1st Anniversary

A year? No way!

It’s hard for me to imagine that it’s already been a year of writing a weekly piece for this blog page. It’s been quite a journey. We’ve looked at theology, anthropology, and how the life conditions we experience effect the many ways in which people see reality. 

Special Thanks! to Gaia Orion, Michael Luenig, Jane Booth! Also, thanks to all the artists of the Creative Commons [CC0] for sharing their extraordinary artwork!

 

 

I’m over the return2decency URL

I have changed. My thinking has changed. So, I’ve changed the title and the address of the blog page. I’m still with WordPress as I have had a rather satisfying experience with them to date. I feel that my sentiment (#ReturnToDecency) after President Trump’s election was heart-felt and authentic, but transitory and grounded in grief. It’s really the term “Return” that has become disqualifying for me.

While we desperately need to rekindle in society our sense of grace and decency toward one another, there is no place in our history we can go back to so that we might ‘return’ to a mythical state of grace. No manner of romanticism, or nostalgic desire we may have, will enable or allow a return to the past. Sadly, our society may indeed regress, but we will not cope with twenty first century reality by making a retreat to twentieth century coping skills.

 

 

A new “second tier” of development?

For the past year I’ve been writing weekly about the first six values systems as described, initially by Clare Graves, and, subsequently, by Don Beck and Chris Cowan in Spiral Dynamics [SD]. Two weeks ago I wrote:

The author of the ‘post-truth’ piece, Aaron Z. Lewis, argues that online survival—Yellow [A’N’]—will require going meta: (here)

Wait. Hold on a minute. It’s been Beige, Purple, Red, Blue, Orange and Green, and AN, BO, CP, DQ, ER, and FS, respectively. Nope, there’s nothing about “Yellow [A’N’]” there!

OK, I confess, I have intentionally held back in the blog on the whole “tier two” conversation happening in most SD circles because I have generally found it confused, and, most often, misleading. I’ve written previously (here) regarding my concern over the problems and confusion created by a mashup of SD and Ken Wilber’s “Integral” project [= SDi]. 

The chief concern I have is the misdirection that seems to be catalyzed by an Orange [ER] values’ shadow, e.g., the myth of progress. In a clip from a scene in The Matrix, Morpheus and Neo meet for conversation in “the construct.” It’s a brilliant illustration of what it looks like when the “powers and principalities” completely dissociate from actual life on the ground. Well, let’s watch:

 

 

Neo’s perceptions were totally dissociated from actual earthly reality. My concern with the gnostic visual of SDi, a never ending double-helix ladder, is that it visually dissociates ‘second tier’ from the first six systems in human values development. Is there a danger that the distraction of an Orange [ER]-shadow—translated as the never-ending ascent—leaves the earth on fire while second-tier leapers ascend further up the construct? I’ve been convinced of a need for a visual correction. Instead of a never-ending leap to ascent, rather a never-ending möbius-like movement toward full humanness. 

 

The möbius leap visual keeps the leading edge in proximate connection with ground zero and the first six systems. I created a visualization to see the ascent to Yellow [A’N’] as a partnering with Beige [AN]. Yellow re-imagines Beige in light of advanced Life Conditions.

 

 

Announcing:  mysticalmobius.net

The new domain name (address) for my blog page is mysticalmobius.net, and the title of my blog is now a mystical möbius. I’m very pleased to be making the change, and I do find the new name far more descriptive of what I’m trying to write about over all.

The chief concern that I had in making the change was that all the links to the past year of blog posts shared by readers through social media and so forth; I feared the links would be broken with the new URL. Turns out, I kept the old URL as well, I just made it secondary to work in the background. Thankfully, all the old links still operate seamlessly. Thanks for your shares!!!

 

Next week

Last time we began unpacking a quadrant model designed as a mnemonic device for keeping a holistic approach top of mind when discerning meaning and veracity of media information. We’ll pick-up where we left off with the conversation regarding the homeless population in Seattle and the documentary that tries to define the problems at work there.

Your thoughts?

I never know what I’ve said till I hear the response. What did you hear me say?

Note: The blog has outlined Spiral Dynamics, a complex developmental anthropology. Introduction (June 30, 2018), first in series (July 1, 2018).