Does it feel like the world is becoming more polarized, spinning out of control into groups of completely divergent thinking where one person’s solution is another person’s source of the problem? Some believe we need more individualism and personal responsibility. Others believe we need more collectivism and shared responsibility. Some believe we need more anarchy (“without rulers”) and autonomy and others believe we need more government and restriction.
How can these opposing views be reconciled?
One possible framework to make sense of things come from the book Spiral Dynamics Integral. It describes a framework individuals and cultures go through where higher memes of the spiral integrate and include aspects of all layers beneath, but the lower layers in many ways can’t even understand or communicate with the higher levels.
Can we play a role in helping bring more integration to the world? What would that look like?
I was thinking this morning what it would look like to write an action letter of sorts such that a government employee or politician would appreciate it and agree with the vision, goals, and steps outlined (or out themselves as a greedy, self-serving drain on society). What if the same document could be read by a voluntaryist/anarchist who would also appreciate it and agree with the vision, goals, and steps outlined (or out themselves as a greedy, self-serving drain on society)?
Is that even possible?
I think it might be. Many individualists I know operate in the orange Achievist/Strategic meme. Many collectivists in the blue Puposeful/Authoritarian meme.
The turquoise Holistic and yellow Integrative meme seem to be key to this potential.
The interesting thing about the green Communitarian/Egalitarian meme is how collectivists promote resource distribution to all, which most individualist soundly reject, while individualists promote voluntary consensus solutions like blockchains and cryptocurrencies, which collectivists often reject becuase they see it as technological elitism, concentration of wealth, and environental waste (each argument there can be rebutted, but that’s not really the point here).
What are the things we can agree on? Where are the yellow/turquoise leaders and their writings, games, documentaries, movies, and stories to bring us together to see things in a completely new way to work together within our meme frame while honoring and understanding those outside of it?
