Free Tibet, and bring back slavery?

[howstrange]

It seems like one of the very few good things about China's Blue communism was the destructions of Slavery in (Purple/Red?) Tibet. The growing free Tibet protests seems so textbook mean green I was wondering what the thoughts on this were in the Wilber/Integral circles? Are they acually calling people out on this issue, or has the grasp of eastern spirituality and the mystic traditions within the Integral movement prevented some harsh criticism against this mean green pre-trans fallac:) movement?

[Dialectic]

Sorry man, I just noticed this post now!

I'm not sure what the Wilber/Integral folks think about the current situation.

I could take an educated guess, as well as give you my own thoughts.

Everyone with a COG green/ "mean green" is fully against China and pro-Tibet. That much is pretty easy to understand.

Anyone with a truly "integral" orientation is balancing a few things: the compassionate drive to ease suffering, along with current political and economic realities, and an understanding that things weren't so hot before the Chinese arrived either.

This might lead a person to being either for Tibet or China anyway, but it's my feeling that most integralists would try to find an "integrating" "3rd-position" solution.

The fact is, China is not leaving; they do not bow to political or diplomatic pressure, and in fact, as a few articles have indicated, that sort of pressure may even cause them to "harden" an already very firm stance. As I understand it, there are two reasons why they won't leave: 1) they want Tibet's resources, and 2) if they grant Tibet independence, every other minority/separatist group is going ramp up their own efforts, from internal guys like the Uyghurs to "externals" like the Taiwanese. A destabilized China is something no one wants, particularly since everyone is so tied up economically these days (which is a good thing, as it prevents war).

There's also no guarantee that a freed Tibet could form a stable democracy or "just" autocratic government. As you mentioned, they come from a reddish stage themselves (probably leaning toward blue), and had a bunch of corruption and slavery as a result (the expected manifestations of government at that stage), so we have no idea how they'd govern on their own. Add to this a whole bunch of inevitable green (and orange) Western muddling, other Eastern powers horning in for resources, and the Tibetans' own probable drive to modernize, and there's no guarantee that they, or the world, would be better off without China (though whatever government formed would certainly put the interests of at least some Tibetans first).

Understanding this basically leaves us with taking something resembling the Dalai Lama's approach: accepting Chinese rule and working toward some non-trivial form of Tibetan self-government under the supervision of the Chinese.

The Chinese have thus far not granted any sort of real power or influence to Tibetans, while they pretend to have the utmost respect for Tibetan culture and traditions. The Tibetans, remarkably, began their negotiations with the Chinese by requesting that the Tibetan Autonomous Region be expanded, which is an obvious non-starter.

What the Chinese ought to do is bring the Dalai Lama on-side and engage in serious good-faith talks (assuming that the Dalai and his government-in-exile also participate in good faith). The objective of these talks should be to begin developing legislation and governmental structures similar to what Canada and the U.S. have with regard to Aboriginals, their rights, and their limited form of self-government. I don't know a lot of details about this stuff, but I think everyone would stand to gain if they made Tibet into some form of Canadian "Nunavut," which is what the "Autonomous Region" is supposed to be right now, but clearly isn't.

This would take time, and it may not even be possible in the current political structure, but I think at least a good-faith beginning is realistic. This could only be done with the Dalai Lama on-side, as he would have a pacifying influence on the Tibetan people and would be the only hope of moving toward some form of reconciliation in the immediate future.

The major problem, as I see it, is that China is currently in an nationalistic-industrialization phase, moving as it is from being a largely impoverished agricultural society which also sustained massive damage from internal strife and colonial influences. This marks it as being "blue-orange."

What we are proposing is a "solution" which satisfies largely green values (technically post-green, but you have to be at least green to understand this), originating from the strong orange belief in the universal equality, dignity, and freedom of individual beings. This idea largely has no meaning to the blue-orange or "mythic-rational" mind, which simply rationalizes the mythic feelings and beliefs which came before (which is why early-rational Europeans could be ok with slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, homophobia, and a belief in a correct one-God). As such, China tends to engage in objective, relatively short-term cost-benefit analyses from the point of view of entrepreneurs, the rising middle-class Han Chinese, and the Chinese in power. Note their current political strategies of whipping up nationalistic fervor through their state-run media when it suits their political interests, i.e. recent anti-Western, anti-Tibetan, and anti-Japanese sentiment.

In addition, we also know that interior value structures co-arise with exterior techno-economic structures in a reciprocal relationship: blue arises with agricultural production, orange with industrial, green with informational. It's fair to say that China is still largely agricultural (rural farming) with a rising industrial sector. Given the needs and worldviews generated by these modes of production, it would be very difficult to get them to appreciate post-industrial green values, like respect for minorities and environmental protection.

So we need some sort of "solution" or approach to even implement our above-mentioned (beginning of a) "solution." There are two sorts of pressure which countries can exert on each other short of military: diplomatic/political, and economic. If the West itself really cares about China's minority and environmental problems, it has to take a balanced two-prong approach: dangle some sort of economic carrot and apply stronger political pressure to at least "modify" China's blue-orange behavior. (We have already seen that such modification is possible, at least to some extent; China was very, very gentle in Tibet this time around.)

We can't expect miracles, i.e. any sudden shift to green values, especially when orange ones have not yet been entrenched (indeed, they're using green pluralistic arguments to justify their blue-orangeness, calling their one-party dictatorial rule a "Chinese" approach to socialism and capitalism, and saying "Chinese" collectivist values, where you can stomp on people who don't politically support you, as being a legitimate equal alternative to Western democratic values of freedom), but with enough pressure, it might be possible to have China sit down with the Tibetans and at least begin good-faith discussions toward some sort of Aboriginal-like relationship, but the likelihood isn't high.

[howstrange]

Hi thanks for the response. You should really make it front page material. It will really be a refreshing article amongst AA sites.
It’s funny, that Bushes 8years of war mongering, has caused quite a leap towards green v-meme. They’re out in massive force.. collectively shadow projecting Iraq-war guilt straight at China. I just hope China gets through its industrialization as quick as possible and doesn’t get backed into a corner.. That‘s the last thing you want to do to mean Orange meme...survival of the fittest, winners and losers.. China as a sleeping giant, awaking to its own Pearl Harbor.
As for China going green.. Well Tibet and the new pluralistic-leaning modern world are setting China up for a gamma trap.. The inability of its current status quo to satisfy certain conditions, such as China’s acceptance amongst the world’s elite, or the populaces desire for freedoms and opportunities beyond just having more money.
Personally from my own integrated view, I don’t want China going green for at least a decade. Green bureaucratic structures will not be efficient enough to develop a country that huge.

[Dialectic]

I might try to modify it and post it up on the frontpage. The problem is this kind of talk is meaningless without some understanding and acceptance of worldview-development, as well as its correlation with "exterior" structures of production.

Yes, the Bush years resulted in everyone at the various worldviews "reinforcing" and becoming more hardcore in their positions: blue, orange, and green, particularly the first and last. It may also have created a few more greens, and tipped others toward "mean."

Also, the trend of the last few decades has been toward green, and we see this pretty clearly in the Western democracies: it's only been maybe a year since global warming and the risk of environmental catastrophe has become widely accepted, and ideas of race, religion, and systemic/ structural understandings have become part of public discourse. This is only going to increase, and we'll see efficiency drop, confusion rise, and more fragmentation in the near-future.

I agree that China cannot go COG green without disaster: green requires a massive political and economic infrastructure where information flows freely and "fundamental" needs like eating and safety have largely been met. That's not really the risk here: the risk is they stay blue-orange or go sick-orange.

What we need to figure out is a viable way for developing countries with large numbers of red, blue, and emerging orange structures to deal with their own pressures PLUS the addition green pressures placed on them by Western democracies. As my buddy "Sothy" and I were discussing today, because developing nations are not on the cutting edge of development, they have their own red/blue/orange needs to consider, AS WELL AS green needs, which they have learned to recognize as a result of being on the same planet as more advanced nations, but they are incapable of dealing with those needs while their lower-order fundamentals have not been met.

I think what we're seeing now is an emerging Eastern "counter-force" of nations with growing economic strength supporting each other with orange thinking without regard to green values and decreasing their dependency on the West (look at the warming of relations between Iran and Sri Lanka, as one example, as well as those between China and everybody). I think this is a good thing, as long as they, and the West, and minimize the blue and orange tendencies toward pathology. Another question is whether the West can recognize and minimize its own green tendencies.

What do you mean by "gamma trap" and China "awakening to its own Pearl Harbor"?

[howstrange]

What do you mean by "gamma trap" and China "awakening to its own Pearl Harbor"?

The Gamma Trap, in the Graves/Beck model of Spiral Dynamics, is the condition that often precedes change towards the new meme. During a state where the current conditions no longer satisfy life's needs, the feeling of being trapped, seeing a better way life on the other side of the fence, but currently not having the tools to achieve it, can occur. It can either be the point of change forward(often through revolt as in the Civil rights movement) or regression back to the "good old days" as can be seen happening in Putin's Russia. The Gamma trap is associated with a revolt type change rather than change through reform.

The process of vMeme shifts go something like this:

Apha condition(everything is wonderful)> Beta Condition(things aren't quite as good, inadequte)> Revolt(result of Gamma Trap) or Reform into a new Alpha fit.


Now in China, Orange as you have stated is still in it's honeymoon where everything seems so prosperous and hunky dorey. It has been great for emergence. However we are seeing a couple of cases of gamma trap, the revolt in Tibet is an example. Also, China's image itself is experiecing some Beta Conditions. It's feeling its power, it wants to be accepted into the modern worlds elite, yet at the same time the oppressions and lack of certain freedoms for its people is in direct contradiction to the image it is trying to portray to the world. In that way, China is caught in a trap of contradiction, so it hides the skeletons through massive propaganda, nationalism, and hi-tech(internet)censorship. Now whether or not there will be revolt may depend upon if there will be gradual yet substantial reform in the government as China fully realizes modernization.

As for the China and Pearl Harbor analogy, what I meant was that if the West starts throwing sanctions, military threats, and continues it's pressure on China, China may turn it's focus from interior progress out towards world aggression. An awakening giant akin to America's entry into the world stage via the Pearl Harbor invasion.

[Dialectic]

I see, thanks for explaining! I haven't read the SD book itself, but it's on my list. It sounds like the SD version of developmental psychology's "crisis of being in the world," which I think would be fair to call an "identity crisis." As you described, this occurs when the person (or in the SD context, social organization) encounters an experience - a crisis, contradiction, or incomprehensibility - which threatens or challenges the individual/group's self-sense and worldview. It cannot adequately deal with the contradiction at its current level. I'm reading Robert Kegan's The Evolving Self at the moment, and he has a great way of describing it:

"The nature of their 'crisis" is structural; the crisis is not the seemingly unresolvable problem, but the way [the problem is] suited to informing the [psychological] balance that something is fundamentally wrong about the way one is being in the world. Any real resolution of the crisis must ultimately involve a new way of being in the world."

As I understand it, the subject can reject, ignore, "resolve" (without actually resolving) the contradiction or actually integrate it and reorganize the self-sense and worldview to a higher order of sophistication, complexity, and appreciation.

Examples of crises which precipitate self-reorganization might include a young child's realization that Mr. Rogers is saying "You are my special friend" to everyone watching TV everywhere and not just her; a religious person's realization that she cannot justify her exclusive faith in a world filled with many gods; or a postmodernist's realization that she cannot justify her own moral-relative or truth-relative position.

As you say, the problem is right now, the discourse is so confused, probably the most in the West, that people can't differentiate lower and higher-order problems (a classic green trait), and because these are all "real" problems China is caught in a real bind. It has to simultaneously worry about cultural/national integrity, economic development and poverty, minority rights, gender equality, environmental degradation, disease, and elite acceptance, and we know that these concerns cannot all take the same priority.

In fact, thinking on it now, including Western acceptance as a high-priority objective probably creates a no-win situation, because their acceptance means sacrificing blue unity and orange development. If you appease them, you fuck yourself, and if you succeed, you piss them off. This is something I think all of the East (including the Middle, of course) is increasingly recognizing, and I think ultimately that the goal of acceptance will be (or has been) "dropped" in favour of blue-orange priorities (while keeping trade relations intact, of course).

Our responsibility in the West is to minimize sick Western blueness and greenness and encourage healthy orange to continue to work in developing countries (while minimizing, obviously, sick orangeness and human rights violations there). Once a country is firmly COG orange, then you send in the greens. (Or in the case of something like Iraq and a bunch of African countries, get them COG blue first.) It behooves us, then, to do our best to change minds here, in whatever way we can, but I think, with the rise of green, that these "traps" are going to get worse, and more ubiquitous, for rising powers, before they get better.

[howstrange]

yes, yes, and yes, you have a great way of putting things clearly.
I should def check out Kegans work, although I rarely get to read these days. I tried reading Beck/Cowan's Sprial Dynamics but just didn't have time so I broke down and bought the Spiral Dynamics Integral audio cds. They may be condensed but are great. There are even some cool Clare Graves clips on it that are just amazing to hear, cause he's like the OG of developmental psychology.

And again, you gotta do a front page piece!

[Dialectic]

^I will; it'll probably just be a smoothing out of what we've discussed here, though!

By the way, it's awesome that you've got into this; now we have three people reading this forum! =P