Discussion of the Graves Model

This series of 3 articles was published almost 30 years ago and consists of a debate between myself and Stephen Creffield about Clare Graves model and how it is used by NLP Trainers. I republish it, not to reargue these points, but as a reference for future discussions about the evolution of values.

Grave Errors In Values

-Richard Bolstad-

Values

Like any open system, NLP is continuously taking in and utilising new information from its environment. For example,  the TOTE model for Strategies was taken into NLP from the earlier work of mathematicians Miller, Galanter and Pribram (1960). This article focuses on a more recent candidate for acceptance into NLP: the Levels of Psychological Existence Theory, proposed by Clare W. Graves.

Some prominent NLP trainers suggest that the Graves model is or could be an integral part of NLP. When a model is accepted into use by us as NLP Practitioners, it makes sense for us to check that we are using it in a way that accords with the fundamental presuppositions of NLP, particularly the presupposition that “The Map Is Not The Territory”. I have grave concerns about the way we might use the Levels of Psychological Existence Theory (also called Spiral Dynamics; Beck and Cowan, 1996). At its worst, I consider the theory to be used in a way that is unverifiable, misleading, and interpersonally destructive. This article will summarise the model, compare it with a couple of other values systems, and then present my concerns about its use.

Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall advocate the Graves system as a model for understanding human values. They describe values (1988, p155) as “those things (or notions) that we are willing to expend resources for, or to obtain resources to have. Values are largely unconscious, and at the deepest level they drive a person’s true purpose as a human being. Values govern ALL human behaviour. First they provide the push or the kinesthetic drive as prior motivation for our actions. Second they serve as after the fact evaluation criteria, or judgement about our actions. Values are the way we judge good and bad, right and wrong, appropriateness and inappropriateness.”

The Graves System

Clare W. Graves was a professor of Psychology at Union College, New York. He died in 1986, and much of his research and work was first presented in the 1960s. Graves attempted to categorise eight systems of human values and world views, one of which he held would predominate in a given person at a given time, and each of which was arranged in sequence so that a standard “evolution” of values systems is occuring throughout human history and individual life (or at least adult male history, to use Graves’ words.). Graves suggests that this evolution spirals upward through periods of willingness to sacrifice self alternating with periods of willingness to sacrifice others. He sums up “At each stage of human existence the adult man is off on his quest of his holy grail, the way of life he seeks by which to live. At his first level he is on a quest for automatic physiological satisfaction. At the second level he seeks a safe mode of living, and this is followed, in turn, by a search for heroic status, for power and glory, by a search for ultimate peace, a search for affectionate relations, a search for respect of self, and a search for peace in an incomprehensible world. And, when he finds he will not find that peace, he will be off on his ninth level peace.” (Beck and Cowan, 1996, p16)

Don Edward Beck and Christopher C. Cowan studied with Graves and have formed the National Values Centre to promote their developed version of his work, which they call Spiral Dynamics. They call each of Graves values systems a ^VMEME (Values-attracting meta-meme; a concept conceptually related to a gene) and assign it a colour. The systems are listed in table 1 (adapted from Beck and Cowan, 1996, p41-51) Amongst the points Beck and Cowan make about these values systems are:

1. The value systems describe types of values found in people, not types of people (of which there are as many as there are people). Each person uses a combination of systems, which varies as their life experiences avry.

2. None of the systems is inherently better or worse than any other (though this is presumably to be read in the context of Graves’ original position, quoted below, that “higher systems” are better for the overall welfare of total man’s existence in this world” -Beck and Cowan, 1996, p294).

3. The value systems describe how a person thinks, not what they think (so that, for example, the content of a Blue values system may be atheistic or Christian or Buddhist etc).

Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall discuss the Graves system in their book Time Line Therapy And The Basis Of Personality. (James and Woodsmall, 1988, p173-177). They say “Major personality shifts often require making major changes in values. It is important to make sure that the model you are using is the same as theirs. Using the Graves System, you can assist your client to make the transition more easily from level to level.”

Two Other Examples Of Values Systems

The Graves system is far from being the only categorisation of values available for us to consider. Every researcher has her or his own theory. For example, James and Woodsmall also discuss the work of Morris Massey, who identifies three major periods in an individual’s life when values formation occurs (the Imprint period, age 0-7, the Modeling period, age 8-13, and the Socialisation period, age 14-21. James and Woodsmall follow this by listing four values categories (based on the world events occuring during those people’s Imprint, Modeling and Socialisation periods), as follows:

Hunter Lewis proposes a categorisation of values based on the mode of creating them (the how) rather than the content (the what). This system is described by Ken Wilber as “A brilliant work… enormously significant” and by  M. Scott Peck as “…groundbreaking… enlightening, thought provoking…” Lewis says (1990, p7, 9) “Although the term values is often used loosely, it should be synonymous with personal beliefs, especially personal beliefs about the “good”, the “just” and the “beautiful”, personal beliefs that propel us to action, to a particular kind of behaviour and life…. What eventually becomes clear is that there are only six ways that we “believe” or “know” anything, and these may be summarised as follows:” (Table adapted from Lewis, 1990, p10-11 and 161-162). This categorisation is strongly suggestive of Carl Jung’s classification of the modes of experiencing and processing information (Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and Intuiting) used in NLP as Metaprograms (Jung, 1971, James and Woodsmall, 1988, p 81-109).As with the Graves model, these are categories of values, not categories of people. Any person uses a combination of methods for developing values.

Notice that there are some similarities between these three systems, and some differences. In all cases (perhaps by definition), the “systems of values” are as much  about sorting systems (metaprograms, to use an NLP term) as about the values themselves. The Hunter Lewis system could be seen to represent an analysis of values correlated with the core Jungian metaprograms, while the other systems represent far more complicated sorts.

In their view of history, all three systems identify a shift away from authority based codes occuring over the last 100-1000 years. Each system proposes a different basis for the changes in values (the evolution of ^VMEMEs, the effects of social influences on upbringing, and the modes of experiencing and “thinking”). Unlike the Graves system, both the other systems focus on the evolution of values in recent history only (say 1500-2000 AD). Unlike the Graves system, both the other systems suggest a shift back to earlier values is occuring in the latter part of the twentieth century.

One marked difference between the Hunter Lewis system and the Graves model, to contrast those two, is that Hunter Lewis is clear that his system is just a map, and not a newly discovered reality. He acknowledges that “this book is necessarily and unavoidably loaded with personal bias.” (Lewis, 1990, p19). Graves, on the other hand, claimed that his values systems “… reflect different activation levels of our dynamic neurological equipment, ie, our brains’ wetware, complex cell assemblages, and billions of potential neuron connections.” (Beck and Cowan, 1996, p51).This difference forms the basis of my first concern, below.

Another  major difference between the Graves system and the other two is that the Graves system claims to describe some form of objective “progress” towards what Graves describes as “the overall welfare of man’s total existence in this world” (Beck and Cowan, 1996, p294). On the contrary, Hunter Lewis suggests that his values systems are purely choices, and that the only purpose of creating a values system is to be able to “distinguish, separate, compare and contrast so that people better understand the choices they face.” (Lewis, 1990, p12). This difference forms the basis of my second and third concerns below.

Concern 1: The Subjectivity Of Values Systems

Hunter Lewis warns of two key fallacies in constructing values systems. As a person constructing a classification of values systems based on processes of creating them, rather than content, Lewis is acutely aware that (to use an NLP term) “The map is not the territory”. The first fallacy is thinking that the map is the territory, and actually believing in one’s own categorisations. (Lewis, 1990, p19):

This dialogue is a variation on the old saying: there are two kinds of people, those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t. In other words, this book is necessarily and unavoidably loaded with personal biases.”

The second fallacy is believing that “research” somehow  enables one to escape the first fallacy. (Lewis, 1990, p 7): “The limitations of polling techniques for determining people’s values can be seen in a famous study by the Stanford Research Institute of 2713 demographically representative Americans, each of whom was led through a gargantuan 800-part questionnaire by a professional staff. The resulting nine “value” categories in which Americans were deemed to fall proved to be suspiciously subjective (“Integrateds: have a kind of inner completeness”) and judgemental (“Emulators: seem in some sense to lead hollow lives”).”

Failure to recognise this subjectivity (the map is not the territory) is my first concern about the wellformed use of the Graves system in NLP. Graves held the belief that his system was referring to a real biological distinction within the human being, and claimed that his values systems “… reflect different activation levels of our dynamic neurological equipment, ie, our brains’ wetware, complex cell assemblages, and billions of potential neuron connections. ‘As man solves the problems of existence at a level,’ Graves contended, ‘new brain systems may be activated and, when activated, change his perceptions so as to cause him to see new problems of existence.’ Instead of beginning only as passive hardware without content (Locke’s tabula rasa or blank slate view), it turns out the normal human brain comes with potential ‘software’-like systems just waiting to be turned on -latent upgrades!” (Beck and Cowan, 1996, p51). The supposed evidence to support this as given by Beck and Cowan is limited to a few quotes suggesting that the brain may contain “layers” or “areas of unused potential”, with no reference to anything like the Graves system being discovered by measurable biological (or social) research.

I consider this claim to be pseudoscientific rationalisation of the Graves’ biases in categorising values. There is no more evidence for the Graves system’s reality than for either of the other two values systems described above, or any of a hundred other such systems. Infact, there is considerably more researched evidence for the reality of Astrology as a predictor of values (see Gauquelin, 1984). I’m not opposed to the use of astrology or the Graves system; only to the claim that it represents some detailed revelation of biological truth. I believe that the wellformed use of this system within NLP needs to respect its subjectivity.

Concern 2: The History Of Values Imperialism

Graves reassures us (Beck and Cowan, 1996, p294) “I am not saying in this conception of adult behaviour that one style of being, one form of human existence is inevitably and in all circumstances superior to or better than another form of human existence, another style of being….  I do suggest, however, and this I deeply believe is so, that for the overall welfare of total man’s existence in this world, over the long run of time, higher levels are better than lower levels and that the prime good of any society’s governing figures should be to promote human movement up the levels of human existence.”

This belief of the Graves system is analogous to the belief in classical Marxism that societies follow a standard dialectical economic development from Primitive Communism through Slave Societies and Feudalism to Capitalism and on to Socialism and Communism (Engels 1972). Marx also maintained that each stage of society gave birth to its own set of values systems (eg Bourgeois, and Proletarian values systems in the era of Capitalism). Marxism is a fascinating and intricate theory. In retrospect, we can see that it glues an incorrect prediction of the future evolution of values onto a useful historical summary of values systems. I consider the Graves system to be doing something similar. Seeing that the description of the history of values systems 1-6 seems convincingly real, it then leads the reader to follow a “yes set” by accepting the existence of future systems 7 and 8 as equally real and even “good” for us.

The idea that certain values systems are “more advanced” is also discussed by anthropologists, where it is known as ethnocentrism (the belief that ones own culture is intrinsically better or more advanced). I’m reminded of Mahatma Gandhi’s comment (from out of “Level 2” India?) when he was asked what he thought of European civilisation. He said he thought it would be a good idea. Gregory Bateson, anthropologist and contributor to the development of NLP, comments “……”

The attitude of the Graves system is remarkably familiar to me as a facilitator of anti-racism workshops in New Zealand. Beck and Cowan warn us that when dealing with lower VMEMEs, “‘democracy’ has almost been deified as the definitive, universal end-state model for decision-making, whether the active ^VMEMEs in a group can handle it or not.” (1996, p278). For comparison, consider this quote from a New Zealand Newspaper in 1865 (Quoted in Angela Ballara’s study of Ethnocentrism, “Proud To Be White?”, 1986, p18) “In the attempt to govern the natives we have made a false start. He was treated as if his mental constitution and moral nature were identical with our own race…. They are very much worse than ourselves, indeed, and have nearly everything to learn; and it is by setting to work, and teaching them, using, if need be, the strong hand in the process, that we shall alone succeed…. Savages do not become Chevalier Bayards all in a day, or in a generation either.” In the year this statement appeared, the colonial government was engaged in a systematic massacre of indigenous Maori villagers, destroying consensus based (“level 2”?) communities in the New Zealand wars.

Concern 3: “All The Good People Are In Our Team”

My third and greatest concern about the use of the Graves system is that it lends itself to an extremely unpleasant form of personal insults and conceits. Beck and  Cowan (1996, p45-47) give James Bond villains and Atilla the Hun as examples of the Red (system 3) values system, while in the Yellow (system 7) values system we have Deepak Chopra, Carl Sagan, W. Edwards Deming and Stephen Hawking. In that context, one NLP trainer describing another as a “Level Three”, as I’ve heard, is pretty much a new way of calling someone a psychopath. An NLP trainer describing themself as a Level Seven is close to calling themselves a scientific genius (which, of course, is fine by me, as long as we understand the subjectivity of such claims).

Curiously, we are then told that the advanced Yellow “Spiral Wizards” believe that (Beck and Cowan, 1996, p279) “If the situation calls for authoritarianism, then it is proper to be an authoritarian; and if the situation calls for democracy, one should be democratic. ‘Good authority’ that sets necessary limits is a lost art in many families and schools, having been confused with punitiveness, regimentation and rigidity. At the same time, ‘democracy’ has almost been deified as the definitive, universal end-state model for decision-making, whether the active ^VMEMEs in a group can handle it or not.”

So the Spiral wizard is able to determine when authoritarianism is “good” because people are too far down the scale to handle anything else. As a parent who raised kids from early childhood using a democratic model of relationships (discussed in my book coauthored with Margot Hamblett, Transforming Communication) the absurdity and arrogance of this claim astonishes me. I call it absurd because I know that the development of mental and values faculties has nothing to do with whether democratic win-win methods work. It is someone unfamiliar with the skills of the win-win method who easily complains that the reason it doesn’t work is that other people are not advanced enough to use it. I consider Beck and Cowan’s claim arrogant because it reveals the final end product of believing that one can “metacomment” on which values are more valuable.

Atilla the Hun would have been proud of this so-called Yellow statement. I am certain that Deepak Chopra and W. Edwards Deming, both champions of enhanced democracy, would not.  The following statement from Chopra summarises my position precisely: (1997, p201) “…dictators… always start out believing that their seizure of power is for the good of the country. The populous then becomes like powerless children living by the benevolent grace of a political father figure. Yet however well disposed to peoples welfare, dictators inevitably live in fear. No-one is more to be feared than a person whose power you have taken away, even if he or she agrees to it. In order to protect this power, the dictator is forced to impose harsher and harsher controls, putting more people in fear of him, until things escalate beyond control, and the people rebel. Many relationships proceed on the same basis. In the name of love one person assumes power and the other gives it away…. Control is no solution to the problem of fear.”

The Graves Model and NLP

When we view the Graves model through NLP eyes, several questions arise. One I have already referred to is how to reconcile the most basic NLP presupposition that the Map is not the Territory with the rather more absolutist claim by Beck and Cowan that their system is more than a map as it describes how “a living intelligence is at work, carried in both our genetic DNA and our ^VMEMEetic ‘DNA’.” (1996, p50)

There are other concerns relating NLP to the Graves system. Note that the use of the word “good” above in Beck and Cowan’s statement about authority is a rather deceptive one. Values themselves are decisions about good and bad, right and wrong. As NLP practitioners, we know that values statements need a performative to be well formed. If I say something is “good”, the question is “according to whom?”. Graves and his students claim to be creating a model for understanding how people make such value judgements. As a comment about that model, they then suggest that some values systems can identify what is “good” for others. Working behind this complex model, Graves seems not to notice that the same question requires answering: “Good according to whom?”. Consider, for example, the lost performative in this critique of Green (level 6) behaviour by Beck and Cowan (p271). “The [level 6] ^VMEME’s egalitarian homogenising offers the false hope that ‘there’s no such thing as a bad boy’  -only misunderstood, misguided youth. There is adamant refusal to accept that there may be brains ‘broken’ beyond repair by current treatments.”

Those who are familiar with the presuppositions of NLP will realise that it is not only the metamodel that is violated by these “Spiral Wizards”. It is also the fundamental presuppositions of NLP.  The last quote above, for example, is a direct reversal of NLP presuppositions such as:

•             the adaptive intent of all behaviour
•             everyone has the necessary resources
•             resistance is a signal of insufficient pacing

What does it mean, then, for NLP Trainer Wyatt Woodsmall to say that “I fully realise that the majority of the NLP community believes in World Six NLP…. My efforts in NLP are directed to developing and exploring a World Seven existential/systemic approach to NLP. Such an approach is more rigorous and more systematic than a World Six approach and deals with greater complexity. At the same time it is more tolerant of diversity and more open to change. This is where I come from and what I am about.” (Woodsmall, 1997, p17) ? Wyatt has clearly been dedicated to the promotion of NLP in the world, and yet it seems to me that here he is proposing a model of NLP with reversed presuppositions and without the ability to use the metamodel on its own content. Using the Graves system as an interesting categorisation of metaprograms/values is one thing. Building a new model of “NLP” around it is another altogether.

NLP And Values: A Suggestion

What is our intention, as NLP Practitioners, as we categorise values? If it is to assist people to change, as James and Woodsmall suggest, and to build rapport, do we need a categorisation of values such as the Graves model at all? I believe that we would be better served by a categorisation such as the Hunter Lewis system, which focuses on the methodology by which values are generated in the mind, rather than hypothesising a biological source such as ^VMEMEs. In fact, this is what we have done in NLP already by identifying values as Towards or Away from in terms of the Direction Filter metaprogram (James and Woodsmall, 1988, p112).

I suggest the use of 6 metaprogram distinctions already available in NLP. In this way, values classification requires no new additions to the system. The first four metaprograms I propose using are the Jungian categories which form “… the obvious means by which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience” (Jung, 1964, p49);.Sensation, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling. With them, Hunter Lewis’ work becomes immediately accessible. Intuition, Feeling (Emotion) and Sensation (Sensory experience) are already recognised as categories in his model.  Thinking directly correlates with his categories of Logic and Science. These four categories all involve an Internal Frame of Reference for choosing values, to use another pre-existing metaprogram distinction (James and Woodsmall, 1988, p118). Lewis’ other category of Authority is the External Frame of Reference.

As you can see, this is only a subjective map, and not reality. It contains no assumptions about the ultimate good of humanity, and is a way of categorising the style of genius, rather than separating out the “geniuses” from the “mentally ill”. Hunter Lewis gives more details of its use in his book “A Question of Values”.

Richard Bolstad is an NLP Trainer teaching in Europe, Japan and New Zealand

Bibliography:

• Ballara, A. Proud To Be White?, Heineman, Auckland, 1986
• Beck, D.E. and Cowan, C.C. Spiral Dynamics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996
• Bolstad, R. and Hamblett, M. Transforming Communication, Addison-Wesley-Longman, Auckland, 1998
• Chopra, D. The Path To Love, Harmony Books, New York, 1997
• Engels, F. The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State, International Publishers, New York, 1972
• Gauquelin, M. Birthtimes: A Scientific Investigation Of The Secrets Of Astrology, Farrar Strauss & Giroux, Paris, 1984
• James, T and Woodsmall, W. Time Line Therapy And The Basis Of Personality, Meta Publications, Cupertino, California, 1988
• Jung, C., Man and his Symbols, Dell Publishing Co. New York, 1964
• Jung, C., Psychological Types, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971
• Lewis, H. A Question Of Values, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1990
• Miller, G., Galanter, E., and Pribram, K., Plans and The Structure Of Behaviour, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1960
• Woodsmall, W. “The Myth Of Positive Intent, Part II” in The NLP Connection, Volume XI, No1, 1997, p12-17

Bolstad’s Grave Errors

• Stephen Creffield

I do hope any and all NLP Professionals who have read Richard Bolstad’s article on Spiral Dynamics are concerned with the ‘how’ of his approach, the imbalance of his critique and, time and time again, the presuppositions, the undercurrents he uses in his evaluation. I certainly am. It is not often I come across such spurious and imbalanced analysis.

It is my intention here to not only to address Richards main concern that Graves work violates the basic presuppositions of NLP, but also to provide some balanced analysis of the application and core themas of Spiral Dynamic understandings of human evolution.

Further to this I would ask the reader to look for the “AND” between NLP and Graves, rather than fall into the vacuous ‘either-or’ debates, and I would also ask Richard to take the stabilisers off his NLP trike and begin to ride NLP to its full potential. Yes, there is here, the potential for a significant, contributing, empowering “AND” between these two pattern-detecting areas of thought. That’s right, if modelling and pattern detection are at the heart of NLP, which I believe it to be, then Graves offers one of the most comprehensive models and patterns of the process of human evolution.

Let us just step back in time to establish the beginnings of Grave’s work because, and directly contrary to Richards article, Graves did not “attempt to categorise’ human values”, Spiral Dynamics is a pattern that “emerged from observation”

When you review the original research you find that Graves set out with an approach and a question “‘If I took some area of human behaviour about which there was confusion, one in which there was a great deal of controversy and one in which the different points of view conflicted with one another, that possibly I could begin to get the kind of information with which I was concerned.”

His question – “what a group of human beings, just like you would say is the psychologically healthy human being in operation?”

His aim was to breakout of the black-white, either-or, right-wrong, conflicts and contradictions of his time and explore the chaos that surrounded him, not only in the diversity of people, but also in the contradictions and conflicts of psychological approaches and theories he was expected to teach.

This starting position, for me, is one of brilliance – instead of hunting around for old constructs, why not take a new road and observe the chaos that lays there before us, take notes, go meta, set up situations and wait for a pattern to emerge – and it did.

For a number of years Graves didn’t even know what his results were telling him or where they were taking him, yet he tolerated the ambiguity and fully explored human differences. If you are interested in modelling go to this research, it is a fabulous place to go, it not only provides an NLPer with an insight to a rich, complex, curious and powerful thinking process, it also offers a methodology for organising chaos. You will also discover that Spiral Dynamics is a pattern that emerged from observation. It was not and does not set out to classify and categorise people. Further more if it is used in this way you undermine the concept, its presuppositions and limit yourself in the process.

“Say not it is the truth but so it seems to me as I now see the things I think I think I see.” – James Payne – Mississippi University

The purpose of the theory is to expand our minds, our maps. Using Spiral Dynamics provides us with new choices and options that we may not ordinarily think about – Spiral Dynamics is far from common sense, it takes the practitioner meta and takes them to a place where the world of “either-or” collapses and the dynamic, process orientated, connected world of “And” emerges.

With AND logic you can only request that Richard Bolstad significantly review his understanding of the presupposition of “The map is not the territory.” His perception that Graves violates this core NLP presupposition is fundamentally flawed, not only from the perspective of Spiral Dynamics but also from the original formulations of Korzybski. When you fully explore and accept the neuro-linguistic understanding that Korzybski developed, that is in the hyphenation of “mind-body,” “thought-feelings”, “neuro-linguistics” to illustrate the relationship and dynamic interplay of a whole system, you can also uncover “map-territory.”

The territory informs our maps, there is a dynamic interplay between our environment, our experience and the maps we form. It is time to breakout of the nature, nurture, neurological construct reductionism and see the whole. This is what Spiral Dynamics endeavours to do – it explores the relationship and the systemic nature of our neurology (map) and dynamic interplay of our Life Conditions (territory).

In Michael Halls recent book “Figuring Out People” he asks some powerful and useful NLP questions that Spiral Dynamics directly attempts to answer:

• How does context affect “thinking”
• What contexts tend to initiate what kinds of thinking?
• How do contexts of contexts affect thinking?

To answer these questions what is required is a longitudinal study of peoples experience and their formulated constructs of the world in which they live – this was and is Grave’s research. We at The Human Software Company have run a number workshops in the UK where participants are asked to plot their life history, marking out significant shifts in thinking, values and perception. Time after time we see the Spiral Dynamic pattern emerging without exception. And what causes these shifts in thinking and perception, values and beliefs? Our observations suggest an intemal-extemal (map-territory) change process occurs and further more this change process fits with the Spiral Dynamic pattern- for example, from expressive to sacrificial.

A simple and common illustration of this change is where one becomes a parent. The child is not a mental construct, it is very real, yet its introduction into the context of our lives frequently results in a shift of our perceptions, values and beliefs. The context (life conditions) of the new parent becomes more complex and more complex thinking is required

to deal with these new life-conditions, human beings attempt to adapt, and through this adaptive process their neurology shifts, even their chemical composition shifts, their values can shift – people evolve – it happens, observe people, it is the map-territory dynamic process!

Wyatt Woodsmall and Tad James propose that Spiral Dynamics is “one of the most powerful models for understanding human behaviour… in NLP the metamodel deals with the deep structure of the grammar that people use and the process of how someone is constructing a map… Spiral Dynamics addresses the deep structure of the emotional domain – the process of valuing and prioritising…it denominalises the process of valuing.” And in denominalising it presents a pattern of map-territory evolution, a pathway, a trajectory that is open, and perhaps never ending. Human beings are open systems.

“Damn it all, a person has the right to be who he is” -Clare Graves

Richard also proposes that we can not and should not make distinctions between people on the basis of the complexity of their thinking or attempt to determine appropriate interventions/solutions because this “lends itself to an extremely unpleasant form of personal insult and conceit…” (P32) He goes on to say “1 am astonished by the absurdity and arrogance of this claim.” I ask you, can we not accept that John Grinders thinking, for example, is more complex that some of ours? I can! That is not to say he is more intelligent, it simply states that his thinking is more complex. What does this complexity provide him with, more choice, more adaptability, and more flexibility? YES!

What about our NLP workshops, do we not seek to activate the latent upgrades (everyone has the necessary resources), develop more complex thinking, to create balance in the map-territory dynamic. The presupposition is – that out there, there are people with less complex thinking and in many cases that is quite appropriate, and should be left alone, AND in others it creates pain/dissonance where people want change.

Consider this, if our map is less complex than the environment in which we are operating will we not feel a dissonance? And if our map is more complex than our environment will we not feel boredom? Simple I know, but used to identify what Graves and NLP proposes – the solutions to our problems, individual/organisational/societal/global will not be solved unless more complex thinking is brought to bare – as Don Beck and Chris Cowan would say “New Times Require New Thinking.” And yet to develop complex thinking just because it is perceived that complex thinking is inherently “good” can be equally destructive – I have seen many NLP Graduates go back into the world and leave jobs, family, parmers in absolute turmoil because their complexity has evolved beyond the complexity of those people around them. What has happened? Do these individuals actually make the shift, for example, from sacrificial to expressive, or from expressive to sacrificial in the NLP training environment? And do they have an understanding of the wider system and of the consequences of this shift? With Spiral Dynamics you can predict these changes and introduce a very significant addition to the ecology of NLP.

You will already know this too, that the flexibility, the style, form and ethical approach requires discrimination – in fact flexibility is discrimination. If I was to work in the same stylistic form, manner and methodology with the drug addicts as I do with the executives, well frankly, I am not sure if I would be around to write this article – “if the solution calls for authoritarianism, then its proper to be authoritarian” – I work by this and goodness survive by it too. For me it is about intention, if our goal is to activate latent upgrades to more complex thinking where people solve their own problems then discrimination in terms of approach, methodology and style is required. I consider this to be one of the significant characteristics in the work of Milton Erickson (if anyone knows the story of the bed-wetters then they will understand the power and role of authoritarianism in change work).

For me, Richard makes so many fundamental errors and offers up thinking that is bordering on, dare I say, Closed Green in understanding flexibility (discrimination) – he even goes as far as referencing Dictators, Racialism, Colonialism. I have to say Richard “get real,” use your NLP skills and chunk-up – what is the intention? It is like saying much of NLP is about Brainwashing – chunk up, explore the intention – after all Spiral Dynamics has a very positive intention.

One mind-read would be that Richard is really anxious about the application of Spiral Dynamics, just as many are concerned about the ethics and application of NLP, yet he seems to attack the pattern and not its application. All the applications he presents in his article are of his hallucination and what-ifing. Where-as if he went to the source and asked ‘how has this been used and what are the results’ – he may well surprise himself.

For me Spiral Dynamics provides NLPers with a further refinement to their discriminatory/flexibility potentials and my guess is that many people will be working with, and perhaps attracting (through their own neurological selective processes) people that cluster around a point on the spiral. Why not take a look at what Spiral Dynamics offers you in making the transitions. It certainly offered up solutions, insights and approaches that were way outside my consciousness even after 1000s of hours exposure to NLP books and training’s – yet without NLP I could not have fully appreciated the complexity and the potential of Spiral Dynamics approaches.

I can only recommend that NLPers explore the potential of Spiral Dynamics – it is nothing like Marx, Lewis, Massey – it certainly contains them all, yet is far more complex and appropriate now. I believe there is a real opportunity here to be grasped by combining the ‘how-to’ tools, approaches and technologies of NLP AND Spiral Dynamic filters, it offers the potential to develop new ways to…

• Anticipate and diffuse conflict situations
• Manage complexity and human differences in business
• Further enhance an ecological approach in the teaching of NLP
• Further develop our requisite-variety across many contexts
• Identify appropriate and workable solutions to individual, group, organisational, societal

and perhaps world problems

Stephen Creffield is a Director – Consultant & Trainer With The Human Software Company, A company in the business of “facilitating evolution” You Contact him on Leeds 0113 239 2392 Or e-mail h.software@virgin.net

Deadly Serious

-Richard Bolstad, NLP Trainer-

Stephen Creffield has written the above article in response to my essay “Grave Errors in Values”, published in NLP World magazine earlier this year. My original essay discussed a model for categorising human values responses, developed by Clare W. Graves, and now called “Spiral Dynamics”. I suggested that this Spiral Dynamics model could be and is used in ways that conflict with the core presuppositions of NLP, and in ways that endanger respect for human beings.

Stephen Creffield’s article was not the only response. To provide a contrast, David Gordon (one of the original NLP developers, and author of books such as “Therapeutic Metaphors”) wrote describing my essay as “one of the best articles I have ever read coming from the NLP community”. He continued “Naturally, part of my response has to do with the fact that I agree with everything you have to say. But beyond that, it is cogently written, well argued and succinct. And important. I think the issues you raise go right to the epistemological question of, “What IS NLP?””

Epistemology, by the way, is the study of how we know what we know. NLP has proposed a radical viewpoint about this. It says that the Map we make inside is not the Territory. Patterns and maps do not accurately represent the real world. This truth cannot be side-stepped by saying that a particular map “emerged from observation”, as Stephen Creffield claims the Graves model did. To say that a pattern “emerged from observation” in NLP terms is still only to say that it emerged inside a particular person’ s neurology. This has nothing to do with how “real” it is. People can and do take sample life histories and use them to prove the Freudian theory of infantile sexuality, the Behaviourist theory of stimulus response, and any number of other patterns which (to the examiner) seem to naturally emerge from the material. That is a tribute to the Map-making power of the human neurology.

Based on the patterns which Graves has discerned, the Spiral Dynamics people are willing to make certain distinctions about how they react to others. I guess everyone does make distinctions about how they behave in relation to specific other people. I have no problem, to use the example Stephen mentions, being impressed with the sophistication of John Grinder’s thought (at least sometimes). What I have a problem with is Spiral Dynamics “wizards” making decisions about whether John Grinder or I or whole groups of people “can handle democracy” or whether we need “authoritarianism”. The usefulness of democracy is not dependent on people being equal in the sense of being able to think at the same level of complexity. It has to do with what human results treating people equally can deliver us. These are totally different issues. Proving that people are not “equal” in nature has nothing to do with proving that they should lose their right to free speech or a voice in decision-making.

In talking about useful authority, Stephen has confused three meanings of the word “authority”:

1. Authority meaning expertise (in which sense John Grinder is an authority),

2. Authority meaning designated role (in which sense a therapist such as Milton Erickson, or a teacher is an authority. They may tell someone to do a certain behaviour, just as a pilot tells a co-pilot when to switch on the landing lights)

3. Authority meaning coercive power (in which sense Hitler had lots of it).

I’m sure both the developers of SD and the developers of NLP have excellent positive higher intentions. Far from leading me to “trust” their models/patterns, this encourages me to ask if their models meet those intentions. In the case of NLP Practitioners who would like to use SD, I’m simply encouraging that same caution.

Footnote From 2014

In the last decades Beck and Cowan argue amongst themselves about who is the true spiral wizard. They parted company in 1999. Cowan describes Beck’s neo-Buddhist “Integral” beliefs as “fifth or sixth level” and you need to be functioning at seventh level to be a spiral wizard (Volckmann, 2002). It becomes clear that the real question has simply been taken a step backwards: Who will choose the wizards? Cowan warns about Ken Wilbur’s colonisation of the model, saying “When Wilber first encountered the Spiral Dynamics book a few years ago, he seemed enamored of what he grasped of it and wrote extensively about the fragments, applying chunks of the theory with lifting chunks with varying degrees of success and accuracy. But like many things absorbed into the Wilberian world, the Spiral model became folded into his vision and some bizarre things were attributed to it, things never part of the original work or its intentions. He seems never to have quite grasped the ideas behind the theory, and his tone changed toward dismissive while promoting his own renditions of the Spiral and redefined tiers through his consciousness conglomerate called the Integral Institute.” (Cowan, 2006). Beck now agrees that Wilbur has harmed the model, and he broke with Wilbur in the years following 2002 (Wilson, 2008).

Isabel Clarke cautions “I am aware of the debate around the hierarchy issue, and that, for instance, Wilber argues in Integral Psychology (Wilber 2000), with reference to Beck and Cowan’s (1996) spiral dynamics theory, that his is a nested actualisation hierarchy, and not a dominator hierarchy. I regard that argument as specious, as any hierarchy, however twisted about, has a top and a bottom! Since the validity of absolute hierarchy in this context is questionable, the damage that it does is all the more regrettable. Hierarchical classifications marginalise, exclude and “subjugate”.” (Clarke, I. 2003). Clarke’s concern is that while spiral dynamics seeks to explain our social problems by explaining which level people are functioning at, it actually merely gives us new terminology to accuse and control others with.

Beck puzzled many by explaining his support for American President George W. Bush in the invasion of Iraq, explaining that “Bush is a good leader” who “has been chosen by the spiral” (Bauwen, 2006). Michel Bauwen suggests that the SD descriptions of the Spiral Wizard have come to resemble Nietzsche‘s idea of the Übermensch, which so inspired the Nazis. As Graham Wilson gently points out “Some critics dispute the universality of deeper linear or emergent transitions as proposed in Spiral Dynamics, due to the high degree of variation they see among the surface expressions of human cultures over time. The claim that humans have changed systemically on psycho-social dimensions, such as self concept or the human propensity and reasons for self sacrifice, over the time period proposed in Spiral Dynamics, is not currently supported by mainstream anthropology, the social sciences, or evolutionary biology.” (Wilson, 2008)

In a later article on NLP and Social Theory, I discuss the fact that most social theory has moved far beyond grand historical narratives like the Graves model, a model that amounts to “what postmodernists call “Evolutionism” — the idea that there is a grand plan or “metanarrative” behind history (Johnson, pp 126, 187-196)”. 

Bibliography:

• Bauwens, M.  “The cult of Ken Wilber” 2006 http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/Cult_of_Ken_Wilber.html
• Bauwens, M. “A Critique of Wilber and Beck’s SD-Integral”, P/I: Pluralities/Integration, no. 61: March 23, 2005
• Beck, D.E. and Cowan, C.C. Spiral Dynamics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996
• Clarke, I. “Reply to Letter from John Rowan” p 69-71 in The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Volume 3, Number 1, 2003
• Cowan C. and Todorovic, N. “The Never Ending Quest”, 2005
• Cowan, C.C. “FAQ Integral and integrative” 2006 http://spiraldynamics.org/faq_integral/
• Johnson, M. (2020) Archaeological Theory: An Introduction Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell
• Volckmann, R. “An Interview with Chris Cowan” March 21, 2002 www.leadcoach.com
• Wilson, G. ” When dynamics spiral out of control” http://www.the-confidant.info/2008/when-dynamics-spiral-out-of-control/