Hi, Michelle. I think there are a few Red institutions out there, though they are kind of hidden.
Street gangs are generally Red, though they can have tinges of Amber. Antifa is often Red, as are violent movements on the right.
Sports teams can also offer a kind of “play Red” or “pretend Red” for people at higher levels of development.
So many good points and examples throughout this thread!
What I would add is that I think lines of development are key here, in the sense that one can be at, say, orange or green in their cognition or professed values even, but have a self-sense that is at red. So it can show up as the “underbelly” (to use the KW term) of someone at practically any 1st tier stage.
If one thinks of red as me-centered (egocentric) and self-absorbed (narcissistic), and also impulsive, opportunistic, and power-driven, to name a few traits, then it’s easy to spot the red underbelly in individual people at even the highest levels of power/status in society. I don’t think of red as “attaching” to other stages (although that’s perhaps a less personal and less affrontive way of speaking of this subject), but rather, as a developmental dysfunction or pathology of one kind or another for some people (e.g. fixations/addictions, disownings/allergies, which creates shadow material; and mental illness such as personality disorders).
Some might say our entire culture is basically egocentric, lots of red underbellies, some more unhealthy and fight-oriented than others.
I think you guys are exactly right, so why are we, the US, still developing so many people at red? Something is going wrong right at this point it seems to me. Then there seems a phenomena that happens where once red enters the institution people like it, because they perceive it as giving them an advantage they cant give themselves, so they don’t work to develop it out of the institution, no matter if it’s churches, corporations, universities or the presidency. What is missing in our culture/systems that makes this happen so much?
I get lines in the UL, but I cant tease them out as easily in the LR or LL to a lesser degree. What collective lines are we not developing that leaves us so vulnerable to the persistence of red. Is it as simple as ethics?
I think an important thing to distinguish is that all of us develop through these stages. So it is important to recognize that red is a necessary rung in the ladder of development. The question I think we are asking is, “Are more people having their development arrested at red?”. @LaWanna brings up a good point about the different development lines. I thought about how we could objectively measure if this hypothesis true. One thing I thought about was “Are people incarcerated more often?”. I am not sure if this is the best indicator given some of the background info on incarceration but still a possibility. A better one might be the rate of violent crimes, which I think have been trending downwards since the early 90s. Maybe it is just the appearance that people are having their development arrested at red?
Kind of making my way back to the first point is that there is nothing wrong with healthy red as long as you’re incorporating it with higher levels. Regarding your questions on LL and LR, I think the Integral Life Practice book has a wonderful chapter on integral ethics. The book points out key questions for each quadrant: Lower Left is “How should we treat one another?” and Lower Right is: “How does my behavior affect the system?’ and 'How should we organize it?”.
Lastly, reflecting on the question you propose about what is happening where there is a persistence of red…simple answer: I don’t know. My fallback answer would be something Mr. Wilber brings up in his last book about how Western spirituality has been stuck in the mythic rung for the last 2,000 years and has created a spiritual crisis in our collective development. I think something that I heard about in the last election cycle is that people were tired of Washington and just wanted something different. Well, preconventional and postconventional can look eerily similar to the untrained eye and I think we are all feeling the effects of that in our ethos.
Thanks to all who have added their thoughts, its made for an interesting and thought provoking thread.
What this thread has triggered in me is some thought about “lines” in the lines of development. As a way into understanding a person so as to better be with them I find it helpful… But it does seem to me that a line is too linear a concept when considering a person’s development in day to day real life. So, for example. if I’m dealing with a mother who has recently escaped from an abusive relationship I’ve got an integral map in my head as the basis of a structure for our conversation. Her lines of development seem to be more of a smear than a set of discreet lines. So, she’s at red when it comes to protecting her children - that’s how she got out the relationship, she’s at purple when she talks of the good times she and father had together, she’s at amber when she’s looking to the courts to protect her and her children, she’s at beige when I ask her to clarify aspects of the abuse she has suffered. In one conversation these lines intermingle and affect each other. After the conversation when I reflect upon the work we’ve done in the hope that such reflection will inform our next conversation it is helpful to pick out the individual lines, states and stages. But I think they have no more reality than points on a graph. During the conversation when I witness what is going on, I see that there are no lines, no states, no stages, just me being me , my client being she.
Good insight. You can still have an evaluation/assessment (carrying the map in your head) and not mistake the map for the territory, which allows you to stay present.
That’s what I was getting at. Succinctly put!
What you are doing is seeing her compassionately then dropping the detail and holding her fullness. I am sure you are amazing for people to work with:)
The other thing this conversation has been making me think about is the way the masculine and feminine sides of development have to work together to stay healthy. Red alone is pretty intense, very helpful in moments, but not grounded in either tribal community or church communities, it’s a challenge for modern society. Really the same for orange. It needs either traditional boundaries or PM purpose to keep it from tipping to greed, materialism etc.
I see how people would need either the lower or upper stage to support it and Western culture, modern cultures everywhere don’t have much magenta. I wonder what pulling magenta into American society would look like, not just drops here and there but full systems?
I chatted with a woman yesterday who spent some time in a West African tribal community. She had all the wonderful stories you can imagine of what healthy magenta looks like. For her and myself this would be a lovely retreat, but suffocating to “live” there. But I’m sure there are so many people who really need this always, possibly…interesting to think about what a real multi-system society would look like, instead of one that’s goal is to get people to amber/orange modern life.
That’s a very interesting idea. I see unhealthy red driving so many things. I believe that because it tends to remain more unconscious it goes unacknowledged too often and remains in the realm of shadow. Having traumas directly related to Red in my life that I’ve worked to heal for decades has given me an opportunity to delve deep and understand how red can drive one’s mind without even knowing it. During my formative years I experienced everything from physical violence thrust upon me to food insecurity in which most of middle school and high school years I didn’t have enough food every month and going to bed without a proper dinner was common.
Healing unhealthy Red is very, very difficult! It can require years of hard, vulnerable work because it’s a visceral journey not an intellectual one. That, I believe, is why so many at higher levels are unaware of their Red pathologies. You can’t “think” your way out of unhealthy Red you must “feel” your way up!
Ken’s work has helped me tremendously with this. Integral Mindfulness allowed me to effectively work through my traumas with food and today I “own my hunger” it doesn’t “own me!” I’m still working on the unhealed traumas from the violence I’d experienced in my younger years. My “fight or flight” response became “cocked & loaded” and anything that my mind perceived as a threat would activate it. I’ve come a long way and continue to heal it everyday. When the unhealthy Red arises I can see it more clearly now. All I can do sometimes is breath through it. I always attempt to bring my mind back to my breath, over and over and over again. The healing is a slow process but I can see the growth!
I’ve been AWOL for a while, but I figured I’d chime in. Thanks for posting this Michelle!
#soapbox: I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading the actual Spiral Dynamics book. Beck and Cowan cover this much better than Integralism does (and I’ll admit that my own Red bits of ego are a little annoyed that Wilber doesn’t give them credit where credit is due, he basically appropriated their system and then changed some colors around while losing a lot of the detail). Even Clair Graves’ original research on which Spiral Dynamics is based is more comprehensive and gives a better context on how the system came about.
Spiral Dynamics states clearly that every stage has healthy and unhealthy ways of expression, and also goes into great detail on what methods can be used to foster healing, IF that level is actually open. One of the biggest things (and this isn’t just Spiral Dynamics, but is a basic idea of psychology and spirituality) to keep in mind is that nothing can change if the person who needs to heal isn’t open. The United States has been trying to “orange” the world for almost a hundred years now, and we all see how that has worked out. The European colonialism before the US was founded is another great example of trying to “Blue” the “Red / Purple” savages. The only person who can evolve one’s self is one’s self, and there has to be a willingness there. And if there isn’t evolution or stability, life conditions can actually pull one down to the worldview that seems like it will “work,” and we can devolve.
Red, in short, is the ego. Purple prior has a hard time distinguishing itself from the rest of nature: the best evidence of this are the shamanic religions (which historians believe to be the very first religions), where the tribe doesn’t see itself as separate from nature around them, and literally believe that if they eat an animal (or are eaten by an animal), they gain that animal’s power and become that animal. Ancient shamans would put on the still dripping wet carcass of an animal they killed and the tribe would believe they became the deer, or the bear, or the wolf.
Red develops when we make it past Lacan’s “mirror stage” and recognize both who we are, physically, and how we are separate and different from the world. It’s the birth of a “subject / object” experience for us, psychologically speaking. This usually happens during very early childhood, but as we see with people like Donald Trump, the environment in which we’re brought up greatly influences whether or not we make it past Red egotism being the primary stage. I think one must be presented with at least a semi-healthy Blue society in order to see the benefits of upgrading one’s worldview while also better understanding where Red is limiting. Additionally, Red is very family oriented; the family tends to be an extension of one’s ego (again, take a look at Trump and his family). Maybe this is because it’s much harder to feel “separate” in the context of a family, and there might be some Purple going on (this is pure conjecture on my part).
The best example I’ve seen of healing unhealthy Red is in Tattoos on the Heart by Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who almost single-handedly transformed the gang problems of Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s. He effectively created an incredibly healthy Blue community that became an alternative to the Red “every man for himself” gang mentality at the time. He wasn’t able to help everyone, but he transformed his community drastically and created real opportunities for the ex-gang members who found their way to his church. The book is incredibly moving, and clearly illustrates how love and acceptance are very powerful tools in helping to create an environment where Red can evolve.
John Bradshaw’s work with shame in the 80s and 90s is also an excellent reference on how to heal dysfunctional Red (I hesitate to mention Brene Brown even though I am grateful for her work in making shame as an issue known, but compared to Bradshaw her work tends to be very superficial and a little too self-helpy). Healing the Shame That Binds you is a book I think every human should be required to read, as it comprehensively teaches one where their blindspots are, where they came from, and how to heal them. Basically, most parents are pretty terrible at parenting since most tend to lack the self awareness to know when they’re projecting their unresolved issues on their children, and those issues turn into defenses that help prop up the unhealthy ego Red clings to to feel safe. Because of all the unresolved, unhealthy shame (there is, in fact, healthy shame–again, look at Donald Trump as an example of a man who appears to be shameless), unhealthy Red clings to their ego, their sense of self, at all costs. Anything that might disrupt that immediately generates cognitive dissonance and the person either shuts down or lashes out in defense. The ego quite literally believes it is going to die.
And so, the challenges with unhealthy Red in adults (because one should expect unhealthy Red in children while they’re still developing) are that typically the bad behavior becomes a defense mechanism to hide one from past trauma, likely experienced as a result of the first developmental expressions of the Red ego. When I’m a child and I act out as a fresh expression of this new ego I’m feeling, I may get smacked down (literally) by my parents. That creates shame and if the unhealthy behavior from the parents continues, I’m going to build all sorts of defenses to protect that Red ego from feeling that shame. If Red doesn’t develop past its blindspots, it turns into narcissism, or one becomes a psychopath / sociopath. Once a person reaches that level of automatic defenses, all bets are off because there likely isn’t much of a desire to change. The Red ego runs on autopilot and it’s very hard to actually get to any sort of authentic “self” behind all the bluster, and that self is where the healing lies (check out Jay Early’s book “Self Therapy” where he details the Internal Family Systems method and how one needs to get to their “witness” self before they can heal these type of defenses).
It can be very tempting to look at any one stage of development as the “problem,” but I don’t feel that’s Integral. All stages are valuable and have something to contribute, and we have to be careful in singling any one out as the source of the world’s problems (I’m preaching to myself on this one since I love to beat up Green and Blue!). There is plenty of responsibility to go around for Blue, and Orange, and Green, and even the Integral levels (after all, if we were truly being the “Spiral Wizards” that Beck and Cowan describe, would we be seen as such intellectual elitists, divorced from the world? Wouldn’t we find more effective ways to connect with the prior stages on the Spiral?). We all have these stages in us, and they all express to different degrees depending on the context. Our work, I think, is finding and healing our own blindspots, and then doing our best to create the environment and atmosphere to encourage evolution in others. That can’t happen with blame as Father Gregory shows, but rather happens with love, acceptance, and an authentic desire to understand those around us.
Always appreciate your perspectives Russ, and the clarity of your writing, and I’d like to make a few comments specifically on your statements about shamanism. While religious historians say shamanism is probably the root of all religions, it is actually not considered a religion itself. While religious phenomena can be and often is produced as a result of its practice, shamanism is more appropriately defined as a specific knowledge-and-skill-set. It is a compilation of techniques that are surprisingly similar throughout the various shamanic cultures of the world.
And yes, as far as we know, it originated during the magical stage of development, which we as integralists understand to mean, among other things, that psyche was still halfway fused with environment; the individual, separate-self sense of ego had yet to fully emerge. Yet it’s important to note that shamanism is not a “dead” thing; it is still practiced throughout the world by various indigenous people, and also by contemporary Westerners either as a form of “self-help” and personal problem-solving and healing, or as a livelihood/vocation in service to others. Western shamanic practitioners are practicing a form of “trans-rational magic,” different from what we suppose was the case during culture’s magical stage. Some health insurance companies have actually covered shamanic healing treatments in the same vein as coverage for mainstream medical or mental health services.
Shamanism can and does co-exist with religion, and nowadays in most places is influenced by them (as some religions in certain locales have been influenced by shamanism). There are shamans and shamanic practitioners who work with Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu deities, for instance, as well as plant, animal, mineral, and elemental energies. Not being a religion, it is able to be quite democratic in the sources from which it draws its “help.”
In terms of a trans-rational magical practice, shamanism has a lot to teach the world and its incessant need to fragment and split things: the profane and the “sacred,” self and other, society and nature.
As for shamans believing that if they eat an animal, they gain that animal’s power—just consider for a moment that if you take a handful of vitamins, will you not gain the power/energy of those vitamins? If you drink alcohol (often called “spirits”), will not your bodymind be influenced; will you not know the “power” of alcohol? Why else do we eat food, but to turn it into energy? Combine that with a practice/technique in which you are able to merge with the essence or ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ of an animal or plant you ingest (or vitamins or alcohol), and some of these shamanic beliefs and practices are not as far-fetched as one would think. There are still shamans who will put on a bear skin or deer antlers and “become” that animal, not through just donning the pelt or antlers, but through specific methods for “becoming one” with the animal.
While not a religion per se, shamanism probably was humanity’s first methodical healing and divination technique; developed out of necessity and through trial-and-error, and perhaps with the help of psychoactive plants (the jury is still out on that one.) And it was a community endeavor, with full participation of the community in the shaman’s ceremonies and such, as the shaman existed/exists to serve them. And while not a religion per se, today, many Westerners do use shamanic methods for spiritual development, and some have profound unity experiences through their practices.
I know your statements about shamanism during the “Purple” stage were meant to help readers see the psychological aspects of that stage as differentiated from Red, and you did that. I just wanted to fill in a little around the topic of shamanism. Thanks.
Thanks for your insight LaWanna! Right back at you about appreciating your posts.
One point of clarification and potential caution I want to throw out is the definition of “religion.” I’m using the word in the context of shamanism based on my own education from Dr. Sharon Coggan at U of C, Denver, who included it in our World Religions course as one of the first “religions” we studied. But she uses the word religion in a very postmodern way (and not necessarily unhealthy postmodern before we go down that rabbit hole!), acknowledging that historians and theologians alike are a bit hard pressed to nail down what a religion really is. Robert Ellwood and Barbara McGraw cover that conversation fairly comprehensively in Many Peoples, Many Faiths. Tying shamanism to the word is simply because it was included as a source “religion” in the course as well as the text. I myself don’t have a firm definition of religion due to all the potential factors that could influence its use.
So, when we start asking that question, what is a religion, we get some widely variable perspectives. We also have to be careful when talking about religion in general as it can be tempting to put negative connotations around the word based on how specific sects of our world religions have behaved in the past and today. The West is shifting toward a very secular way of being in many areas, and I’ve definitely experienced a sort of “anti-religion” bias where the very word can trigger folks (and I’m definitely not implying that’s why you responded here!). The reality is that there are many religions today that are just as democratic and inclusive of multiple paths and where they draw their influences. If religions are really self-aware, they’ll know that they include many influences from many seemingly adverse paths. Islam is the culmination of Christianity, which is the evolution of Judaism, which is the evolution of desert religions from nomadic tribes in the Arabian desert. The Kabbalah shares ties with Sufi Islam and vice versa (they were so close together during, I think, the 14th Century that it’s hard to say who influenced whom). Buddhism shares a modified idea of karma from Hinduism. Hinduism responded to Buddhism’s postmodernism by creating the idea of the “Godhead,” Brahman, that’s beyond all human knowing. All the apocalyptic religions like Islam and Christianty share the idea of “good vs. evil, darkness vs. light” from Zoroastrianism and the Ahura Mazda vs. Ahriman cosmology. Another fascinating tidbit is that Judaism drank the Zoroastrian kool-aid while the Jews were exiled in Persia and then later purged probably 95% of that duality after the reforms following the Roman occupation. (please forgive any minor inaccuracies here, I’m going off of pure memory and I am NOT a historian!)
Indeed, Hinduism could be considered a hodgepodge of dozens of root faiths, with a main focus on the thunder god Indra that the Aryians brought to India that mixed with the Dravidian Shiva/Shakti gods. In many ways I see Hinduism as taking shamanism to the extreme since everything has a god. Japanese Shinto also shares some similarities as do the spiritualist beliefs of China (another fascinating tidbit, the world “Shin-to” isn’t even Japanese; they borrowed the term from Chinese immigrants to describe their own religion). The “spirit” is in everything. It’s really just a different way of seeing and describing the divine, the numinous, in nature; yet there nevertheless is that common awareness of the divine in our natural world. That’s probably one of the reasons why I like Ernest Holmes so much… he was one of the first philosophers and theologians to start making connections between seemingly wildly different religions in the Western world. Maybe that’s because almost all religion can trace its way back to common shamanic roots? I don’t know, I wasn’t there! (as Dr. Coggan would so often state rather dramatically in her lectures)
In any event, my callout to shamanism (which I have practiced myself in various ways over the years) was merely to use a historic example to illustrate the development progression of ancient shamanic tribes from Purple to Red and what that means overall in the context of unhealthy Red. Hopefully it didn’t seem like I was trying to mischaracterize shamanism in any way (and I apologize if I did), as I think the practices can be very helpful in showing us how to tap into those primal archetypes that reside in our consciousness.
As you can see, I have a passion for religions and I’m always up for that discussion 
I suppose that’s why I went to minister school. In any case, we’re talking about Red, so we should probably get back to that!
Thought I’d include this for everyone as well since New Thought tends to be the most open philosophy / religion to Integralism (it is, after all, the medium by which I was first introduced).
I wrote this for my History of New Thought class and my Dean has used it in the past to help spark conversation around the “Is New Thought Christian?” conversation. It helps illustrate the challenges with trying to pin any one thing down to a “religion” (Buddhism is another great example; depending on which Buddhist you ask, it’s either a philosophy, a religion, both, or neither).
Anyway, I’ll stop derailing this thread now. I do find the conversation about religion and what it actually is to be quite fascinating.
Hey Russ, great article on New Thought and its changes in evolution. I am not a religion historian or scholar either, so here we are, the blind leading the blind, or something like that. It sounds to me that New Thought’s experimentation or practice of scientific healing or healing with the mind (mesmerism, channeling, and such) is, in my language, tapping into subtle states of consciousness and subtle energies, as does shamanism. Responding to your prior post before this latest one, what I think the shamanic perspective would add is that, while some definitely are, not all of these energies are just or only primal archetypes that reside in one’s consciousness, but are energies that have an existence of their own.
And, I would also mention that Hinduism also “evolved” in the sense that the God Indra and other gods in nature, were early originations spoken of in the Rg Veda. The Upanishads came after this, and those scriptures/teachings focus largely on the central principles that help us make sense of life and the world; they are not philosophy per se, but they do focus on the desire “to know” and to realize–like, what happens when we die, what’s responsible for my being able to see or think, those kind of questions. As such, they give a lot of attention to consciousness itself and states of consciousness. Probably you already know this, but just thought I would mention it. While many Hindus do still acknowledge, pay homage to, and worship the old Vedic gods of nature and the elements, this is not the end-all in Hinduism.
Do you relate to the “3 faces of God” that Wilber has iterated? In your New Thought article, you said that the “God within” is something separated from the self, like a split personality. I wonder how you mean this. Eastern traditions emphasize a 1st person perspective, or identification, with the “God within,” which goes by different names, but it is far from any sense of ‘split personality.’ Were you speaking of this as just the orientation or experience of Christians? I think what I’m getting at is wondering if New Thought recognizes these different “faces” or ways of knowing “God”?
You’re right, there are lots of rabbit holes to go down when discussing religion and what it is, thank you Evolution!
What New Thought recognizes varies from person to person 
But if it helps, part of my ministerial program was to get my Masters in Consciousness Studies, so that should give a clear indication of what New Thought most cares about.
If anything, New Thought could be seen as a western interpretation of the whole Hindu history (especially the Upanishads and their approach to consciousness, both human and divine). Thomas Troward spent much of his life as a judge in colonial India and was heavily influenced by their spiritual practices, and he is almost solely responsible for what we call the “Law of Attraction” in New Thought (though please don’t read it in the context of the move the Secret, which really I think misrepresents what it’s about). But yes, pretty much everything Hinduism can trace its way back to the Vedas. What I love about the Hindu path is how they started with these highly ritualistic ways of worshipping and then went straight to consciousness exploration, and then landed back into how we apply these things in the world with the Bhagavad Gita (probably one of my favorite holy texts, it’s like Integralism in beautiful poetry and prose).
I am a huge fan of Paul Smith, so I personally subscribe to the idea of the “Three Faces of God,” AND I also subscribe to the Hindu notion of the “godhead,” something that is beyond what we could comprehend as those three faces. I’m actually doing work to help bring New Thoughters back to the “I, Thou” relationship since we tend to either see God as this amorphous “whole,” or within ourselves, and miss the 2nd person perspective. That perspective is SO valuable because it gives us a way to relate to the Divine. IE, it’s hard to talk to some grand amorphous whole, and sometimes just talking to our inner Divine can get clouded by our ego. I’m not really worried about this being challenging for those folks who left traditional religions to get away from the 2nd person way of relating to God since New Thought is nothing if not highly utilitarian. The phrase “practical spirituality” is one I use regularly!
Sounds like we’re pretty much on the same page, Russ, regarding all this. Do you participate in the we-space groups offered by Integral Christian Network?
I honestly didn’t know there was an Integral Christian Network, so no…
Thanks Russ! That was very informative and much to think about! Appreciate your insights and honesty!
Is New Thought Christian or a religion at all? Well, I was raised in New Thought Christianity, most specifically the Unity Church but also Science of Mind. The people in the Unity Church probably thought they were in a religion, as it had many of the trappings of religion. It arose out of the 19th cenury evangelical movement.
Here is something that might be of interest. It’s a review of the recent adaptation of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. The reviewer writes a lot about Spiral Dynamics. It’s his field of study as an academic.