07-01-2019, 01:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-01-2019, 01:50 PM by Eric the Green.)
(06-28-2019, 03:55 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Good work!
Eric the Green Wrote:Beige = the phase when the instinct for survival was still uppermost, and people associated in families. Circa the times from when we became homo sapiens sapiens until about 40,000 or 30,000 years ago.
I would push it back before behavioural modernity, which started about 70 000 years ago. The animal age. Today, its values might be represented by anti-civilization anarchists as well as some aspects of pop-culture.
Quote:Purple = the phase when we organized into tribes and told stories around the campfire, worshipped and feared spirits and ancestors and relied on magical thinking. Circa the time of cave paintings up until about 4,000 years ago.
The age of tribal societies. It started to end when first states appeared in Sumer and Egypt. Eastern Europe remained in purple stage until
the advent of Christianity, North America until the arrival of White settlers. Some peoples in Africa and South America are still there yet.
Quote:Red = the phase when war lords and emperors conquered territory, when people worked with metals also used for weapons, sought personal fame and glory, and worshipped male power gods; up until about 300 AD.
I would split that into authoritarian, theocratic Bronze Age, and more philosophical Classical Antiquity starting with Pythagoras, Confucius and the Buddha.
Quote:Blue = the phase of authoritarian mono-theist tradition when righteous morals were imposed to control behavior and enlist loyalty to the group. Up to about 1650 AD.
Basically the Middle Ages, but why do you say 1650 AD? The Renaissance started in the 15th century.
Dominion theologists, Islamists, etc. are stuck in the Blue phase.
Quote:Orange = the "Enlightenment" phase of individualism and rational science enlisted to achieve material progress, and of secular humanism, the free market and the advance of democratic republican government. Up to the 1960s, or about the 1890s-1900s, depending on the author.
Keep in mind that scientific socialism developed in the same era. To associate modernism with capitalism only is a very American-centric perspective. Karl Marx belongs in the Orange era as well, as does Lenin.
I would divide this Age of Discovery into two parts, the latter part starting about the time of the American Revolution should be called Industrial Age, or maybe Rationalist Age if you don't want to focus on technology. The primary difference would be less Christian influence in the Rationalist Age.
Quote:Green = the phase when feelings and respect for diversity are valued more highly, greater community is sought, and peace and environmental movements are happening. Since the 1960s, at least.
Yellow = a new phase, now emerging since the 1990s among a minority of people, who are interested in theories like Beck and Cowan proposed; called "integral," in which a hierarchy of values and excellence is recognized again, in an adaptable way in which all the value traditions are recognized as valid on their own level in a systemic order. "The world is a complex, self-organizing, natural system that requires integral solutions." People develop "Authenticity, systemic thinking and skills to become an instrument for the greater whole and access to a free (holistic) consciousness."
http://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/
The millennial saeculum should be one period on this scale. It might be defined by the ethics of care and sensitivity: decline of the death penalty, more emphasis on self-expression and the environment than on advancing civilization at all costs. Postwar American intellectuals are such a bunch of care bears, it's cute and necessary to an extent, but must be balanced by rationalism of the Orange phase and some discipline-oriented morality from yet earlier ages. The Age of Sensitivity still has some work to do, since the power of acquisitors still exists and has to be eliminated fully before progressing to another era.
The counterculture's emphasis on emotions was necessary after a period of purely celebral attitudes. Even scientists admit they didn't study emotions properly before the millennial saeculum because they thought feeling belongs to the realm of art only, while politics, economics and science were supposed to be purely rational in the Orange phase.
Quote:Turquoise = a proposed future phase in which dedication to the whole and spirituality will predominate over individual quest for excellence in systemic thinking. Perhaps an updated version of blue.
Something like Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "cosmic perspective"? If so, I wholeheartedly agree. Though the future will have many ages as well, it's arrogant to assume we are near the top of the ladder.
To sum up, I'd list the ages as:
Beige - Survival Age - until 70000 BC or so
Purple - Tribal Age - until 3000 BC
Red - Age of Tyrants / Bronze Age - until 500 BC
Yellow (?) -Age of Harmony / Classical Antiquity - until 300 AD
Blue - Theocratic Age / Middle Ages - until 1450 AD
Orange - Age of Discovery - until 1775 AD
Amber - Rationalist Age / Industrial Age - until 1945 AD
Green - Age of Sensitivity / Electronic Age - now
Turquoise - Cosmic Age - future
(...)
I'm not sure which post you are quoting there; this is my summary as I see it of the conventional view of Spiral Dynamics; not fully my own view. I see the Blue/Jupiter Age as 300-1300 AD, and that was succeeded by a Brown/Saturn Age in which state secularism was dominant. That equals your Orange Age of discovery. My Orange/Uranus Age, together with the Lemon/Neptune phase, is the Amber Rationalist Industrial Age you cite. Politics being important to spiral and planetary dynamics, I split this up into individualist classical liberal (Uranus/Orange) and socialist/social liberalism (Neptune/Lemon). This split is important, and remains the primary driver of our Red/Blue political split today, and of the Cold War before that. But I designate the two fruity memes (your Amber meme) as partners.
I do agree that the circa 600-500 BC era was very transformational indeed. It is called the Axis Age. This is significantly indicated by astrology, more than by spiral dynamics, which lumps the two periods together as red. In circa 577 BC Uranus, Neptune and Pluto formed a triple conjunction for the only time in history, and probably the closest such line-up in all of human existence. All 3 planets of enlightenment in conjunction is a big deal.
But for spiral and planetary dynamics, the red/Mars dominion remained in power up to the Fall of Rome (or more-exactly to the Constantine religious takeover of the empire in 300 AD), but blue/Jupiter was "rising," as I see it, from circa 570 BC to 300 AD, and that represented the philosophical and religious awakening that was growing among enlightened people and spiritual advisors, but only came into power in the Middle Ages or Age of Faith.
As you put it, Amber is equivalent to my fruity Orange and Lemon memes, although I certainly see it as persisting until circa 1966. Up till then, "progress was our most important product." Rationalist/Industrialist civilization was still going full blast, except among a few existentialists and beatniks. I call this exception "Pluto rising."
As you probably know, I inserted a Pink/Venus Age to represent the enormous change brought by the Age of Agriculture and Herding culture around 8000 BC. The red/Mars empires and tyrants and the metal ages really got going only with Sargon in circa 2100 BC., though there was minor warlike behavior before that which I call "Mars rising." The stone circles and pyramids were the creation of the later years of this Venus "new stone age" (neolithic). Notably, in the Red meme phase, they stopped building these kinds of stone monuments and concentrated on metal work and courage, both useful for the imperial conquests.
The need for balance for the Green meme that you mention is why the spiral dynamics people inserted a Yellow integral phase following Green.
Remember I use the planets as symbols rather than causes in planetary dynamics, my update of spiral dynamics, and it's interesting that we go through these phases in astronomical order.
http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html