Part II: The Green Meme and Lines of Development

Okay, again, I still have two papers to write but I had another idea I wanted to explore briefly in continuation of the conversation below on Salvaging the Green Meme.

Matthew made an important point in his comment about the desire to bypass the green cleanse being more of an orange desire, for yellow is inherently inclusive of all the first six tier systems, but here's my question...

What happens when we start looking at lines of development? Reading through Wilber's new book Integral Spirituality, I've become really interested in the complexity that lines add to our discussion on development. When we talk in SDi language it is true that no stage can be skipped in the unfolding, but when we add lines to the equation we suddenly get different lines developing relatively independently through each stage. Although always interacting, the key is that they all develop from precon to con to postcon relatively separately.  And when we look at development this way it becomes...well frankly, really messy(-:

I don't know how many people I've met who so obviously carry yellow if not turquoise to coral cognition yet are emotionally, psychosexually, or relationally still extremely underdeveloped (we all know this problem both in ourselves and others in our life).  I think a healthy relational and emotional line evolves out of a strong green base and without which yellow and turquoise cognition can still be developed but very asymmetrically and perhaps sometimes without the heart.  Now maybe this is an unfair assessment, I'm open to criticism (isn't that green of me(-:), but I would argue that I've seen this problem enough to be relatively concerned by it.

The other thing I was thinking today was that Beck and Wilber often say that an emergence into a new system, in this case yellow, is accompanied by a rejection of the previous level, and that this is an important part of its detachment process.  So it's definitely essential that we keep this in mind but also watch that it doesn't become dissociation.  

The last thought I wanted to throw out there and which is open to feedback is something I've been wondering about for a while.  We often talk about the pathology of green being its affair with an unhealthy narcissistic red that we never truly healed and transcended and so sits at the base of a lot of green motivations.  So here's my concern... As we now try to move ourselves up to second tier, what happens to that red if we still haven't done our good HEALTHY green emotional work that would allow us to re-identify with that red and then transcend it?

 Pathologies don't just disappear because we get to integral; in fact shadows grow the farther up we go without dealing with those pathologies. So my question is, if we haven't healed that red that was sitting at the core of our unhealthy green is it possible that that red viciousness can then transmute to become that which vehemently rejects all things green and attaches itself to the new discourse of power (integral) for the purpose of its own survival? Discourse is power (yes I'm a fan of Foucault(-:) and I just worry that discourses can be learned and used even when we don't necessarily completely embody integral in a majority of our other lines.    

Just some thoughts...still to be continued...