An Integral Assessment of President Joe Biden

Reflections
22

Hi @Charles_Marxer

I’m curious to go back to your opening question and perspective.

I do resonate with the question, “[how can] people at higher levels […] be grossly immoral [in their] ideas and decisions” ?

I feel the question could go in many directions.

In UL, maybe the person is only cognitively turquoise, but their ethics are red.

Maybe in UL their ethics are orange, but the LR situation means they have to choose between the lesser of two evils.

Or perhaps the LL culture wars are so divisive—heavy shadows everywhere—that any politician must lie constantly, and those lies are just brain damage—the politician themselves can no longer tell what’s real—and so they form an enormous dysfunctional shadow.

Maybe we just don’t really understand, as a human species, eros and thanos, nor the creative play, and if we did, we’d have a sort of liberation from chaos and order, and could surf life in an open, honest, unknowing, innocent way, rather than constantly building Atman projects, which lead to wars and suffering.

But I do agree that it’s essential to look at the levels/stages and just recognise our problem. I mean, Wilber seems to have reiterated that in his “dark” chapter in his recent book. The notion that we have orange technology but most people are not really stable at orange in the ethical line.

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23

I had a conversation this morning with a young lady from Russia. She is trying to line up her citizen paperwork and it is really messy. I met her mother who lives here and is as American as apple pie which is kind of interesting. The young lady seemed highly agitated about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. She was probably in her late twenties or early thirties. She told me she grew up in the USSR and now Russia so she might be older. As would be expected she thinks capitalism is a dead end BUT she would not take up arms against capitalism because she doesn’t agree with it. The young lady was particularly impressed with the fact (if it is true) that the Ukraine was developing a nuclear bomb but abandoned the effort. I expressed how the doctrine of mutual assured destruction is insanity. Has there ever been a weapon that has been developed but never used? Not to my knowledge.

The point of all this is there are a great majority of good people at the amber and orange levels all over the world. I don’t remember what the percentages are but I believe they are the “center of gravity” for most cultures. I think the news loves “man bites dog” stories because like the ancient tragedians there is some kind of cathartic effect to see how relatively sane those who watch that stuff feel.

I traveled to all the continents (except Antarctica) and don’t claim to be an expert on cultural anthropology but it seems to me most people want to provide for their family and have some leisure time to do that which is meaningful to them. How many beautiful, good, and true religions, philosophies, social and political ideals have humans created but we keep making the same mistakes. It is part of our nature but it is a part that can be modified and mollified.

On the other hand, I believe with all my heart there will come a day when children will be born into a world where the thought of mass warfare is unthinkable. I point to the awareness that human sacrifice, cannibalism, abandoning female babies to the wilds, and most recently slavery have become unthinkable to the great mass of people. I think we are in accord with the power of nature with is intelligent and loving but we are limited and are being shaped slowly. If it isn’t our species a more deserving species will be the top of the food chain because in the current state of affairs, we are our own worst enemies. I don’t think we are done yet, not by a long shot.

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24

I think that’s beautifully put.

There’s that notion that the spiral goes higher and becomes more compassionate, so that by the time one is at super duper mind, it’s practically angelic love or something, but there’s also the notion that every level has its healthy and unhealthy side. And I recall Suzann Cook-Greuter mentioning her relationship with her sister, who despite being in some sense, not developed, still seemed to be a genuinely good person. And I’m not sure where that fits in with all the conceptual systematic maps.

I’m also reminded on the topic of politicians — does it matter if some political figure is turquoise or orange or amber, if they’re in some sense, corrupt? Maybe just corrupt to the principles of office—i.e., serving the people, not the power hungry shadow government groups.

I wonder if future historians will wonder how WWIII broke out (if it did). Most people alive today seem good, trying to do the right thing, wanting to live a good life, be a good person.

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25

I think it’s important to understand that the term “corrupt” also has different meanings at different levels.
At Orange, when Industrial Robber Barons control the Government, that is Orange Capitalism working as intended. In Green Capitalism becomes Schitzophrenic because it isn’t a Green System of Government. Green would place humans and human life as more valuable than artifical paper entities, while Capitalism places the Corporation as more valuable than human life. Socialism is a Green form of Government - but socialism collapses through corruption in an Orange society.
A Teal government cannot be created as long as physical borders are a the primary defining characteristics of a “Nation”.

Thus, when we operate within government - even a Teal individual has to use the rules of that system and work within those rules. If it is an Orange system such as Capitalism with Orange rules - you cannot “transcend” the system. That will result either in being unsuccessful like Jimmy Carter or going to jail for failing to adhere to laws.
When a Court Case like Citizens United becomes the law of the land - it is just folly to not operate within the parameters of that law. You just lose elections, plain and simple.
If a nation is at war - it is folly to try and operate under Green. This is what the Left does not understand about the Middle east and Palestine. Green does not work when the warring cultures and religions are stuck at Red for 3,000 years. To expect Biden or anyone else to implement a Green solution in Palestine, Ukraine or any other hot war zone is not Teal, but unhealthy Green.

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26

Yes, so then, maybe the word “corruption” only makes sense, as you say, if it is being used to see if something is, how to put it, being true to itself? Red may look bad (from higher levels) but if the dominant environment is red then red is just being red.

Another nuance then is that the levels build on each other. Amber for all its limitations of a rule/role based hierarchy, can create safety, and then that safety makes possible an orange system where people have individual freedom (which they can afford because most of the other “free” people aren’t going to raid their town and burn their crops).

Would that mean then that “corruption” is whatever is breaking up a particular level? So, orange is also supposed to be a system of democracy, but if red elements in corporations are abusing their power to buy off government agencies and create a kind of fascism, then that is a corruption of orange.

Likewise, so much of green is in some sense corrupted by other elements. When that red corruption of orange corporate power then owns governments and pushes certain development agendas, you get the global CO2 scam. [1]

Within orange mind-space of formal operational thought, 3rd person perspective, science, the ability to question one-self, the ability to recognise universal rights, universal freedom, the freedom of speech, the investigative journalist, the doctor philosopher, the Hippocratic Oath, the need for patient consent to any procedure, the principle of following and accepting evidence as it arises, of publishing all findings even if they prove one’s own hypothesis wrong, and so on — when all that seems to be getting mangled, then I wonder why that is, what’s causing that “corruption” of those modern jewels.

Maybe it is that the levels are built on top of each other. I think one of the Spiral Dynamics economics books makes the point that, the big problem we have is that money has become very abstract and basically has lost touch with any underlying basic truth about value — it’s corrupt because all the funny paper money has lost touch with Amber/Blue basic goodness and truth, it’s lost touch with Amber money.

Which reminds me that decades ago, on the environment, people would decry the specific chemical pollutants going into rivers, actual physical chemistry with observable interactions in nature, but today that’s all been subsumed into “carbon credits” and “carbon quotas” and “carbon offsets” and “carbon trading”. Even carbon isn’t CO2, it’s a proxy term into which they can add abstractions and rules about what’s a carbon “equivalent”.

There’s a sense in which, of the two statements:

“we have the power in these lands, and you must obey or be eliminated”

“we are sending in our service people and we will liberate them and bring them democracy and freedom”

it’s the second one that’s corrupt.

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27

I believe there is going to be corruption at all the levels of consciousness. I’ve gotten to the point that maybe the most important issue to human consciousness is not survival, not loving and belonging, and not self-actualization (thanks Maslow). It is an incessant need to make meaning. For each color it’s a different end-game–individual power, faith, progress, empowerment to all, non-identification with any end-game. I think Stefano hit the nail on the head, what is one person normalcy is another person’s corruption.

For me it’s the Fireball mystery. How weird is that we are sustained on Earth by a relatively middling sized fireball? Included with this is the belief by many that all these massive structures, planets and suns, galaxies, nebulae of galaxies are by necessity following universal properties, interactions, processes, and laws. YET there are 5"9" creatures that are the only forms in the entire universe that have the freedom (of will or whatever your favorite philosophical power is) to override these inexorable and mightily truths.

It’s freaking weird and bizzare. Ken Wilber more than his contemporaries has provided meaning to life. He has provided what seems to be the best system of classifying and ordering consciousness, ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, and mysticism that has been developed to date. Yet to me, the real meaning IS the mystery, oddity, and absurdity of all of our existence. Mystery IS the meaning of life.

I too have an insatiable need to continue to hear different versions of meanings which has no meaning and becoming more and more contently self-conscious about the nature of what cannot be known. How are we self-aware of being self-aware (mind-body dilemma). I guess it keeps me off the streets and mostly out of trouble.

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28

Thanks for mentioning Jimmy Carter Ray. I don’t think Washington ever knew what to make of a determined person striving to be on the right side of moral behavior. I also forgot the recent discussion about folks who have had contact with non-terrestrial beings. I have no reason to disbelieve their experience, in fact I believe the odds favor that there are non-terrestrial beings. I just need more evidence. If it is true, the situation self-conscious forms find themselves in is even stranger. I think my existentialist persona has emerged over the past few days.

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