Ecotherapy and Spiral Dynamics

When my husband and I took the Permaculture Design Course last year, our teacher was always reminding us to ask the following questions on every design project: WHERE ARE WE? WHEN ARE WE? In other words, we needed to take note not only of the deep ecology of the landscape we stood on but also its (and our) place in the natural succession of things. Are we at the disturbed earth/pioneer plants stage? Or are we members of the mature forest?

Recently I discovered Spiral Dynamics, developed by Dr. Clare W. Graves and his followers, and was pleased to see that it too deals with this critical question of “when” we are in the evolving nature of things. SD focuses not on natural biological succession, but rather on the succession patterns of human culture. It is highly controversial, especially when misunderstood and misapplied – but also profoundly thought provoking.

Graves’ followers have attached color descriptions to the different levels or “memes” to make them easier to understand. For example the “Red” meme encapsulates those times in human history when the raw assertion of dominance, conquest and power predominates. “Blue” describes those cultures which follow higher authority, rigid rules and are absolutist. “Orange” is the meme involved with science, technology and the rationalist/materialist viewpoint. Supposedly we have now arrived at the dawn of “Green” which is just what it sounds like: the sustainability meme, involved with sharing, interconnections, collaboration. Other colors supposedly follow green: “Yellow” is described as involving integralism, responsibility and a higher knowing or gnosis. Spiritual evolution is also included.

According to SD, different cultures have different predominances and mixes of the various memes. Each meme has its own strengths and weaknesses. The trouble starts when we foolishly consider some to be “higher” and more evolved than others without valuing the necessary contributions they make to the evolving whole. As with human life, we must learn to walk before we can run, and at any point we could lose that ability and be back to crawling if we don’t maintain the health of the whole organism and our respect for the job being done by legs, thighs and knees!

So what relevance can this viewpoint have for ecotherapy? It seems to me that we have arrived at the historical transition from Red-Blue-Orange culture to Green. Some would argue that we started out at Green in the hunter-gatherer or horticultural stages of human culture and need to return to and recover that felt sense of connection. Others believe that this new 21st century Green stage that follows the centuries of Red-Blue-Orange will of necessity be a different version of Green. In the spirit of “Yellow” integralism, perhaps it’s a “yes/and” situation and both are true: we need to return, reclaim and recover the best of earlier historical stages and also honor the best of recent historical stages to create a new synthesis for a sustainable human future on this planet.

Ecotherapy is, I believe, called to facilitate this current transition, whatever its nature. If we fulfill our own promise we will be able to help our generation ford the raging, chaotic waters separating the old from the new. Of course much is at stake here. The doomsday clock is ticking ominously and it is way past time for us to wake up and begin paddling for all we’re worth. If we succeed in this transition, our species may continue its evolutionary path as a natural expression of Gaian life and consciousness. If not – well perhaps it will be the work of other species to evolve into cosmic awareness and awakeness.

The challenge, I believe, is for humans to develop a deeper understanding of and compassion for the value and purpose of each successive meme and to avoid devaluing any. Even egocentric, dominating Red has its purposes in the grand scheme of things. Even rigid authoritarian Blue has its uses. And Orange – so threatening now to the survival of our planet – must not become the baby thrown out with the bathwater. To achieve all of this, we have to evolve – quickly – to a higher level of consciousness and awareness.

So there is lots of work for all of us to do – and especially community and cultural ecotherapists.

But where to start? Perhaps with those simple questions: where are we on planet earth in this giant cosmos? And when are we in historical, evolutionary succession at this moment in time?

Comments

[heather]

Hi Linda. This is a very nice interpretation of SD. I must admit that when I was exposed to it (at a Bristol UK ecopsy meeting) none of us listeners/learners found it useful because it seemed to be (pardon the language) "validating something that was pathological"... or maybe acting as though these stages or memes were "normal" and we're just progressing through them. Again, I'm using an Andy Fisher framework here, but it seems to me that no matter what stage you are at, the healthy (naturalistic psychology) stage is the one we should move toward. What I remember clearly is seeing that it was "natural" for teenagers to rebel... And I said that it was only "typical" in our society because of the way we are so disconnected and so if teenagers had been raised in a more holistic, ecopsy way, they would have nothing to rebel against, but instead would continue to explore their ever-expanding world and begin to have response-ability to life around them. Does that make sense? What do you think?

[Linda Buzzell-Saltzman]

Good thoughts, Heather. I certainly agree that the teenage stage doesn't have to be as miserable as it is in modern Western industrial culture!! I like your idea that these stages may exist, but they don't have to be as pathological as they sometimes are in specific cultures. (I wonder what a healthy transition from Orange to Green would look like? We seem to be doing it exactly in the wrong way.) But each culture seems to have both a positive and a shadow side. Again, perfectly natural...

My understanding is that anthropologists have observed that various cultures around the world have evolved in a rather patterned way that they continue to try to understand, with hunting and gathering preceding horticultural societies preceding agricultural societies etc. Perhaps one can argue with the sequencing, but something seems to happen as cultures begin, evolve, complexify and then dissolve -- just like other living beings in nature?

I believe it's really important not to put inappropriate value judgments on the various "stages" -- they just are. Especially ethnocentric value judgments without full understanding.

Where some folks go wrong, I think, is in assuming there's some sort of hierarchy of "better" and "worse" along this continuum, "higher" and "lower." Philosopher Ken Wilber points out that life seems to have a sort of circular direction - with both ascending and descending paths. But we have to be careful again about our own inappropriate value judgments about any point on that circle. Ascending isn't "better" than descending. Just part of the whole cycle of life, part of the mystery of why things are as they are...

It's so easy with this big picture, cosmic stuff to become egocentric ("our stage is better than your stage")and ethnocentric and even anthropocentric. Even Wilber himself falls into this trap periodically, and is roundly criticized for it. Many in ecopsychology are particularly concerned when he mistakenly views our field as a "regressive" return to an earlier stage of human cultural evolution. Sort of the "back to nature" idea as a bad thing rather than a return to previous stages to recover lost treasures so we can go forward once more. Very controversial stuff in ecopsy circles!

[Amy Lenzo]

I very much agree with your last point, Linda, and would go even further in saying that I think the spiral dynamic isn't even so much of an ascending & descending movement where we could 'return' or 'go forward', as much as it is an encompassing and expanding movement, where we hold what we know and keep expanding and evolving in a 'whole' movement.

In the model I'm suggesting, the knowing we have about our oneness with the natural world is at the center of our consciousness and our understanding of all that is just continues to expand outward from there... encompassing more and more, but never leaving the oneness behind.