Chapter 2 --  Spiral Dynamics:  Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
The Nature of ^vMeme Systems

Interviews with Six People -- Find the answer to the question:  "What is life all about?"

Songoma

Casts and removes hexes, weaves spells, dispenses potions, and sells concoctions to protect the users from evil ones.

Answer:  "To please the spirits"

Street Kid

Answer:  "You gotta watch your backside 'cause nobody else will"

West Point Cadet

Answer:  "There is a higher calling that transcends everything else in importance.  It is god's will that we spread freedom and democracy across the Earth.

Entrepreneur

Answer:  "The world is my oyster.  The challenge in life is to win the biggest and finest pearls one can, then sell them and grow bigger ones"

Social Activist

Answer:  "I feel life's all about people and belonging and understanding of our need for harmony and community"

Parks Ranger

Answer:  "I get a great deal of personal satisfaction out of working here to reclaim and preserve our natural habitat.  We should celebrate and respect life as it is and seek to understand how everything relates to everything else"

The Same Six People (Ten Years Later)

Songoma

Many of the mystical, animistic beliefs appear to have been left behind.

Street Kid

Has become a militant urban evangelist.

West Point Cadet

Has become the academic dean of a small military prep school in Virginia.

Entrepreneur

Has been working as a volunteer in a poor section on a major human rights project.

Social Activist

Has now become an account executive for a prosperous public relations firm.

Parks Ranger

Died two years ago but stayed pretty much the same.

Re-enter Clare W. Graves

Graves suggest that human existence contains numerous modes of being, precisely rooted in the multifold potentially of mankind's hierarchically structured brain.

Human nature is such that modes of being can ebb and flow.  New ones can replace old ones, yet the old ones don't disappear.

Qualities of vMEMES

1. Memes manifest the core intelligences that form systems and impact human behavior.
2. Memes impact all of life's choices.
3. Memes express both healthy (for better) and unhealthy (for worse) qualities.
4. Memes are structures of thinking.
5. Memes can brighten and dim as Life Conditions change.

A Quick Meme Overview

The evolution of the memes follows several trajectories:

• From less complex to more complex
• From surviving in the bush to surfing beyond the Internet
• From a small piece of land to the global village and cyberspace

Beige -- Survivalistic -- 1st awakening

Purple -- Magical -- 2nd awakening

Red -- Impulsive -- 3rd awakening

Blue -- Purposeful -- 4th awakening

Orange -- Achievist -- 5th awakening

Green -- Communitarian -- 6th awakening

Yellow -- Integrative -- 7th awakening

Turquoise -- Holistic -- 8th awakening

Coral -- ??????

< Back

Beck, D.E. & Cowan, C.C.  Spiral Dynamics:  Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change.