spiral dynamics and covid-19

  • Red wants to blame Bill Gates, China, or the CIA for creating the virus
  • Blue wants to see the virus as God's judgement on the nations
  • Orange wants to calculate the QALYs and variolate the young
  • Green wants to save all lives through lockdown plus basic income
  • Yellow... wants Red speed, Blue trust, Orange innovation and Green values?

These all have substantial influence except for yellow, and the rest are all failing. Looking down the spiral, they can see why the previous vmeme is insufficient:

  • Red thinks Purple is so dumb for not aligning with the strongest team
  • Blue thinks Red is so dumb for believing conspiracy theories
  • Orange thinks Blue is so dumb for trusting institutions and so-called experts
  • Green thinks Orange is so dumb for not showing caring for human lives
  • Yellow thinks Green is mildly dumb for being ineffective at acting

Looking up the spiral, they don't trust those weird people above:

  • Red trusts their leader and thinks institutions are run by shadow-masters
  • Blue trusts their institutions and thinks self-taught experts are misguided
  • Orange trusts their self-taught experts and thinks the hippies are deluded
  • Green trusts their values and thinks that should be enough

I see the global challenges of Covid-19 causing stress in all these people - we want to escape/resolve that stress, and that is an opportunity to grow in our capacity to hold developmentally bigger perspectives.

If we had yellow leaders, we'd have the best of green values being served by the best of orange accountability being implemented by the best of blue cooperation at the best speed of red execution... but I have no idea how much more developmental capacity we'd need to grow before we could actually have-and-use yellow leaders and the rest of that flex-flow stack.