other religous fundamentalists attempt to do.]  

• Blue is needed to stabilize the tumultuous rivalries of red. Individual egos must be subdued by a Higher Authority that is stronger than them and any of their lesser Gods. In both Judeo-Christian and Islamic history, purple and red tribes required the appearance of an all-powerful monotheistic blue God to bring them out of chaos and move them toward a stable authoritarian order.

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What Moves People from Blue (Law and Order, Higher Truth) to Orange (Rational, Scientific, Individual Achievement):

• Once blue has stabilized the world and brought order, the scales begin tipping toward autonomy again, and the pendulum begins to swing from an external locus of control back to an internal locus of control.

• There is an initial cautious, inoffensive, and controlled movement back toward independent thinking. It becomes possible to deviate from the One Truth, as long as one remains in close proximity to it.

• True believers begin to voice quiet uncertainty among some of their peers. One may be respectful of authority when it is present, but critical when it is not. 

• People begin to seek freedom from the limitations that accompany faith in the One True Doctrine, or from the restraints imposed by relationships with other true believers. They may become increasingly angry and resentful over limitations imposed on their personal freedom.

• “I’m tired of being ‘right.’  I just want to be happy.”

• The ability to distinguish among different versions of the truth emerges. Questions arise about exactly where truth resides, and who is authorized to interpret it. Truth becomes open to the masses, not just a privileged priestly hierarchy. 

• Doubts about the infallibility of authority allow for reinterpretation of the truth to better fit the “real world”. 

• God wants us to use the brains he gave us, not just blindly obey. 

• Real improvements begin to seem possible through independent thinking and a little less restriction from authority. The trains don’t have to just run on time; they can be made to run faster, too. Believers begin discussing reforms they would like to implement. 

• We come to believe that we ourselves are a better authority than the established authority. Newly emerging autonomy layered over a blue belief in absolute authority can lead to a strong sense of our own total rightness. 

• People search out the failings of established authorities, whose feet turn out to be made of clay. Whistle blowers appear. The misdeeds of those in authority are publicly reported.

• Self-made martyrs appear who need to be punished by the system so they can be reborn even stronger. By reacting against these critics, blue establishes their legitimacy. If martyrs are ignored, they will find a way to somehow be punished or made victims of the authority.

• One begins to accept that overt rejection of authority will cost them the support of those who still believe in it.

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What Moves People from Orange (Rational, Scientific, Individual Achievement) to Green (Equality and Sensitivity): 

• People begin to wonder if there is more to life than scientific materialism or financial success.

• Feeling the pangs of loneliness and isolation brought on by constant competition.

• The realization that divisive competitiveness makes peace of mind hard to find. 

• Experiencing an increased need for others, and not just as means to an end.

• Increased awareness of feelings. What others think and want begins to matter more. 

• The pendulum begins to swing from an internal locus of control back to an external locus of control. Polls, surveys, and discussions begin to inform one’s decisions, rather than one’s own judgement alone.

• The realization that there is not equality among human beings. Many people have far more than they need, while others go without basic necessities.

• A growing awareness of the environmental fallout of human technologies and consumption.

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What Moves People from Green (Equality and Sensitivity) to Yellow (Integrated Systems): 

• Doubts about the effectiveness of collectivism begin to surface. Green consensus-building makes quick, focused, responses to changing conditions difficult, even when they are badly needed. Individuals are able to get things done, and done well, all by themselves.

• Larger issues appear that are beyond the scope of any one community to handle itself. The collective process no longer matches up to the complexity of the problems being faced. One begins looking outside of the group for alternative solutions. 

• The price of keeping everyone happy becomes too high. One begins to feel frustration and impatience at the group’s needs.

• The pendulum begins to swing from an external locus of control back to an internal locus of control.

• Tempered individualism begins rising from the collective, without confinement to orange islands of independence or tough red exploitiveness. This results in an interdependence that frees one to be as he or she chooses on their own individual terms, sometimes seeking inclusion and cooperating when the situation warrants it.

• Positive relationships with others begin to be seen as one important component of being, but not the sole purpose of it. What others think is interesting, but no longer critical. There is no deliberate rejection of belonging, but the need to be part of a group just begins to fade. 

• A certain amount of disharmony becomes natural, and one’s tolerance for open contradictions grows.

• Spirituality meets up with quantum physics.

• One begins to feel the power of a mind that can reach out to the universe without hand-holding from the group. The interactive universe is becoming more intriguing than either autonomy or community.

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What Moves People from Yellow (Integrated Systems) to Turquoise (Global Holism): 

• Much of the time yellow will stand alone, relying on the power of knowledge and information, not colleagues. But as the spiral zig-zags once again between a focus on “me” and “us,” a new sense of community begins to replace individualism, but this time without the heavy emotional loadings of green communities. 

• The recognition that there are some problems that cannot be resolved by yellow individuals alone, no matter how much they know or learn. This requires a return to the communal, only this time on a global level. Turquoise, the global collective of individuals, rises to enfold yellow, the information elites.

• There is heightened respect for the greater holistic wisdom apparent within living systems.

• Yellow concerns with “what?” and “how?” are supplanted by questions of “why?” and “who?”

• Spirituality begins to creep back in amongst the likes of astrophysicists, advanced philosopher-thinkers, and high-order mathematicians. 

• The search for universal causality and the means necessary to reorder the chaos of the world are revived.

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A Culture's Center of Gravity

Well-entrenched worldviews create powerful supporting structures and institutions around themselves. These supporting structures may include family, community, political, social, and religious groups that embody the values of a particular stage. The stage that an organization or culture as a whole is at acts as a kind of developmental magnet for the people in that organization or culture. This means that the culture will tend to pull people up to its current stage – up to its cultural "center of gravity." But if individuals try to move beyond the current stage of their culture or organization, their culture's center of gravity usually tries (overtly or covertly) to pull them back to its present stage. 

We may be deeply embedded in relationships, groups, and institutions that are built on the values and worldview of our current stage of development. When this is the case, a painful uprooting may be required before growth to a new stage can happen. Organizations and families can split in two when new stages emerge in only some of their members.