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Journalings

This is a place for sharing items that I think might be of interest to others. My e-mails often involve sending some newly discovered website or an updated project to many different folks, so I thought it might be more efficient to try this approach. Feedback encouraged, and I have turned on the comments permission now that there's a Spam control. Feel free!

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Name: Ramón Sender Barayón
Location: San Francisco, California, United States

More than you want to know right here! http://www.raysender.com

August 21, 2005

Current reading

> Did you guys see this? Very well written by Paul Krassner. Peter Coyote speaks,
> http://www.nypress.com/18/32/books/paulkrassner.cfm

Thanks, C, for the pointer to the Krassner article! Great quotes from Gaskin, and the Libre book sounds like a winner! Anyone who's tasted communal life I'm sure has experienced the group consciousness that evolves. That's what 'tribe' is all about, and tribal psychedelic trips played an important role in merging individual consciousnesses. The only 'church' I'll ever attend is the true democracy of natural entheos.

I'd like to emphasize that life moves forward in a spiral, just like the earth spirals around the sun and the sun spirals around the galaxy. Orbits ARE spirals, which means that although we come back to the same part of the orbit, the space we're in has changed.

I love 'hippie green,' and it always will be my tribe just as Gaskin reports, but I also believe we've bumped up two levels since then, like it or not (see color codes below).


From "A General Introduction to Integral Theory and Comprehensive Mapmaking by Sean M. Saiter. For the full article: http://www.cejournal.org/GRD/Mapmaking.htm
For this quote, scroll down to the Spiral Dynamics section. (Hippies are the Greens on the top level of Tier One, but then Tier Two begins to kick in.)

[QUOTE]
Spiral Dynamics is organized around waves of human unfolding called vMEMEs. A vMEME is shorthand for value meme. Briefly, a meme has been called a "mind virus" because it behaves like a virus though I find calling it a virus is a bit too value laden.[59] It is an independent idea, value, set of thoughts, beliefs, etc. that has the tendency to "infect" or be passed like a virus from person to person, group to group, or culture to culture. Memes are also likened to genes yet they are not physical in any way. In fact, strangely enough they would have no existence outside of human minds yet they exhibit properties that seem to be self-creating (autopoiesis) even at the cost of human lives.[60]

A vMEME specifically refers to a type of meme that is at once "a psychological structure, value system, and mode of adaptation, which can express itself in numerous different ways, from worldviews to clothing styles to governmental forms."[61]Spiral Dynamics outlines eight distinct and basic vMEMEs with the potential for more to be added as time and consciousness develop. These levels have been assigned different colors to represent their respective characteristics and to serve as convenient signifiers. Furthermore, they are divided into two "tiers." Again, I will use Ken Wilber's summary of the vMEMEs to describe the distinct characteristics of each stage:

First Tier:
1. Beige: Archaic-Instinctual. The level of basic survival; food, water, warmth, sex, and safety have priority. Uses habits and instincts just to survive . . . 0.1 percent of the adult population, 0 percent power.

2. Purple: Magical-Animistic. Thinking is animistic; magical spirits, good and bad, swarm the earth leaving blessings, curses, and spells that determine events. Forms into ethnic tribes. The spirits exist in ancestors and bond the tribe . . . 10 percent of the population, 1 percent of the power.

3. Red: Power Gods. First emergence of a distinct self from the tribe; powerful, impulsive, egocentric, heroic . . . The basis of feudal empires power and glory. The world is a jungle full of threats and predators . . . 20 percent of the population, 5 percent of the power.

4. Blue: Conformist Rule. Life has meaning, direction, and purpose, with outcomes determined by an all-powerful Other or Order. This righteous Order enforces a code of conduct based on absolutist and unvarying principles of "right" and "wrong" . . . Rigid social hierarchies . . . Law and order; impulsivity controlled through guilt; concrete-literal fundamentalist belief; obedience to the rule of the Order . . . 40 percent of the population, 30 percent of the power.

5. Orange: Scientific Achievement. At this wave, the self "escapes" from the "herd mentality" of blue, and seeks truth and meaning in individualistic terms--hypothetico-deductive, experimental, objective, mechanistic, operational--"scientific" in the typical sense. The world is a rational and well-oiled machine with natural laws that can be learned, mastered, and manipulated for one's own purposes. Highly achievement oriented, especially (in America) toward materialistic gains . . . 30 percent of the population, 50 percent of the power.

6. Green: The Sensitive Self.[62] Communitarian, human bonding, ecological sensitivity, networking. The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma, and divisiveness; feelings and caring supercede cold rationality; cherishing of the earth, Gaia, life. Against hierarchy; establishes lateral bonding and linking . . . Emphasis on dialogue, relationships . . . this worldview is often called pluralistic relativism . . . 10 percent of the population, 15 percent of the power.

Second Tier:
7. Yellow: Integrative. Life is a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies [holarchies], systems, and forms. Flexibility, spontaneity, and functionality have the highest priority. Differences and pluralities can be integrated into interdependent, natural flows . . . Knowledge and competency should supersede rank, power, status, or group. The prevailing world order is the result of the existence of different levels of reality (memes) and the inevitable patterns of movement up and down the dynamic spiral. Good governance facilitates the emergence of entities throughout the levels of increasing complexity (nested hierarchy).

8. Turquoise: Holistic. Universal holistic system, holons/waves of integrative energies; unites feeling with knowledge [centaur]; multiple levels interwoven into one conscious system. Universal order, but in a living, conscious fashion, not based on external rules (blue) or group bonds (green). A "grand unification" is possible, in theory and in actuality. Sometimes involves the emergence of a new spirituality as a meshwork of all existence. Turquoise thinking uses the entire spiral; sees multiple levels of interaction; detects harmonics, the mystical forces, and the pervasive flow-states that permeate any organization.

Second-tier thinking: 1 percent of the population, 5 percent of the power.[63]

The difference between the two tiers is crucial. The overriding characteristic of first-tier thinking is the inability to perceive the world from the perspective of the other vMEMEs. First-tier thinking believes its worldview to be "better" than any of the other memes, including second-tier. People in the first tier have a chronic lack of ability to step out their values. It cannot grasp the entire spectrum of interior and cultural development. Second-tier thinking, on the other hand, doesn't have this problem. Second-tier thinking is characterized by the ability to consider the other vMEMEs in their own right and is not afraid of dynamic hierarchical systems based upon this meta-perspective. It is in the second-tier where all worldviews are beginning to be integrated and balanced into a "higher" way of perceiving.[64]It is a multileveled, multidimensional, richly holarchical view.[65] Second-tier thinking is rare. However, according to many, it is emerging on a greater scale now than it ever has especially with many "green memers" moving up the spiral at the same time:

With only 1 percent of the population at second-tier thinking (and only 0.1 percent at turquoise), second-tier consciousness is relatively rare because it is now the "leading edge" of collective human evolution. As examples, Beck and Cowan mention items ranging from Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere[66] to the growth of transpersonal psychology, with increases in frequency definitely on the way--and even higher memes still in the offing.
[END QUOTE]

Ramon comments: Last sentence of second-to-last paragraph:
"However, according to many, it is emerging on a greater scale now than it ever has especially with many "green memers" moving up the spiral at the same time." I think that's where a lot of us commune grads are evolving.

Note that these new Tier 2 levels INCLUDE all the previous ones, so it's not a cop-out, just a 'new spiral.' Do check out the main website for a brain-expanding bunch of very interesting essays on various topics.
http://www.cejournal.org/gpage.html

Beyond that particular 'map,' I've been reading this amazing conversation between Terrance McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham titled "The Revolutionary Mind." McKenna is really an amazing mind, with the ability to look into what Stewart Brand calls 'The Long Now,' although according to McKenna, there seems to be an encounter lurking at 2012 with the unknown.

(Now where's that damn lug wrench...)

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