​​Harvesting Pad 8: Tom Christensen
​​Part of "DandDTrans," a community of inquiry and action regarding the role that dialogue and deliberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time
​​Image courtesy of www.NewStories.org
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​Tom Christensen
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​Summary comments, following January 2015, online, Dialogue experiment.

​​[Posted here by Ben Roberts, with permission from Tom, as a version of his "final DandDTrans harvest"]
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​​Let’s start with that frog who, at least the metaphor says, ends up unaware of the big transformation it is experiencing while being cooked in the steadily increasing temperature of the pot. From one frog to the many frogs…hi! We’re cooked, and who we were before is usually no more than a very hard memory to recall. We do know that things are different though, and we have just shared the experience of trying to figure out how to live effectively as the new massively informed, extensively connected, silicone prosthesis adapted, beings we have turned into. If we are to find our legs in our new forms and new world we have to carry on experiments like we have just shared in. I am grateful beyond measure for the engagement of the pioneers I met in this past month…thank you all. And again thankfully, it is not on my shoulders, but there are those of you harvesting our learning and providing that richness back to us. Learning is afoot, and the future will work better for this. 
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​​It was an extremely forwarding thinking, and generous move, to open up your Dialogue community to those of us focused in other domains. Cross pollination is not a new idea, but affirming its value shows the clear wisdom informing your efforts. I arrived in this experiment with a background in human development, specifically the framework made available by Prof. Clare Graves, and popularized as Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi) by Prof. Don Beck. Given my sensitivities cultured within the SDi idiom, there was a noticeable absence of distinctions entailing human differences. Many times things were said, often during one person’s speaking, that conflated several levels of development, missing the fact that general attributions of human nature, usually suffer from the lack of accuracy that a view that considers, “which person, at which level, in which context” provides. In order to make these kinds of experiments more revealing and more useful, I suggest that Dialogue folks, who don’t have this, be encouraged to learn any model of human development. Any model. Refinements in distinguishing who, where, when, can be developed from within any human development frame, and such refinements put into practice, into shared inquiries, will produce insights that have more leverage when turned into action, than actions based on a general assessment of humans.
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​​To ground this recommendation I offer in the following a quick summary of human differences based on the growth through life of cognitive complexity. This maturation trajectory is invariable, must be fulfilled one step at a time for healthy adaptation, and all later levels rely on continued healthy expression in all the junior levels. For those of you who will naturally react against what looks like a hierarchy, I ask you to suspend that prejudice during the following, and keep in mind that ALL levels must be healthy, and later levels never disappear or diminish earlier levels, but transcend the earlier while including it. Here is how people are sig different, based on the growth in cognitive complexity and the existential concerns that are at the core of living for each level of maturation. The colors are primarily for easy of memory:
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​​Beige:  How do I survive?  Babies, severely disabled, and other seriously compromised humans.  Where we all begin.
​​Purple:  How do we be safe?  Clans, families, tight knit small groups.  Magic is.  Taboos, customs, shamans, wisdom of the elders. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are real, as are gods and spirits.
​​Red:  Where is my power?  Think the “terrible twos” at any age. Boundary setting and protecting. Birth of self-expression.  Chiefs, gang leaders, power by dominance.  Short attention span.  No time sense.
​​Blue:  What are the rules, and what is our purpose?  Honoring the one right truth.  Deferred gratification now possible.  Ideologues, and rigid rule enforcers.  
​​Orange:  What can I create?  Out of the box, beyond the rules, thinking.  Entrepreneurs and artists. First appearance of objectivity, i.e. the capacity to think and feel about thoughts and feelings. 
​​Green:  How do we include everyone?  Inclusivity, Gaia, multi-culturalism, consensus decision making.  Great at bonding, short on results.  While inclusive, Green will exclude anyone that isn’t inclusive.  
​​Yellow:  This is Beige all over again, but at a much higher level of complexity – how do we survive?  This time though, Yellow, for the first time on the maturation trajectory, has the Objectivity to see all the other levels, and knows it has to provide the satisfiers for those levels in order for the whole system to be healthy and foster emergence as appropriate for each level.  This is the Wizard’s level, the home of the Bodhisattva, and where many new human cognitive capacities emerge. See my article here for a presentation of those currently distinguished new capacities - http://integralworld.net/christensen1.html . Most here will see themselves in these leading edge cognitive capacities, but I bet didn’t know this happened while the water has been heating up. 
​​Turquoise:  There are few contexts where Yellow shows up, and Yellow needs a band of Yellows, a sangha to support Yellow cognition.  As this band matures, something unusual happens, the band finds itself emerging a shared consciousness, a one mind phenom, which provides insight and wisdom beyond what the individuals can bring forth.  Turquoise is even more rare than Yellow.  There are levels above Turquoise, Coral is next, and who knows beyond that.  The trajectory has no known end…
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​​The above is a short and incomplete presentation of Grave’s ideas, but hopefully shows how general attributions to humans, can seriously miss the mark. As I said earlier, it’s not essential that this model of human nature be used, but some model must be. No corrections, refinements, insights are possible unless we have a starting point, a model to generate refinements within, and there are several other very good models to choose from: Kohlberg, Cook-Greuter, Maslow, Freud, Donald, Wilber, and others. 
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​​I have written much more than I planned. This excess should in no way diminish the value of the past month. And we can do better, of course, always.
​​I carry a medallion of Ganesh in my pocket, to remind me that things can turn out better than I expect. I wish the spirit of Ganesh to be with all us frogs in all matters we care about.
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  • ​​The Gravesian Model of Human Emergence
  • ​​Levels of Human Existence
  • ​​Tom Christensen – Writer, Editor, Speaker, Educator
  • ​​ Editor: Graves Applied (2015)
  • ​​Specializing in Gravesian Education: 3 hour to 3 day, lecture or interactive, Introductions
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​Comments by Others on this Story

​​​@Chris Smerald​ 2-8 
​​I really like your suggestion. I have seen parallel types of thinking like Richard Barrets values pyramid, but yours is a great necessary dimension. Part of dialog is knowing who is at the table and who is not. You add which of our developmental levels are present or not. And that we hold many of these at once. It is so easy to speak platitudes, which forget our other true as well selves. Thanks. I will be thinking how to enrich what I do with this.
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