Monday, November 22, 2010

The Problems of Patterns

People want order very, very quickly, order in the economy, order in systems, order in whatever--order in the government.  And so, the only way to [make people comfortable with] emergence is to have everyone agree that we don't know what we're doing, because if we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't be in the place that we are.  And so, somehow, that enables people to go with the flow.  And they don't need an answer, don't need a system, don't need a pattern.  They can experiment, they can open up, they can be creative and...and I think that's being in the stream, it's part of it.  --Born, a social innovator, taken from the book Getting to Maybe by Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton.

After reading this book on social innovation and "getting to maybe" in regards to creating social change, I think Born's point is something we should all keep in mind.

We all want to hurry to a new kind of order.  We believe ourselves to be distressed by disorder, but what really seems to be happening is that we get distressed by novel forms of disorder.  Humans actually adapt quickly to new environments and new social systems.  The social system we have now is atrocious (perhaps better than some ancient societies), and it is rife with disorder, but we are used to it.  It's our "normal" so it's hard to get anyone to notice how aberrant it actually is.

The second, deeper point speaks to our psychological insecurity.  We need a pattern...what would we do without one?  Religious followers state that without religion humans would be immoral savages.  Upon some investigation, it's not too difficult to see all the problems with the current pattern or system or psychological habits, so we want to run quickly from that pattern to a different one that promises us greater security, comfort, and happiness.  However, what if the rigid adherence to a pattern is itself part of the problem?

The ZM is great at pointing out many of the current problems, and it offers a kind of new pattern, which right now is not very explicit and detailed.  I think this is a positive thing about the ZM.  A new pattern can only emerge if we give it room to emerge.  To forcefully impose another pattern will create new conflicts, new problems.

What will the resource-based economy look like? It's hard to say.  There are some general guidelines, of course, which are focused on human well-being and the planet's well being, but the exact means of working towards those goals can vary by location, by group needs, and by time.  The resource-based economy should also have a general guideline of being flexible, part of its "constitution" if you will.

In other words, guidelines should be understood as living rules.  They are not static, ideal for all time.  We need to be aware of this socially as well as psychologically, kind of like being aware of your stomach.  You cannot learn about hunger and the stomach and forget them.  It's a part of your life, every day.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Spiraling to Zeitgeist

A scholarly friend of mine who does cognitive counseling was telling me about spiral dynamics a few days back.  Spiral dynamics is a theory about personal and social development that characterizes developmental stages into discrete categories and provides a convenient color label to each of those stages.  I want to briefly discuss those stages and then demonstrate how this is relevant to the ZM.


Reflecting upon our current society, the main colors we find today are red, blue, orange, and green.


RED is a stage that is based purely on power.  If I don't like you, I want you dead or somehow to be rid of you.  Many members of the current Tea Party group exhibit this mental stage.  They want liberals gone and anyone else who disagrees with them.  The Wild West and days of the Pharaohs were very Red.


BLUE is a stage where people grow weary of this "kill or be killed" mentality so they come to a place of rigid conformity.  In other words, they sacrifice some freedoms for safety.  We can be groped, x-rayed, and suspiciously watched as we pass through airport security because that makes us feel much safer about flying. (By the way, a couple of years ago, I found out I had carried two box cutters on board with me by accident!) Everyone has a specific place in this organized society and deviants need to just come in line with the group.  Authority is important and the laws put in place are for our own good; that's why they're laws, after all!  Getting into the reasons behind the formation of laws is unimportant.  Many democrats fall into this category.  We accept the laws because they are good for all of us so we just need to obey them.  Rebellion against the rules is seen as a sign of REDness, which no one wants to go back to.


ORANGE people tire of the constraints of BLUE conformity, so they seek to break away and be special.  Laws should apply to everyone else, not them.  They want to manipulate others for their purposes because they know better.  Neo-conservatives fall into this group.  They don't want to actually send their own families into war to die, but they will pull the strings behind the scenes to get what they want through political tactics. They exploit the current rules to feed their self-interests. America's obsession with celebrity is a sign that as a whole, we are moving toward Orange.  


GREEN people realize the limitation of the ego-centric Orange.  The irresponsibility of everyone greedily grasping for what they want in a world of natural limits becomes apparent.  The idea that some people are just "special" and deserve more than others becomes unpleasant. Greens rebel in an opposite pattern and want to believe that all perspectives are valid.  Everyone should have a say at the table, and all points of view are equal.  This stage leads to a quality of impotence because deciding which action to take if all points of view are equal is a challenge.  If morality is culturally relative, then another culture has no right to even criticize the merits of our culture.


GRAY is a place of devastating disillusionment.  It seems that no one knows what they are talking about and so the whole of life is a big disappointment.  Suicide and "humanicide" ideation are frequent.  Just blow up the planet and oneself to stop this mess. It's the only way. In a more psycho-spiritual sense, this is the stage when a person lets go of all gurus, ministers, religions, and self-created beliefs.  


YELLOW comes about through a major transformation in which the prior colors are appreciated and understood for what they are, but there are no illusions about their limitations.  We all must have some cooperation (blue) to coexist, and we must celebrate our special characteristics (orange), but there needs to be a broader awareness about the effect each one of us has on the whole of global society (green).  You have the power to act decisively (red) but you don't become identified with any particular action/system (gray).  The resource based economy may be the next step in human society, but it most likely won't be the last.  When the time comes to let the RBE go, people above gray will not rebel against that because they are not committed to RBE-identification, only to the well being of people.

Spiral Dynamics is a useful shorthand to describe different interactions as they relate to discussion that the Zeitgeist Movement elicits.  The first point is that a person in orange will be misunderstood by a person in red.  The Neo-cons exploit the Tea Party by speaking down to them in the way they understand to use them for their purposes.  It's not always successful because the Reds have an undisciplined streak about them.  Peter Joseph is clearly in Yellow (or above) and as such some of his points about the unequal validity of each viewpoint will be off-putting to people in Green (which this group tends to attract).  It reminds Greens of the tactics of Orange and they want nothing to do with that!

Generally, the movement from one stage to the next is prompted by a crisis or awareness about some conflict and suffering, personal or global.  This means that the person becomes disillusion with the current system.  The cracks are appearing and it leads to skepticism.  The stated present goal of the ZM is to promote awareness.  The "awareness" is about the inadequacies of the current monetary system.  If you are in Blue, you do not want to hear about changing "the system," you just need to make minor modifications.  The ZM states clearly that the system itself is to blame for the suffering.  It doesn't just allow for it, it engenders suffering on a massive scale, which is why it becomes obvious that the system must change.

When discussing the ZM with people, there is often a reaction against it because it entails such a major transformation that simple actions to change things are no longer meaningful.  The result is an effort to undermine the ZM through whatever means so that the ZM as a whole can be dismissed.  For people involved in the ZM, I think it's important to keep the focus on the awareness of the damage of the current system.  A mind that is identified with the current system has not experienced the disillusionment to allow for something new.  Sometimes, when deciding what to do, it is important to sweep away the old clutter.  You cannot redesign your room if you haven't cleaned it out first.  The majority of the "audience" will be in colors that are Green or below.  To try to paint a pretty picture of a RBE is like trying to lure someone out to play when they are comfy on the couch in front of the their TV with a bag of chips.   They must have some compulsion to get up off their duff.

For people involved in the ZM, it is appropriate to identify it as a significant change from the current system, and then to bring back the discussion about the problems of our current economic paradigm.  After all, when 2+ billion people are starving, how successful is the current model which they want to keep defending? Or what about people who are nutritionally starving but overfed with empty calories because they can't afford fresh foods? At what point does the current system become just too uncomfortable?  To put it bluntly, is it only when you are starving that you care to do anything about it?  Isn't it then too late?

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Election Frenzy

The air is filled with the energy of competition and opinions.  With defeat and success.  With hope and sorrow.  The election results have just been determined and we will begin again a new cycle of hoping for political intervention that will, somehow, make our lives better.  We know our lives won't really change that much and that the world is still full of problems too big to manage.  At least we are distracted...for the moment.  Looking at the bigger picture, which the Zeitgeist Movement is all about, is overwhelming for many.  How do you absorb that much information and not feel too little to make a difference?  How do you not fall into the world-weariness that is common from really looking at the crisis of the world?  Voting is so easy and simple.  Put a smudge on a check box and things may get better.

It's not so easy.  The Zeitgeist Movement's declared global mission is to raise awareness of the bigger picture.  That's all!  Yet, that is so difficult.  It is really a mission to provoke people to the point that they question their own conditioning, the deep and planet-pervasive conditioning that the monetary system is the only system of social organization.  The ZM has an enormous task ahead of it.  To de-condition an entire population of 6+ billion will require much dialogue and manifest many disturbed feelings.  Transformation is always this way.

I urge all ZM people to continue talking about these issues to their personal networks.  There is not a day that goes by that someone doesn't discuss an issue which is related to the problems ZM is constantly addressing.  Start there and explore those assumptions.

We may or may not survive our own term of office on this planet, but we don't really have much choice.  The more we steep ourselves in denial and ignorance, the more life comes violently rapping at these walls of enclosure.  Whether we get voted out by a tidal wave of our own violence or mother nature's, it will become increasingly uncomfortable for us to sit idly by.  An estimated 2 billion people are starving everyday.  That alone is enough to call upon yourself to change.