Some thoughts on Spiral Dynamics

Some morning thoughts on Spiral Dynamics solicited on reading some posts from the SD community. And in particular this thought from D.Beck (citing C.Graves) “[we] are [able to] recalibrate our entire world when life conditions overwhelm the existing patterns”

This key thought about the way people organize and how they change the structures and basis of the organization is found in the general model of Spiral Dynamics. Largely a model that describes the adaptations of humans to new meta ‘life conditions’ as they emerge out of the existing structures of relationship and understanding of the world.

It is dynamic in the sense that it describes and predicts a Tao swing from a broadly individualistic center to a broadly group/community center – each movement incorporating the lessons of the prior modalities, but also in the movement, over time, creating new conundrums which emerge out of the new organization.

We humans do not remain at a functional static level of experience and/or existence. Always moving, testing, inquiring, searching for ways to meet the needs and longings of each of our multiple levels of awareness and physical needs. It is this compulsion that is the engine of the dynamo that is the human spirit. It is this ability to “to re calibrate our entire world when life conditions overwhelm the existing patterns” that makes humans so interesting. Even rising to the lofty place of “being the consciousness of the planet”, as James Lovelock put it recently.

It is spiral because the issues that are encountered by humans in this world are essentially the same, but have different inflections and details depending on the “life conditions” that are in force when they are engaged.  Similar in terms of being at similar places in the circle of life, but spiral as they are encountered at different levels. Levels distinguished by unique particulars of complexity and organization and paradigmatic context. (For example: The questions of needing food and shelter are similar for the tribal peoples of Africa living on the veldt as well as the modern urban apartment dweller. But the details and complexities of each system are very different requiring very different patterns, systems and knowledge’s to negotiate each context.)

These processes can be seen to function in individuals as well as more generally in large historical human development over centuries. In each domain, from the small to the large, the individual to the national, and even the global context, there are forces of creativity and a restlessness that are not capable, or willing to “leave well enough alone”.

As each of these centers of life undulate through the pursuit of meaning, understanding, “peak experience”, satisfaction they will be faced with the same questions over and over, but just from ever more complex levels. What is the pattern of organization as a community? What is the pattern of organization that is me as an individual? Always seeking to understand the underlying “I”. Sometimes it seems clear who that “I” is. And in that moment perhaps it becomes a little less clear who “We” are as a community. And visa versa. Sometimes it is clear who we are as a community. Think of times in western history when ones identity was folded into ones relationship to the church, or ones feudal lord. Or the current “individualistic” western meme contrasted with the more traditional community/group identity of Eastern frames of reference.

In these conditions/states the identity of the group is well established, and the inklings about who “I” am as an individual can be experienced as a radical act of protest. How does what “I know about it is in  our group/community: A sort of Group “I”,  now square up and incorporate with what I now know of “I” as a separate entity. How does “I” fit into the context of “Us”? And that sets off a new inquiry.

New in the sense that it is unsettled in the current context, and the ready answers of the past are insufficient to the present. Same question. Different Context, or Paradigm from which it is being asked. Later, that question will be more or less answered. And the patterns developed to engage the inquiry will begin to be insufficient to the now emerging question: Who are all these individuals in terms of the community…. And a new level of inquiry begins.

Same questions. Different starting point. The Tao of existence. The Tao of inquiry.

New. Old. Same. Different. Patterns within patterns.

In these transitions of growth from one clarity into a state of non-clarity on the way to a new clarity, there are, broadly speaking, two responses/reactions. These transition times are epochs of serious perturbation as people and groups have to make a decision whether to go forward into the unknown or remain in the thrall and comfort of the well known; if not worn out well known.

In these periods, and I suggest we are in such a period of turbulent transition now, these very opposite forces lay claim to the “truth”. The “middle” essentially vanishes into extreme polarities and points of view. Some saying “We must look forward to find the answer to our challenges”, as A.Lincoln put it in his day: “…As our times are new we must think anew, and disenthrall ourselves from the creeds of the past…”. Others unrelentingly holding out that the way it is is just fine, it just needs to be reformed. Maybe cleaned up. Maybe just try harder to do it and do it better. “If we would just quit being sinners, hold fast and true to the old and established ways (..The Founding Fathers The Old Time Religion.) and shape up everything will be ok”. And this polarity gives rise to what is called in the current environment the “conservative” or right wing position of fundamentalism, and the presumed contrary position of “liberals” or the “left wing” position of progressive. (Of course these are not the only poles of this dynamic. And indeed these political manifestations of the “dynamic” are not even the most important. But they do occupy a large amount of the conscious attention of the nation and the world.)

The Spiral Dynamic model now predicts an emergent condition that integrates the lessons/learnings from the entire past history of humankind’s questions and answer to the fundamental questions of “Who am I” and “Who are we”, “How do we/I survive?” “What is happening around me?”. The model suggests that the levels of experience with these questions has led through various modalities of organization of relationships. All necessary in their time. All no longer sufficient to contend with and encompass the challenges and needs of the present. Now, again, we are in a transition period from This to That. What “That” will be is as yet unclear. But some of the general qualities and outlines are coming clear.

Perhaps the most essential quality of the emerging meme is systemic integration of all that has come before. After all the fights and struggles, the wars and the killings; enlightenments and learnings, and whatever else it takes and will take to get thru this particular transition; eventually all of the past human experience will synthesize into a new, larger comprehension, more complete and complex organization. One large enough to contain the questions and breakdowns of the prior condition. One sufficient enough to be the basis for the next level of human endeavor.

On Corporations: What does it mean to be a “Citizen”?

Senator Sanders published a article, copied below, where he exposes a serious flaw in the tax code which allows profitable corporations to pay zero, little, or even get a payment – effectively enjoying a negative tax rate!
I think these facts need to be published and cited repeatedly in the face of those calls for even more tax reductions and tax rate reductions championed by various organizations, and politicals like the GOP, and their more astringent form, the TeaParty. How much lower than zero will be satisfactory?

That said, I have one substantial disagreement with this article. Sen. Sanders closes with this comment

“The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

I think we need to talk about participating in the country and in the society that created the context for them to exist and then to thrive.  It may be a sacrifice in some sense.  But in order for the right balance to be restored between the private/corporate sector and the nation within which it lives there needs to be a different and better way of thinking about what it means to be a citizen.  Corporate as well as individual.

There is a serious flaw in our “Pioneer Ethos” thinking, that “I did it all by myself and without the help of anyone”. It infuses every discussion about the notion of citizen vs community, or the role of government vs the role of the private sector.

In fact this is not true. The ability for any company, as well as individual, to thrive is profoundly predicated upon the context, or, the paradigm within which they were born and raised.  In the case of corporations this paradigm is the nation and the body of laws, customs and beliefs that define it.   Being an American company does indeed create an obligation to the community. We recognize this in the individual sphere by the high value we place on our families. Our families, our “blood” or those who gave us life, and then gave us all that was necessary to live, grow, and thrive. There are many layers of family. Immediate family, extended family, and then our community, our local family. All of which exists in even larger containers, such as towns, cities, and ultimately the nation that we are citizens of.

I assert that the framework of family, or more broadly, citizenship, applies to corporations as well. That the power of the corporations, as inflected in the laws passed by those politicians whom they have sponsored, has legally enabled them to bypass their responsibility to the country does not absolve them from this responsibility. [And of course it is the same politicians who continue to demand even more tax cuts, even less tax rates for their sponsors. Seemingly there is no limit to these demands. Seemingly there is no other issue salient to the country than this one if the agenda and proposals forwarded by the Republicans and some Democrats are any indication. Cut everything that does not directly benefit a corporation; from education, to labor, information networks, FDA and food safety, EPA and the environment and ad infinitum.]

Corporations like to invoke the fiction that they are themselves “Citizens” when it suits their purposes. Most recently in the Supreme Court case “Citizens United” where it was reasserted that corporations are just like any other person for the purpose of free speech and other “rights”.  On the other hand when it benefits them they will abandon this and assume the character of a multi national firm whose home is the world, and therefore is not subject to the laws of any particular country. And herein is the flaw that enables the dysfunctional disparity in corporate contributions detailed by Sen. Sanders below.

One of the operational principles governing our real-world relationships these days is the Privatization of Wealth and the benefits of wealth and the Socialization of the risks and costs incurred by the creation of that wealth and power.  Dramatically seen in the financial crisis, it is seen in lesser ways every single day. It is not a light statement to say this is the governing principle in far too much of our Corporate state.

Sen. Sanders calls on the corporations to Sacrifice. I say they need to function as a member of this society that they were birthed in; that they function as the “corporate citizen” they actually are and participate in the sustaining of their home and heritage. It will be a sacrifice of course, as it is for all the members of this “family” called America. But it is more than sacrifice, it is honoring the family from which you were birthed and which enabled the corporation to come into being and to thrive. If and as we have all of our citizens working together the problems we have to solve will actually be solvable. If we continue to have members of the society feel entitled to only take and receive the benefit of the community nothing will be able to be solved. Like parasites feeding on a host, the body will be weakened, and if nothing changes, die.

There are plenty of wealthy people and institutions that understand this, and they are calling for a very different set of laws to define our relationships in very different terms. And this problem must be addressed at the level of Law. It is not a matter of charity, moral obligation or simple good intentions that can create the context within which the corporations can properly function. We simply have to start asking different questions. Questions that will go to the heart of the right relationships between the government and corporations, or government and the private sector. There is a role for each. Until this balance is restored, or – in many instances – created for the first time we can expect that the current state of affairs will only perpetuate and eventually the host will die.

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Article posted by Sen.Sanders

While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.

With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.

Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes.

Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders:

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.

“We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed,” Sanders said, “but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

On the information and infrastructure required to sustain a democracy

I wrote the following as an email to friends as something of a spontaneous response to this article.

I think the essential rudiments of our Constitutional government are under a strain nearing the breaking point. What was intended to be open and subservient government – as exemplified by the Bill of Rights, is again, under attack by those who find the liberty offered to citizens and the limitations imposed upon power to be distasteful as well as a violation of the natural order of things.

I believe we need a call to return to the original moorings provided by the constitution. I dont mean some fundamentalist ‘original intent’ doctrine by which we are supposedly unable to think a thought that the founders didnt. Rather a wise comprehension of what the constitution represented: An attempt to form a ‘more perfect union’. Not perfect, but laying down the antecedents of liberty and freedom. Specifically the notions of citizen, and power distribution to the lowest level possible, and the tension of opposing voices so there would be a constant check and balance of power.

But what happens when all the supposedly naturally opposing forces that are supposed to organically provide a balance of power all align on the same side? Every system has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Sometimes called unintended consequences, there are fundamental incompatibilities built into every system that will eventually insure its demise.

This flaw in the American constitution is this unintended, indeed, unimaginable condition where Congress would cede its power and charter to oversee the executive to the expediency of position and not having to make hard choices; where the press would be owned, nearly in entirety, by corporations whose interests more closely align with the government and not the imperative to inform the citizenry. Where the notion of citizen itself is subsumed into a more bland, but palatable ‘consumer’ state.
When this combination of factors align in this configuration there is little left of the possibility of government by the people for the people.

And now we have the balancing possibility of the internet and all it represents as a by-pass to the systems of power and communications that have been established. From the point of view of the power systems it is a breach. One that must be staunched.

It is sadly ironic that Lieberman would be the standard bearer for this effort. As recounted below….

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There is a constant tension between the governors and the governed. Who gets to say what, and when, and who decides.
Behind this article, and Lieberman’s efforts, is a very real pressure to abandon the power reduction/sharing structures of the constitution.

It has been there from the beginning, the “ruling class” (ref N.Chomsky) has always chafed at this “experiment” (A.Lincoln)

It has been well said, by Gobbles (there he is again!) as well as being one of the main themes/lessons of 1984, that to keep the population (are we citizens yet, or just population?) under control you need to keep a constant state of low level agitation and fear.

Before we had the Russians. Now we have terrorists. Neither were “true” in the way they have been used.

Now, again, perpetually, the newest means of sustaining liberty – the structure of the internet, which has the potential to fulfill Madison’s(? or was it Jefferson) requirement of a free people to be informed (And as I wrote in a different post, that the government be open and transparent, and the citizenry have rights of privacy… not the other way around); Now that institution/function (of the i/net) is under sever attack.

And now, again, from this (insert many bad words here) piffling little man Lieberman.

It is apparent to me that the deep understanding, hell, shallow understanding, of the nature of information, communication, liberty and free speech et al… is ill understood. And therefore easily abandoned by the population; not citizens… citizens understand these things.
For example: this line here Lieberman defended himself in a response letter, saying, “the peril here is not to legitimate dissent but to our fundamental right of self-defense.” reveals the fundamental breakdown of thinking and more formally the breakdown of the logical/philosophical structures of liberty as erected by the constitution. And again the point and the question is raised: by what measure do you judge an expression to be ‘legitimate’ or not. According to….? You Mr. Lieberman? Maybe Mr. Cheney could decide for us… so we could be relived of the burden of actually having to think…. (I rant. ….)
He thinks you can have liberty by imposing limits. He (nor bushco, nor any of those neocons who hold these pernicious tenants) does not understand the relationship to positive outcome of free speech requires the possibility of bad free speech. Hell, the ACLU gets this, defending neo Nazi’s whom they abhor at the idea level, but whom they are compelled to defend at the level of being able to express those ideas, regardless. (Or… Maybe they do understand .. and that would be a separate line of discussion!)
Understanding, to complete the point, that the battle is not won by suppressing the idea, but by exposing it and having better ones!!
And of course, one of the main reasons trying to have freedom by restricting freedom doesn’t work is because….. who decides? And that re-enjoins the power discussion. And that gets us back to the constitution vs. all the other forms of ‘who gets to decide’. What is proposed here, then, is not simply a “stop the terrorists” but “start the reification of power to me…”
(This is a complex point, of course, with many aspects. But here is one observation I make on these processes: The ruling ideal in the times of creating the constitution was expressed in preamble [ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble_to_the_United_States_Constitution], was to create a ‘more perfect Union. There was a vitality and a compulsion to make something positive, a looking forward to possibility.
It seems to me that the ruling ‘Zeitgeist’ today is fear. A restriction, a regression, a xenophobia to retreat within. We seem to be at the juncture of making an irrevocable choice whether to proceed to develop our nation, our constitution, our place and relationships in the world on a predicate of fear.
Thus stupid foreign policy adventures like war (and as gore vidal talked about – and orwell predicted – perpetual war for perpetual peace), bush in israel making his standard bland dull witted assertions; and also our commercial adventures; as well as our lemming-like rush to have ‘security’ all the while not realizing we are being herded into prison cells. I am referring to the Jane Jacobs division of the commerce and guardian functions…We are funding, for example, Blackwater, to save us. And look how that worked out in NewOrleans, not to mention the horrors of Iraq. Privatizing the guardian function. With hardly an ripple of understanding that this is the first and an essential step toward fascism…. [see how complex and interwoven all this is...!!! The nature of systems. The requirement now is to comb all this out, and hopefully make it more understandable, and actionable.])

[ -- as an aside, I like B/O's take on this in his race speech--- it wasnt perfect in the form finalized at the time, and they knew that. But it was 'more' perfect than before. And -- systemically -- it had the provisions for change embodied within it. And in so doing would continue to become 'More Perfect'. BTW... From a systems perspective this is why it works!!! Also, from a Taoist pov, it also it why it has the potential to fail. Because the machinery for change embedded in it can be hi-jacked by people and forces whose intent is toxic to freedom. The only remedy to this is the congress, and the people. But what if they are complicit? ref Jean-François Revel: How Democracies Perish, and Alexis DeTocqueville. ]

We used to have a jurisprudence that recognized this as well. It was embodied in the form : ‘better to allow some criminals go free than to convict an innocent man.’ The system, if allowed, will correct itself. The true criminal will be exposed, and will be caught. If not this time, then the next, and the innocent man is spared.
We are turning this proposition on its head. Now anyone who seems to have a criminal look, driven by our fears, [reference many Twilight Zones and other movies, books, stories where the "other" is hated just for being different... And 'justice' is meeded out of our fears and reaction not reasoned inquiry ... Another example: The Oxbow Incident.] is taken for ‘questioning’.
And… why would you resist if you have nothing to hide? If you are not guilty? (This line of reasoning and its consequences was fully exposed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the work ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago).
And then there is the example of how this is played out in our ineffective so called airport security. Ineffective, yes, for the stated purpose. But quite effective at sustaining that low level agitation required…. What, for example, could be more demeaning and therefore controlling than to subject people to stupid and irrelevant little humilities – not quite enough to protest, almost having the feel of reasonableness, but with a niggling sense that this entire apparatus is really not doing anything meaningful at all. And for all that, creating a very real hierarchy of governers/subjects – and to such petty and unthinking trogs as is the common tsa examiner… ‘just doing our job’. All creating an environment of unconscious capitulation to the proposition that “we know better than you do”. Big Bro indeed! (and… referring to other conversations, can you imagine this post being written in Newspeak? Cant be done. Thats the point.)
And you know what happens when you give unthinking people power and a mission to uphold. (ref The Lucifer Effect/Zimbardo. and even more horrifically Hitler’s Willing Executioners”) .
But then, again, this upsets the Constitutional balance of power. We are not supposed to be required to constantly defend our innocence. That is the intent of the 4th Amendment ( .. and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause… ). To extend the point: The government is presumed to have unlimited power and resources which must be restricted from being unleashed on the citizenry. In only well defined ways is this power allowed to be used.
As that restraint to harassment is removed we retreat from not only the ideal, but the actual facts of Constitutional Governance.
What replaces it? Not a better form, that is for sure. It is surely a historical verity that what comes next is a form of totalitarianism, either in tyranny, or fascism, or royalty (in the case of England 1600′s post Cromwell) or some other form we have not seen yet. (But will surely be an amalgam of these astringent forces…Something akin to the world of 1984 if we don’t pay attention.)
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Anyway, I see I have again gotten carried away! It is, I suppose, my morning writing. My original purpose was simply to show you this article and the structural deficiency of the thinking that is increasingly dominating our public square.

Part of my purpose, might be/should be? to assess this issue as well. What is it that we want to save? What is it that we are so intent on changing? And changing into what?
Part of our place in these times of potential opportunity might be to uncage systemic principles in a way that does real work in reclaiming the ground lost to the flood tide of the recent administration’s encroachment on the rudiments of liberty…