Tag: Cities

Integral intelligence for the city – part 2

In my last post, Integral intelligence for the city – part 1, I outlined two maps that help us see cities as whole, integrated systems: the nested holarchy of city systems and Spiral Dynamics integral.   The two remaining maps complete the collection of maps presented by Marilyn Hamilton in Integral City (click here for the book and here for the website).

The two maps I present today are the integral map and the scalar, fractal relationship map.

1.  The integral map

The basics of this intelligence have been applied in the Nest City blog in my post entitled  City – a dance of voice and values. The map here is very simple: four quadrants that help us notice within our selves and any scale of human system the individual and collective, and the internal and external.

Figure A - Wilber's Four Quadrants (illustrated by Brandy Agerbeck)

As a map, it helps us track this territoity.  It isn’t the territory itself, but a frame for us to explore the territory we are experiencing, or not. Marilyn Hamilton applies this lens expressly to the city:

  1. Upper Left (individual, internal, subjective, intangible) – appreciates the beauty of life and the city, particularly in living systems.  This is the psychological well-being of the city.
  2. Upper Right (individual, external, objective, tangible) – appreciates the truth of life: the actions that support our material survival in the city.  From this perspective we determine the energy flow in the city for life: water, food, waste, shelter, clothing. Our attention here gives us a quality built environment. This is the biological well-being of the city.
  3. Lower Right (collective, external, interobjective, tangible) – appreciates the the truth that emerges from the material systems generated by the Upper Right.  From here the artifact of the city emerges for us to live in collectively – our combined habitat.  This is the social well-being of the city.
  4. Lower Left (collective, internal, intersubjective, intengible)-  appreciates the Goodness in life.  From this perspective we see the moral qualities of our collective choices.  We weave this voice into the stories of everyday life.  We see this view in our formal laws.  This is the cultural-well-being of the city.
For more on Hamilton’s view of this work, please explore her book, Integral City – click here for the book and here for the website.
The lens of the integral map is crucial to seeing the whole city as a system of citizens, city managers, city builders and civil society.  Any contemplation of a city without all four of these integral voices is not complete.  In our work to create cities as habitats in which we thrive, this is a crucial part of integral intelligence.

2.  The scalar, fractal relationships of human systems

I have not written about this map in an explicit fashion so far, but the spirit of this map is within Next City.  Two images I have shared here are fractal: our work and habitat, and the city dynamic.

Figure B - Work in Habitat (at any scale)
Figure C - The City Dynamic (at any scale)

(For further description of work and habitat, visit this post: The development of cities is a survival skill.  For further description of the city dynamic, visit this post: Dynamically steering cities to the future.

By fractal, I mean that regardless of the scale, the pattern is the same.  The image and concept of our work evolving in response to our habitat, social and physical, is one that holds for individuals, families, neighbourhoods, cities and so on.  We don’t come up with new ways of doing things but for in response to some kind of challenge that we face.  This pattern is in place regardless of scale of human system.

The other important consideration when using this map, is that each individual whole that makes up a larger system (think nested holarchy of city systems in my last post) is each in response to her/his/its own set of life conditions, making a soup of values and responses to changing conditions.  Understanding these dynamics are critical to understand as we upgrade our work to ensure cities are habitats for citizens to thrive.

 

The pattern

We build habitats for ourselves at many scales.  We build habitats for self, for family, for our neighbourhood, our organizations, our whole cities, regions, nations, continents and even our planet.  We have even begun building habitats for ourselves when we spend time in outer space.  The scale at which we do this work is expanding, yet it is only as good as the health of the wholes that make up the whole.  The well-being of selves, families, neighbourhoods, organizations, cities, etc., determine the well-being of the larger wholes.  Our work, as people keen on creating cities that serve citizens, is always at many scales, and in many directions (think quadrants) at once.

Marilyn Hamilton – An Integral City “is dynamic, adaptive, and responsive to its internal and external life conditions.  An Integral City acts much like a complex adaptive human system that concentrates habitat for humans like a beehive does for bees or an anthill does for ants.”[1] 

My next post will explore ecosphere intelligence – our ability to locate cities in appropriate locations.

 


[1]   Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City, p. 52

 

 

 

Integral intelligence for the city – part 1

Integral intelligence is about charting patterns.  Since I began blogging Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities on May 1, 2012 (click here for the first blog), I have used three of the four integral maps introduced by Marilyn Hamilton in her body of work called Integral City (here are links to her book and website).

The four integral maps to look at cities in a whole, integrated fashion are:

  1. The nested holarchy of city systems
  2. Spiral Dynamics – the complex adaptive structures of city change
  3. The integral map
  4. The scalar, fractal relationship of micro, meso, macro human systems
In this post, I will outline the first two maps. The next two will be outlined in my next post on Monday.

1.  Nested Hierarchy of City Systems

Figure A – Nested Holarchy of City Systems

I first introduced the nested holarchy of city systems when describing the role of work and our work life as the evolutionary spark that began our migration across the planet, then into cities, and the subsequent growth of our cities.  We are driven to do more than merely survive, so we constantly find ways to think, make and do new things.  The result is that we change our habitat along the way – we create settlements and cities (and many other things that physically change our habitat).  More importantly, our work, at every scale in the city, creates the conditions for even more ways of thinking, making and doing new things: innovation.  Our cities are engines of innovation, which means that  the development of cities is a survival skill.

For Hamilton, to look at a city as whole we must contemplate the city as a human system, which is comprised of a nest of systems, each of which are themselves whole.  Each of which has its own level of complexity that includes the preceding “smaller” systems.

The value of this map is that at minimum, it reminds us to thing of city life at more than one scale.  It also reminds us that to work at any scale, we must also work with the systems that make up that system.  If working at the neighbourhood scale (5), then we must also work at the individual, family/clan, group, organizational scales as well.

Hamilton has made a recent blog post on this if you are interested.  Other Nest City posts that include this map are: Cities: the result of our evolving interaction with our habitat, Work at scale to serve the city, and The city as a nest.

2.  Spiral Dynamics – integral

Figure B – Spiral Purposes of Cities

The Nest City blog next introduced Spiral Dynamics as a means to map the evolution of the purpose of cities.  A series of posts (Is an unplanned city part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4) tell the story of St. John’s, Newfoundland and reveal how as the levels of complexity change (as the scales of system in the nested holarchy of city systems get larger), we adapt to provide structures that support new levels of complexity.  As the  purpose of a human settlement evolves, we shift and adjust our values and priorities to organize ourselves in response to changing conditions.  These posts are a window into how the Spiral shows up in the city.

Three additional posts outline how the Spiral works: A primer on the emerging spiral, 7 principles frame the emerging spiral, and Conditions for evolutionary expansion.

The value of this map is not just in the map itself.  The places on the map tell us about the values of that spot, and the things that motivate people and systems from that spot.  This understanding has huge implications for designing and communication with city systems.

The additional value of this frame is the understanding  that movement up or down the spiral is always in response to life conditions – our habitat.  This is so critical for cities – for our cities are our habitat, made by us.

Both of these maps are intensely connected to our drive to thrive in cities.  The nested holarchy reminds us that cities are a systems made of systems and part of larger, expanding systems.  Moreover, as we build our cities we are creating the conditions for our own movement up the Spiral.  We are creating the conditions for our own evolution.  

The next post will address the two remaining maps of integral intelligence: the integral map, and scalar, fractal relationships.  

12 evolutionary intelligences

In many preceding posts, I have referred to Marilyn Hamilton’s application of integral theory to the city: Integral City.  She articulates 12 evolutionary intelligences in her book, Integral City.  (Visit the Integral City web site here.)  (For  a quick summary of integral theory, visit this post.)

Integral City identifies 12 intelligences that are part of our evolutionary relationship with cities.  Each of these intelligences are described on Hamilton’s website.  If you visit her site, you will find this compass.  When you hover over the words in the compass, the text immediately to the left of the compass will describe that intelligence.  If you click on it, you will go to a new page with some text that describes that intelligence in more detail.

 Here is a quick phrase describing each intelligence:
  1. Ecosphere intelligence – locating places
  2. Emerging intelligence – seeing wholeness
  3. Integral intelligence – charting patterns
  4. Living intelligence – living and dying
  5. Inner intelligence – conscious capacity
  6. Outer intelligence – embodying right action
  7. Building intelligence – creating structures that flex and flow
  8. Story intelligence – feeding each other
  9. Inquiry intelligence – releasing potential
  10. Meshing intelligence – enabling order and creativity
  11. Navigating intelligence – directional dashboards
  12. Evolving intelligences – imagining the future

Over the course of the next several posts, I will look at each of these.  At times, I will look at clusters of intelligence, and other times I will explore only one. My intention is to present the ideas of the intelligence, reveal the power of the intelligence, and find an example of how the intelligence is lived in world.  Following this exploration of evolutionary intelligences, I will apply them more specifically to the Nest City model that articulates how we organize ourselves in cities: the city organizing dynamic.

Stay tuned if these evolutionary intelligences catch your eye – your evolving being.  I’ll start tomorrow with integral intelligence. 

NOTE  – If these evolutionary intelligences are of interest to you, the Integral City eLab will be taking place in September 2012.  Please click here to see the invitation.  Please click here to see the preliminary program.

 

 

Retreat results

Last Wednesday I headed into a writing retreat.  I popped back out into the world Sunday afternoon feeling satisfied with the time I spent with myself, exploring our evolutionary relationship with cities and the reasons for whichI am compelled to do this work.

Strawberry Creek Lodge is in a beautiful setting in aspen parkland – full of the genus populus, after which my company is named.  I love to spend time outside, so I took my tent and set up camp on the edge of a meadow, on a bluff overlooking strawberry creek a hundred feet below.  The view from my tent was impeded by the forest growth crawling up the bank.  Yet despite the visual obstacle, I knew what was on the other side – a beautiful view.

I learned that I need a good night’s sleep in order to be able think and write clearly.  In the end, I spent only two nights in the tent, bookending the summer solstice.  I learned that while I am writing, it is absolutely critical for me to have a good night’s sleep.  Waking up at 4:40 am and working from 5-8am before breakfast and then being so tired to have to sleep until noon is not a recipe for success with my body.  Sleep in split shifts is not helpful. I chose then to sleep in my room in the lodge and make treks out to my tent to think about my writing.

It feels good to just sit and write.   it was a great way to mark the transition into summertime.

My accomplishments:

  1. I completed and submitted my book proposal to New Society Publishers.
  2. I have organized a bit of a ‘plot’ to guide the next series of posts on evolutionary intelligence.  In July, I will introduce the intelligences for the city articulated by Marilyn Hamilton (Integral City).  In September, my blogging time will be consumed by my participation in the Integral City eLaboratory, an online conference.  You can expect many more details on evolutionary intelligences for the city.  Over the course of August, I will tease out the principles and practices that specifically create the conditions for a  social habitat  that allows for us to integrate our economic life with our physical habitat.
  3. A Nest City Manifesto is coming.  As I conclude the first piece of this book that has a hold of me, I am preparing a 30 page ‘report’ to share with readers.  I will share this freely (literally) with readers in the fall of 2012.
  4. I have updated some of the text on my website.  I have some things to keep adjusting, but I have recognized that it may be time for a refresh of the whole thing.  The truth is, I am not sure what needs to be done on this front.  Comments welcome!
  5. I have rearticulated my business plan and how I wish to spend my time – in my personal and work life – in support of writing and exploring our evolutionary relationship with cities.

Thanks for reading – I appreciate this opportunity to share what I am thinking, finding and writing with all of you.

Here are two great blogs that have shaped several decisions over the last few months: Chris Guillebeau’s unconventional strategies for life, work and travel, and Nina Amir’s How to blog a book.  Enjoy!

Evolutionary intelligence – integrally

The last five posts articulate a body of work called Spiral Dynamics:

  1. Pause for evolutionary understanding begins Chapter 3 – The Thriving Impulse outlines the need to pause and understand our evolutionary trip as we organize ourselves in cities.
  2. Primer on the emerging spiral reveals a pattern in our emerging intelligence: Spiral Dynamics.
  3. 7 principles frame the emerging spiral articulates how the Spiral works: the trends behind the trends.
  4. Conditions for evolutionary expansion articulates the conditions that need to be met for the natural growth in our intelligence.
  5. Evolutionary impulse to thrive looks at movement on the Spiral in the context of changing life conditions.
The perspective offered by Spiral Dynamics is best viewed integrally, that is to say in consideration of the spheres and scales by which we experience the city.  In City – a dance of voice and values, I begin to knit together the Spiral of values and the four integral city voices: civic managers, civic developers, civil society and citizens.
Imagine the Spiral alive in each quadrant.  Imagine the Spiral alive in each individual in each quadrant. Imagine the Spiral alive across the whole city: a symphony of voices each expressing themselves from where they are at any given moment.  When an earthquake hits and our city is destroyed, we will hunker down for BEIGE survival.  On a day when the local hockey team has just one a big game, the city experiences a surge of RED elation and pride.  On a day when a drunk driver has killed a busload of school children, we call for a recalibration of our BLUE rules.    When we reach the big job at the top of the corporate ladder, we revel in our ORANGE achievement.  When we realize that our success has meant that others do not succeed, we are motivated by a GREEN communitarian ethic.  There is a point where we realize that the gifts of all these value systems are indeed of value together, rather than in competition with each other.  This is when we hunger for the integration of YELLOW, to flex and flow.
In a city’s population, these value systems are forever in flux, in each and all of us. The dance of voice and values is in self, others and the city all at once, all the time, at every scale, at every moment.
It makes city life a wonderfully dynamic experience with endless possibilities.
The next series of posts will explore some broad, macro principles that help create the conditions for the self and the city to thrive: evolutionary intelligence.

 

A wee solstice manifesto

I woke up this summer solstice morning overlooking Strawberry Creek, 80 km south of Edmonton, to begin a 4 day writing retreat offered by the Writer’s Guild of Alberta.  While I have a wonderful building to work in, I have chosen to sleep in my tent, rather than the building.   Very unusually for me, I was up with the sun today.  My morning practice of awakening my body is complete and I am ready for a day of writing.

I arrived last night, and it has occurred to me that one of the things I am writing is a manifesto for the city – a manifesto that articulates how we can organize ourselves for an unknown future by creating a habitat, cities, that serve us well.  It is not lost on me that I have left the city to write about the city, but this is not anomalous.  The city is always in relation with its region, and perhaps being on the edge of the city has a perspective worth taking in.  I suspect it has.

I wonder what I will see as I work beside Strawberry Creek?  What is my wee solstice manifesto for the next few days?

The purpose of my writing is to explore our relationship with cities and how we influence one another.  We create cities and they in return create us.  In this process, I recognize that as I write I will find people who are on the same exploration.  I write for folks on the same learning journey.

As I write, I will give everything away.  Writing here, publicly, I commit to hold nothing back.  I will share what I find, whether that be in the form of questions, new information and ideas, sketches, poems, links, guest bloggers, videos, and the like.  I will collect, synthesize and share.

I wish to bring people together to talk about cities and what we are building for ourselves.  I am formulating more precisely what I mean by this as I write.  Over the course of this retreat, I will:

  1. Finalize my latest book proposal for publication.  I will send this proposal to New Society Publishers by Monday, June 25, 2012.
  2. Prepare material in advance so I can continue Nest City posts every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday throughout the summer.
  3. Determine the “products” I can offer my readers for free.  As I wrap up part 1 (Chapters 1-3) shortly, there may be a synopsis piece I can create for readers.
  4. Figure out how to refresh this website to accurately reflect the work I am doing now.
I have a post complete and the bell has just rung for breakfast.  This is a day unlike any other.

 

 

 

Conditions for evolutionary expansion

Our impulse to work to improve our world is an impulse to evolve.

I suspect that you recognize a deep impulse to survive and thrive in you, in other individuals, your family, your community, your nation and in the whole of us as a species. When faced with hardships and challenges, we do what it takes to protect ourselves and our clan, to survive.  We don’t often think of this, but it is ever present in our actions.  What is also present is our impulse as a species to thrive –to learn how to grow and change and adapt constantly.  Survival alone is not good enough.  We are always seeking more of what is possible in the world.  This is an impulse that even drives the creation of cities.

The last two posts, A primer on the emerging spiral and 7 principles that frame the Spiral, lay out one way of seeing how new value systems emerge within us as we evolve:  Spiral Dynamics.  As we move up the Spiral, our awareness and understanding expands as we meet ever more complex challenges in life.  Clare Graves called this movement up the Spiral a never ending quest.  Our evolutionary expansion, however, is not a given.

Potential for expansion – six conditions

Beck and Cowan outline six conditions that need to be in place for upward change on the Spiral to be possible.  Keep in mind that this is not a recipe – it is possible that most conditions are met and change does not occur.  It is also possible that only some conditions are met and change occurs anyway.  This is a pattern that offers some insight into how change happens, but more specifically, about the conditions in place as we move upward along the Spiral, at various scales – individuals, families, groups, organizations, nations, species.

1.  Openness to the potential for change.  Beck and Cowan are very clear that not all people are equally open to, or even capable or prepared for change.  Normally, humans are in a potentially open system of need, values and aspirations, but “we tend, however, to settle into what appears to be a closed state wherein we operate in a consistent, enduring steady way.  Once reached, we tend to stay in these zones of comfort… unless powerful forces induce turbulence.”[1]  So the potential for change revolves around three elements: thinking that is open, or at least arrested; having the appropriate intelligences, ie the ability to operate under more complex life conditions; and being free from restrictive patterns, ‘sink-holes’ and ‘baggage’.

Beck and Cowan distinguish three states in which we may find ourselves relative to potential for change[2] that I have organized as follows:

Openness to the potential for change

2.  Solutions.  Change will not occur if ‘serious, unresolved problems or threats still exist within the present state’.  Satisfying this condition involves: adequately managing the problems at their vMEME level creating comfort and balance; and direct excess energy to exploration of the next, more complex system.[3]

3.  Dissonance.  “Change does not occur unless the boat rocks.”[4]  The sensation of dissonance is stirred when the waves of some kind of impact jostle the steady-state system.  The factors that create dissonance are (verbatim)[5]:

  • Awareness of the growing gap between life conditions and current means for handling those problems.
  • Enough turbulence to create a sense that ‘something is wrong’ without so much chaos that the whole world seems to be falling apart.
  • Abject failure of old solutions to solve the problems of the new life conditions may stimulate fresh thinking, release energy, and liberate the next vMEMES along the Spiral

4.  Barriers[6].  Beck and Cowan discern two steps in this process. The first is recognizing the barriers, which typically are external.  ‘It’s their fault.’  ‘The bloody establishment holds us down.’  The second step invites exploration into why the barriers are effective obstacles, which reveals both internal and external obstacles. In the end, we have to clean up both the world outside and inside.

So barriers need to be eliminated, bypassed, neutralized or reframed into something else to provide the needed solid foundation on which to build change.  But all this is to be done conscious of risks, consequences and the pain of barrier removal, as well as exposure of the excuses and rationalizations for not implementing change.

5.  Insight.  When leading change, it is critical to understand the thinking systems in play, and discern the different patterns, models and structure that come with those ways of thinking.  Further, “alternative scenarios must be active in the collective consciousness before they can be considered.  Too often they are guarded in the minds of an elite few ‘planners’ or ‘decision-makers’.  People need mental pictures of what things might be like for them in their own real Life Conditions, not for some distant Hollywood start or textbook case-studies.”[7]

Change is ultimately about changing patterns, and Beck and Cowan offer the following ways to initiate change in patterns[8]:

  • Greater insight into how systems form, decline, and reform – particularly one’s own.  People must accept the possibility of change as well as the means.
  • Put a stop to wasteful regressive searches into out-moded answers from the past which simply cannot address greater complexity in the present.
  • Consider optional scenarios, fresh models, and experiences from applicable sources.  Scout the competition and demonstrate concretely what alternatives look like.
  • Quickly recognize the appearance of new life conditions and the vMEMES required to shift into congruence. Custom tailor for best fit.

6.  Consolidation.  Beck and Cowan say this best: “When significant change occurs, you can expect a period of confusion, false starts, long learning curves, and awkward assimilation.  Those who change – either as individuals or as organizations – may be punished by those who do not understand what is happening and now find themselves left out, misaligned and threatened.  Old barriers may be rebuilt in the form of punitive rules, turf battles and power tests.  New obstacles might be set up.  Sometimes, you will have to go around, let the bridge burn and not look back.”[9]

Conclusion

There is a gap that sits between how we experience the world and how we see the world could be that propels us forward.  This is not a gap that we all see in the same way at the same time.  It is not a gap that we are all even able to see, nor are we all required to see a gap before making attempts to cross it.  But there is always a gap, should we choose to notice it, examine it, explore it and cross it.  We are always at a threshold.

My next post will explore the word “change” from a Spiral perspective, and the difference between changeability and adjustability.  When at a threshold, when is it appropriate to change or adjust?

Notes

[1]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 76

[2]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 76-82.  The text.

[3]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 82

[4]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 82

[5]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 83

[6]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 83

[7]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 84

[8]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 84

[9]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 85

 

7 principles frame the emerging spiral

New value systems are emerging as each of us as individuals, and in our city life, evolve.  In my last post, A primer on the emerging spiral, I described Spiral Dynamics, a way of seeing the pattern in our emerging value systems.  Seven principles describe the core intelligence of Spiral Dynamics and frame the emergence of new patterns, paradigms, theories, etc.  As Spiral Dynamics authors Beck and Cowan put it, the principles uncover the deepest trends that generate trends.

The seven principles are[1]:

1.  Humans are able to create new vMEMES.  Looking back over the history of the human species, Beck and Cowan track the emergence of each vMEME[2]: 50,000 years ago PURPLE emerged as we formed tribes, experienced magic, art and spirits.  10,000 years ago the RED world emerged with warlords, conquest and discovery.  5000 years ago BLUE emerged with literature, monotheism and purpose.  1000 years ago ORANGE mobility, individualism and economics came to the fore.  150 years ago the GREEN vMEME emerged as human rights, liberty and collectivism.  YELLOW emerged 50 years ago with complexity, chaos and interconnections.  TURQUOISE emerged 30 years ago with a new discourse on globalism, eco-consciuosness and patterns.

2.  Life conditions awaken vMEMES.  VMEMES are a product of our interaction with the life conditions that we face in the world.  This is not a scripted biology, but rather a result of dynamic interaction between our internal states and our external world.  The age we live in, the place we live in, the problems we face and the social circumstances we find ourselves in shape our beliefs, ideas and values.  For example:

3.  vMEMES alternate between ‘me’ and ‘we’ focus.  Imagine a pendulum that swings between two poles.  As the pendulum approaches each pole, it generates life conditions that can only be addressed with solutions from the other.  Here are the two poles and their characteristics:

4.  vMEMES emerge in waves.  Beck and Cowan describe this best: “New vMEME systems come in like waves to a beach.  Each has its own ascending surge… At the same time, each also overlaps the receding waves of the previous system as they face.  Sometimes the interference generated as the new systems compete in their ascendancies slows the overall Spiral’s momentum, even shoving it backwards.  At other times, the vMEME waves resonate and reinforce one another to speed the evolution of thinking along.”[3]
5. Higher levels of complexity emerge along the Spiral.  There are four characteristics[4] of this flow:
  • Expansion of psychological space – toward more multifaceted personalities, diverse organizational forms, and a much more complicated planet
  • Expansion of conceptual space – toward bigger picture views, wider span on influence, and extended time frames
  • A progressive increase of alternatives – toward more choices to make from a broader menu of ways to do a thing
  • A progressive increase in degrees of individual freedom – toward more possibilities in terms of how to be, ways to display emotions, acceptable kinds of human interrelationships
6.  vMEMES co-exist.  We have the capacity to think in many different ways about many different things all at the same time. While I may be very competitive (RED) on the soccer field, I am also conscious and respectful of the rules (BLUE) and the diversity of skills (GREEN) of my teammates.  I notice the strategic (ORANGE) choices our coach makes about who plays where, how and when on the field, and I appreciate the sense of belonging we have created as a team (PURPLE).  How bright each of these vMEMES shine depends on the life conditions – at a game, RED will be brightest.  As I write, PURPLE is surging as I notice the fond connection I have with my teammates.
7.  There is a momentous leap after the first 6 tiers.  The first six vMEMES, BEIGE through GREEN, are the culmination of our primate nature.  They are the 1st  tier of human development and focus on human subsistence.   The 1sttier vMEMES have very little tolerance for each other.  They conflict and clash, and these are the seismic battles we experience in the world.The leap to the 2nd tier offers a shift from subsistence to ‘being’ – which means appreciating the wisdom of each of the first six vMEMES.  Beck and Cowan advise that the momentous leap is characterized by a dropping away of fears and compulsion, an increase in conceptual space, an ability to learn a great deal from many sources, and a trend toward getting much more done with much less energy or resources.[5]  The words of Clare Graves:
After being hobbled by the more narrow animal-like needs, by the imperative need for sustenance [BEIGE], the fear of spirits [PURPLE] and other predatory men [RED], by the fear of trespass upon the ordained order [BLUE], by the fear of his greediness [ORANGE], and the fear of social disapproval [GREEN], suddenly human cognition is free.  Now with his energies free for cognitive activation, man focuses upon his self and his world [YELLOW, TURQUOISE, etc.].[6]

Summary of the principles

The seven principles provide insight into how the Spiral works.  We are able to create new vMEMES and we do so in response to our life conditions – our habitat.  As we do, the focus of the vMEMES swing back and forth between ‘me’ and ‘we’.  New vMEMES arrive like waves on a beach – always in relation to the other waves – with each wave upward bringing a high level of complexity.  As these vMEMES awaken, all the previous vMEMES  remain in tact.  And until such time that a momentous leap is made from the sixth (GREEN) to the seventh (YELLOW) level, where we recognize the value of each perspective, there is great conflict between the vMEMES.
The emerging value systems highlighted by the Spiral are so clear in city life at many scales – self, family, neighbourhood, organization, city, province, nation, continent, world.  Readers interested in an example may be interested in the series of posts on St. John’s, Newfoundland:  Is the unplanned city unplanned? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.  In the meantime, the next post will look at how we move up and down the Spiral.

 

[1]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 50-67

[2]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 50-51

[3]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 59

[4]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 62

[5]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 66

[6]   Clare Graves as cited by Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 274.  Graves’ use of the masculine in this explanation is indicative of his life conditions and the times.

 

 

A primer on the emerging spiral

Figure 1 - City Purposes (St. John's)

There is a pattern in human activity that reveals how our intelligence evolves (Figure 1).  The story of St. John’s emergence as a city in Chapter 2 – The Planning Impulse highlights this evolution in the creation of a city.  The purpose of this post is to provide a primer in one way of thinking of evolving intelligence: Spiral Dynamics.

Spiral Dynamics

Imagine the double-helix spiral of our DNA and the work that has been done to catalogue our genes – the codes that guide our physical being. Imagine a similar spiral with our cultural codes: our organizing principles.

Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, drawing on the work of Clare Graves in the 1970s, have revealed how the organizing principles emerge in humans, and how they glue together our social systems. This area of work is called Spiral Dynamics.  The organizing principles are found in levels of value systems that emerge as we evolve.  They are called value memes, or vMEMES for short (rhymes with genes), as coined by Richard Dawkins.

vMEMES are codes, or behavioural instructions that are passed on from generation to the next, social artifacts, and value-laden symbols that glue together social systems.[1]  Beck and Cowan:

These vMEMES include instructions for our world views, assumptions about how everything works, and the rationale for decisions we make.[2] 

We evolve and grow through these vMEMES – as individuals, as families, cultures, workplaces, cities, nations and as a species. Here is a summary of the eight vMEMES that have appeared to date in humans – our ideas and beliefs gather around each of these:

The spiral of city purposes in Figure 1 is an interpretation of the vMEMES described above. Here is another take on the spiral with some key words you will recognize as the structures and processes associated with ways of thinking at different levels of the spiral:

Highlights

The first six vMEMES, BEIGE through GREEN, form the first tier of value codes.  Their focus is subsistence.  Very simply: BEIGE, is explicitly about surviving.  When our basic needs are met, in PURPLE we survive together and make sense of the magical world in groups.  When resources become scarce, our groups compete for independence (RED).  When we recognize that stability is needed, BLUE surfaces and we establish institutions, protocols and rules with purpose.  When those rules get in the way, ORANGE shows up as an entrepreneurial, creative spirit.  When uncomfortable with achievement orientation of ORANGE, GREEN emerges and seeks caring and socially responsible communities.

These first six vMEMES have very little tolerance for each other; we see great conflict between the values of competition and community, or the power of the individual vs the role of the collective.  A second tier of  vMEMES (YELLOW, TURQUOISE) surfaces when we desire to integrate the first six.

It is critical to note that none of these vMEMES are better than another.  They simply reflect different perspectives on what the world  and its complexity .[3]  Each vMEME builds on the one(s) before.  Each building block arrives as we adjust to new levels of complexity. Each transcends and includes the previous vMEMES, responding to increased complexity in the world, meaning that the building blocks already created remain in us.

vMEMES are types of thinking in us, not types of us.[4]  As a body of work, Spiral Dynamics notices the patterns in human development, and recognizing the pattern allows for deeper views of the role of cities – and ourselves – in human development.

How does the Spiral work?  The next post will describe seven principles that frame the emergence of new patterns.  As Beck and Cowan put it, the trends that generate trends…


 

[1]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 31

[2]   Beck and Cowan, Spiral Dynamics, p. 32

[3]   Beck and Cowan,  Spiral Dynamics,p. 50

[4]   Beck and Cowan,  Spiral Dynamics,p. 63

 Additional Reading:

 

 

Pause for evolutionary understanding

Figure 1 - City Habitats

If the purpose of cities is to grow and evolve the human species, then it is necessary to understand the evolutionary forces in play.  There are huge implications for our relationships with each other as we create cities that support our efforts to learn both as individuals and as a species

In today’s world we are in the process of recalibrating how we relate with each other.  We are adjusting our relationships with smartphones, texting and social media.  We are in contact with each other, both locally and globally, in whole new and unforeseen ways.  Information is distributed very quickly. We are both more informed and misinformed.  We are deeply engaged in life and rewiring the nature of our engagement with self and other and the city in our city life.

The advent of social media does not remove our desire to create cities that serve us well, or minimize our desire for face-to-face contact.  We still hunger for it.  We use social media to organize ourselves – to share information, to rally, to have fun.  Ultimately it is a form of connecting.  As communication sparked an evolutionary burst in humans 60,000 years ago, and with the printing press more recently, we are sparking another evolutionary burst now – where do we need to put our attention to ride it out safely? 

Figure 2 - City "Nestworking"

Organizing ourselves into and within cities is a process of organizing human intelligence.  Looking back at Chapter 1 – The City Impulse, we can see that we are organizing our economic life in the context of our physical habitat.  We are doing this by creating a social habitat that allows for feedback and integration (Figure 1). There is no ‘plan’, per se, but as my colleagues Don Beck and Marilyn Hamilton would say, there are patterns in the life conditions. One of the patterns is the activity of planning our cities. In Chapter 2 – The Planning Impulse, I propose that planning is one of many activities we undertake to organize ourselves.  The Venn diagram in Figure 2 articulates the planning of our cities as an activity that is non-linear, messy and uncomfortable work for an uncertain future.

Our attention needs to be on cities –  because cities are a source of innovation.  The development of cities is a survival skill for the human species.  Moreover, as we organize ourselves in cities, we need to pause and learn about ourselves and our evolutionary trip before diving further into the Nest City model (Figure 2).  That is the focus of the upcoming series of posts that form Chapter 3 – The Thriving Impulse, where I will describe and explore:

  1. Evolutionary intelligence
  2. Evolutionary intelligence in the city
  3. Protocols and practices that support the evolution of the city