This is Hakann speaking. I greet you in peace and love.
On your world there’s a model called spiral dynamics. It describes the development of stages of consciousness. It’s reasonably accurate at the lower stages, although it won’t apply to everyone perfectly. It’s also not very accurate at the higher stages, and therefore I won’t bother to describe the highest stages of spiral dynamics here.
According to the spiral dynamics model, you have to go through each of these stages in turn. So you cannot reach a higher stage without first having gone through each of the previous stages in turn. That said, most people will go through some of the earlier stages during childhood, so it’s entirely possible that people reach adulthood at a stage somewhere in the middle.
This is my slightly non-standard interpretation of the main spiral dynamics stages:
Red: At this stage people simply use force or violence to get what they want. Your average violent criminal on the street is like this. Most people are briefly like this when they are small children and then grow out of it.
Blue: This is a reaction to the previous states. In this stage people understand that society is awful if everyone just steals or murders at will. So at this stage people are no longer violent, but they are dogmatic and intolerant. They insist that they are right and virtuous, and everyone who disagrees with them is wrong and evil, and in their ideal world everyone else would conform to their worldview and way of life. Or at least in their ideal world other people wouldn’t have the right to say things that are hateful or harmful or blasphemous. Blue stage people may or may not be actively preachy.
The stereotypical modern American left-winger is blue consciousness (which doesn’t mean that everyone on the left is like this). The stereotypical religious zealot is like this (though most religious people aren’t zealots). A right-wing person is like this if they believe that implementing capitalism solves every single problem and all the evil in the world comes from either the Jews, or from the left.
Orange: This is a reaction to the previous stage. In this stage people understand that it’s bad if people are forced to conform and obey. People at this stage prioritize freedom, science, material abundance and individuality. They understand that other people are individuals too, and hence it’s not productive to label your own group as good and go on a crusade against everyone who disagrees with you, or go on a crusade against entire groups of people. Orange people believe in “live and let live.” This is the stage of consciousness of the stereotypical American.
Green: This is a reaction to the previous stage. In this stage people understand that society won’t be the best place to live in if everyone prioritizes individuality, science and personal profit. So these are the “money is the root of all evil” and “all you need is love” people. These people value community, spirituality, unity, societal livability, non-polarization and being loving towards people. Free speech absolutism is green. It’s green to argue that the universe is about light and dark and therefore we shouldn’t stand up to bad actors.
A green person may argue that they themselves aren’t bothered by people being verbally aggressive and so we shouldn’t stop verbal aggression, without realizing that it’s easy for them because they’re a bystander, and it’s a lot harder to not be bothered as the person who is being targeted by the verbal aggression. Plus, less firmly grounded people also deserve to not be subject to harassment or aggression.
Left-wingers who just follow the dominant culture, engage in identity politics and view everyone who disagrees with them as evil are blue consciousness. Left-wingers who have been individualists and have worked hard to make a good living, and who have seen the limitations of material life and are now more spiritually focused are green consciousness left-wingers.
Traditionally this spiral dynamics model says that the green stage of this model is exclusively left-wing, with right-wingers being forever doomed to remain at the previous stage until they become enlightened left-wingers. I don’t think that’s an accurate description of reality. Now, green is concerned with societal fairness and societal liveability, but that doesn’t necessarily need to come out in left-wing ways. The right-wing version of that is people wanting safety, freedom, opportunity, low taxes, lack of censorship, lack of government overreach, some caretaking of people who genuinely are unable or too old to work, and some care for the livability of the environment (don’t poison all the rivers).
So the green stage right-winger wants a livable environment for everyone, from the right-wing perspective (safety, opportunity, etc). Whereas the previous orange stage right-winger is only really concerned with his own and his family’s well-being and prosperity. An orange stage right-winger is willing to poison a river for personal profit, but a green stage right-winger isn’t.
Yellow: This is a reaction to the previous stage. In this stage people understand that just singing Kumbaya and being anti-money isn’t how you build a thriving society. Yellow people aren’t in resistance to money.
At yellow, people finally understand that there are good and bad aspects of all the previous stages (some have more than others but still). For example, a yellow person understands that a blue society is stable and orderly and everyone knows what to expect and what is expected of them. For those people who happen to naturally fit into the blue society, a blue society can be a quite good place to live in. However, blue society is awful for those who don’t fit into it.
Yellow integrates the previous stages, which means that yellow understands that you need some amount of people with guns (police and military) because otherwise bad actors will commit violence against innocents. And yellow accepts the blue idea that enforcing a basic level of order is necessary for things to function and for things to be liveable. And yellow accepts the orange and green perspective that free speech is very important indeed, and that censorship is bad.
Yellow integrates the previous stages, and so yellow stage people are able to convincingly argue for free-market capitalism in a way that a right-winger would approve of, and are also able to convincingly argue for socialism in a way that a left-winger would approve of.
That said, while a yellow stage person understands all perspectives, a yellow stage person may absolutely have preferences and strong opinions. In fact, a yellow stage person will more often than a green stage person just simply say that one option is worse than another, or that a certain person is just wrong. Yes sure, theoretically all perspectives are valid, but so long as you’re inhabiting physical bodies with physical needs, some things are just more effective than other things.
At the same time, people at the yellow stage can think in more nuanced ways, beyond black or white. People at lower levels of consciousness often engage in false binaries, falsely claiming that the only alternative to what they want is some extreme option that is obviously horrible.
Or people at lower levels of consciousness characterize literally any alternative to their preferred option as being so inherently awful that it shouldn’t even be considered: their option is great and any alternative is communism, or is censorship, or is fascism, or is unspiritual, or is lower-consciousness, etc.
Modern Earth society has become so complex that only yellow-consciousness people will be able to build structures or create ways of living that work in the long term and that work for more people than just for one specific group.
Conversely, a blue person will push for a society that’s awful for those who don’t naturally fit into it.
An orange person will push for a society that’s great at first. However it will become alienating and unequal and unstable and deteriorating in the long term, as a few families hoard more and more wealth and usually become more and more separation-conscious as a result. This is a big part of what happened in America.
And a green person will push for socialism or libertarianism or a naive spiritual-communal way of living, and it will fail at present because right now there are many lower consciousness people and these systems don’t handle them properly.
People at the yellow stage also finally understand that theirs isn’t the ultimate stage of consciousness and that there are higher stages of consciousness still, which are about spiritual mastery. A yellow person isn’t a spiritual master yet.
So, these were the stages. So to summarize in brief:
– at red people are violent criminals
– at blue people dogmatically label themselves as good and everyone else as evil
– at orange people are materialistic, scientific and individualistic
– at green people are spiritually minded and they believe that love is all you need, to the point where they’re unwilling to stand up to bad actors
– at yellow people integrate all the previous perspectives
– at stages beyond yellow people become spiritual masters
Most people who receive this message are in the green stage of consciousness. To them, I would say: “all you need is love” isn’t the ultimate truth; it’s merely the green perspective.
The more integrated, yellow perspective is that you need love, wisdom and strength. And the wisdom and strength part means that you allow speech, except when it’s directly harassing or personally attacking someone. And you allow actions, except things that are so disruptive or hostile or selfish that they ruin things for the majority of people.
Note that people generally only evolve a stage of consciousness if they are smacked in the face with the realization that their current stage doesn’t work.
So if a violent criminal never faces repercussions for his actions, he’s likely to remain a violent criminal. Why not? So this American left-wing idea that you should just let criminals go free doesn’t work. And in fact you help red-stage people by letting them face the consequences of their actions, because that’s how they grow out of their current stage of consciousness. That said, preferably prison does offer people the opportunity to develop new skills, to become physically fit and to connect with inspiring role models.
If a blue person is allowed to personally attack others or make everything about their cause or harass people… if the blue person is allowed to do that, then why would he stop doing that?
It’s only when a blue person is told that he can say anything but only so long as he doesn’t personally attack or harass others, that the blue person will encounter the friction that allows him to eventually get to a higher stage of consciousness.
Telling people they can say anything they want but only in a non-aggressive, non-harassing, non-personally-attacking way isn’t censorship at all.
So, appropriately standing up to lower consciousness people doesn’t just protect innocent people from them. It also helps the lower consciousness people grow themselves.
As a metaphor: if parents are loving towards a child but never correct the child or set any boundaries, then the child may grow up to be a narcissistic bully.
Whereas if the parents are loving towards the child and also set boundaries and correct it as appropriate, then likely the child will grow up to be well-adjusted.
It’s the same for adults. If there are no boundaries or consequences for adults, then the adults who are behaving negatively will continue to do so, and no amount of love and light will change that. Yes you need love, but you also need boundaries and consequences for people violating those boundaries.
The actual loving thing to do is to set firm boundaries and not accept unacceptable behavior. Because that’s what certain people need to grow to become better people. Plus this way innocents aren’t harassed by them.
So, I hope this was helpful.
I love you so very much. And I wish you a very good week.
Your star brother,
