Let’s talk about Spiral Dynamics theory and its key insights as well as its limitations.
I’m glad that my bumper article on Spiral Dynamics is so popular, because I believe everyone should learn structural-developmental theories of this kind.
As I learned this theory for the first time, nearly a decade ago, I could sense my worldview was shifting dramatically. And I was right. Looking back now, it has radically changed my view of myself, others, my society, and the entire species. The core insights from the theory are now baked into it.
It brings deep order to the apparent chaos. It helps me trust in the long-term trajectory of human psychological evolution. It puts my life and all our lives into a giant, inspiring framework.
If you want to master Spiral Dynamics theory, I highly recommend my ebook Master Spiral Dynamics.
For now, though, let’s delve in, starting with the origins of the theory.
Origin of Spiral Dynamics Theory
Spiral Dynamics is actually, in most part, a later elaboration of Clare Graves’ ECLET theory, which he built after 12 years of research in the fifties and early sixties, along with his experience working with adult behavioural problems.
Many of the core aspects of Spiral Dynamics theory come from his original work. His model also had eight stages, with the first six stages forming one metastage and the second two forming the beginnings of the following metastage.
Though the names of his stages differ from those used in Spiral Dynamics theory, the basic levels they refer to are the same. This is clear to see in the descriptions of the stages.
The authors of the book Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change say: “Graves sought to get to the mind of the matter and explore why people are different, why some change but others don’t, and how better to navigate through the emerging and often chaotic versions of human existence… his work is massive and elegant.”
Clare Graves’ work certainly wasn’t perfect, nor was it the only structural-developmental model of the time. In creating his own, he refernced and cross-checked many others. But it did form the basis of Spiral Dynamics theory, which is possibly the most well-known and accessible model of its kind.
Key Insights from Spiral Dynamics Theory
The Stages
We can’t talk about Spiral Dynamics without mentioning the stages, for they are the backbone of the theory. That said, there is a lot of nuance that you can easily miss if you oversimplify the model.
In the original Spiral Dynamics Theory, the stages were also based on the idea of vMEMEs, which are packets or collections of memes, a concept from Richard Dawkins that is somewhat dated and has since been debunked. Memes or no memes, similar stages have been discovered by many researchers.
These stages represent the different levels of human psychology, values and worldview, each a product of its times and circumstances. This is crucial: the particular levels can not and do not exist without the circumstances necessary to support it, much like how a plant will only survive in a specific climate.
That said, there is no guarantee that improved conditions will elevate a person or society. There is much deviation around the mean, and change is often delayed by decades, as Robert Inglehart astutely observed.
The stages are hierarchical in that each is more complex and embracing than the previous one, yet they include the previous one. They also appear sequentially, both in human history and in our individual history.
The earliest stage, called Beige, dates back to the start of Homo Sapiens. And it’s where we all start as newborns. The following stages then slowly emerged as human societies evolved and complexified, as they do in our individual history.
There are eight stages in all, though a key assumption of the model is that new stages will come online as human society and cultures change.
At this point, human beings occupy a myriad of stages. Even within countries, cities and families, people’s level of development varies remarkably. We live in a rainbow world, with all sorts of conflicting worldviews, values and psychologies brought about by people’s specific life circumstances and inner dials.
In fact, we never occupy just one stage. Not only do we evolve in different rates in different developmental lines, our level in each line is really like a probability wave rather than a lock-step mechanism.
A simple rule of thumb, which comes from the Spiral Dynamics theory, is that we spend half of our time in our dominant stage and the other half in the two either side of it.
That said, the next concept gives a direction to all this. We’re not just meandering through these levels. Each is more complex than the next, and once human beings have waded through the gunk of our lower nature, we’ll emerge conscious, aware, altruistic. We’ll be 2nd tier.
You might like my episode on the Spiral Dynamics Stages.
1st Tier and 2nd Tier
In his original research, Clare Graves noticed that there was a watershed moment in human growth. It seemed that after we traverse the first six stages of psychological development and begin to enter the seventh, our outlook attitude fundamentally and dramatically changes.
So striking was the transformation that Graves grouped the first six together into a metalevel called “Subsistence”, and the following two into another called “Being”, or the “Second Spiral of Existence”. In the Spiral Dynamics theory, they are called 1st Tier and 2nd Tier.
There are a couple of chilling quotes in his original work that capture the depth of what he understood:
“Thus far, man has been just another animal, a pawn in the hand of the spirit world, a sacrificer of the self, an attacker of the world and other men, and a social automaton; but man has never been himself.”
“The seventh level of human behavior is actually the beginning of human life all over again on a new and different basis.”
clare graves
What is the essence of these tiers? Essentially, at 1st-Tier levels we are fundamentally fear- and scarcity-oriented. That is not a judgment, but a clear assessment of our behaviour when faced with conditions that reflect scarcity and threat in its various forms.
At 2nd-Tier levels, on the other hand, we are being- and abundance-oriented. Ken Wilber calls them the Integral levels.
By and large, human beings are still locked in 1st-Tier concerns. Fundamentally, we feel that we need to gain, fight, pilfer, protect or please. People close to the sources of power are mostly operating from 1st-Tier, which is why their actions often seem so short-sighted, selfish and discriminatory.
That sounds depressing, but remember that humans have been developing since day one. In the most advanced countries, we’re not far from 2nd-Tier functioning.
As evolution continues to move into Integral levels, society is poised for perhaps the most momentous transformation in its entire history.
Ken wilber
Its Limitations
First of all, we should note that Spiral Dynamics theory is just that: a theory, a model. Thus, it is inherently limited and flawed. As statistician George Box famously said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Often Spiral Dynamics enthusiasts forget this, and I’m one of them.
Another level is that it’s not a complete psychological model, not by any stretch of the imagination. Often you’ll find people claiming that this is a theory of everything: even back in the sixties a magazine called Graves’ original work “a theory that explains everything”.
I don’t want to deny its explanatory power and the transformative effect that learning and applying Spiral Dynamics can have on your life. I admitted above that this has forever altered how I view myself, others and our species.
But if we think it explains it all, we’re kidding ourselves. Enthusiasts tend to try to fit everything into Spiral Dynamics theory, or dismiss entire fields of human knowledge because they’re grounded in the lower levels of consciousness. They use it to colonise.
To me, this is the wrong approach. If anything, this theory should open our mind to the vast complexity of human life and offer a new lens for us to see a deeper order among the chaos, not to reduce the chaos down to a few stages of development.
For one thing, the Spiral Dynamics theory only accounts for growth in a few developmental lines. Though others will disagree with me, to me it deals with our growth in values, worldview and self-sense.
Those are merely a select few: what about the stages of faith, or moral development, or linguistic development, or ego development, or all the many other lines in which we grow?
In this way, Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory is far more complete. He gives a broad, overarching framework for all human knowledge, one that gives it free reign to speak in its own language. He exquisitely deals with the state-stages of human consciousness, which Spiral Dynamics does not. He also talks about the dysfunctions in our development, while Spiral Dynamics theory does not.
In conclusion, I encourage you to deeply study Spiral Dynamics theory and soak in the groundbreaking ideas it proposes, but don’t grab on too tightly. It’s just one more perspective.
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