📖Faq integral and integrative

June 29, 2021–June 30, 2021

authors: Chris Cowan
year: 2013
url: https://web.archive.org/web/20170509121724/http://spiraldynamics.org/faq_integral/

“Integral” thinking is spreading as a meme and is now promoted by other vMEMEs as the solution. Not everything integral is a sign of Yellow, and many who proclaim to be integral are not). → “Integral” re-coloring

There is a tendency to “tierism”—believing that second tier is best and we should achieve it. → Tierism

According to Cowan, Wilber is misinterpreting Spiral Dynamics: takes most of the typology/coloring but largely ignores the rest (why and how we evolve and vMEMEs change). This leads to oversimplification in some aspects and over-complication in others. And as a whole, this leads to a distorted model that is inadequate, so Wilber first indulge in it and then criticizes his own (mis)interpretation. → Wilber misinterprets Spiral Dynamics

Spiral Dynamics becomes too popular and is now filled with charlatans and misinterpretations. One must be careful and should preferably read books first. → Spiral Dynamics dilution

“Integral” meme re-coloring. “Integralism.”
- Labeling self integral likely means you are not
Spiral Dynamics dilution
It’s a mess because, like “integral,” Spiral Dynamics has come to mean so much to so many that it reliably means nothing.
Graves is more than colors
Graves is more than intervals and typology. The essence of his point of view is the quest for the engine that drives human emergence – why we are and what leads us to change to be something different. The types and categories are merely artifacts of that process.
“tierism” — wanting to be second-tier
q
It’s not a theory of everything, but it is a theory that can be applied to almost anything people are doing.
_
Readers of the SD book should note that some of the materials […] would not even be included were the SD book being properly redone today, especially some rather poor and over-simplistic examples for the levels described as “Where Found” and the political analyses because a great deal more has been learned about the theory since the writing in 1994-5 which is not reflected in that volume. After spending tfive [sic] years working on The Never Ending Quest and digging deeply into both Graves’s writings and those of his sources, we find some glaring errors in previous renditions of Spiral Dynamics which we are trying to address.

Backlinks