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Are values spiraled or networked?
I think one of the most difficult things one can do is break
with a mentor around a major difference of opinion. While
I think the world of Dr. Don Beck and Spiral Dynamics and how
many contributions that his mentor Dr. Clare W. Graves made to
the field of adult bio-psychosocial development, I am in awe.
It's not easy to kill a friend, although that is just a
metaphor used in RED October, when a mentee finds that his
mentor is defecting and he has orders to not allow him to turn
over the RED OCTOBER ballistic missile submarine to the
Americans.
My break with Spiral Dynamics came almost a decade ago, and
for those who know me, I have continued to support and
hopefully enhance the work and field. But
my true loyalty lies in the capability we can develop to
explain what's happening in our own lives. Models
have to come and go in the process, including my own.
In trying to assimilate a model of development, you might want
a context for why individually, it's not a good idea to use a
spiral vs. NETWORK EFFECTS to explain learning, growth and
development by mirroring development in the brain...as well as
the internet...albeit the brain has 4.5 billion years on the
internet in terms of spaghetti on the wall time...
Take a look at this graphic. It
is a graphic that simulates the nodes (power law distribution
example) of the internet:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg
Memetic development follows a scale-free network design, not a
spiral.
While it is true spiraling occurs, in most cases, all of the
development in us and in a connected society is explained more
EES with network dynamics rather than spiral dynamics.
Can you see that things are spiraling? Sure...and
that is why we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Graves/SDi
gives us tremendous gifts. However,
with the advent of exponential complexity, ubiquitous
connectivity, and memetics, we have more efficient, effective
and sustainable (EES) ways of explaining, and predicting...if
not emerging....development in both the personal,
professional, business and network domains.
Imagine several domains of development: individual,
collective, and add others such as social perspective,
hierarchical task performance, ego complexity, capability,
values, and even artifacts, and resultants (a word used by Dr.
Graves which has great explanatory powers) all of which are
developing in concert with "us" as well as that which is not
us, or I... And that which is not I, perhaps the archetypal
collective consciousness as an example...and that which does
not develop... Space?
Hmmm.
In Star Trek 2009, when Spock shows Scotty his "trans-warp
beaming calculation" from the future... Scotty
remarks... Something like..."And who would have thought that it
was space that was moving...", which is a pretty profound
metaphor for those of us who think we actually know what is
going on, to shift the figure and ground on its ear as in that
moment of reflection... Beam me up Scotty!
To be able to explain a network effect for development
provides us with more dimensions with which to explain why,
and how, and when, and where, as well as which and who...in
our reality maps--which we know are not the territory--but is
bounded reality...we can work with
and in.
NOT getting locked into a theory which doesn't explain
differences well, but addresses similarities is something to
notice...and that is why we look towards network effects
rather than just a spiral to explain so many things which are
a projection; If I might take liberty of creative evolution's
way of modeling the efficiency by which the 2.5 pound lump in
our heads has developed, and is developing itself and us in
the process.
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