I have very practical questions. I am a business leader (I lead 160 people company). Recently my marketing department voluntarily changed our logo to rainbow colors, as a way to communicate gay-pride month solidarity (which I wholeheartedly support).
I have two problems with it:
In my country (Poland) we have a lot of Amber-Orange meme, and rainbow is perceived by many, as a symbol of oposition to Amber (f.ex. catholic) symbols. There is a lot of culture war in my country about why rainbow “offends” beloved “catholic cross” (as it’s symbol). Obviously Liberal-Green is well represented as well.
Everything I get from this action is a lot of internal worldview discussions, not leading to any growth, better understanding and even worse - a lot of fights and regression rather than each-others support.
Thesis:
Communicating symbols (such as rainbow, cross etc.) , which are associated with one specific meme, are probably not well suited to support growth on a spiral, on contrary - I see them as war-reinforcing and regressing.
Questions:
Can you point me to a framework of communication (of integral paradigm), which could lead to growth rather than (“we have our rainbow and it’s supreme to your backward cross vs our cross is our tradition and faith and your rainbow is offending it and threatens health of our families”) unending meme war?
What can replace symbols or maybe is there any integral symbol, which can be effectively communicated (understood by lower level of spiral)?
Don’t know how integral my view is, but is it necessary for a business enterprise to publicly support any social or religious causes in any form? You might also be willing to show support internally for the employees and not externally to avoid alienating your clients.
It sounds like your marketing department made decisions on their own. Perhaps after this settles, you might want to review how internal and external corporate messaging is determined. I’ve found to always include a “review any proposed changes for the upcoming month/quarter/year” to avoid getting surprised by “great ideas”.
Thanks for reply.
Totally agree - it’s not necessary for a business to publicly support any of the causes and to become a platform for such discussion. I will set up a rule of reviewing the ideas etc.
BUT
this topic is still interesting to me.
I would love to be able to add integral paradigm to the mix (show people that there’s an alternative to being embedded in one meme only) and support growth on a spiral. I even think that it’s a kind of mission I would happily realize but actually I have no knowledge of any tools for that. The only way to communicate integral paradigm would be hours-long discussion/training and even if performed, may be of low quality or generally a bad tool for the purpose. I am seeking some direction/framework on how to practically communicate about the spiral/growth/integral. I read a lot about the topic, and frameworks like AQAL/spiral exist, there are lot of books but still, they are ineffective in conveying the idea. I know that these frameworks are about complexity of the world and there may not be any simple way to communicate it, but maybe someone in the community came across some more effective way than other. I know that Ken himself is involved, I would love to ask this question to him personally - is there a way to do it?
Comming back to original question - almost all bigger corporations are rainbow colored in June. So they are actively supporting green meme in very effective way using this symbol. Is there any way in which I could support integral level with the same effectiveness?
I think that paradoxically (my thesis from my first post) changing corporate logo to rainbow actually damages the original cause (to support gay-pride) as the effect it has, is radicalization (arrested attitude) of other memes which may cause more harm to homosexual people then not doing anything at all. Is there any smarter way to do it? Anyone thought about it?
It’s a kind of meta-level discussion. Integrallife.com is a great place to be when you know what it’s all about, but how to „sell” this great idea seems still not grasped. I do not mean selling to indoctrinate people, but rather selling to show alternative to „ordinary worldviews” which may solve a lot of conflicts. So is there any meta-level knowledge of how to communicate this great meta-level framework of understanding the world (AQAL/spiral etc)?
Hi @ksudnik
I feel like once enough people adopt the ideas of the green meme, once it becomes embedded and accepted enough in a culture, this meme actually becomes the new transcendent order for amber. Amber never wants to go against the norm, but once green is the norm, I feel like amber will then be on board, until it isn’t the norm again and they make a gradual transition to whatever the new standard order ship is. Before Christianity was the transcendent order, amber was actually pro-homosexuality for a long time - even the king of the gods - Zeus - was bisexual. Roman Emperor Hadrian was homosexual but actually Rome was against homosexuality for the most part as they saw it as being ‘Greek’, and they saw Greek men as not being manly enough and too into philosophy and poetry - Rome was all about war. There were also Roman poets and philosophers, but unless they were writing epics they were often seen as ‘less than’, whereas in Greece they were heralded. I’m digressing…
Of course during the transition period from the current amber meme, there will be protest and potential violence against whatever is against their current transcendent order though, and it would be great if this could be minimised, especially by showing people they are welcome in the world and their society.
It would be great if there were a solution for appeasing people who are homophobic - I feel like it’s more about the group norms of the religion that are homophobic rather than the religion itself? - e.g. in the bible, it seems more to be the case that the text is against male prostitution and male rape rather than loving relationships between two men with freedom - likely because there was often a huge inequality of power in male relationships in the Classical period - they were often between a man and a boy. I also don’t think the bible actually mentions relationships between two women. Someone with more bible knowledge than me, please correct me if I’m wrong though.
At the same time, I think trying to include the religions in the pride symbolism would be a bad road to go down, or trying to show Christians that actually Jesus wasn’t against homosexuality.
I really like your idea of using a new symbol - which would support pride whilst also showing acceptance of Christians and their chosen worldviews. I’d be interested to know if there is one too.
From what I sense with Integrallife.com it isn’t so much about what works or effectiveness in the real world, but a highly abstracted 3rd person observer perspective.
Given that you run a real company with 160 real human employees building and selling real products or services to real people in real communities with real concerns, you aren’t facing so much “abstract” as you are real world concerns and issues.
One scenario and most popular here in the US is to hire a VP of Diversity and Inclusion, setup preferential hiring and promotion policies based on Intersectionality scores and then slowly work all of the amber Catholics out of the company. Same will need to happen with your customer base as well. It could be very expensive but the transformation is worth it in the end.
send me an email at jpjako@gmail.com and let’s talk. I did my PhD on integral theory, and also consult companies on the matter. No strings attached, just want to help you with this!
I mean, what’s your product?
Is it in any way more marketable to a multicultural or younger population than a traditional or older demographic?
For example, in the USA if I sell Guns, I’d have patriotic symbols, flags, and so on everywhere. If I’m selling skinny jeans - yeah rainbows and pink unicorns. Or if you are selling solar panels, for example - rainbows makes sense.
As a business, you surely have an “ideal customer”. Where in the political spectrum does this ideal customer lie? Or are you selling something like beer or sausages and trying to sell to everyone?
Rainbows are a funny thing for where I live. We used to be called “The Rainbow State”, our University Sports Teams were the “Rainbows”, and many companies formed before 2010 have the Rainbow in them.
Because we have a lot of rainbows, lol.