Maslow’s Hierarchy – How good is it?

 morality, Psychology, spirituality  2 Responses »
Dec 212010
 

Written by TREY HARRIS

 

I recieved this interesting e-mail today from sometime correspondent and Spiral Dynamics list contributer Trey Harris… 

I realize that in a lot of circles, questioning Maslow might seem like blasphemy. But I’m not in those circles, and I’d love to posit that Maslow’s model, while useful, is not complete and, in fact, is a bit misleading.

(I’m rather new to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and came to it after my experience with Spiral Dynamics, so my understanding of it may be fundamentally flawed by viewing it through these spiral-colored glasses. Please keep this in mind as you read on!)

I have a bit of an issue with the “Self-Actualization” tier on the hierarchy. Maslow’s original intent may be different, but it seems as though most commentary on the Hierarchy considers this to be a catch-all category of all Needs that are growth-based (rather than deficit-based). While he later split out the categories of Cognitive & Aesthetic Needs, I would say there are still a couple specific sets of Needs that have at least as much impact as either of those:

1) Purpose/Meaning: It’s very common to hear that the main reason our consciousness is special among animals is that we are aware of our own death. And, as far as I’ve ever heard, this is true. And I believe this awareness of our life cycle leads directly, in a majority of cases, to questioning our purpose and the meaning of life. This category would also relate to the need for goals and direction.

2) Charity: I believe there is something fundamental about making it through the first three stages of Needs that allows someone to open up a capacity for sharing with those in need. Whether it’s medical/psychological help, monetary assistance, or simply extra attention, many people are driven by the need to give back. Gandhi and Mother Theresa might be examples of people driven by this Need.

3) Innovation: There are many people driven by the need to advance civilization, to innovate for innovation’s sake. They’re not trying to achieve because they lack self-esteem, or because of some cognitive need to understand things better, but simply because there is a desire to blaze trails. Neil Armstrong, Lewis & Clark, and The Wright Brothers all made their names because of this (complex) Need.

The other Levels can be split, as well. When we talk about Physiological needs, are we talking basic survival or better nutrition & exercise? When we discuss Safety needs, do we mean shelter or Customs Agents? Belongingness and Love can be split between Familial Love and Intimate Relationships, and Esteem can be separated into Internal and External rewards.

Most of these split levels (save maybe the Esteem segments) won’t occur at the same developmental stage (i.e., someone in need of their next meal is not thinking about getting to the gym), so the pyramid model would be incapable of maintaining these distinctions.

In fact, I think there is a flaw with the whole concept of this being a “hierarchy,” wherein one set of needs cannot be met until the others are fulfilled. For instance, I know plenty of people pursuing self-actualization (Level 5 or 7) who haven’t exercised (Level 1) in years. There are plenty of people who are driven by a need for cognitive understanding (Level 5 in the Adapted model) precisely because they did not fulfill their need for Love and Belonging (Level 3).

Thoughts? How is my understanding of this model flawed?

Trey Harris, MNLP MTD MHt
Washington, DC

‘Radical Islam’ and the Return of Tony Blair

 Afghanistan, cross-cultural, government, heroes and inspirational figures, international conflict, Middle East, morality, racism, religion, society, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  8 Responses »
Sep 072010
 

Wow, Tony Blair sure is back in the news in a BIG way! First the Gordon Brown-bashing memoirs, then having eggs and shoes thrown at him in Dublin on Saturday and being a star guest yesterday on the inaugural showing of the new breakfast programme, Daybreak. And, of course, in the Sunday Telegraph both he and Brown were bashed by former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt for failing to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq adequately. (Dannatt was in uncompromising mood, blaming Blair and Brown explicitly and personally for needless deaths.)

Tony Blair

Perhaps the most interesting set of comments to emerge from the seemingly endless round of interviews the former prime minister has conducted were those to do with ‘radical Islam’ and the threat that would be posed by a nuclear Iran.

Talking about radical Islam in general, he described it to ABC News as “…the religious or cultural equivalent of [Communism] and its roots are deep, its tentacles are long and its narrative about Islam stretches far further than we think into even parts of mainstream opinion who abhor the extremism but sort of buy some of the rhetoric that goes with it.”

Blair told the BBC: “There is the most enormous threat from the combination of this radical extreme movement and the fact that, if they could, they would use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.”

Referring back to 9/11, he said: “If these people could have killed 30,000 or 300,000, they would have.”

Blair’s undoubtedly right about the threat the extremists and terrorists pose in the name of fundamentalist Islam. However, there is a need to be clear about just what Islam, in its most fundamental form, says and requires and how those use it who would dominate others and destroy those they can’t dominate, all in the name of Islam.

There are some similarities with the way the Mediaeval Crusaders twisted elements of the Christian religion to justify horrific atrocities in and around Jerusalem. Their actions were abominable but they didn’t make Christianity as a religion abominable. Nor do the modern fundamentalist Christians in the southern United States who, in God’s name, periodically shoot dead a doctor who carries out abortions. On a personal note, I was a radical fundamentalist Christian for 7 years and I never found anything in either the Bible or the teachings of my Pentecostal church to indicate I needed to go kill some abortionists.

So we need to be very careful about using phrases like ‘radical Islam’. What the terrorists did on 9/11 was abominable but that doesn’t make Islam abominable.

Blair unwittingly illustrates how complex this issue of separating out the religion from those who claim to be its followers when he referred to radical Islamists as “regressive, wicked and backward-looking”. Sounds to me like he’s using what cross-cultural researcher John Berry (1969) called an imposed etic – treating other cultures as though they should be operating from our values and then judging them negatively because they don’t. So they take Islam’s requirement for women to dress modestly to the extreme of the burka… But consider this: in the wake of the 1995 Bradford riots, one Muslim rioter told a friend of mine that it was all about driving the pimps and drug dealers out of the Manningham area. He concluded with: “Our women can walk the streets safely at night now. Yours can’t.”

Better to wear a burka or have prostitutes and drug dealers on your street corner…?

Can we deal with the terrorists?
Blair may be confusing the nature of fundamentalist Islam with those who seek to dominate and destroy in its name but he’s ‘bang-on’ in describing the determination and ruthlessness of such people. Personally I have no doubt that some of them would indeed use nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons if available when a high value target could be attacked.

Large-scale acts of destruction so appalling they defy credulity pepper the history of our planet when the BLUE vMEME is seeking to establish its one right way to be. From the Jewish genocide of the Amorites and the Hittites in Biblical times through the Catholics and Protestants torturing and murdering each other in their thousands in the early Renaissance (eerily paralleled in the Sunni vs Shia atrocities in the districts of Baghdad) to the industrial-scale death machines of the Nazi concentration camps, to Pol Pot’s extermination of the Cambodian intelligentsia in the 1970s and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Just some of BLUE’s handiwork, made that much worse when RED-driven demagogues – eg: Adolph Hitler, Slobodan Milošević – use PURPLE tribalism and racism to reinforce the notion that they are doing the ‘right thing’.

An al-Qaeda suicide bomber setting off a suitcase nuke in Manhattan or central London is not just a figment of the 24 scriptwriters’ fevered imaginations. It really could happen; but, in real life, it’s doubtful there would be any Jack Bauer to save us at the very last second.

It’s a delusion to think you can deal with peak BLUE. You can’t because it only recognises one right way in that scenario and any deviation from that one right way is a corruption and must be eliminated. It’s that simple. That absolute.

As I argue in the Global feature, ‘Killing the Terrorists’, you simply cannot negotiate with peak BLUE. You can only kill it. Utterly. Completely. And without mercy.

For a year or so now, views have been expressed by certain American politicians and senior military figures that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable on a purely military basis…so it’s time to talk to the Taliban. And it was reported a few days ago that Afghan president Hamid Karzai has now set up a ‘High Peace Council’ to do just that.

Such moves will be seen by hard BLUE as signs of weakness, reflecting the moral corruption of both Karzi’s government and the whole American ethos. To the extremists amongst the Taliban, the American (and British) ringing of hands over dead and maimed soldiers plays badly when contrasted with the implacable fortitude of their brave suicide bombers and confirms to them that they are morally superior…that they are right.

American commander in Afghanistan General David Patraeus’ approach is perhaps more realistic. Those Taliban who renounce violence are invited to rejoin mainstream (if there is yet such a thing!) Afghan society. He’s not rushing to talk to the extremist leaders. Rather, he’s whittling away at the edges of the Taliban camp, offering a way out for those are not quite so absolutely sure of their cause and/or are simply sickened by the brutality of the war.

Movements rarely stay static in terms of every member consistently adhering to its tenets absolutely for the rest of their lives. Circumstances change and many will adapt to the changing circumstances. In the early 1990s it happened in both South Africa and Northern Ireland that positions amongst a body of members (the ANC and the Provisional IRA respectively) began to shift significantly. As Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck demonstrates with the Assimilation-Contrast Effect (ACE) (2003), without taking any pressure of the unremitting hardliners, this is the time to negotiate with the more reasonable.

It’s interesting that the Basque terrorist group ETA announced a truce this Sunday gone in a manner that was so reminiscent of the IRA in 1994 - fumbling, half-hearted, non-specific…reflecting the internal struggles and convulsions to get it this just far from the usual violence. It’s to be hoped the Spanish government responds with a multi-level approach - courting the ‘reasonables’ to the negotiating table while continuing to try to kill the extremists.

Similarly a multi-level approach is required in Afghanistan…

# The war must be pursued - there must be no let up militarily for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Ironically, Gordon Brown was right in November last year when he said that our soldiers were fighting them in Afghanistan so that there would be less likelihood of having to fight them on our own streets, in the ruins of our own bombed cities.
And when the tide turns, those who insist on fighting on must be destroyed. Utterly.

# Petraeus’ idea of escape routes for those Taliban whose commitment to their cause is shaky needs to be expanded upon. And they should be given every support in integrating into whatever it is Afghan society is becoming - including engagement in the political process.

# The Afghan economy and social and political infrastructure needs support and direction in developing. This is what we should have been doing during the wasted years in Iraq.

# The form of government Afghanistan develops needs to respect its traditions, respect the overwhelmingly-dominant religion, Islam, and reflect the tribal nature of the country – what Don Beck calls Stratified Democracy (2003) - rather than be tied to the Western dogma of one man/one (secret) vote.

What about moderate Muslims?
There are hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the world who have no interest whatsoever in the establishment of a global Muslim caliphate. Many would be appalled at the thought of living under Sharia law.

Like Christians and Jews, they will be of varying degrees of ‘devotedness’, ranging from those who visit the Mosque only when pressured to by family and are really quite partial to Western ‘sins’ such as non-marital sex and getting ‘blathered’ (on alcohol) to those who take the Qur’an and Hadith quite literally and wouldn’t dream of not following all the rituals every day as required of a good Muslim. Those towards the latter end of that spectrum may well want the government of their country to be more influenced by notions of religious morality in its lawmaking but they’re not about to take up arms and plant bombs in furtherance of such desires.

In terms of Tony Blair’s unfortunate use of the term ‘radical Islam’, this is ‘moderate Islam’. So what has Blair got to say to them? For that matter, what do we have to say to them? It’s one thing to fight back against so-called radical Islam but how do we engage with moderate Islam? If Blair’s worldview is not to slip into the ‘Crusader mentality’ which so bedevilled George W Bush’s first responses to 9/11 and we want to avoid the West vs Islam ‘clash of cultures’ war some have mooted, then we have to find means to enable moderate Muslims to interact positively with the West and its libertine culture without disrespecting Islam.

There are obvious and not-so-obvious shifts taking place naturally anyway. You only have to walk around certain parts of Birmingham and north London on a Saturday night to see young Muslim men drinking coke while their white mates down pints of beer and young Muslim women dressed more modestly than the white girls at the next table…but only a little more modestly.

But we could do with managing such processes more deliberately so that the engagement and integration is smoother - eg: helping the young Muslim man who’s started dating a non-religious white girl deal with the reaction his family is likely to experience. Or creating more facilities to help devout Muslims carry out as many of their prayer rituals as possible without serious disruption to their work.

Of course, pretty much everything recommended above costs money at a time when the capitalist world is still teetering near the edge of global bankruptcy; but, from a 2nd Tier perspective, we’re looking to develop longer-term strategies for a safer world. From the macro - isolating and/or destroying the Taliban – to the micro - a Muslim/non-Muslim romance, it needs to be done.

Contrary to some of the stereotypes that get bandied about in the media, there are serious Muslim intellectuals, academics, clerics and politicians grappling with these very issues and who are only too keen to engage with their Western counterparts in developing ways to deal with them.

Bafflingly, sometimes it is the Western counterparts who are slow to engage.

In April this year I wrote ‘Why is the West ignoring a leading moderate Muslim?’ This concerned the publication the month before by Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a leading Islamic scholar, of a detailed 605-page fatwa against suicide bombings and terrorism. It said that terrorism cannot be justified under any pretext through allusion to any real or alleged instances of injustice and there is no space for terrorism in Islam. I wrote the Blog in frustration at how little political and media attention had been paid to this groundbreaking fatwa. That the Blog was  republished by ul-Qadri’s people on his institution’s web site perhaps reflects their frustration too…?

Has Tony Blair, in his concern about ‘radical Islam’, been talking to this pillar of ‘moderate Islam’ who is deeply concerned about the attempted hijacking of his religion by extremists to justify terrorism?

Well, have you, Tony? If not, why not? This enquiring mind wants to know!

The Iran Question
In one of his interviews, Blair said that Iran was one of the biggest state sponsors of radical Islam and it was necessary to prevent it by any means from developing a nuclear weapon.

“I would tell them they can’t have it and, if necessary, they will be confronted with stronger sanctions and diplomacy. But, if that fails, I’m not taking any option off the table….I’m saying I think you cannot exclude [military action] because the primary objective has got to be to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”

2 years ago I wrote ‘Iran: jaw, jaw or war, war’ as an Integrated SocioPsychology commentary on an Israeli air force exercise to test their capability to bomb the Iranians’ principal nuclear facility at Bushehr. At the time I was castigated for the piece by one of my A-Level Psychology students who is half-Iranian…but I stood by it then and I stand by it now.

Regardless of the ‘right’ of one country to develop nuclear weapon capability when others have it, a nuclear Iran is simply not practicable. The Israelis will not tolerate the concept – and, given Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s overt hostility to the state of Israel, who can blame them?

What is important - and this is what I think Blair is getting at - is that it is a coalition of countries that restricts, forcibly, if necessary, Iran’s nuclear ambitions. An Israeli attack on Iran, however ‘surgical’, would destabilise the little steps various elements in the Middle East are taking towards a workable, comprehensive peace beyond the current armed truces. It might even result in all-out war.

Far better that the ‘Quartet on the Middle East’ (United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia), for which Blair holds the position of Envoy) manage the Iran-constraint policy. Preferably by diplomacy. By sanction where necessary – as has proved necessary. By force, if no other way.

Blair is absolutely right.

And the Quartet must act strongly enough to keep the Israelis out of it.

Welcome back, Tony Blair…?
Not that he ever really went away…but he’s certainly been dominating the news this past fortnight in a way he hasn’t since Gordon Brown moved into 10 Downing Street.

Back in 2001 I was mightily impressed with Blair. He sold the American invasion of Afghanistan to the world – even learning enough about the Qur’an to justify it to the leaders of Muslim states in terms of their own values. It was a remarkable job. (I doubt George W Bush would have even known where to start!)

I was so impressed that, for a time, I wondered if Blair was able to self-actualise into YELLOW thinking. But then came Iraq. (Even now it appears his RED won’t let him be shamed by admitting he was wrong on Iraq.)

Blair was a giant of his times, setting the style of the modern British political leader – David Cameron and Nick Clegg still come off like Blair wannabees on occasion! As has been said many times, perhaps more froth than substance; but a very artful persuader nonetheless.

His return to the daily headlines is welcome - not least for the fact it’s a timely reminder to the Labour leadership contenders what a charismatic party leader should look and sound like.

The fact he’s chosen to major on ‘radical Islam’ as one of his key themes is good in one respect. He’s solid steel on the need to tackle the extremists at a time when most Western leaders are more focussed on the body bags being flown home than what might happen if the extremists aren’t stopped.

But his language and choice of terminology is still regressive from where he seemed to be in 2001. If the extremists are really to be stopped, then they need to be isolated from the broad body of Muslim opinion using ACE-based strategies. Strength is just one (very important) tool. The broad body of Muslim opinion rejecting terrorism and its advocates unequivocally is arguably more important in the longer-term.

Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri’s fatwa is a foundation stone to that strategy. Tony, pick up the phone and give him a call.

‘Liberal Conservatives’: new politics?

 Afghanistan, community, government, heroes and inspirational figures, Psychology, schemas & memes, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics  2 Responses »
May 142010
 

The first day of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition we had Nick & Dave: the Love-In in the Rose Garden which more than a few commentators likened to a wedding, such was the bonhomie and adoring gazes between the principals. Yesterday we had Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ voice of sensible moderation, and William Hague, the conservative of the Conservatives, sharing the walk along Downing Street to David Cameron’s first cabinet meeting. Not to mention the bizarre spectacle of Lib Dem anti-nuclear spokesperson Chris Huhne taking charge of implementing the Tories’ plans to build more nuclear power stations! Today, of course, Cameron’s at war with a number of his own backbenchers over the intention to fix the level at which Parliament can be dissolved prematurely at a vote of 55% of the House of Commons (up from a simple majority of 51% and making it that much more to get rid of them). At least the Lib Dems are only being berated for this ‘stitch up’ by members of another party (Labour)!

Undoubtedly the week since the general election results were declared has been one of the most interesting in modern British politics!

The 55% no-confidence level stitch-up is, in fact, a key plank in the Tory/Lib-Dem agreement which, theoretically, ties the 2 parties to each other for the to-be-fixed 5-year life of this Parliament. This straightjacket, it is claimed, will give us the stable government we clearly need to steady the markets and to start to tackle the huge problems Britain faces.

But the story of this historic coalition – the first since the Second World War and the first time Liberals have had seats in a non-wartime cabinet since 1922 – may be in trouble even before it has begun. Not only are there very noisy grumblings about the ‘unconstitutional’ 55% but grassroots Lib-Dem activists are mounting a campaign to force Nick Clegg to put the coalition agreement to a full vote of the party membership. Meanwhile a number of Tory MPs have said they will campaign outrightly against the Lib-Dem-driven proposal for electoral reform once the legislation for the referendum is pushed through.

A number of seasoned political commentators are also far from convinced. Eg: the venerable Max Hastings, writing in the Daily Mail (12 May), says: “Nick Clegg has climbed into bed with the Tories, whom most of his supporters hate, for a political price that is more than a pittance, but scarcely worth the price of their souls. More than a few Tories, in their turn, are dismayed that David Cameron has made a deal with a party of hookers.” He goes on to describe the coalition as: “…a pantomime horse doomed to fail”.

Of course, putting together a government from parties, which have been staunch rivals since the Victorian times when William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli used to square up to each other across the dispatch box, is going to be problematic. Not least because these 2 historical political giants still infect their respective parties with their memes.

While economically Cameron might be Margaret Thatcher’s grandchild, his emphasis on social responsibility and talk of society’s obligations to the underprivileged and disadvantaged show clear strands of Disraeli’s political DNA surviving and replicating through generations of Tories to infect his thinking. As for the Lib-Dems, while they might in title be Liberal Democrats and have a touch of the centre-left about them, at heart the likes of Simon Hughes embody old Gladstonian Liberalism.

But some would declare us now to be in a post-ideological age where stolid pragmatism is more important than unthinking devotion to principle. Perhaps it was that kind of thinking that led the Lib Dems to leak that Monday’s (doomed) flirtation with Gordon Brown and Labour (far more, it was previously thought, their natural allies) was just going through the motions, to appease the party activists, and that the object of desire all along had really been the Tories?!?!? Maybe it was similar values that led David in the Rose Garden to declare that a minority Tory government, negotiating policy by policy support with the Lib Dems, just wasn’t inspiring; he just had to have a full-on relationship with the man he had only a couple of weeks before, as one reporter reminisced, referred to as a ‘joke’?!?!?

If pragmatism does have the upper hand over principle, then maybe…just maybe…the coalition does have a chance of succeeding. In which case, Clegg’s fine words about a “new kind of politics” might not turn out to be just so much hot air.

As for Cameron, he is reputedly talking about the ‘Liberal Conservatives’?!?!?

Some overlap of values?
On the face of it David Cameron appears to be dominated in his thinking by the ORANGE vMEME. He is concerned with progress, achievement and wealth. In these respects, he is very much Thatcher’s grandchild. Beneath this is a solid BLUE desire for order, stability, duty and conservatism (small ‘c’). Thus, his natural approach to the fiscal deficit is to cut, cut and cut public spending while looking for opportunities to liberate wealth-generating entrepreneurism.

Yet there is also a touch of GREEN liberalism in Cameron’s thinking. (Goodness, he’s even on record as supporting civil partnerships for gay and lesbian couples!) And it’s the work of the GREEN in his selfplex which enables Cameron to at least understand where the Liberals are coming from.

As for Nick Clegg, his near-naked ambition shows strong ORANGE at work beneath the publicly-voiced GREEN-derived mantras of the Lib Dems. Ostensibly, Clegg’s ORANGE ambition pulls him down from GREEN ideals to do the ‘dirty deal’ with Cameron which has so unnerved many Lib-Dem activists.

It’s interesting, looking at the footage of him and Cameron on the steps of 10 Downing Street and in the Rose Garden, how alike they seem. The same age, similar youthful good looks, slim, modern haircuts, sharp suits…they could almost be peas from the same proverbial pod.

If they can get on on a personal level and they can use each other for mutual progress, there is every possibility the core of the coalition will work – and the ruthlessness and cunning of ORANGE will enable Cameron to outwit the rigid BLUE of the Tory naysayers while Clegg undermines the lofty principles of GREEN-led Lib Dems simply by being in government, having a highly-visible profile and gaining credibility with the electorate.

Of course, there is a real risk of divisions in the ranks being driven and/or manipulated into real splits, with one or both parties splintering in the stress of being in a coalition with those they had previously despised – and that’s probably a higher risk for the Lib Dems. However, a real partnership between Cameron and Clegg, even if one of mutual use, should, theoretically, work. And, if the partnership works, without the parties splintering under the pressures of coalition, then maybe we really are into “a new kind of politics”.

2nd Tier thinking
After the Regent’s College summit last June, when we started putting together the Centre for Human Emergence UK, there was some considerable debate amongst the core team, as to how we might engage with politicians in developing ideas for the regeneration of British identity and culture. By and large the consensus was that the Lib Dems – at least, as a party – were most likely to be receptive to the kinds of ideas we were beginning to formulate.

The reason for this perception, partly drawn from portrayal in the media and partly from the direct experience of some of us in meetings with Lib Dem politicians, was that GREEN was so strongly dominant in much of the party’s collective selfplex, compared to the BLUE and ORANGE vMEMES driving the Tories and BLUE and GREEN motivating Labour. (These vMEMETIC ascriptions are, of course, huge generalisations about the 3 parties.)

If we were to find 2nd Tier thinking – or at least a readiness to move to 2nd Tier thinking – we thought we would be much more likely to find it amongst the Lib Dems.

So, a year later, with the Lib Dems forming a minority element in the new government, how does that perception stand?

Well, there was little in the Lib Dem election manifesto to indicate that the primary vMEME driving their thinking was anything other than GREEN. (Which doesn’t mean other vMEMES didn’t exert their influence – just that the overriding impression is one of it being a GREEN-led agenda.)

Since GREEN, in its desire to bring about fairness and equality, can actually become unrealistic in its expecations, the Tories’ BLUE and ORANGE demands on their policies being adopted by the coalition in areas such as immigration, defence and fiscal management is probably no bad thing. The Tories’ insistence on no joining the euro for the life of this Parliament is also no bad thing, given the mess the Eurozone is in – but longer term that may need to be reviewed, both from a pragmatic as well as an ideological angle.

The coalition programme, from what we know of it so far, can almost certainly be described as coming primarily from BLUE and ORANGE, with some GREEN initiatives. So it’s not the strong GREEN-derived  programme a pure Lib Dem government might have attempted to implement – but then it’s also without the worst excesses a strongly GREEN agenda might have contained.

So far, at least, there seems little on offer for people whose values come primarily from the PURPLE and RED vMEMES lower down the Spiral. As all too often in modern British politics, their needs get ignored by the political cognoscenti, making them easy prey for the likes of the British National Party. Hopefully, the Tories proposed cap on non-EU immigration might help those people feel they are not totally ignored by the political mainstream.

This disconnection with communities dominated by PURPLE and RED thinking – particularly the traditional white working class – is just one reason why programmes produced by BLUE and ORANGE and even GREEN are not enough in themselves. It requires full 2nd Tier thinking to perceive the full range of needs and desires on the Spiral.

So we’re back to the question: where is the 2nd Tier thinking in our leadership?

The effects of dissonance
Between 9/11 and the build-up to Iraq, I thought I detected an amount of 2nd Tier thinking in Tony Blair. The way he courted Muslim leaders in the wake of 9/11, using Qur’anic text and Islamic concepts to persuade them to at least not oppose the American invasion of Afghanistan seemed to me to display the remarkable ability to work with people in terms of their own values. Then came the blind alliance with George W Bush and the blunders people are still paying for with their lives in both Afghanistan and Iraq. After that, Blair was always ‘damaged goods’.

Yet no other 21st Century Western leader has impressed me with that quality of thinking. Even Barrack Obama, for all his initial promise, now seems bogged down and uninspired.

David Cameron certainly doesn’t impress me he’s got that kind of vision. At least not yet. Nor does Nick Clegg. Vince Cable maybe. Certainly the man is a treasure for his erudite wisdom and seemingly-unflappable composure – but he’s yet to master projecting himself as a charismatic figure in the mass media. William Hague is even worse at handling the media; though, years after fluffing his go at leading the Tories, he is at last starting to be recognised for his incisive judgements.

So what hope of 2nd Tier thinking in our new government?

Ironically it may actually be the stresses and strains of coalition – the very same pressures that lead commentators like Max Hastings to declare the coalition doomed – that make the difference.

Don Beck & Chris Cowan (1996) identified dissonance as being a critical component in any process of change. And dissonance there will certainly be as the 2 coalition partners try to come to terms with people and policies they have publicly despised until now. So this key to change will certainly be in abundance.

The actual triggers for neural change, which would enable Cameron, Clegg and their colleagues to self-actualise into 2nd Tier thinking may actually come about via the incredible surfeit of ideas – memes – involved in the huge internal and external dissonance which will beset the coalition. Susan Blackmore (1999) hypothesised that it is was memes – the sheer scale of ideas – early hominoids were dealing with which led to the development of the human ‘big brain’. So could it be that it is the sheer scale of the problems they face which will force the thinking of Cameron, Clegg, etc, up the Spiral…?

If so, are there any signs of the potential Beck & Cowan state is also necessary for progress up the Spiral?

Well, consider this from Clegg: “I hope this is the start of the new politics I have always believed in – diverse, plural, where politicians of different persuasions come together, overcome their differences in order to deliver good government for the sake of the whole country.”

It’s a good talk, isn’t? Let’s now hope they walk the walk!

Great Ideas from the East…?

 cross-cultural, schemas & memes, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  7 Responses »
May 172008
 

I don’t think I’m racist. At least, not consciously so. And I would hate to think I was unconsciously racist. (Althougth the PURPLE vMEME easily makes racists of us all if we’re not careful, with its not-of-our-tribe discriminations!)

I guess I sort of knew enough from my studies in Psychology and Sociology to recognise vaguely that I was ethnocentric. Today it was brought home to me just how ethnocentric I am.

I was exposed to the ideas of a female Pakistani business consultant – WOAHHHH!!!!!! Hang on! A female business consultant from Pakistan???????? Well, there goes the tabloids’ version of a Pakistan stuffed full of sub-al-Qaeda clerics intent on reducing the world to a feudal fundamentalist state, with the women only allowed out of their homes if chaperoned by their menfolk and dressed in full burkha.

Clearly there is more diversity in Pakistan than ‘The Sun’ newspaper would have us believe!

Score one on the enthnocentric challenge meter!

Then, the ideas of this consultant, Ramla Akhtar, are really rather interesting. Although it is nominally a business model, Ramla’s People Centred Model of Businesa (PC-MoB) is as much a model for growing psychologically-healthy individuals in a sociologically-healthy society.

Ramla admits to developing her schematic before discovering Spiral Dynamics; so it will be more than a little interesting to see how the PC-MoB develops as she takes the concepts of vMEMES and memes on board. Even so, PC-MoB has much to offer as it is now in terms of sociopsychological thought. As Ramla says, it is as much about asking questions, as proposing solutions, about how we act and interact in the structures of society.

PC-MoB uses the same kind of 4 quadrants idea Ken Wilber (1995) bequeathed us – and developed so powerfully by Don Beck (2000) in 4Q/8L. However, where Wilber has a tendency to lose many of us in the heights of his abstraction, Akhtar relates her concepts to the practical realities of most people’s lives.

A potent foundation on which much can be built.

Yet this concept didn’t come from the gurus’ mansions in California or even the noted Integral Salons of Seattle, New York City or London. It came from Karachi in Pakistan, a country caricatured in the Western media as socially, economically and philosophically backward.

The contradictions reach a zenith of sorts when you realise that one of Ramla’s favourite books is the Qur’an!

It isn’t supposed to be like this. Great ideas, according to the (neo-)science Western text books, come from the (neo-)scientific West. Not the pre-scientific East.

Score two on the ethnocentric challenge meter!

Better take the East seriously 
An hour or so following links from Ramla Akhtar’s various web activities did nothing to dispell my schemas that there is massive poverty in the Indian sub-continent, that the hard BLUE of Islamic fundamentalism does represent a real threat to the ORANGE-led consumerism of American Capitalism and that the West does need to be concerned with what is happening politically in Aghanistan and Pakistan. (Even though Western intervention has, in the mid-term, arguably done as much harm as good.)

What my web odyssey did show me was many, many instances of Pakistani (and Indian!) innovation, creativity, diversity and rich thinking that was a match (at least!) for much of what you would find on comparable Western web sites.

Why am I surprised (and delighted!), I ask myself. I know historically  that China, India and the Middle East contained advanced civilisations when Europe was languishing in the post-Roman misery of the Dark Ages. Even now it is clear that China and India will be among the most dominant players in the world economy within just a few years.

When only a hundred years ago Europeans were colonial masters of the East and Asians were regarded (and treated) as racial inferiors – how ever much one might abhor racism and the suffering that colonialism inflicted upon millions upon millions…

…when the United States has dominated cultural and scientific thought in the West and way beyond since the end of the Second World War…

…it takes a little recalibration to realise just how alive with thought the East is and just how much thinkers in the East can offer to thinkers in the West – and what a global collaboration might achieve. The more superficial stereotypes in what Carl Gustav Jung (1917) called the Collective Unconscious are being challenged and need to change.

I find that every now and again I hit one of those ‘ah-ha moments’ Abraham Maslow talked about as a characteristic of (YELLOW) Self-Actualisation. I think Ramla Akhtar might have triggered one of them!

De Menezes: was it Policy pulled the trigger?

 human rights, international conflict, Psychology, society, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  No Responses »
Nov 102007
 

It beggars belief. It really does. On 22 July 2005 one policeman holds an innocent man down while two others execute him.A total of 11 shots are fired –7 into his head. The bullets used are ‘dum-dums’– illegal in warfare under the Geneva Conventions – with flattened noses so they cause maximum damage. The man’s head is effectively blown apart. The execution takes place in full view of the passengers of a tube train.

No one is tried for this MURDER – because that’s what it was.

In this country: England, the ‘mother of democracy’, with one of the most respected justice systems in the world…?

For all the subsequent revelations about his drug use and migrant status, in this context Jean Charles de Menezes was innocent; he was not doing anything to indicate he was about to commit an offence of any description. The police officers had decided he was a suspected suicide bomber and respresented an immediate threat to the public.  So they deliberately killed him without warning.

Whatever happened to that centuries-old axiom of English law that a man (or woman) is innocent until proven guilty?

Last week’s Old Bailey ruling that the Metropolitan Police were guilty under Health & Safety law of very serious operational/procedural failings which put the public (and de Menezes) at risk is a relative side show to the decision made in July 2006 by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). On the basis of a 2-part investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), they took the decision not to prosecute either any of the officers directly involved in the muder or any in the chain in command – policy-making or operational – whose decisions led to the murder.

As London mayor Ken Livingstone said after the Old Bailey decision: “At the end of the day mistakes are always going to happen in situations like this.”

Few procedures are perfect and the human beings who operate the procedures certainly aren’t! Unfortunately it was a particularly bad series of errors at nearly every level of communication which led to the officers putting their guns to de Menezes’ head and pulling the triggers. Believing they were chasing a suspected suicide bomber – in the bowels of Stockwell Station, cut off temporarily from their colleagues – they would almost  certainly have been driven by the RED vMEME’s gung-ho express self now without thought of consequences motif. As they were most likely the kind of ‘action men’ who volunteer for that type of firearms duty, it is quite plausible that they were high in the impulsiveness and compulsiveness of Psychoticism.

Given these factors and the overall desperate mentality of the Metropolitan Police in their search for the failed suicide bombers of the day before, in the wake of the very real attrocities of 7 July, it is not entirely surprising that something like de Menezes’ execution occurred.

The failings of the Met put those officers and de Menezes on that fatal collision course. From a 2nd Tier ‘Big Picture’ point of view, it is entirely right that the Met’s failings in this respect have been exposed so that there is substantial pressure on them to improve the procedures, the communication systems and the training of the men and women who have to operate them.

But, how ever much the operational aspects need to be improved, are they the real issue?

Two days after de Menezes’ murder Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick told community leaders in Stockwell he could not guarantee a similar error would not happen again. The reason such a guarantee could not be made…? As Met supremo Sir Ian Blair told Muslim community leaders the following day, the force’s shoot-to-kill policy for suicide bombers was to remain in place.

Changing Precedent?
The question for me is whether the officers who executed de Menezes were acting on their own initiative, on orders or on policy.

If they can be said to have acted on their own initiative, then are they culpable?

Although some commentators have recognised the implications almost from the immediate aftermath of the Stockwell tube murder, it has not been widely discussed in the media; but the 2006 decision of the CPS not to prosecute, if not challenged, may change one of the fundamentals of English law by precedent.

It would appear that, if police officers have a suspicion that someone is a dangerous and/or violent suspect (the police had apparently mistaken de Menezes for Hussain Osman, one of the 21 July would-be suicide bombers) and they think that person represents an immediate and serious danger to themselves or to others, they may now kill that person legitimately.

The next time a police officer kills an innocent person they think may be an immediate and dangerous threat, in their defence, will they be able to cite the de Menezes killing as precedent?

The de Menezes family have been threatenting a private criminal prosecution against the Metropolitan Police for some time; the Old Bailey decision opens the way for them to sue the Met under civil law. It is to be hoped the family do choose the more arduous route of criminal prosecution because the issue of whether police officers  as individuals do have the right to summarily execute a suspect needs testing in full court proceedings.

Because if a police officer does have the right to kill someone on the grounds that they might be dangerous, does a suspect, in the established right of self-defence, have legitimate cause to kill a police officer they think might be about to kill them?

If we generalise that line of thought, don’t we all have the right to kill someone – anyone! – we think may be about to harm us? In which case, shouldn’t we be allowed to carry weapons to defend ourselves against people we think may be about to harm us?

If our society should eventually descend into a widespread state of paranoia, where we kill each other merely on suspicion something might be done to harm us, then our society will have failed and the terrorists will have won.

Further comments made by Ken Livingstone on the Old Bailey verdict are very telling…

“I think this is disastrous. If an armed police officer believes they are in pursuit of a terrorist who might be a suicide bomber, and they start making reasonable calculations based on this, ‘how’s this going to be seen, am I going to be hauled off to court?’”

For Livingstone, it would indeed appear that ‘might be’ is sufficient grounds for summary execution of a suspect.

Policy more than Procedure
The Old Bailey trial was largely concerned with errors in operational procedure – of which clearly there were many. Since the Met’s failings put those officers in the invidious position of being face to face alone with a man they believed was most likely a suicide bomber and able to detonate himself, for all that de Menezes was murdered, it might be that the right charge to be brought against the officers individually and certainly against the Met as a corporation is manslaughter. After all, no one intended that an innocent man called Jean Charles de Menezes should die on that day. So what to do? The police and the government have a duty to protect the citizenry from harm – and some would argue: even if that means occasionally executing the wrong person. (Some apologists make a similar case for the death sentence.)

Undoubtedly the officers who killed de Menezes did so on their own initiative; but there was confusion as to just what their orders were and the information they had been given. Certainly they did not intend to kill an innocent man; but, in the ‘adrenaline rush’ of the moment, they certainly did intend to kill the man they suspected of being a suicide bomber.

So, in its bunglings, the Met, as a corporation, is culpable also.

However, I would contend that the real issue is at policy level: should the police have the right to execute someone merely on the suspicion they might be about to commit a highly-dangerous offence?

Of course, armed police officers and their commanders sometimes do have to take difficult decisions very, very quickly – sometimes virtually at the level of automatic response! – and tragically they do sometimes make the wrong decision. The fatal shootings of Harry Stanley in 1999 (when in semi-darkness police mistook the chair leg in his hand for a shot gun) and Derek Bennett in 2001 (wielding a cigarette lighter that was a convincing replica of an automatic pistol) are examples of such desperate mistakes. But in such cases the person was acting in an aggressive manner, warnings were given and the officers had tangible evidence on which to base the assumption that they and others were at serious and immediate risk. The policy in such instances was essentially correct and the procedures were examined by the IPCC to see if they could be improved.

Unfortunately the rise of the suicide bomber puts police officers in the position where the evidence of intent to commit a highly-dangerous act is not always tangible – and that puts us as a society in the position where we have to decide whether we are going to authorise our police to execute suspects with no tangible evidence of intent. Ie: on mere suspicion.

Metropolitan Police policy in regard to dealing with suspected suicide bombers is codenamed Operation Kratos and is in part at least derived from Israeli and Sri-Lankan tactics in dealing with suicide bombers. The policy of shooting in the head with a highly-destructive dum-dum round comes from the determination to destroy the suspected suicide bomber before they can detonate the explosives they are thought to be carrying. Shooting to the head rather than the usual police marksman’s target of the upper toros is not only so much more likely to  result in instant incapacitation and very likely a quick death but avoids the risk of the bullets hitting the explosives belt (usually worn across the torso) and unintentionally triggering the explosion.

But there is a fundamental difference between the Israeli and Sri-Lankan situations and that of the British.

Israel and Sri-Lanka are effectively engaged in low-level wars with terrorists from different ethnic groups than their majority populations. While there undoubtedly is a significant GREEN voice in Israel that objects vociferously to such policies, the PURPLE/BLUE religious/nationalist harmonic which dominates much of Israeli national culture doesn’t place the same value on a Palestinian life as an Israeli one. Thus, if an Israeli policeman makes a mistake and shoots dead an innocent Palestinian on suspicion they might be a suicide bomber, it’s not much of an issue. For many Israelis, the occasional mistaken execution of an innocent Palestinian is a price well worth paying to stop the suicide bombers.

And, as the Sri-Lankan government has been getting away with some pretty brutal oppression of its ethnic-Indian Tamil population for at least a couple of decades, it’s probably safe to assume that many Sri-Lankans don’t overly value Tamil lives either.

(In both cases the PURPLE-BLUE devaluing of the other side’s lives also strongly influences the actions of Palestinian and Tamil extremists.)

In multi-ethnic Britain, where GREEN’s egalitarianism and valuing of all life influence much political thought and social commentary and where the threat of suicide bombers comes from within our own citizenry, executing citizens on mere suspicion of intent gives the police and the government a huge problem.

A highly-significant number of people in this country, most of the intelligensia and the greater part of the media consider what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes simply unnacceptable in a ‘decent society’.

The IPCC report on the de Menezes execution, released this week, makes it clear that Kratos was not formally sanctioned on 22 July but expresses concerns that its ethos of shoot-to-kill-suspected-suicide-bombers has permeated the culture amongst Met firearms officers. As IPCC commissioner Deborah Glass said at the report’s launch: “The difficulty with having an operation called Kratos that is specifically about suicide bombers is that there is an implicit assumption that you are going to be always dealing with suicide bombers,” she says. “You are giving it a level of certainty that does not appear in real life. So the problem can well be that if you create a mindset in firearms officers that you are dealing with a suicide bomber then the concerns commanders would have about what is the level of the threat may well be overtaken.”

So we can conclude de Menezes was killed by a combination of adrenaline-rushed officers, misinformed and badly let down by bureaucratic bungling, all operating with a policy-bred-but-undiscriminating maximum lethal force ethos.

A 2nd Tier Solution?
And it could be argued that, while GREEN would be totally against allowing legitimate execution on mere suspicion of intent on the grounds that all life is precious and a few cannot be sacrificed for the many, true 2nd Tier thinking would sanction it as a lesser evil than letting the suicide bombers wreak their carnage. From the little known about it, it is claimed that the TURQUOISE vMEME is indeed prepared to sacrifice parts of the whole for the overall good of the whole.

However, TURQUOISE will also know that the agents of the law taking the law into their own hands and engaging in summary executions, whatever the immediate justification, can only work as a very short-term measure in a democratic society supposedly based on the rule of law . If widespread respect and support for the law is undermined and BLUE fails at a macro-cultural level, then, in a cultural jungle, RED will indeed assert itself. Then we do risk the nightmare scenario of police officers and ordinary members of the public trying to kill each other on the suspicion that the other intends them lethal harm.

Small wonder IPCC chair Nick Hardwick has called for a public debate on the shoot-to-kill policy and the very real difficulties facing the police in combatting terrorism.

Clearly there are no easy answers. The terrorists would indeed appear to have us in a dilemma of moral ambiguity.

But what about YELLOW? We know a fair amount about YELLOW thinking, thanks to the work of psychologists like Clare W Graves and Abraham Maslow (who termed the effects of this vMEME ‘Self-Actualisation’, 1943). One of the characteristics both men attributed to this level was its incredible problem-solving capabilities – four times greater than GREEN, according to Graves (1971/2002).

So, if the suicide bombers really do leave us with no option other than to incapacitate through execution on the mere suspicion of intent but that option is unnacceptable in our kind of society, we need to get YELLOW problem-solving to work on changing some part of this paradoxical equation.

One possible avenue YELLOW might pursue is the manner in which West Midlands Police arrested another of the 21 July would-be suicide bombers, Yasin Hassan Omar, just five days after de Menezes’ execution, using a Taser stun gun. While Sir Ian Blair publicly criticised the use of a Taser as there was a risk the electric charge could have detonated any explosives on Omar’s person, the fact West Midlands incapacitated their suspect without lethal force does suggest their methodology should be studied.

Clearly, when his own force had made such an appalling mistake, it suited Blair to rubbish the other force’s achievement – and it may indeed turn out that West Midlands took an absurdly-silly risk and were astonishly lucky to pull off their coup. Nonetheless, at a time when we are putting innocent lives at risk in our efforts to combat the terrorists, it behoves us to study any possible means of incapicating a suspected suicide bomber that doesn’t cause that person serious harm. 

Suicide Bomber – right or wrong?

 American Foreign Policy, community, cross-cultural, Middle East, morality, society, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  4 Responses »
Jul 092005
 

Written by DAVE LOWE

 

As the country reels from the London bombings, I received this thought-provoking message from Dave Lowe, a graphics artist and trainee counsellor in Hull. Dave wants it put up for public discussion. So here goes…

I listened to Bush on the news and yet again he said ‘we will find the perpetrators of these terrible acts’. Does that guy have any idea that it’s not about 10, 100, 1,000 guys with olive skin trying to blow up some folks on a bus?! Bush sees only goodies & baddies in his singular ORANGE view.
There are very different thought and value structures in different parts of the planet. All Bush sees is the free individual acting for his/her rights, being attacked.( orange in the US, orange/GREEN in Europe) He sees the attackers as the same as him, just with darker skin.

How wrong he & Blair have been has been recently shown when they have tried to present the people of Iraq with the freedom to choose a multi-party democracy (just like the one at home) – and they didn’t want it. Offering GREEN values to a BLUE society that is in RED turmoil !

Bush does not see that the Arab & Muslim world is based on a purple tribal view, with a strong BLUE functioning state , complete with intermarriage and huge extended family. As fast as the world is becoming connected by ORANGE technology – offering GREEN connectedness – it remains more disconnected than ever by culture, belief, values and the technology makes it all happen faster than ever.

Our western values have got horribly stuck in self, individual ambition. The focus is always inward. Even Maslow, Rogers has some part to play in this! (and what might be an alternative be to ‘inward focusing self-actualization’ – which is supposed to turn us into social & spiritual beings by separating our consciousness from everything else on the planet, and focus on ourselves as individuals, our internal feelings, desires etc. Does that really add up ??)

Until we change (in the western world) – to be prepared to adopt a world integrated view, to understand that different people, countries are passing through different time zones – different consciousness’s – we have no chance of understanding the mindset of the suicide bomber on the bus, train , plane.

His intentions are for the good & survival of his culture. How can he be seen as the baddie when we have bombed, torn his country apart and tried to offer our own brand of brainless culture in exchange for his history & tribal values?

Dave