Lose a cat, lose a father….

 heroes and inspirational figures, human rights, NLP, politics, prejudice & discrimination, Psychology, racism, schemas & memes, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics  No Responses »
Aug 082011
 

Yesterday we – my wife, Caroline, and I – attended a service for the interment of my father’s ashes. A few hours later we picked up a new cat, a 6-week old male kitten we’re calling Basmati - ‘Basmati Rice’, geddit?! Baz, as we tend to call him, is settling in remarkably well and is a real delight after what seems to have been 6 months of loss.

Personally I would never admit to being religious or, in any sense, ‘spiritual’ beyond having a strong but rather vague conviction that there is something bigger than me ‘out there’.  On the odd occasion I do think about it, I tend to think of this ‘something’ in God-the-Father/Allah-the-Compassionate terms – which I attribute to cultural memes rather than any spiritual intuition. And I certainly consider myself far too rational to entertain anything superstitious!

Yet, for several years now, I’ve had the thought that I would lose Artemis, my cat, and Ted Rice, my father, within a very short time of each other. Of course, I could rationalise this by arguing that both were approaching the end of their natural life and had already lived significantly beyond the average age of their sex and species. (Artemis was 19 years old and my father 83.) Or maybe the PURPLE vMEME’s tendency to believe in signs, omens and superstitions was simply tuning into something that rational science can’t comprehend…? Certainly, it would appear from studies of primitive peoples such as the Kalahari bushmen (eg: Richard Katz, 1982) and Australian Aborigine tribes (eg: James Cowan, 1993) that at least some of their number can ‘tune into’ and be informed by something way beyond the ken of conventional modern science.

PURPLE was certainly the dominant vMEME in terms of giving meaning to both relationships…so maybe, just maybe, there was something intuitive in that thought that I would lose them pretty much at the same time…?

Artemis
I acquired Artemis on 5 October 1991. I already had a 7-week-old black male, Merlin, I wanted company for since (just like today!) I worked long hours. My girlfriend of the time knew I was looking for another kitten and alerted me to a kitten some friends of hers had found in a barn on their farm in the hills above Keighley. When I saw this (approximately) 4-week-old kitten, apparently abandoned by her mother, I thought she was the ugliest kitten I had ever seen: a blobby belly on short stumpy legs, ears bigger than her head, bulging eyes, a coat that looked like someone had thrown a range of creams and browns over her in totally random fashion and one half of her face a totally different colour than the other. (Split straight down the middle, like the villain, Two-Face, in the Batman comics!) But, as long-time friend Linda Scurrah commented many years later: “Artemis has grown into her looks. She’s quite beautiful now she’s older.”

Merlin, sadly, didn’t last that long – getting knocked down when he was just over 6 months old. But Artemis survived illnesses, sequential girlfriends and multiple moves, to become a true companion. I talked to her and, to some degree at least, I thought she understood my mood, if not the content of my words.

Pure Behaviourists take the view that animals don’t have cognitions but I am in no doubt that Artemis had certain basic expectations – schemas. She expected stroking if she made certain noises or approached us in a certain way. If she went and sat by her bowl around about evening meal time, she was indicating clearly that she expected feeding.

Some would say I am anthropomorphsing but I am convinced something akin to the PURPLE vMEME functioned in her brain. Throughout all the moves and all the girlfriends, Artemis coped with it all as long as I was there; but, if I had to stay away overnight, I’m told she would prowl the house looking for me and acting distressed. Sometimes, if I just looked at her when I had been ignoring her for a while, she would purr – apparently pleased that I was giving her attention. It appears I mattered to her – that, from her side as well as mine, there was some kind of desire for mutual affiliation. Indeed, I would be prepared to stick my kneck out and say Artemis craved affection. Eg: as she got older, I could still tempt her to a bit of play occasionally…but then she would lick the hand she’d just pawed, look at me in what I meta-stated to be a pleading way and start purring.

Artemis, 2006

I’d also speculate that there was some degree of RED operating in her very basic selfplex. Eg: if I was eating chicken, she would howl at me until either I gave her some or she would get frustrated and try to snatch it from my plate – even though she had her own food down that she was usually quite content with. She knew what she preferred and she would try to intimidate me in to giving her what she wanted.

Artemis was also choosy as to which of my girlfriends she was prepared to associate with…or not. Around 7 years ago Caroline and I were decidedly relieved when Artemis did take to her.

Other prominent temperament traits Artemis displayed included great caution and  nervousness – which may have contributed.to her longevity. Tied in with that,  she was a coward and would never defend her territory. That is, until she  started displaying mild signs of feline dementia and seemed to forget she was a coward, charging at much larger cats and succeeding in driving them out of the garden!

Like most higher mammal pets with their owners, Artemis would not hold  my gaze for more than a second or two – indicating that she accepted I had greater power. However, in the last 6 months or so of her life, Artemis did  take to holding both mine and Caroline’s gaze from time to time. But we  meta-stated it was not in an aggressive way but more as though she was  searching us for something.

Ted Rice
My father was proud of being a right-wing racist who thought the sun shone out of Margaret Thatcher’s backside. He considered the trade unions to be the single biggest threat to the wealth and prosperity of the British people and wanted them tamed again – like Maggie had done 25 years previously! Being a classical music man, he despised The Beatles and the long hair hippie culture of the 1960s. He thought young women should still be virgins when they married and that young men should have short back & sides and wear suits. So when my teenager self grew my hair long, wore jeans, listened to Jefferson Airplane and espoused many of the more idealistic tenets of the hippie culture….!

BLUE was so strong in his selfplex that he considered everyone should listen to the TV news every night because everyone should be informed – it was ‘the right thing to do’. My  mother’s PURPLE village gossip mentality seriously irked him and they had  numerous rows about her finding the housewives’ gossip on the street more  interesting than the state of the British economy or the progress of the latest war in Africa.

There was some partial emergence of ORANGE in that he had ambitions to be a director of the company he worked for and was then able to reinvent himself very succesfully as a health & safety consultant after he was made redundant.

But of GREEN there appeared to be no trace. As said, he was a racist…of the England-for-the-English variety. He was a sexist in that it was understandable if men were unfaithful to their partners but women had to be totally faithful. He had no truck with the idea of human rights, believing criminals deserved to be beaten up by the police and that prisons should be such harsh places that offenders would be terrified of going back to jail. Unsurprisingly he was a staunch advocate of capital punishment and believed corporal punishment should be reintroduced to schools. His limited view of social mobility was that only those who, by virtue of intelligence and/or sheer hard work, could rise above their birth class status should be allowed to get on with it; the state should certainly not award benefits to create positive discrimination for the socially disadvantaged.

For all our cultural and political differences, I was close to my Dad…arguably closer to him than I was to my Mum. Though many of our discussions ended in rows – because of the cultural and political factors! – I could talk to my Dad about the world and what was going on. (Any time I raised anything like a problem with a girlfriend, though, it was immediately passed on to Mum – it was her job to do the emotion work!) But problems at work, too, he would listen and offer his advice. He was immensely skilled in management techniques and provided a very useful sounding board as I tried to fathom my way through various issues. My career and the social, economic and political implications of the news formed the basis of most of our conversations – though increasingly his health problems became a pressing topic of conversation after my Mum died.

Ted, celebrating his 80th birthday

My mother, Betty, died in 2000 (from cancer). For a year afterwards, my Dad was depressed, becoming a virtual hermit and dropping almost all social contacts. Then he developed Myasthenia Gravis, a neurological illness which inhibits the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from working in the  synapses at the muscle platelets, effectively preventing the efferent neurons from sending messages from the motor cortex and the cerebellum to the muscles. A Bell’s Palsy-type face droop in 2001 was followed by a collapse of his lungs the following year, necessitating a 5-month stay in hospital – 3 of them in intensive care. After getting the Myasthenia under control with stupendous amounts of medication, mobility problems and excruciating arthritic pain led to 2 hip transplants. Dad then had a couple of reasonable years before gallbladder problems led to a series of collapses and stays in hospital. By January this year it was clear he was deteriorating, with kidney and liver problems eventually triggering the long, slow, downward spiral to the end. I doubt I’ll ever forget seeing him 2 days before he died, screaming in pain and the hospital staff not able to get the morphine into him fast enough.

For all my ‘psychology tricks’, as I call them, that experience has left a deep wound in me. If it was bad for me, what must it have been like for him?

The downward slope and the aftermath
Already on major medication due to her Arthritis, Artemis began fitting late last year. The fitting may have been a by-product of a botched operation to remove bad teeth that left her temporarily blind and paralysed…but it would have been very difficult to prove. With even more medication, we thought we had got the fitting under control. However, a really severe and distressing fit at Easter, with medication at maximum levels, left us with no other real choice. As Caroline said: “What would happen if she had a fit outside? She’d be at the  mercy of any predator that was nearby – foxes and so on.”

Artemis hated going to the vet’s in a cat carrier. For all the steep extra cost, I got the vet out to our house. It was important to me that Artemis died in her own home, with as  little pre-procedure distress as possible. As she went under, in the conservatory in which she spent so much time, with me stroking her…did it actually make the experience of her passing any less traumatic for her? If I’m honest, I have no idea…but she seemed peaceful. And it helps me…whether or not it helped her.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t give the same consideration - euthanasia – to my Dad. He took another 2 days to die. By the last few hours, they had finally gotten the morphine levels right and he did appear to die in peace…but the 48 hours before must have been a horrendous experience for him.

I was at my Mum’s death bed in 2000. I saw and heard the final intake of breath. (The first time I had seen somebody die in front of me!) Strangely I cried only once for my mother – on a misty November night in the garden 2 months later. I think my focus was so strongly on trying to hold my Dad together in the following months and years that my BLUE never really allowed my PURPLE the privilege of grieving for a loved one. When Artemis’ executioners left - because, being blunt, that’s what we did to her: execution – I sobbed inconsolably for days. My little companion – who at times had seemed unnervingly human and who I sometimes referred to as “my little furry daughter’  – was gone. Even now Caroline and/or I will break into tears, if something triggers certain memories of Artemis. She was such a huge personality and such a part of our lives….

By contrast, my Dad was much less a part of our lives. We  spoke on the phone at least once a week, I travelled to see him approximately once a month – and Caroline would come with me every 2nd or 3rd visit. Christmas dinner with him was an annual ritual.

So far at least, I’ve cried less for my Dad than I have done for Artemis. Again, as with my mother’s death, it’s been all action. As my father’s only child (and the executor of his will), it’s been my responsibility to arrange the funeral, deal with Dad’s financial affairs and apply for probate, and clear out his house, ready for sale. In and amongst these processes, there have been tears but the focus has been mainly on doing rather than thinking. Certainly finding photos of Artemis amongst Dad’s possessions was a trigger for both Caroline and I to shed some tears!

Mum & Dad, 40th Wedding Anniversary

One photo that certainly brought me to tears was the one of my Mum & Dad’s 40th Anniversary in September 1991. Dad was 5 years older than I am now and Mum just 2. They look to be still in their prime, before the cruelties of old age could tarnish and diminish them. My PURPLE feels a great ache looking at that photo. The end of Summer in 1991 was a good time for my PURPLE. Just a few weeks later I would acquire Artemis.

Maybe I‘ll do more crying for Dad – and for Mum? – once everything is done and there is more time for reflection…?

A change in life
I miss my Dad in some different ways to Artemis.

Artemis was in my life every day, working through a variety of situations, ranging from her being a demanding pain to a purring pleasure. Her suddenly not being there any more left a huge emptiness in our lives. One or both of us still think we see her out of the corner of our eyes from time to time. The schematic expectation is still, to some extent, that she is there – or should be there. Caroline and I still hold each other and say we wish we could have her back, we miss her so much.

But somehow the scope of the relationship with my Dad, while lacking everyday impact, was more. Perhaps because of the greater history…? Perhaps because, according to Dale Hay & Jo Ellen Vespo (1988), parents teach us to love them from a very early age…?

Maybe it was simply the cognitive level of the relationship which made it more…? Bizarrely, at the post-funeral bash, I found myself thinking I would have to tell my Dad how pleased I was that my Mum’s relatives were mingling so well with his…when I suddenly realised he wasn’t there to tell anymore! I will miss talking to him.

Then, of course, you can sort-of replace a cat. Not that we feel we could or would want ever to replace Artemis. She will always have a unique place in our memories. But we can get a new cat. We had talked about this possibility and, after my Dad died, Caroline sourced the little kitten who is now Baz. We deliberately went for a male and one who looks nothing like Artemis because we don’t want to find ourselves drawing comparisons. We want to preserve her importance in our selfplexes.

But you can’t even begin to replace a father. (Or a mother, for that matter….)

UPDATE: 14 July 2012.
2 days ago, on the anniversary of his death, after a days’ teaching, I drove from Harrogate to Garstang, to stand by the marker which is all that remains that is tangible of my Dad (and my Mum). It was a near 5 hours round trip to spend 40 minutes with them…but I’m glad I went. On a rare (for this year!) warm and sunny evening, in the tranquil, almost idyllic graveyard of St Thomas, alone amongst the gravestones and the markers, I found that, for the first time I could remember my Dad, without being disturbed by horrendous memories of those last 3 days of his life.

I found that, for the first time, memories came easily to me of when he was younger and healthier…of things we did as a family as well as when I visited them as an adult. For the first time too, I found I could laugh again at some of the memories – at some of the more outlandish and ridiculous things he had said and done. The horrendous final days were still there if I looked for them but they were fuzzy and indistinct – as if partially repressed - so I left them alone and enjoyed my little graveyard reverie of better times.

Over the past year I’ve often moved away from thoughts of my Dad and tried not to engage with them by distracting myself with something else. Interestingly I found remembering my Mum a more easy and pleasant experience. So I’m pleased and hopeful now that I’ll be able to enjoy my memories of Dad.

My intention is to go back to Garstang every year on or around the anniversary of his death and use that trip as a way of honouring him and Mum.

I guess I’ve found for myself some truth in the old adage that pain eases with the passing of time. (For many months, it seemed like it would never ease!)

As for Artemis, we buried her ashes in a little copse on the cliffs above Robin Hood’s Bay and carved her name into the branch of an overhanging tree. As we love the Bay and usually spend a week in a cottage there most years, as long as we can still climb the cliffs, we can visit that copse.

In a strange way, there’s also a connection to my Dad in her burial place. He had always loved Artemis and often asked after her. When he was no longer well enough to visit us, we bought him a little wooden cat, which had something of her ‘look’, to symbolise her to him. As the carving was of a cat all curled up and seemingly very much at peace with itself, after Dad’s death, we took the carving and half-buried it on top of Artemis’ ashes to serve as her marker.

Of course, the world is a busy place and so often we’re too busy to  give much time to remembering those we’ve lost. But it’s good for our PURPLE to remember those in our personal history who have meant so much and to honour our past.

Well, are the Arabs ready for Democracy?

 Afghanistan, Africa, cross-cultural, government, heroes and inspirational figures, international relations, meta-programmes, Middle East, morality, NLP, politics, Psychology, racism, religion, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics  6 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

On 22 February David Cameron, in an address to the Kuwaiti parliament, hit out at suggestions the Middle East “can’t do democracy”, saying: “For me, that’s a prejudice that borders on racism.”

Even at the time it was blatantly clear that such statements were part of his and French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign to persuade the United Nations to approve military action against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi viciously and bloodily repressing pro-Democracy rebels across Libya.

A little over 6 weeks later, as NATO tries not to apologise for bombing the hell out of the first armoured column the hard-pressed Libyan rebels have been able to assemble in what is now a de facto civil war…as revolutionary Tunisia and revolutionary Egypt wonder what on earth to do next now they’ve gotten rid of their dictators…and Syrian security forces exterminate yet more pro-Democracy protestors on the streets of Deraa, I’d argue it could be construed as racist not to ask the question: “Can the Arabs do Democracy?” After all, thousands of Arabs have died over the past 3 months in the name of Democracy. If we’re not to devalue their lives, we have to ask whether their sacrifice for their cause is justified. We’d certainly ask it if thousands of demonstrators were being killed systematically by the police in cities across Europe!

So, are Arab peoples significantly different in their genetic make-up from the Europeans and North Americans who do do Democracy? Certainly, from the huge amounts of evidence analysed by the likes of Elliott Sober (2000) in the past 20 years, it would appear not. In which case, if there is a difference in the potential for Democracy, it has to lie primarily in cultural factors.

It’s interesting that it’s generally accepted that, while Europe languished in the Dark Ages, the Arabs not only kept Hellenic science alive in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and Philosophy but added to many of the ancient Greeks’ works. It’s even of note that some attribute the first flourishings of European science coming from the Moorish invaders of Spain bringing Arabic science to the continent. From there the European Renaisssance developed and eventually the ‘scientific revolution’ of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Meanwhile, Arabic science – and, with it, Arabic culture largely fossilised. This digression into the development of science is important because, while the link between cultural and scientific development is extremely ‘rough and ready’, there does indeed seem to be an unexplored correlation. Many commentators – eg: Norman Tebbitt in his August 2005 remarks on the 7/7 bombings – attribute the fossilisation of Arabic science and culture in the late Middle Ages to the increasing stranglehold of Islam on Arabic thought. Others attribute it to the political systems in place. Yet others attribute it to the cumulative effect of a plethora of small things such as the Arabic failure to adopt a patenting system as the Europeans did which made science potentially profitable for its exponents.

Whatever, over an 800-year period – arguably starting with the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 – the Europeans made a slow and tortuous progress to modern Democracy while the Arabs changed little other than for some of their national borders to be imposed upon them (eg: Iraq, Libya) and to accept some of the benefits of Western science and engineering (medicine, transport infrastructure, etc) during the ‘days of empire’.

In terms of political systems, very little has changed. Some countries like Saudi Arabia still have absolute monarchies while others – eg: Egypt, Tunisia, Libya – had their kings replaced with autocratic dictators who were either military leaders or sponsored by the military.

These are, of course, generalisations – Lebanon, for example, stands out as different in many ways – but the post-colonial history of that country is far from being that of a stable, democratic, unified nation.

In terms of cultural vMEMES, Europe could be generalised in the late Middle Ages as being dominated by RED-thinking despots with a power hierarchy of lords and nobles, with the Roman Catholic Church providing some semblance of BLUE structure and PURPLE clan networks largely suppressed and/or dying out in terms of influence. Now Western Europe (and North America) can be generalised as largely dominated by BLUE political structures (democratic systems) exploited by ORANGE-driven political achievers and business corporates – with some sheen of GREEN influencing moral thinking in social matters, particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

In contrast the Arab nations have largely remained ruled by RED despots, with Islam providing a BLUE veneer of conscience and duty. The PURPLE clan (tribal) networks still flourish in many of the Arabic countries but have been quite suppressed in others – eg: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. The army generals in these countries function in a similar way to the Mediaeval European king’s lords.

So where have these intense campaigns for Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa come from and what does Democracy really mean to the protestors?

Complex ideas for simpler worldviews…?
I’ll never forget, in late 2000, during the HemsMESH project, hearing Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck talk about irresponsible, profit-oriented ORANGE beaming television images of high value/high status items into homes where the thinking was largely in PURPLE and RED. The danger in this, as Beck saw it, was that RED would drive many of those people to do anything to get those items. As they lacked BLUE disciplines and ORANGE planning and RED has no concept of time other than NOW, some of those people would deal drugs, commit burglaries, extort others and prostitute themselves to get what they saw as necessary for the ‘good life’ – Zygmunt Bauman’s (1988) concept of the ‘seduced’ criminalised. Those whose thinking was more dominated by PURPLE would most likely feel more alienated than ever from the ‘others’ – those who have the ‘good life’ – effectively Bauman’s ‘repressed’.

Beck was talking about the residents of the South-East Wakefield former mining villages where, until the mines closed, life for a couple of centuries had been little more complicated than going to school to get the basics of reading and writing until you were old enough to go down the pit (males) or get married, have children and look after the household (females). Until the mines closed, their ‘life conditions’ didn’t require thinking more complex than PURPLE and RED. Then, in less than a generation the mines were gone and incomes severely reduced while ORANGE consumerism tempted them endlessly with the ‘good life’ they simply couldn’t have legally without a substantial upgrade in thinking.

Beck’s concerns can be applied in large measure to the peoples in the Arab states whose life conditions, for perhaps centuries, have required little beyond PURPLE and RED. Where more complex thinking has emerged, it has tended be isolated to the universities or repressed or both. It’s no accident that it’s largely been imported workers from the West (management and technology) and places like the Philippines and the Indian subcontinent (more manual labour) who have got the wealth-producing oil out of the ground in those Arab states which have the ‘black gold’.

But especially with the advent of the internet and more especially with the development of social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc), the Arab peoples have been exposed to complex concepts previously rarely experienced by the average Arab in downtown Benghazi or the backstreets of Deraa. Like the former coalminers of South East Wakefield, many Arabs are being exposed to ideas with which they do not yet have the mental and cultural sophistication to fully understand and assimilate.

The result has been the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ – an angry outpouring of long-suppressed dissatisfaction with the authoritarian regimes which have ruled them largely through the shadowy terrors of a police state. They are driven by a RED contagion that flies in the face of the water cannons, the tear gas, the rubber bullets, the baton charges and all too frequently live ammunition. In spite of the appalling injuries and sometimes death inflicted upon their fellow-protestors right by their side, they come back time and time again, more and more determined to get rid of their autocratic rulers.

Apart from the sheer level of violence inflicted by the state upon the protestors - most obviously in Libya but Syria, Bahrain and the Yemen have also seen levels of violence by the state that are totally unacceptable to most North Americans and Western Europeans – there is a problem in understanding what the protestors want and how they might get it. They certainly know what they don’t want – Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh, etc – as if a collective move-away-from meta-programme was running their heads…. But do they know what they want beyond some ephemeral idea of ‘Democracy’…?

This is where there seems to be a clear lack of charismatic, ‘big-vision’ leadership. There are no Mahatma Gandhis or Nelson Mandelas - not even a Gerry Adams! – to articulate what the new Tunisia or the new Egypt might look like…what model of Democracy they might actually try to implement. So far the Arab Spring revolutions seem to be composed genuinely of the ‘little people’ who had simply had enough of the ‘bad guys’ terrorising and exploiting them and got some ideas of what to do about it from the internet.

So the problem of the lack of leadership also leads to what might be termed a ‘vision vacuum’.

History shows that, where there is chaos and a lack of leadership and vision vacuum, then the vacuum can be filled very easily by those who offer quite an unsavoury vision as long as it is a vision that offers hope and order from the chaos and is accompanied by strong leadership. Just think of what Adolph Hitler offered bankrupt and depressed Germany in the 1930s. Just think of what the Taliban offered ravaged Afghanistan after the failed governments that followed the Russian invasion and withdrawal.

Fortunately – so far, at least! – the Arab Spring seems to be running a move-away-from fundamentalist Islam meta-programme. But how long can the vision vacuums last before people became desperate for strong leadership and someone or something to give them vision?

The West is right to be concerned that al-Qaeda or their ilk could take advantage of the vision vacuums.

How Democracy works
Using 4Q/8L it’s possible to take a sociopsychological analysis of the way Western Democracy works.

Firstly the structure (Lower Right) is largely BLUE in that the political systems are tightly controlled, very bureaucratic and centred on the principle of one (free adult) person/one (secret) vote. The cultures of the Lower Left are all over the Spiral’s 1st Tier but the vast majority of the population’s thinking is in the PURPLE, RED and BLUE zones. There isn’t that sizeable a proportion of the population thinking in vMEMES beyond BLUE. (In 1983 Anne Colby, Lawrence Kohlberg et al found only marginal evidence – around 5% of his samples – of thinking at Stage 5 – the equivalent of ORANGE – in his Stages of Moral Development.) Thus, the ORANGE thinking of key individuals (Upper Left) is able to manipulate less complex thinking in the Lower Left to vote in elections (Lower Right) to their advantage. A prime example of this was the way Tony Blair fought to get and retain Rupert Murdoch’s support for Labour because he knew The Sun - Britain’s most widely-read newspaper – was one of the most powerful weapons in his election armoury. Gordon Brown lost Murdoch’s support in 2009 and the following year Labour lost the election.

Western Democracy is far from being the fair, just and egalitarian concept the West likes to portray it as. Marxists have no hesitation in pointing out how it largely preserves elites. But it does facilitate some social mobility, it does factor in some capacity for change and most people in the Western democracies find it more or less acceptable – and certainly they see it as better than any form of totalitarian or authoritarian government!

If we apply 4Q/8L to the Arab states, we find the Lower Right structure is BLUE enough for the government’s police systems to work but they run on RED power and coercion. There is little BLUE in the Lower Left – in fact, it’s largely fear-conscious PURPLE-dominated. All of which enables RED-led individuals in the Upper Left to use the Lower Right to dominate the Lower Left…until very recently. Now we have an explosion of angry RED in the Lower Left.

Just how much the protestors are driven by RED (and, to some extent, PURPLE) is illustrated by the Libyan rebels who appear mostly incompetent as would-be soldiers and are far too disorganised to take on Gaddafi’s forces who have a strong dose of BLUE military discipline among them. The only time the rebels seem to have real success is when Gaddafi’s forces are reeling from United Nations/NATO airstrikes.

The above analyses of both the Western democracies and the authoritarian Arab states are, of course, full of generalisations. In reality, there are many, many variations which make those generalisations flawed. Nontheless, as a generalisation it can be said that Arab culture and state structures have some way to go before they are ready for Western-style Democracy.

Democracy is said to require:-

  • People be informed enough to take an interest in how they are governed. This assumes a degree of education and intelligence amongst the electorate. Plus, they must have the time and resources to take the interest.
  • It also assumes media, free from government interference, communicating information on the key issues for people to develop an informed opinion. Communicating on issues to the electorate forms a powerful check on what governments do, putting them under scrutiny by the electorate. (Which is why so many leading politicians cultivate the media magnates to win their support.)
  • People doing things the government can’t control. Much in the lives of British citizens is beyond the direct control of governments. Families, religious organisations, clubs and societies, for example, facilitate discussion and debate about public concerns…yet in the UK it is difficult for government to influence them very much.
  • Little desire for radical alternatives. In the UK there is not that much difference between the parties. Those supporting losing parties usually don’t need to fear that their lives will be ‘turned upside down’ as a consequence of their favoured party losing.
    Eg: in the wake of the 2010 general election in the UK, while the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government proposed an average cut of 25% in public sector costs, the losing Labour Party conceded that they intended cuts of around 20% – though at a slower pace of implementation.
    Because there is a maximum term a government can serve in a democracy before another election – 5 years in the UK – the losing party have little incentive not to accept defeat. They will get their chance again at the next election.

Clearly there are a large percentage of Arab populations who are poorly educated, with many illiterate. They are not used to having a free media – though much is being made of the ‘free’ rebel radio stations in Benghazi! Plus, there is a minority – hopefully still rather small – who would like to see the revolutionary states dominated by Islamic fundamentalism.

For Democracy to be sustainable, it also has to be embedded as a cultural norm. And there the strong PURPLE tribalism running throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa presents a real problem. A central concept in Democracy is that, after all the attempts to influence and buy influence, the voter should make up their own mind. In PURPLE tribal cultures, there is effectively no secret vote. You vote how your tribal elder tells you to vote.

It would be wrong to say Arab cultures and structures couldn’t very quickly become democratic…but the seriously-flawed experiment in Democracy in Iraq should serve as a warning that change is unlikely to occur quickly, smoothly or painlessly.

Even more the election of Hamas in Gaza in 2006 is a cautionary tale on how Democracy can go badly wrong if the ground is not properly prepared. The campaign was marred by tribal and gang political violence but the election itself was judged fair by the UN.

And let’s never forget Hitler and the Nazis were democratically elected in 1933!

What now?
It’s a pity the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring have tried to drive out all politicians associated with the old regimes and have refused to accept gradual transfers of power and interim arrangements.

Given the brutal, exploitative and deceptive natures of the old regimes, the mistrust of anyone associated with them is understandable. In light of this, the proposals being put forward today by Jacob Zuma’s African Union delegation to the Libyan rebels are clearly inadequate. The government remains in power, their military entrenched around Ajdabiya and Misrata and able to regroup, and NATO airstrikes are halted. In return for which, the rebels are invited to talk to Gaddafi’s government about a transition to Democracy. No wonder Gaddafi endorses the proposals! Given his past record on broken ceasefires and ruthless repression of opponents, the rebels would be crazy to accept.

However, transitional arrangements, if firm, transparent and monitored by, say, the United Nations, could give the Arab states the breathing time they need to put in at least some of the educational and cultural development programmes they need to create the groundwork for Democracy to begin to work.

Don Beck’s (2000) concept of Stratified Democracy - see Stratified Democracy vs Modernisation Theory – posits that the form of government (Lower Right in 4Q/8L) has to be in line with the cultural level of thinking (Lower Left). Thus, Western Democracy (BLUE with an ORANGE leading edge) is a step too far for peoples whose thinking has mushroomed suddenly from cowed PURPLE to furious RED. What is needed is an interim form of government which rules with some semblance of the old, familiar iron fist but is sympathetic to the concept of Democracy and has committed to a clear and transparent process of transition. But that process may take time – bearing in mind that Walt Rostow (1960) reckoned it could take a century to develop a largely tribal African nation into a Western-style consumerist society – and the process will need to be managed and monitored very carefully indeed.

In this sense, the Egyptians may actually be on their way to getting it right. The interim military government seems committed to turning Egypt into a modern democracy; but, rather than rushing at it, they seem determined to take the time to develop a system that is right for Egypt and sustainable in the long term. Of course, the military government also appear to be using some of the old regime’s secret-police-and-torture repression methods and the violence against demonstrators in Tahrir Square this past Friday night (8 April) does not bode well for the future. But the calls of the demonstrators illustrate just how difficult the transition process may prove. The demonstrators were not telling the government what they wanted for the future of their country - a visionary move-towards. Rather they were telling the government more of what they didn’t want – a nihilistic RED move-away from - getting rid of more old regime members of the government and stopping Hosni Mubarak hanging onto the wealth he amassed from exploiting Egypt.

In  thinking about how the Arab states progress towards Democracy, it may  be salutary to consider the former totalitarian communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Many of them. such as Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, have successfully morphed into liberal, capitalist democracies over a 20-year period – though not without much turmoil. They also had, under Communism, much stronger BLUE in the systems and structures of the Lower Right, giving them a more advanced starting position when their totalitarian regimes collapsed.

Nonetheless, many of the challenges the post-totalitarian Eastern European states faced will be similar to those the post-autocracy Arab states will confront in the coming months and years.

Don Beck’s got who at his workshop this weekend…?!?!?!

 American Foreign Policy, cross-cultural, NLP, Psychology, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  3 Responses »
Mar 062009
 

This weekend Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck has got Lt Colonel Fred Krawchuk attending and presenting at his workshop programme at the Integral Centre in Boulder, Colorado. WHAT?!?!?

This man is a killer! He’s been heavily involved in the ‘surge’ in Baghdad. There will be more than a few innocent men, women and children killed by his troops. And suspected insurgents summarily executed without a shred of evidence.

What the fuck is Don doing having this man presenting at his workshop?!?!? And, fercrisakes, what were all those supposedly-TURQUOISE Buddhist types at the Integral Center doing letting this mass murderer through their doors?!?!?!? Have they all gone mad? We’re supposed to be about building a better world, not endorsing the work of ruthless killers!

I tell you, my GREEN vMEME really went off on one!!

I was going to e-mail Don and tell him he was a disgrace! I was going to cancel my ticket to Don’s London workshop on 14 March. I was gonna…! I was gonna…!

 

And then, while seething, I caught sight of the Key Update notification on my home page of the Global feature, ‘Killing the Terrorists’. In that article I had advocated the ruthless extermination of terrorists whose peak BLUE made them closed to other, more reasonable points of view.

 

…er, hang on. I wrote an article advocating pretty much what Krawchuk had been trying to do??? Was that the same me having histrionics about this mass murderer presenting at Boulder?

 

Different vMEMES value different things

Well, yes, it was. And, when, I read it again, there isn’t anything I feel the need to change.

 

The me who advocated killing unreasonable and unmovable terrorists was the same me who got so offended by Beck having Krawchuk present at his workshop. Well, it sort of was the same me. But not quite the same me….

 

Put simply, the selfplex – your concept(s) of who you are – bends, twists and morphs according to which vMEMES dominate in your vMEME Stack in any one context. Thus, it was my GREEN which was indulging in histrionics over Krawchuk. However, I’d claim it was 2nd Tier thinking which was behind ‘Killing the Terrorists’. Research to date shows that 2nd Tier thinking will sacrifice a few for the good of all. Thus, I was in a state of outrage over Krawchuk; but, when authoring ‘Kill the Terrorists’, I was coolly aware of both the need to say that and the huge responsibility I was taking upon myself by saying it.

 

Having worked practically with Spiral Dynamics for over 10 years and researched intensely into how it fits into the broader world of the behavioural sciences for over 5, being an NLP Master Practitioner and having undergone all the self-examination that goes with that training, I thought I pretty much understood how human beings work – how I work! Getting to understand just how and why I had reacted so strongly to the news of Krawchuk’s involvement at Boulder has been an important learning for me. And once again it brings home to me to just how much vMEMES shape our current state.

 

Now I look at Don Beck’s blurb about Krawchuk with interest – that he “has been in our SDi series before. He played a major role in revealing the underlying  tribal structures and demonstrated how to relate to Shia and Sunni factions, as well as integrate the military with the civilian elements.” Krawchuk used Spiral Dynamics-rooted strategies in Baghdad…? Wow! I almost wish Krawchuk could be at London next weekend – and I’m certainly pleased Don intends including Krawchuk’s work in his briefings.

Re: Jerry Coursen on Clare W Graves

 education, NLP, Psychology, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics  8 Responses »
Jun 132004
 

Written by BARBARA N BROWN

re: the Jerry Coursen on Clare W Graves article,  today I received this rather thought-provoking e-mail from Barbara N Brown in Texas, which I thought it important to share.

Thanks for this post. Very interesting.

I noticed the comment that “One of those issues was the fragmentation of the field of Psychology into multiple disciplines like Anthropology and Sociology. Graves thought the discipline of Psychology was better served as a unified entity. I’m of the opinion that this is great intuition on Graves’ part, but, even today, it still bucks the reductionism trend of science.”

I notice from your site, and also from comments on the posts [on the SD lists] that most of us here use multiple models, but interesting enough very few of the models we find useful in the real world are in favor in academic circles. For example, NLP, Wilber, Myers-Briggs are all used widely everywhere but in Psychology departments.

It’s almost as if the early physicists had refused to use Newton. Or as if universities were ignoring integrated circuits because they were only ‘commercial’.

I don’t think it’s possible to do much integral science in the current academic world, much too D-Q in structure. Since the business world finds it useful at E-R, perhaps we should be looking at commercial research. After all, going back to physics, most of the best research on integrated circuits is done in the good industry labs, not in academia. Until we get Orange schools, I don’t think we’ll get much integral research out of them.

It was heartening to hear that business has been using SDi in other areas. Houston – the home of Enron – is such a dismal wasteland there hasn’t been much hope with business here.

Keep up the good work.
Barbara

I wonder what others think…?

Formation more than Education

 education, Neurological Levels, NLP, Spiral Dynamics  3 Responses »
Jan 242004
 

I find that one of the more interesting aspects of my part-time return to secondary school teaching is that of being a form tutor.

The role has a pastoral element built into it not obviously present in classroom teaching or general schooIl management.

For someone interested in the development of children and young people and how their psychology affects their performance at school (and beyond), the role of form tutor offers possibilities of making the kind of difference that most other roles in school life don’t.

What’s more, a good form tutor can create a climate of trust that enables members of his or her tutor group to open up and confide some of the turbulence going on inside their teenage heads.

Recent examples I’ve had to deal with include a 14-year old girl distraught because her mother had started calling her “fat” and “ugly” over the past few months – having previously tended to tell her daughter how beautiful she was. Investigation revealed that the catalyst for the change in Mum’s behaviour was the arrival on the scene of a new serious boyfriend. It looked pretty much to me like Mum was belittling her daughter because the daughter (who was quite well-developed for her age!) could be seen as competition for the attentions of the new male on the scene. If that may sound far-fetched to some, evolutionary psychologists have found much evidence for this kind of behaviour. The mother’s intent was almost certainly subconscious but the flattening of her budding sexuality caused a lot of damage to the girl’s RED self-esteem.

Discussions around the intense feelings aroused by first falling in-love and telling the daughter that Mum’s emotions were likely to balance out a little more after the first phase gave her some reassurance. What really made the difference though was telling her how I had overheard some Year 10 boys saying how much they fancied her. That put a smile back on her face!

On another occasion one of the girls in my tutor group approached me somewhat hesitantly to say how she felt one of the other teachers was victimising her in class. For a student to initiate a serious complaint about one teacher to another is no easy thing. Students – particulary Years 8-10 (when RED is pretty much to the fore) – tend to perceive teachers in ‘us-and-them’ terms and, indeed, the ethic encouraged among teachers is to close ranks and defend colleagues. (Given how vulnerable teachers are to accusations of impropriety and/or unprofessional conduct, this is hardly suprising.) Assuring the girl that her complaint would be taken seriously and offering advice on how to handle her relationship with the teacher in question in the short term enabled the girl to at least function after a fashion in that class while the matter was investigated.

And then there are relationships with parents which develop in ways they often don’t from the classroom teacher perspective.

Unfortunately BLUE’s Procedures meta-programme means that much of tutor time is spent on administrative tasks – chasing up absences and checking whether planners have been signed and homework recorded. Important as these tasks are, they can take away from relationship building.

The Bigger Picture…?
Since the mid-1980s successive secretaries of state (of whatever political persuasion) at the Department of Education have been – not altogether incorrectly! – obsessed with academic performance.

Undoubtedly some of the strategies – most notably the introduction of numeracy and literacy hours in primary schools – have produced impressive results. However, many of the initiatives have failed to have the desired effect. There is serious concern whether the Education Action Zones have provided value for money and criticism is starting to build over the successor Excellence in Cities schemes. (There is now even some evidence that improvements in literacy in primary schools may have peaked and there may even be something of a backwards slide.)

There is perhaps more debate than ever over what to do to improve academic attainment. There has been some relaxation of the National Curriculum in England and Wales. In Scotland it has been dumped as a statutory requirement. Wales has axed Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) at Key Stage 1 and is considering the same for Key Stages 2 and 3. And the January 2003 publication of ‘14-19: Opportunity & Excellence’, along with the establishment of the Pathfinder concept, is starting a process of massive change in the way education and training for that age group is delivered.

Yet there is still relatively little on the pastoral side. Connexions is the Government’s big idea and the fact that the service is oversubscribed in many schools is indicative of just how needed action is on this front.

Children in the early years tend to carry their parents’ memes. Memes – a concept developed by Richard Dawkins (1976) – are transmittable values, beliefs, attitudes and even memories. Parents’ memes will be reflected in children’s behaviours. As an example, one of the teachers at my school recently rang home to dicuss a Year 7 boy who was consistenly underperforming and misbehaving and who displayed a couldn’t-care-less attitude. His mother’s response was: “Well, I didn’t do well at school either and it hasn’t done me any harm.” Hardly surprising then that achieving in the classroom is not on this boy’s list of priorities!

It’s also no coincidence that the majority of parents who attend parents’ evenings – ie: they are concerned enough about their children’s progress at school to make the time and effort – are those whose children tend to work hard and do at least reasonably well in class.

Evidence shows that, in the teenage years, young people tend to be socialised more by their peers – often going through a partial rejection of their parents’ values. This is a normal and in some respects quite healthy part of the RED vMEME’s journey to establish personal identity beyond the PURPLE belonging of the family. This was termed ‘Negative Identity’ by psychologist Erik Erikson (1964), an element of ‘Identity Diffusion’ which the adolescent must overcome to achieve his/her own ‘Identity’.

Even when undergoing a partial (and usually temporary) rejection of the family, the young person’s PURPLE vMEME still has belonging needs. So now the young person tends to find a new degree of belonging in a peer group. But with RED predominant in the mix, the task is to build self-esteem often through recognition within the group.

How that building of self-esteem takes place will depend to a great extent on whether the dominant memes held by the group are those compatible with and including academic success or more centred on delinquency and anti-social behaviour. In his famous study of 14-15 year olds back in 1967 David Hargreaves established that it tends to go one way or the other. The RED vMEME’s drive for recognition and self-esteem does not stop because of the failure to achieve academic success. Rather, it finds ways to ways to achieve its goals through less ‘socially-acceptable’ means. Most teachers in most secondary schools are familiar with this model: the poor performers academically who score kudos with other poor performers by the trouble they cause in class and around the school building. Detentions then replace merits as badges of this kind of success. Nicholas Emler (1984) calls this ‘Reputation Management’.

Thus, the parents’ memes brought into primary school will often be predictors for the kind of memes displayed in secondary school. The child entering infant school, whose parents place no value in formal education, will most likely be an academic failure by the time of leaving junior school and a truant/disruptive student by mid-secondary school.

This isn’t, of course, a route set in stone. All kinds of things can bring about a change in values and, therefore, a change in attitude. For example, Frederick Gough Comprehensive, a school I know in Scunthorpe, is located in a fairly ‘rough’ part of the town. Its school population is not the type one would readily associate normally with good behaviour and academic success. Yet Frederick Gough has been doing substantially better than another, neighbouring secondary which draws upon largely the same catchement area but has had severe behavioural problems and low academic attainment. (A litmus test of a school’s ability to manage behaviour is the willingness of supply teachers to service it! In fairness, it should be pointed out that the other secondary has recently acquired a new headteacher and the description here of the school hopefully will soon be obsolete.)

So what is the secret of Frederick Gough’s relative success? One factor may be that there is a significant emphasis on pastoral care: every student receives a number of one-to-one sessions with his/her form tutor. These function with varying degrees of success, with some form tutors clearly more effective than others and some students memetically more ‘damaged’ than others. Nonetheless, considering its natural population, Frederick Gough does rather well and the emphasis on pastoral care is almost certainly a significant factor.

Where, for all its reforms and intended reforms, the Government is still largely missing the point is that they are targeting ‘education’ at the levels of ‘Skills & Knowledge’. The Neurological Levels model of Robert Dilts (1990) allows for change at any level to impact upon the other levels but makes the case clearly that, for change to be really effective, it has to be at the upper levels of ‘Values & Beliefs’ and Identity. That means dealing with memes – preferably the earlier in childhood the better.

Understanding ‘Formation’…?
Giving pastoral care takes a teacher beyond education and into ‘formation’ – the forming of the character and the personality.

We often hear or read terms like ‘formative influences’ or ‘formative years’ – but how often do we really think through what they mean?

I personally didn’t have a clue what formation meant until I was involved on a quality systems project with the Hospitaller Order of St John of God in the mid-1990s.

A worldwide Roman Catholic lay order dedicated to health care – especially of the ‘disadvantaged’ – the English Province had been pioneering new ways of helping people with severe learning disabilities maximise their quality of life. As the number of ‘brothers’ in the English Province was in marked decline, most of the management and delivery of services was carried out by ‘civilians’ – some of whom were not even Christians, let alone Catholics!

In this situation I found myself fascinated with the few new recruits the brothers did have and how they inducted them into lifelong formation which meant for them celibacy, service both to God and to mankind, no personal possessions, religious study, etc, etc – essentially a life of ‘active monasticism’. But note: this was not ‘lifelong learning’; this was ‘lifelong formation’.

Formal education and training, important as they were, were just part of the formation. The brothers were concerned with the development of the whole person. The character and nature of the inner person, if you will, was the centre of this. The brothers were operating at the levels of Identity and Values & Beliefs. How successful they were was reflected in how rare it was for a brother to leave the Order. Not unknown but very, very rare.

As my knowledge and understanding of Spiral Dynamics and related Psychology has grown over the intervening years – and particularly since my part-time return to teaching in 2001 – this concept of formation has seemed more and more relevant.

If we are to be successful in dealing with people, then we have to deal with the whole man or woman. Not just their training and education.

If we take the example of back-to-work schemes for the unemployed in places like Hull’s Bransholme estate, it’s no wonder they are relatively unsuccessful because the training provided is aimed at the Skills & Knowledge level. If the values of the intended recipient are not in accord with the values embedded in the scheme, then there is a memetic discrepancy. While employable skills are obviously important, bringing about change so that people actually value having a job is the key to take-up of these schemes.

The earlier one can make memetic interventions in a person’s life the better. Cathy Byrne, Headteacher of The Parks Primary School (on Hull’s Orchard Park Estate) – featured as a Services case study – has stated that she believes interventions should begin (where necessary) at nursery school age and possibly even younger.

If we are to transform our schools and enable them to actually hit all those targets the Department of Education burdens them with – if, indeed, we are to transform our society (greater prosperity, less crime, less drug and alcohol abuse, happier and more sustainable families, etc, etc) – then we have to go beyond education and training. We have to deal with lifelong formation.

To do that, we have to go beyond single institutions or sectors. A cross-boundary approach is needed which can address all relevant aspects which impinge upon the people and issues in question..

Back in 1999 Richard Dunn, then Headteacher of Hemsworth High, near Pontefract, agreed to let a team, in which I was involved, work with the school on what became known as the HemsMESH  project. This was the first attempt to use Spiral Dynamics on a macro level in the UK. Dunn’s rationale for this was that he and his staff had improved the school’s score of 5 A*-C GCSEs as much as they could via internal actions at the school. He recognised now the need to engage parents and the wider community – which the MeshWORK approach offered. Though the term wasn’t used at the time, Dunn knew that further improvement in student performance was a formation issue.

As the pace of change in Western societies grows ever quicker – often stimulated by ORANGE’s development and manipulation of new technologies – frequently bringing with it both huge benefits and immense social dislocation, creating what seem to be ever-widening ‘values gaps’, the need to address formation gets overlooked all too often in the drive to train skills and implant knowledge.

Yet formation is clearly the key to what kind of people we are, both as individuals and as societies.

Does Hull have a Race Relations problem?

 community, NLP, Spiral Dynamics  7 Responses »
Sep 022003
 

On the evening of Friday 25 July in my home town of Hull, two groups of men – one white and composed of locals and the other said to be made up of Iraqis and Kurds – fought each other in the Spring Bank and Pryme Street area of Hull. Knives and clubs were brandished. Fortunately police intervened rather speedily and no one was seriously injured – though several cars were badly damaged. 15 arrests were made for “offences ranging from racially-motivated behaviour to carrying an offensive weapon” (Hull Daily Mail).

Trouble flared again between the two groups around about 5 PM the following day (26th) and another 14 arrests were made.

The trouble was supposedly sparked by the arrest earlier on the Friday of a white man in connection with an attack on an Iraqi man the previous Sunday night (20 July).

In that incident the victim had been attacked by a group of white men in the Pryme Street car park and hit with a baseball bat. He ran off along Freetown Way but was knocked down by a vehicle which one of the white men drove onto the pavement to hit him. “Other cars driven by the group then blocked the road, preventing anyone helping him. The group surrounded Salar and, as he lay on the pavement, shouted more racist abuse at him” (Hull Daily Mail).

A senior officer has said that the trouble was not really about race but crime and that Humberside Police perceived the incident to be isolated and not indicative of a new trend.

Hopefully the police are correct – but there may have been a disturbing precursor on 15 April when an Iraqi man was severely beaten in Hull city centre by a group of white youths in broad daylight.

In the attack he was hit repeatedly with an iron bar and chased right across the city centre from Queens Gardens to Ferensway. “All around him, shoppers and office workers returning home stood and watched. No-one helped him. No-one called 999 during the half-hour attack.” (Hull Daily Mail). Police were only made aware when the man, covered in blood, managed to make his way to Hull Royal Infirmary.

Reporting of this incident caused outrage and the Hull Daily Mail printed several letters from readers protesting that the majority of Hull citizens were not racist and that the lack of assistance from passers-by was untypical. (In fact, the apparent indifference of the passers-by may not have been so much a reflection of racist callousness as the expression of an established psychological phenomenon whereby, in a large crowd of witnesses to a crime, sometimes no one phones the police because everyone thinks surely someone else will do it.)

Of course, racist violence – if that is what these attacks were – is a relatively new phenomenon to Hull. For one thing, there aren’t sizeable ethnic communities in the city. Unlike, say, West Yorkshire which has significant coloured immigrant populations, the Humber sub-region is almost completely ‘white indigenous’. Scunthorpe, with a noteworthy Asian community, is the exception; but that town has been held up by many as a model for good race relations.

So what is going on in Hull? Were these isolated incidents…or are they indeed harbingers of a disturbing new trend?

Certainly the incidents of 25 and 26 July rang alarm bells with some of the city’s ‘movers and shakers’. To his credit, in the week beginning 4 August editor John Meehan ran a series of articles in the Hull Daily Mail exploring just how much of a race relations problem Hull had and looking at the kind of tensions which had, in part at least, led to the violence. In doing so, the articles sought to explode a number of the myths around the ‘asylum seeker’ issue.

Villlage Gossip Mentality
I have to say that, much as am I appalled by the violent events reported above, none of it surprises me. Until a few months ago I lived in inner city west Hull where I found prejudice against asylum seekers – particularly Kosovans, Kurds and Iraqis – to be endemic in the pubs and clubs and even to some extent on the open street.

Little of it was expressed in outrightly racist terms. Only occasionally did I hear terms like “black bastards” or “foreign gits”. Rather, the stories circulating about the asylum seekers fuelled spiralling dislike and demands that something had to be done.

According to some of the tales, the asylum seekers could drive untaxed cars without insurance, without hindrance from the police. Social Services provided them with free mobile phones and handed out large one-off payments for items ranging from bedding to furniture to ‘white goods’. It was frequently alleged that asylum seekers were able to jump housing queues and often ended up with better accommodation that their indigenous neighbours in the queues. Potentially very dangerous were stories of groups of asylum seekers whistling at local women passing by and making salacious comments to them.

Trying to deconstruct some of these tales could be a risky business. Ask a question like “How do you know that?” or “What’s your evidence for that?” and the answer might be something like “Well, George told us.” As someone only recently arrived in the area and still not fully accepted myself, asking how ‘George’ got his information might easily lead to an argument and/or accusations that I was “one of them do-gooders” – or, even worse, that “you think asylum seekers are okay – you’d turn the country over to them!” Temporary ostracisation was my usual punishment for challenging the ‘accepted wisdom’. (On one occasion I was even threatened with violence!)

In Spiral Dynamics terms we’re dealing with the PURPLE vMEME’s ‘village gossip’ mentality. Investigating the facts behind the tale to find out the real truth is not important; what counts is who said it. If the tale originates from someone like ‘George’, accepted within the local community as a leader or influencer – tribal elder, if you will – then his authority will give the tale credence.

At this level, the Hull Daily Mail’s factual deconstruction of some of the myths surrounding asylum seekers will undoubtedly have done some real good. For many in Hull whose thinking is at the (PURPLE) tribal level, the Mail is a sort of superordinate authority. Whether its reporting is accurate or not is irrelevant, the fact the Mail said it must mean it’s true.

There’s also a stretch here towards BLUE’s ‘higher authority’ and the fact – genuinely awesome for some! – that the statement is in writing.

For others, though, the dense text and hard factual writing contained in the Mail’s articles will have been just too much for their PURPLE. (PURPLE works mostly off the oral tradition.) All ‘George’ will have to do is say that the Mail’s got it wrong or that John Meehan’s become a ‘do-gooder’ and George’s reiteration of the myths will stand as ‘the truth’.

Bombarding such people with facts that there are only around 900 asylum seekers currently in Hull, that they receive only 70% of the standard Income Support available to the indigenous population and that central, not local, government is concerned with their accommodation will have only a very limited effect. NLP shows us time and time again that, if somebody believes something, to that person it is the ‘truth’…and changing people’s beliefs is a notoriously difficult business!

PURPLE Differentiators
What we’re seeing is the rejection by PURPLE – the dominant cultural vMEME for many in the deprived areas of Hull in which the asylum seekers are housed – of what is perceived as invaders from a foreign tribe.

PURPLE tribalism is the foundation of homo sapiens’ move beyond animal-level instinctive living – and as such is the beginning of civilisation. Although ignored – and often despised – by higher vMEMES, it lies at the root of our identity as a people – our sense of belonging.

To create this sense of tribal identity, PURPLE differentiates itself from other tribal identities. This drive to differentiate can manifest itself in different ways and at different levels. So it can be:-
# Bransholme Estate vs Orchard Park Estate
# West Hull vs East Hull
# North Bank vs South Bank
# Yorkshire vs Lancashire
# England vs Scotland
# Black vs White
# Manchester United fan vs Liverpool fan
# Local vs Asylum Seeker

The more dangerous and/or threatening the ‘other lot’ seem, the more PURPLE seeks to differentiate. At its extreme PURPLE may even demonise those who are ‘not of our tribe’. Differences such as language, religion and skin colour can all serve the differentiation process.

Groups of 20 or more Kosovans or Iraqis gathered in a street, jabbering away in a language that obviously isn’t English and using alien body language gestures, can seem quite threatening. (I know – on a number of occasions I’ve had to step into the gutter in West Hull’s Coltman Street to get around them!)

Their poor English makes it difficult to communicate with locals; their religion forbids them to drink alcohol so they usually don’t attempt to enter the pubs; and their looks – dark hair and swarthy skin – makes them visually distinctive.

Separated by these factors and increasingly disliked by many of their neighbours, the asylum seekers’ own PURPLE leads them to seek security in creating their own mini-ghettos.

Small wonder that the PURPLE of the locals feels like it’s got an army of invaders on its territory!

Combined with this sense of threat is a sense of betrayal. Hull City Council – like the Hull Daily Mail, a kind of superordinate authority to the tribes in Hull – has done its BLUE duty to central government and willingly taken its share of asylum seekers under the 2000 dispersion policy. In the cause of BLUE-ORANGE efficiency the asylum seekers have been put into the lowest rent districts like Spring Bank, Coltman Street and Beverley Road – ostensibly minimising costs to the ‘taxpayer’. The Council has not worked at the PURPLE level. There was little – if any! – consultation with the indigenous populations and no real attempt to prepare them for the arrival of the asylum seekers.

In this state it is not surprising that the PURPLE ‘village gossip machine’ has gone full tilt into rumour manufacture.

In this state PURPLE is highly susceptible to RED-BLUE demagogy – whether of the variety pedalled by the racists of the National Front or that of radical Islamic mullahs.Throw in some in-the-moment RED yobbishness and events like those of 25-26 July are almost inevitable.

The Criticality of Tribalism
The GREEN vMEME’s drive for egalitarianism is cutting edge thinking for many in politics and local goverenment. In GREEN’s worldview, everyone is worthy, those who are disadvantaged are to be assisted, and we all can live as one.

While GREEN thinking ensures that people seeking refuge are welcomed and treated decently, it ignores – or even derides as ‘outdated’ and ‘primitive’ – PURPLE’s tribal turf protectiveness. Thus, in GREEN’s view, it is okay to dump clusters of asylum seekers into low-rent socially-deprived areas. GREEN is disappointed and even irritated that these disadvantaged people aren’t welcomed with open arms.

The more hard-nosed thinking of BLUE (concerned with order) and ORANGE (concerned with effectiveness) has taken note of the difficulties and costs involved in integrating asylum seekers and set maximum ‘cluster levels’. In Hull, this is very marginally over 1300; so, at a current level of around 900, Hull is well below its ‘cluster capacity’. If you add an estimated further 1,500 refugees living in Hull who have been validated as ‘genuine’ by the Home Office, a rough total of approximately 2,400 Kosovans, Kurds, Iraqis, etc, it’s still a proverbial drop in the ocean when set against Hull’s total population of around 260,000. There shouldn’t be a problem. So say BLUE, ORANGE and GREEN.

Tell that to the PURPLE of the residents of Coltman Street when they see 20 or so men of another tribe on our street, living in our houses, acting in their strange and alien ways.

Colour of skin comes into it only as differentiator – a mark of being from another tibe. A large black family lives on Coltman Street, with its members occupying several houses up and down the street. They speak in that distinctive flat Hull accent, go to the local pubs, play in the local football teams and in almost every conceivavble way act little different to their white-skinned neighbours – by whom they seem to be totally-accepted. A couple of them have even married local whites!

They dislike the asylum seekers as much as many of their white neighbours – because they are part of the same tribe and their PURPLE feels threatened too by the almost-overnight arrival of the asylum seekers on their turf.

As Don Beck demonstrated in early 90s South Africa when he used Spiral Dynamics to take race out of politics for the likes of Nelson Mandela and F W DeKlerk, it’s never about colour of skin; it’s about the neurological systems which shape the way people think and the values and beliefs that fit with those systems.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do…?
Before I moved to East Yorkshire, I lived on the south-west side of Leeds and spent a great deal of time in Armley. With high unemployment amongst a largely-unskilled male population, women struggling to make ends meet in part-time factory, shop and cleaning jobs, delapidated housing, high rates of drugs and alcohol abuse, burglaries, vandalism and other petty crimes, its problems could be said to be comparable to several areas of Hull.

Armley also had a small population of Indians – both Sikhs and Hindus. They were heartily disliked by the local white population – reflected in most of the whites refusing to use their shops. Even the local curry house struggled to do much business!

In one of the pubs I occasionally ventured into, I noted a Sikh man who was part of a bunch of male regulars – all white, foul-mouthed and rough – several with that kind of granite-hard look that miners and steelworkers often have!

The Sikh wore his full beard and turban and still had a noticeable Asian accent. Otherwise he dressed like his white mates. He swore like they did, made dirty jokes, knew his football and bought his round. He even leered at the women they leered at – though he was careful never to be the first to leer.

He would speak to other Asians in the street – but, as far as I could tell, only if they spoke to him first.

The Sikh had decided which tribe he wanted to belong to – and, therefore, which tribe he didn’t want to belong to. And he had succeeded in being accepted into his new tribe.

Interestingly Spring Bank community leader Frank McConaghy told the Hull Daily Mail: “It should have been planned much better, integrating smaller groups into all areas of the city where they would have been welcomed.

“That didn’t happen. We now have them in ghettos around the city.”

So…integration at an almost individual level – as per the Sikh man in Armley – or relatively-sizeable clustering, as per Coltman Street?

If those 2,400 asylum seekers and refugees were dispersed almost individually throughout the city, would anyone really notice that Hull had taken its share of them?

Of course, the PURPLE of the asylum seekers drives them to want to be clustered together – seeking safety and belonging in their tribal identities. (“I want to be with my Kurd brothers!”, etc) So, if they were effectively isolated from their tribe, they would need massive support to integrate quickly into another tribe; and undoubtedly the stress of having one’s PURPLE so discomforted would lead to some psychiatric casualties.

BLUE and ORANGE would most likely reject this kind of idea on cost grounds while GREEN would ring its hands at the cruelty inflicted on people who had already suffered so much.

So what else do we do?

There won’t be a Bradford-style ‘race-riot’ – not even a small-scale one like Burnley. There simply aren’t enough asylum seekers and refugees in Hull. But there may yet be murder. Remember, at its most extreme, PURPLE can say: if you’re not from our tribe, then you’re not at my level. Sub-human even, maybe. So we can do to you what whatever we need to do in the interests of our tribe.

Of Cogs & Spirals…

 NLP, regeneration, Spiral Dynamics  2 Responses »
Aug 152001
 

Written by DAVID BURNBY

I first met David Burnby of Common Purpose when he came on the second of my Introduction to Spiral Dynamics & Related Models of NLP courses June-July 2001. David was so enamoured of the material that I asked him to contribute something for my embryonic Blog. The provocative piece that follows is what he wrote for me.

 

Hull is a great place! The quality of life is high, the folk are friendly, the pace is easy. It’s an attractive city with much to offer. Yet ask someone outside of Hull what they think of the City, what image they have of the place, and you’ll probably get a resounding ‘don’t know’ or something about fish (actually, a very small part of the local economy). Unless of course they’ve stayed here a while, in which case you’ll probably get a very different story – a very large number of Hull students for example, fall in love with the place and stay here.

Does it matter if we have a bad image – or no image at all? Yes it does. Because like any other City, Hull needs to attract inward investment, skilled and talented people, tourists: and the people of Hull need to feel good about their own city and spread the word. Yet Hull was not good at marketing itself. The branding was confused based on a variety of different logos, strap lines, even names (the City appears on some maps as ‘Kingston upon Hull’ and others as just plain ‘Hull’).

About four years ago, spurred on by the then Bishop of Hull, the Right Reverend James Jones (now Bishop of Liverpool), a group of business people bought into the future of the City by becoming ‘Bond Holders’. They invested money in buying the services of one of the country’s leading image-makers – Wolff Olins. Their consultants devised an image enhancement strategy for the City and a new branding. Based on the theme of ‘Pioneering’ (for which Hull can lay claim to much), a new logo for the City was launched which became known locally as ‘the cog’. Each ‘tooth’ on the ‘cog’ represents five ways in which Hull pioneers: Discovering, Innovating, Leading, Challenging, Creating.

As a logo, it works well. It is clean, reproduces well, lends itself to use in a variety of formats and, outside of Hull, was well received. But internally – it was a disaster. By and large, Hull people hated it. Quite why so many people felt quite so strongly about it defied logic. They criticised the using the name of the City in lower case saying it was a bad example of poor grammar! They said the ‘cog’ was old fashioned, meaningless, even insulting! They felt Hull’ s traditional coat of arms, the three coronets, was being undermined. Even flower beds depicting the new logo in the city centre were trampled down, feelings ran so high. The Letters pages of the Hull Daily Mail were saturated with abuse and derision.

As a supporter of the image enhancement strategy, I was asked to chair a group of people trying to achieve a greater buy-in to the image enhancement process. Before I could do that effectively, I needed to try and understand just why people were so dead against such a seemingly innocuous branding. Which coincided very nicely with discovering Spiral Dynamics. On Keith Rice’s second series of workshops, I used the issue as my case study.

There were already some explanations about why the cog was received so badly. “People don’t understand branding” was a favourite. “Once it’s explained what it’s all about, they’ll come around.” Maybe; but the Spiral Dynamics model helped me realise there was more to it than that. Not least because for many Hull people, the basic elements of the Spiral are not met. People will not feel positive about their city when they live in sub-standard housing, when they feel unsafe in their own homes, when they are constantly reminded about how their children are failing in school and when traditional jobs and livelihoods have vanished. All of that, I can’t change.

Yet I know that despite the many challenges Hull faces, we are far ahead of much of the country. Our schools are full of brilliant examples of achievement against the odds (even though it is not reflected in the league tables). We have a well developed and active community sector. The City’s regeneration strategy is starting to take effect. The City is steeped in examples of good practice, of community entrepreneurs succeeding against the odds. So there’s much to celebrate.

Many people in Hull operate in PURPLE – a strong sense of belonging which, in a changing world, is being threatened. People crave for the security of the tribe – their local community, often bound by history and culture. This is represented by icons in the City – notably the Lord Line building on St Andrews Quay. It was the head office of one the biggest trawler owners in the city and, in many ways, local people could be justified in seeing it as a representation of how trawler crews were mistreated by the owners, denied employment rights, a symbol of tragedy when a ship was lost.

But no, the weight of the campaign to save that decrepit and crumbling building by the old fishing communities has frustrated developers for ten years. It still remains an eye sore on Hull’s major approach road. Because it’s almost the last icon people have left. Telling people locked into PURPLE that their heritage is dead and gone, “you have to wake up to the NEW Hull” is a doomed strategy. You simply cannot trample over people’s heritage in that way. People will not hear that fish is smelly, unappealing, the past. Because that’s too scary. So, the new logo becomes a symbol of exclusion – a new Hull that has scant regard for the past, that people do not relate to and feel deeply suspicious of.

So the strategy has to start in PURPLE, not ORANGE. We have to help people celebrate their role in their communities, focus on the positive, highlight how successful people are in their new tribes. (The local authority perhaps did not expect the strength of opposition from tenants they would encounter when proposing demolition of the hated high rise flats on Orchard Park Estate). How? By bringing together people in an environment in which they feel safe, by helping them feel part of the ‘New’ Hull. By demonstrating how an image enhancement campaign can improve the quality of life, by acknowledging the present whilst still respecting the past. Then we can start to get the emotional buy-in to the process.

And the logo will become what it is. A marketing tool and, in the scheme of things, an almost irrelevance.