Spiral Dynamics Discussion on Karl Rove

[Dialectic]

Very interesting brief discussion on where Karl Rove stands cognitively and morally.

http://integralnaked.org/forum/tm.asp?m=18030&p=1&tmode=1&smode=1

First post by "nbrenard":

OK. Ken slipped it in and said not a word more about it in the outtake video posted recently in response to the political conventions last summer:

He said (nonchalantly, leading into a reverie about compassionate conservatism): "Karl Rove, who's a turquoise thinker...with a blue to orange center [sic], Karl rove is a genius (I don't agree with a lot of it...)...."

Karl Rove is a turquoise thinker? I don't think I've ever heard Wilber out anyone as a turquoise thinker, other than perhaps himself. In what way is Karl Rove a turquoise thinker? Is this strictly a reference to what we percieve must be the cognitive skill of someone who succeeded at getting a monkey elected president, or does it go deeper than that?

Ken, you got some 'splainin' to do.

Second post by "Markm": [I really liked this response]

Someone asked the exact same thing in another thread, so I'll just paste what I said there. Rove is definitely a Turqoise thinker, as no one could have been as successful as him if they didn't understand what drives people, nations, and the planet.

What Ken was saying was that Karl Rove's cognitive line is at Turqoise, and his vMeme (Values/Morals) line is around Blue/Orange. This is sort of the "Darth Vader" situation that Ken mentioned in the "Transformative Cross Training" video.

For anyone who has studied Bush Jr's campaign's, they will immediately notice the genius of Rove's direction. My brother works full-time for the Democratic Party, and he regularly says "Damn Rove, he's a friggin genius." This all stems from Rove's mastery of manipulating public opinion in nuanced and subtle ways. Don't you find it amazing that Bush skipped out on Vietnam, and then skipped out on National Guard duty (probably because he was either drunk or doing cocaine) yet people believe he's more responsible and keeps this country safe? Don't you find it amazing that Kerry won multiple medals for VOLUNTARY Vietnam duty, and is questioned for his military record? Rove's cognitively turquoise because he understands what influences every vMeme. He knows how to make Blue feel secure, he knows how to make Orange think they're going to make money, he can even make Yellow think they're doing the world a favor.

Morally he's blue though, because he is basically promulgating globalization through geo-political dominance, and believes in the proper use of war to expand US hegemony. These values are unhealthy blue, everyone tends to agree; as green's look at it in horror, and 2nd tiers say "Wait, there are probably better solutions."

Turqoise thinkers are all over I'm sure; the talents of a cognitive Turqoise are required for some of the top jobs: top lawyers, Wall Street Brokers, Investment Bankers, etc. Even though Turqoise is .1% of the population, that's still 225,000 people in America. It's to be expected some of the most intellectually demanding professions in the country are occupied with people at that level.

[Sothy]

I've been thinking about this, and it just leads to more interesting questions/situations.

For example, in terms of Spiral Dynamics, what colour would Rove be if Beck interviewed him?

Would they say that he belongs to the blues, the oranges, or would they say he is turquoise? I realize that his moral-meme is not turquoise, but in cases of severely assymetrical development, is one type of development more important in terms of developmental psychology (which isn't as comprehensive as Wilber's model as it is just one aspect of it)?

For example, Wilber (basically) states that Abi Da

http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/adida.cfm/xid,4572/yid,4887247

has written brilliant books on spirituality, but lacks practical wisdom. Still, Wilber wrote a very glowing review of one his books and Da was once a teacher of Wilber's I believe. Suffice to say, that even though Da is apparently a strange guy (ie. not very wise in some ways to put it nicely) he seems to be at a 3rd tier when it comes to spiritual matters, and given that his book is apparently brilliantly written, his intelligence must be at least 2nd tier (if not higher).

This leads to the question of whether his morals are that great (ie. cults, rumours, etc.), but even if his morals are great, Wilber says that his practical wisdom is lacking (the area where Karl Rove is amazing basically).

What level are these people according to Spiral Dynamics? Anyone willing to hazard a guess?

Rejecting a moral level (in terms of memes) but being at that level intellectually is very interesting. For example, if someone fully understands the need for worldcentric behaviour, how it is a further development of ethnocentric behavior, but chooses to have ethnocentric behaviour, is the person just a worldcentric asshole or is the person an ethnocentric individual with some lame excuse not to worldcentric?

[Sothy]

Along similar lines,

the Japanese have a saying, born a baby, die a baby. Alright, I've changed it, but the idea is that babies are egocentric and that very old people are too. In the middle one is ethno/worldcentric, but old age brings everything back to me me me...

Kinda sad, but it makes one wonder what type of regression in development happens as you age (as opposed to stalling happening because you get set in your ways).

[Dialectic]

Another post from the same thread in the IN forum (by "Markm):

Someone asked the exact same thing in another thread, so I'll just paste what I said there. Rove is definitely a Turqoise thinker, as no one could have been as successful as him if they didn't understand what drives people, nations, and the planet.

What Ken was saying was that Karl Rove's cognitive line is at Turqoise, and his vMeme (Values/Morals) line is around Blue/Orange. This is sort of the "Darth Vader" situation that Ken mentioned in the "Transformative Cross Training" video.

For anyone who has studied Bush Jr's campaign's, they will immediately notice the genius of Rove's direction. My brother works full-time for the Democratic Party, and he regularly says "Damn Rove, he's a friggin genius." This all stems from Rove's mastery of manipulating public opinion in nuanced and subtle ways. Don't you find it amazing that Bush skipped out on Vietnam, and then skipped out on National Guard duty (probably because he was either drunk or doing cocaine) yet people believe he's more responsible and keeps this country safe? Don't you find it amazing that Kerry won multiple medals for VOLUNTARY Vietnam duty, and is questioned for his military record? Rove's cognitively turquoise because he understands what influences every vMeme. He knows how to make Blue feel secure, he knows how to make Orange think they're going to make money, he can even make Yellow think they're doing the world a favor.

Morally he's blue though, because he is basically promulgating globalization through geo-political dominance, and believes in the proper use of war to expand US hegemony. These values are unhealthy blue, everyone tends to agree; as green's look at it in horror, and 2nd tiers say "Wait, there are probably better solutions."

Turqoise thinkers are all over I'm sure; the talents of a cognitive Turqoise are required for some of the top jobs: top lawyers, Wall Street Brokers, Investment Bankers, etc. Even though Turqoise is .1% of the population, that's still 225,000 people in America. It's to be expected some of the most intellectually demanding professions in the country are occupied with people at that level.

[Dialectic]

"estevahn" then responds to the "Darth Vader" paragraph above with this:

Yes, this is my understanding of what KW was saying. I think that when KW started referring SD mapping to cognitive lines, it was a disservice. It's become a major point of conflict between SD and SDi, and it causes extreme confusion.

This, I think, is an important point, because as I understand it, SD was originally conceived as a way to map moral development. Once cognition was mapped onto SD as Wilber became involved (creating SDi), things got much more blurry. Things get even more vague when other lines (psychosexual, mathematical, physical) get mapped on as well, but to be honest I'm not sure if that has actually occurred.

With regard to the subject of cognitive genius itself: Marx and Freud, for example, were no doubt geniuses: they were also wholly enmeshed in Orange-level analysis: everything comes down to libido, everything comes down to material wealth and production, etc. My original understanding was that, yes, they were geniuses, but they were geniuses within the Orange domain.

So my first thought on Rove would be that he is also a genius, but one within Blue-Orange. Now to say that he is Turquoise indicates that he is capable of profound "Vision-Logic" perception (the ability to hold many concepts and contexts and developmental insights in your mind at once), so now the question becomes, can someone who is so adept at Vision-Logic cognition be so retarded in moral development? Is a Darth Vader/ Lex Luthor possible, wherein cognitive capacity and insight verge on profound mystical awareness, but can still be subverted/ perverted by skewed morality? Wilber seems to be saying yes.

[Dialectic]

It's also important to note that I don't think anyone here (including me) has done a lot of reading on the original SD/ SDi source material, which is one component of ITP, and which is considerably more complex than how I have presented it on this forum.

[Sothy]

Yeah, that's true, but still, clarification from the members here is also helpful.

I had confused SD with the SD extra (or SDi I guess), and now I see what Wilber would mean...

I agree that someone can be a Coral level genius and a orange level moral person...after all, Freud was probably smarter than me, but he was an orange (who focused on beige at that!). Eventually I'll be post-orange...but maybe not as smart as Freud (yet, but one day...).

[Dialectic]

I see you've gotten to the chapter discussing how some levels even get to the point of only acknowledging the reality of another level! Great stuff, his discussion of Freud and Jung.

[Sothy]

Do you mean in SES? Naw, I'm only on pg. 40...

In TOE he got into this (albeit less briefly I assume), and I wasn't really sure how someone at orange could analyze yellow or beige in a meaningul way, but now that I see the difference between SDi and SD (specifically), I can see that it leaves a lot of room for an orange to be at an extremely high level of intelligence (like Freud)...

One of the best parts of Wilber's work (that I see so far) is how it allows for non-uniform development.

ps. in SDi I assume that the "i" is integral?

[Dialectic]

Yes, the "i" is integral.

With regard to non-uniform development, yes, this is why we refer to the developmental holarchy as a "spiral" rather than, say, a "ladder," because we recognize that there are multiple lines of development, each of which can be at a very different level of growth (though they all affect one another).

An "AQAL analysis," for example, stands for "All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines, All States, All Types." These must all be considered when forming a comprehensive view of a human's level of cognitive/ moral development.

The Quadrants and Levels have already been discussed at length.

Lines refers to the different lines of development (moral, cognitive, psychosexual, physical, etc.).

States refers to the temporary state you are in in any given moment (a Blue c-o-g person, for example, could temporarily experience a Third-tier level of awareness, or a Yellow cog person could temporarily regress to a Red level of aggression, etc.), and consideration must also be given to how the individual translates or interprets that state into something s/he understands when she "returns" to her normal c-o-g. A Christian Fundamentalist could experience a genuinely profound mystical state of awareness, but upon returning to his/ her default level, grossly misinterpret what occurred as some sort of exclusively communion with the Creator which proves that s/he is participating in the one, true, right religion.

Finally, Types refers to how an individual traverses the Spiral. When discussing Types, the most common referents are male and female styles, or how agentive/ communal one is. A male will most likely develop (and manifest his understanding/ insight) in a more individualistic way, and a female in a more communal way.