[Category:Books] Read August 2019
Levels of consciousness:
- Beige: Survival
- Purple: Cause and effect, mysticism
- Red: Self-interest, predator-prey, guiltless and amoral
- Blue: Organization, identification as part of a social entity
- Orange: Self-interested organization, ambition, markets
- Green: Communal identification, environmentalism
- Yellow: Integration of the previous levels, flexibility, value of competence, identification as part of a universal whole
- Turquoise: Haven’t read the chapter yet
Societies progress through the levels in a linear fashion, while retaining elements of each of the previous levels as they graduate through them. A “Green” solution will not work for a “Blue” society and cannot be imposed on them from outside, but rather, solutions have to be designed to operate within the current framework used by the group, and perhaps to help transition them to the next system.
These systems represent both zeitgeists of groups, and ways in which individuals operate. Many conflicts have to do with competing value systems, moreso than right/wrong or oppression/victimization.
The levels tend to toggle between emphasis on the individual (red, orange, yellow) or the community (purple, blue, green).
This is a useful model I think. The phenomena it describes are “true” in the sense that the phenomena described by the DSM, such as Bipolar Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder are “true” - we have 7 Billion unique individuals on earth, but by developing simplified categories of belief and behavior, we can recognize patterns. These models are obviously oversimplified when compared to the complexity of an individual, but can be ideated at an appropriate level of complexity for the problem that we want to solve or the action we want to take.