Social Development - developed out of the Clare Graves model

This is the model developed out of the Clare Graves scale by various people. I did not develop this model. But since I refer to it all of the time in my posts, I can just as well explain it. Clare Graves, an American professor of psychology, first developed the blueprint at the beginning of the last century. I heard about it during a Tony Robbins event, and I believe the colors were added by Tony Robbins to make the levels easier to identify. I follow most of what I understood from his explanations, except when it comes to levels green and beyond - and for good reason. I would not venture to guess what level he is really on, and at what time, but he is also a salesman for the company. And I did not fail to notice what colors a large proportion of the people who pay the most money and sit in the front rows of his events cheer for. He will need to adjust for that. I don't.

In the following, I explain the levels - each level develops when the person/society becomes dissatisfied with the previous level, and each jump necessitates a certain expansion of consciousness. Most people/societies get stuck at a certain level and do not develop further.

Grey - pure survival. Not really interesting for us, think babies or plants. I leave it un-numbered

Purple (level 1) - this is the level where people talk about the "team" a lot and try to fit in. On the surface it can look very social - people do nice things for each other, and they learn the niceties of society. But at this level, people are really only nice to others out of fear of punishment, not because they necessarily want to be nice. Think the "generosity" of your little sister or brother when your parents were looking, who then stole back what they had given the second the parents looked away. "Fitting in" is a matter of survival, and people will be nice and act with socially acceptable behavior until nobody is looking, or until they are rewarded, NOT to be nice. Think the character of Olivia Coleman in the film "Wicked Little Letters" (Wicked Little Letters - Wikipedia) before the very end. While the character of Olivia Coleman seems very agreeable to a lot of people, this is also the level of collaborators of the Nazis, because people at this level really do not have their own values yet - they just follow what everybody else does, keep their head down, and do whatever promises to give the least pain.

Red (level 2) - these are the power Gods. They got sick of complying in level purple, and they broke out. Think rockstars who trash hotel rooms, dictators who eliminate their enemies, AND Olivia Coleman's character at the end of the film "Wicked Little Letters", when she is driven away, laughing maniacally. The film is actually an excellent depiction of the development from purple to red, and while it does not look like much of an expansion of consciousness, you can see that before the very end, her character could not even perceive being free to be herself and happy to show it to the world - until she changed into red at the end of the film. In societies that are mostly at a purple level, but eager to break through to red, you will find people being fascinated by "being bad" as if it was a great trait to be - because for them it is. Red is not a pleasant level. Certainly not for any people, animals, or creatures around that person or society. But it is a necessary level to develop through to get to blue. If people or societies get stuck in red for a long time, they develop a fake "nice-face" to get away with the behavior, or to snare purple people into their net, and to appear either as fitting into purple, blue, or orange. But they are really still all about themselves underneath and will sell their grandmother if it benefits them.

Blue (level 3) - this is the level of law and order. Think the son in the series "The good cop". He will keep standing at that red light whether someone watches him or not, and whether he will get punished or not, simply because it is right. This is the first time when people, or societies, develop true values (and don't mistake values for feelings they like or don't like). Why would people develop out of the freedom of red into blue? They may well realize that if they, and their neighbors, stay in red forever, they will eventually eliminate each other. Sometimes, Power Gods (red) are also aging, and younger power gods are trying to take over, so the current power gods want to establish a system of control. Maybe they simply grow tired of sitting in trashed hotel rooms or countries, as it were, and want something around them that looks functioning and whole. Think the catholic church, the military, a lot of middle managers in big companies (although some may still be in red faking nice), and the newer generation of people in Germany after the war ended and Hitler and the Nazis (red) were defeated. You will still find today that most older Germans will keep standing at a defective red light until the crack of dawn the next day, whether there is any traffic or not. It has the advantage of order, and, for the first time, it has a real element of care for others. The laws are kept and enforced so that everybody has an advantage, not just one single person. While purple just claims to be social to get an advantage, blue really is socially conscious. It also is rigid. The law is the law, is the law, is the law, and blue will aggravate both red and orange (the next level) because of its unforgiving application of rules, just for different reasons.

Orange (level 4) - Americans call this the "entrepreneurial" level, and America has a lot of entrepreneurs, but a lot of entrepreneurs, in my opinion, are still red. They have just learned to put on a "nice" face, as that is what mostly sells products. Also, a person does not have to be a good entrepreneur or good at certain necessary entrepreneurial skills (like sales or marketing) to be on level orange, that is a misperception. The expansion of consciousness needed to develop from blue to orange involves a change in attitude to rules and regulations instead. As it is probably easiest to understand this in terms of entrepreneurship, though, I'll go with that example.

Orange DOES value the rules, and not just in respect to other people (like red and purple do, who greatly enjoy using rules to pull other people down but do not like to follow them themselves). Orange developed THROUGH blue and does follow the rules when they make sense, but orange also sees that there are times, when the rules, rigidly applied, are standing in the way of good, of real progress, of creativity that could benefit all, and where a rigid application of rules hinders the very thing these rules want to achieve. This is the level where people become aware of the "spirit of the law" rather than the "letter of the law". You will find very senior judges in all countries on this level if you read some of the judgments. Some founders of family businesses and senior managers in international companies are on this level. This is also the level of truly social entrepreneurs, who really do care about the families of the people they employ (and don't just talk about it like red does), and who oftentimes aim for a social benefit of their companies, even though this level is still human-centric only. It involves a wider circle of caring beyond just monetary profit of the company. You will find that a lot of these entrepreneurs will also have foundations that help people, or art, or education, and not just for tax reasons, even if they do take the benefit of the tax cuts.

Green (level 5) - This is the level where people realize that everything is connected, whether it involves us humans or not. It is the first level where consciousness expands beyond humans, and while some on the orange level start naturally developing in this direction and become "Ecopreneurs", entrepreneurs who have only just entered the orange level see green people as a nuisance, someone who hinders business. Green people scare the daylights out of blue people because this level also, for the first time, necessarily involves some transcendence of human rules (see the picture in the beginning of this article: (21) Jobs for ultimate fulfillment | LinkedIn).

But green is neither dangerous (the blue perception, who are all about controlling green, or the orange perception when they mistake red people in green movements for "green") nor incapable of making decisions (the orange perception when they mistake purple people in green movements for "green"). Green is also not weak, it does not show love to please, like purple people do. Green, by necessity, developed through the other levels and therefore understands all previous levels and then realized that there is a wider view when zooming out that changes everything.

Green is, unlike "turquoise" (level 7) does not feel "oneness" yet as an experience, at least not on a permanent basis, but it can read the science and understand the interconnectedness of all on an intellectual level, and it does understand the necessity to act by protecting the whole, not just our little corner of it.

Green, unlike "yellow" (level 6) cannot see the benefits of the other levels yet, and will get greatly annoyed and hurt at times by the early stages of orange, and certainly by red, and it will also resent the rigidity of blue.

And yet, it is the level that sees the whole most clearly - but it doesn't understand yet, what to do about it, and a lot of people in green developed to this level before they had the external opportunity to develop some entrepreneurial skills to grab power and money to make their visions now happen - sales and marketing in the early stages is best learned while the person is still in the "red" stage, and most marketers who teach it remain at red, being able to pretend to be purple, all their lives, so green people get put off by the selfishness of what is taught, or by the fake nature of it, before they ever get good at techniques that can be transformed to something truly beneficial.

Green can be a stage of great discovery, great insight, of experimentation, and expansion, especially for orange people developing into it when they did develop their sales and marketing skills earlier in red and then transformed them in orange and got into their power - and it can also be a stage of great frustration for those who ascended to green before they developed these skills - until the person develops to one of the next tow stages - yellow, or turquoise.

Yellow (level 6) - this is flex-flow. The person has realized that all the previous stages have their place in certain situations in life. If there is a fire in a theatre, it is perfectly fine to use "red" to get people out, even if some people might get offended by the force of it - you don't want people to burn while they are still making up their mind which exit to go to and if it is really that bad, you just want to overpower their will and get them out. And blue is a necessary stage for all kinds of professions, from police work to middle managers, because they are the ones who provide the structure. Orange provides some great entrepreneurs, who have developed the sales and marketing tools that they learned while being in red further, to turn them into truly beneficial tools, instead of exploitation, they know how to activate the good sides of the colors below them, and they have amassed the power and money to make the shifts that green needs - their consciousness just needs to expand a little. And purple make for great employees - they mostly do what they are told and stay forever in the company. The shift to Yellow from green is not necessarily up in consciousness, but it is a lateral shift - a shift to the side, to see the system as a whole and thereby the benefit of the entire system.

Turquoise (level 7) - this is a truly spiritual shift up. Enlightenment is said to happen in stages, this is the stage where there is a truly permanent aspect of it present. It is the stage where people feel "oneness" on a permanent level. There are levels beyond this, but turquoise and even yellow are achieved very seldom by people on a permanent level. Individual people may get glimpses of it - that spiritual experience they once had, a certain feeling of connectedness with nature, the birth of their first child after which they told everyone that now they understand the secret of life - but very few stay there permanently.

It is possible for people on lower levels to have moments, where they get a glimpse of a level above them, but it is not sustainable, and the level will not be truly understood until people live there. Olivia Coleman's character was writing the Wicked Little Letters in the purple stage already, but she never understood what true red is until she developed into it at the end. That is why you don't want blue people (managers, most psychologists) to analyze green people, because they will see the higher level through the lens of their own level and their anxieties, and it will come to misinterpretations from hilarious, to just plain wrong, to even dangerous to people on higher levels. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi were of great benefit to society, and yet they were killed - likely because somebody or a group of people on the blue level saw them as a threat to the structure of their society.

Most people get stuck at a certain stage and never develop beyond it for the rest of their lives. According to social psychology, most of the earth's population, about 70%, I am told, are located somewhere on stages 1 to 3. Most people think they are on a higher stage than they actually are.

Only people on the higher stages can truly understand the stages below them, simply because they developed through them. Under pressure, most of us will drop down to another stage. Green people may well drop to blue when confronted with orange people and will regal them with the law, or will go into a red rage, or, if the pressure becomes too much (e.g. a green woman confronted with a red husband) may even drop to purple. But it will not be a consciously chosen drop, as when people reach yellow. Sometimes, external pressures can destroy the development and permanently drop people down to a lower level, like when people who were already at orange or even close to green will be "broken" in companies, schools, or the military, and drop back down to purple or red.

Societies mirror the development of most of their population. You will find societies that are mostly purple except for some red people in their aristocracy. Other societies are mostly red but have learned to put on a "nice" face. Other societies are mostly blue and a great annoyance to red societies and the orange people everywhere.

I am not sure that there are real orange and real green societies yet. There are a sizeable number of people in some societies that will fall into those categories, but they are not numerous enough yet to really shift the society permanently.

And if there is a turquoise society, it is probably hidden from view.

For those who are interested in energies (i.e. yin and yang, feminine and masculine energies) one interesting aspect is that these energies seem to change from one level to the other. Purple is mostly yin, red is yang, blue is yin again, just as at a maturer level (as in the mother disciplining her child), orange is yang, green is yin again, and yellow is yang, I believe.

Only Turquoise may be a true blend - but I leave that teaching to spiritual teachers.