Comments on “How meaning fell apart”

Looks like the wikipedia article for Spiral Dynamics was removed.

I remember Clare Graves’ work seeming more useful / less hyped (fwiw SD community seemed coopted by oneupsmanship by the time I found it, over a decade ago)
http://www.clarewgraves.com/home.html

It seems to me that the description of the countercultures is specific for the US. While something like counterculture also existed in Germany, for example, beginning, I would say, with the 1968 student movement, the specific forms it took seem different. There is nothing like the dualist counterculture. Evangelical Christians are largely absent, so there was no basis for that. The other counterculture took a more political form, I think (with environmental, anti-nuclear-movement, peace movement etc., and leading eventually to the formation of the Green party). I would say the Hippie movement here was never a counterculture but was a subculture current of that left/green counterculture.

There seem to be some counterculture-like currents in Germany much earlier already. Starting in the late 19th century, there was a current of movements of “Lebensreform”, there was Anthroposophy, etc., leading to a lot of different sub-cultures in the 1920s, including several youth-movements. Some of these movements where then either destroyed by the Nazis or driven into exile, where, I guess, some people from the Lebensreform movements contributed to the rise of the Hippies. Others were rightwing and fed into the emergence of the Nazis or were absorbed into the Nazi-movement in what was called “Gleichschaltung”). Maybe the term subculture can already be applied to some of the movements of the 1880s to 1920s. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensreform for some hints in this direction. You may assign this to the “systems in crisis” stage, but at the same time, a counterculture and subculture stage seems to be present already in the 1920s.

Please pardon my presumptuousness, but I perceive that you have more difficulty with this topic than with most on this excellent site.

Firstly, I feel that your historical review is generally accurate but incomplete. I think there is a common thread to this progression that deserves a lot of attention: the growth of global communication. It’s difficult to maintain any fixed point of view when airplanes, telephones, televisions, and the internet bring you countless other points of view. I may be oversimplifying, but I think that the recent changes you describe can pretty much all be chalked up to this.

Secondly, I wonder how we might get past atomization. I mean, I like your proposed “fluidity”, but the societal forces at work don’t seem to aim in that direction. Can you describe some general cultural trends that might give one hope that we’ll move away from atomization? I fear that random individuals groping at fluidity are effectively atomized (if I’m using your terminology correctly).

Having read further, I see a mistake I made in my earlier comment. Your history is quite complete as you proceed. What threw me is that you seem approach this section differently from the earlier sections. I suppose it’s difficult to present a concise intro to all this.

Since none of the modes is fully functional, none constitutes straightforward progress. I’m sympathetic to the conservative impulse to resist these changes and stick with a mode that seems to mostly work. Later in this section, I’ll write about the risks and costs of too-fast change. However, I believe the only way out is through. And, I hope that the fluid mode will be able to incorporate the valuable aspects of all the others.

“Since none of the modes [are] fully functional”

“is” –> “are,” unless I’m reading it wrong, haha.

However, I believe the only way out is through.

I feel like something is off here, but I might just be misunderstanding. “…the only way out is through [change?].”

Reading your comment that “Dzogchen” means “completion” reminded me that there is also an interesting use of “complete” in Early Buddhism. The steps of the eightfold path are each prefixed in Pali by “samma-” – that is, sammaditthi (right view),… up through sammasamadhi (right concentration).

But “right” is a very poor translation of “samma.” The root is much closer in meaning to “complete.” We are asked to practice “complete view” and “complete action” and “complete effort.” What does this mean? Perhaps another reasonable translation is “appropriate.” The view that is part of the eightfold path is whatever view is appropriate in a situation such that it becomes a step toward liberation. This view will be “complete” in that it accounts for all relevant aspects of the situation. “Complete action” has a totality to it – it is done from a perspective that includes the big picture as well as the details, and is appropriate for the moment. [One can imagine similar descriptions for all the steps: view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration].

I have the sense that this idea of “complete” fits well with your use of the term as a meta stance that rises above contradictory stances.

In fact, after finishing this history, I will demolish it. The whole thing is a lie. There are no modes; we are always “in the fluid mode” because meaningness has always been both patterned and nebulous.

This passage addressed a reaction I sometimes have when reading your stuff; that all these elaborate systems of modes and stances and stages and whatnot all seem like plausibly useful parsings of reality, but are being talked about in overly definitive terms, as if they were unquestionably solid and real.

To put it in your own terminology: your writing can come across as overly patterned and insufficiently nebulous (relative to my own biases at least).

But this reassures me that you have the the right attitude to your own ontology.

I take this example from when I was working in a candy packaging company where we had to package candies in cardboard stands and box them to be shipped. Basically, I was not a very good worker because I was always surveying everything and trying to think how each problem I saw could be resolved without actually taking an action in any direction. If I was less meta, I could just do my role without thinking about it too much and just allow myself to be guided by the line leader. Do you think that being too meta paralyzes you and makes you unable to do the basic actions that constitute existence?

Another example: how when I played pokemon for the first time as a little kid, I would just choose the “best” pokemon at the start (Squirtle!) and use him whenever I could, and level him unevenly over the rest of the pokemon. Whereas later on I got into new silly games like “make sure all 6 pokemon you have are levelling/progressing evenly all the time” or choosing the weaker pokemon at the start (Bulbasaur!) because it will be more of a challenge, or it’s more interesting because it’s weak or something. Or making sure that I always have a type advantage even my pokemon are way stronger and it doesn’t really matter anyway.

Basically, you start making provisions for an eternity, or at least, a very long time, that doesn’t really exist. That’s how I function now. Using the complete stance helps a little bit though because I don’t reflexively avoid things that initially feel a little unpleasant or “boring”.