Good thinking habits

[7Wannabe5]

I don’t know if it’s as simple as needing an alternate outlet for violent urges. Social reinforcement is pretty huge. If I had a penny for every disadvantaged kid who told me that his parents told him to fight back with intent to win if anybody ever messed with him. I’ve seen kids as young as 7 putting other kids in extreme choke holds and 13 year olds rigid with anger just beating the living shit (pow, pow, pow-like a machine) out of other kids. I’ve also seen 9 year olds cheerfully wrestling on the well-kept playground lawn in affluent school district while their parents calmly looked on, sipping vitamin waters and discussed developmental stages and appropriate gender dispensations. Different worlds.

[chenda]

I don’t know if it’s as simple as needing an alternate outlet for violent urges.

Well I think sportsmanship is the idea. There was a documentary on Netflix about a couple of ex police officers who set up a free boxing gym in rough part of New York and apparently its kept a lot of troubled young men out of gang culture and a likely early death. Gave them a sense of self worth and positive male role models and stuff.

On the other hand, a good hard caning might be equally effective.

[white belt]

I don’t know if it’s as simple as needing an alternate outlet for violent urges. Social reinforcement is pretty huge. If I had a penny for every disadvantaged kid who told me that his parents told him to fight back with intent to win if anybody ever messed with him.

And yet this is an extremely useful mindset in context. That is, structured environments like competitive sports allow children to learn such contexts. There are rules, safety measures, and so on that limit the overall damage that can occur. If you fight to win but in the process violate the rules, you will still lose so that doesn't work. How many sports clichés do we have that talk about playing to win?

I theorize that is another reason that gangs are so appealing to disadvantaged children. They provide structure but still allow for aggression.

[7Wannabe5]

Does the structured activity have to be physical? For instance, does a highly competitive chess club or debate team provide the same level of release? Can we at Level Yellow ever get free from "fight club" not just being something we do, but also something we observe ourselves doing from journalistic remove? Or is the lack of "journalistic remove" experienced by those who are truly functioning at Level Red the true cage? If we own our primitive urges, we can choose to repress (or express or transcend or sublimate or celebrate) them. If we don't, they define us and we are prisoner to them.

[daylen]

Perhaps the warm vs cool color distinction is helpful here with beige-purple being a sort of physical anchor. Warm and cool emotions volving with the gestation of warm and cool vMemes respectively. Warm colors being beige, red, orange, and yellow; cool colors being purple, blue, and green. The warm emotions aligning more with the left-hand side of Plutchik's emotion wheel (optimism, aggressiveness, contempt, remorse), and the cool emotions aligning more with the right-hand side (love, submission, awe, disapproval).

For instance, transitioning from a red center of mass to an orange center of mass may lead to rages being expressed and experienced as anger, then a transition from orange to yellow leading anger to become more of an annoyance. Similarly for the cool side, we have terror becoming fear and eventually apprehension in transit from purple to green.

[jacob]

Perhaps the warm vs cool color distinction is helpful here [...]

For instance, transitioning from a red center of mass to an orange center of mass may lead to rages being expressed and experienced as anger, then a transition from orange to yellow leading anger to become more of an annoyance. Similarly for the cool side, we have terror becoming fear and eventually apprehension in transit from purple to green.

I think the warm/cold distinction is especially helpful for those of us on the extreme introvert or extreme extrovert side. For example, being on the introverted (ironically called warm?) side, I relate much more to red/orange/yellow vmemes than I do to the purple/blue/green ones. This makes me somewhat question the idea of individuals going in between warm and cold. That has not been my lived experience. It's rather than I don't really fit in with societies based on cold colors as their vmemes doesn't fit my temperament; whereas I can relate to the cold color societies.

In the Listening Society thread, I think 7wb5 noted that resolution of disagreement tends to get lighter and lighter the further one goes up the spiral. Red kills or injures. Blue excommunicates. Orange fires. Green excludes. Yellow ridicules. Turquoise appreciates. The same may hold for intensity of feelings? I'm not sure about this one though. However, I can definitely +1 that I feel "disagreement" as annoyance. The number of times I've felt genuine anger in my life can be counted on one hand. Rage has never happened. Was just remarking to DW yesterday that I've never attempted to destroy anything (like a cup against a wall or tossing papers on the floor) in a fit.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

It’s also can depend on the company you keep or the contexts you choose to inhabit. Allie Brosh has a great piece in “Solutions and Other Problems” where she describes not being able to put together a verbally coherent statement after spending a VERY annoying day in the company of her Green/Yellow husband ending in a trip to the produce aisle. The ridiculous statement that comes out of her mouth is “Okay, guy - guess what; you don’t get to choose the bananas anymore.”

My DD31 bookmarked this for me, because it reminded her of the ridiculous things I would say on the rare occasions I lost my temper with my own kids.

But, when I am dealing with large groups of VERY poorly behaved adolescents, it is easy to find myself I the verge of losing it fairly frequently. For instance, on one occasion two chronically troublesome boys wouldn’t stop telling a girl that she looked like a horse, I became very angry, but channeled the emotion into writing them up, and I only fretted a little bit that it wasn’t very professional of me to feel kind of happy about their 10 day suspensions.

On the other end of the spectrum, in very different MUCH more controlled context, I once gave another level yellow human permission to slap my face, and it’s kind of an exhilarating or enlightening experience to feel the emotional response rise high in you and then recede like a wave.

[jacob]

But, when I am dealing with large groups of VERY poorly behaved adolescents, it is easy to find myself I the verge of losing it fairly frequently. For instance, on one occasion two chronically troublesome boys wouldn’t stop telling a girl that she looked like a horse, I became very angry, but channeled the emotion into writing them up, and I only fretted a little bit that it wasn’t very professional of me to feel kind of happy about their 10 day suspensions.

From my perspective, which I think centers on yellow, I take an almost perverse pleasure when "stupidity suffers immediate karmic consequences". (Because in reality, karma is more of a time-consuming ergodic process(*) that the perpetrator is all too keen on blaming on others.) If I could pick a superpower, it would be "instant karma". Someone blows through a stoplight at an intersection---BAM, they get T-boned by another douchebag who is in the habit of doing the same thing. From my perspective, the greatest sin is stupidity as defined by a failure to be yellow, that is, not considering the complex repercussions from one's actions on everybody involved.

(*) See ERE book.

However, sins are relative to color. For me it's the failure to recognize one's effects on the overall system. This is different from Blue's sin of "breaking the rules [of divine order]". Thou shalt never not stop at a stop sign! The crime above would not be in terms of putting others at risk but rather the rolling through a stop sign is simply illegal---end of story. Whereas the Orange sin would be in not maintaining a professional detachment and doing better next time.
Each color resonates at some level, but people don't experience that resonance similarly. For example, Green sees the violation of a stoplight as not being considerate of other drivers. Conversely Green would forgive driver for being temporarily distracted by smartphoning, the children in the back, or a stop sign being semi-obscured by vegetation.

On the other end of the spectrum, in very different MUCH more controlled context, I once gave another level yellow human permission to slap my face, and it’s kind of an exhilarating or enlightening experience to feel the emotional response rise high in you and then recede like a wave.

Yet the best way to operate in society is at or near its own level. I was astounded how effective it was to simply raise my voice in an argument. I didn't learn this until I was 40something. Doing so felt oddly detached and even [disgustingly] manipulative, but damn did it ever work.

Anyone's affinity for vMemes can likely be described as a vector of channels rather than a binary type. Talking to someone in their own language of their own color maximizes the communication factor! Being talked to in the color of one's a second or third language is sometimes exciting too.

[chenda]

@7wannabe5 What are your thoughts on corporeal punishment ?

[WFJ]

"Our life is what our thoughts make it"
"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength"
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature"
"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking"


Marcus Aurelius

[7Wannabe5]

What are your thoughts on corporeal punishment ?

I think that Level Blue thinks it is necessary to prevent collapse to Level Red. Even though it was still practiced fairly widely in my childhood, it's very hard to imagine reinstating it at Level Orange/Green/Yellow in 2022. I would be too soft-hearted to ever administer it except in form such as sending kids out to run laps around the playground if they misbehave.

Yet the best way to operate in society is at or near its own level.

True. Anyways, nobody should take my advice on anything, because it seems likely that I am experiencing early onset of that which is sometimes referred to as the amorality of old age.

[chenda]

What do the different colours mean?

[jacob]

What do the different colours mean?

https://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/ov ... e-systems/

[Lemur]

The arrows in the graphic here always throw me off a bit...is the idea to progress up the colors similar to ego development? Or is it just an all encompassing map to help explain why some people think what they think and I should ignore the arrows? Must be the achiever type in me.... The utility could certainly be useful...for example you're giving a persuasive speech and you have to know your audience. If you could quickly determine, say that 90% of your audience is reds or blues or what have you then that might change how you express your points...

Sometimes, for instance, I like to look at world problems from a 3rd party perspective and think to myself "I don't like it but I think the Red's have the best solution here" or "the orange types are really getting in the way of this." That is far too over simplistic but just reading through the different colors I can't pinpoint exactly where I am. Maybe the idea is to blend like a chameleon depending on what situation you're in... I think I'm part orange, green, and yellow and could certainly express differently depending upon the problem I'm thinking about. Not sure what my primary/secondary color is if there is one. My spouse is definitely a Purple/Blue though.

[jacob]

The arrows in the graphic here always throw me off a bit...is the idea to progress up the colors similar to ego development? Or is it just an all encompassing map to help explain why some people think what they think and I should ignore the arrows?

Opinions are divided. We had a bunch of long and boring discussions about this in the ERE2.0 threads. The colors reveal societal values that individuals adopt from society.

The theory of the dynamics is that societies progress up the colors (some consider this assertion colonialist) as the society develops the corresponding traditions, institutions, beliefs, and cultures more or less in order.

Most individuals in a society take their values from the color of society (because Kegan3). Note that "society" here refers to whatever environment someone finds themselves in. A God-fearing family in rural Alabama IS NOT the book-filled home of a professor in Princeton IS NOT a single mom in gangland Chiraq. Societal values can be induced. An almost proverbial example would be an inner city boxing gym adding Blue to Red.

However, individuals may grow up to become [theoretically] any color insofar the person can somehow access its vMeme.

Sometimes, for instance, I like to look at world problems from a 3rd party perspective and think to myself "I don't like it but I think the Red's have the best solution here" or "the orange types are really getting in the way of this." That is far too over simplistic but just reading through the different colors I can't pinpoint exactly where I am. Maybe the idea is to blend like a chameleon depending on what situation you're in... I think I'm part orange, green, and yellow and could certainly express differently depending upon the problem I'm thinking about. Not sure what my primary/secondary color is if there is one. My spouse is definitely a Purple/Blue though.

Tier2 is [theoretically again] the only ones capable of seeing color as well as understanding and expressing other colors appropriately. The idea is not to blend like a chameleon, which I hear as camouflage, but to relate to people in a way that they can understand. Tier only ever accept their own values and belief structures; everyone else is wrong.