Humergence®

South Africa - second gamma revolution

Well today is June 12, and I woke up to head line news; a young girl seeing visions of “the virgin mother Mary”, people have flocked to be blessed by her. Psychiatrists want to admit her to hospital, claiming she is on the verge of becoming psychotic. Strangely, if she were a young black woman having these experiences, there would be celebrations, she would be nurtured by the elders and taken to an initiation to begin her journey as a Sangoma, a great position in the tribe. Today, there are also one million people striking, the army protecting schools and hospitals, 2 sub stations that have blown up due to negligence of routine maintenance which have resulted in 14 suburbs and 100 000 people being without electricity - again.

The entire sub station burnt down and it will have to be rebuilt, so these people will be without electricity for at least a week and all businesses will be closed and millions of rands will be lost. It’s winter at the moment; at night the temperature drops to freezing or below. And a student that I taught at varsity, the father of two small boys, was shot dead by suspected robbers.

One cannot say that living in Africa does not offer an intense range of emotions.

As the sun starts dropping behind the day and we get ready to meet the 0 degree evening, we will wake up to a complete union strike tomorrow morning, all unions are on strike in solidarity with the public sector union: this means all service providers including taxis, buses, trains - everything and everyone. It should be a very quiet morning tomorrow.

The strike has had many incidences of violence; private schools and hospitals have been intimidated. Teachers and nurses have been assaulted by striking workers, and parents have been shot at by wild frustrated strikers. These events have necessitated the army's protection, and they have come out to protect the strikers. If you changed the dates on the news paper headlines, it could be a scene from our apartheid days. Armed soldiers with A4 machine guns protecting schools and hospitals. It is surreal.

Last Sunday the paper had an editorial by Max du Pressis, who is an ANC Afrikaaner, which is very unusual. He was detained in the old days for being a strong ANC supporter. Max was called a traitor to the Afrikaans culture because he supported and became a card carrying ANC member during the apartheid regime when the ANC was banned and declared a terrorist organization. Most liberal, white South Africans tended to be English speaking supporters of the Democratic Party, whereas the white Africaans people tended to be supporters of the National Party.

Du Pressis's article focused on his disappointment in coming to the realization that the ANC are just like the Apartheid leaders of yesteryear. It was a heartbreaking article, because it conveyed his sadness and disappointment. He described how he had fought for what he thought was freedom, only to have a country where the people became slaves to leaders of a different colour who behave exactly the same way as the old regime. It seems both the ANC and the National Party (the Broderbund)  operate from a DQ/ER existence. The wealth and jobs are only shared amongst the inner circle who are determined by their position in the organization which is ordained by the authority within each structure. The normal, poor people of

South Africa

will never have the opportunity to rise out of the squalor and become middle class as long as all the wealth goes to a very select few. This select few are in bed with big business, the very people who became wealthy due to the opportunities created by apartheid. Private schools are saturated with government members' children as they would not send them to government schools which are places of violence producing illiterate, under-achieving students. Why? This is mainly due to the curriculum changes and the retrenchment policies of the ANC itself.

Du Pressis referred to the security systems strike last year which was extremely violent; sixty-four people were murdered for going to work instead of striking. He said: In the 1976 Sharpeville shooting, 64 people were killed and it started a revolution, last year 64 people were killed and not one person has been arrested for their murders.

Speaking of Sharpeville, today is June the 16th; 31 years ago 64 teenagers were shot dead by a small group of scared, frantic, apartheid police officers. People ran through the streets, tires burned as black smoke mushroomed into the air. The front pages of newspapers led with pictures of a country in turmoil. Today, 31 years later, our newspapers lead with an editorial: Why has this has been a winter of discontent, people marching through the streets, burning and damaging cars and property. Has much changed? Is this freedom? What has freedom brought to the people of this country? A sad thought is the comment that many have made, a black person today would rather live under the violence of apartheid than under the rule of the ANC. Why? Because they have less now than they had under the apartheid regime. People have the power of the vote, but what is it worth without economic power and with a deterioration in one's standard of life? A transfer of power from one party to another, who on the surface looked so different, one white Afrikaans, one black Xhosa, but in

Graves

terms, they are exactly the same brains in the way they think, perceive the world, and in their behaviour. The ANC are reaping the spoils of the economy while the bottom is quickly falling out because you need a solid foundation of DQ to maintain social stability and to build a platform for ER to grow.

Some people believe this strike is the real revolution. It is the first time that people are rising up and speaking out against their own government. This strike should never have reached the place it is at now. The people who provide essential services asked for 12% increase in their salaries.  They make R6 000 per month, that is about $750 per month, and a teacher can earn R78 000 a year. Meanwhile, parliament members just proposed they give themselves up to a 57% increase to their R1,1 million a year salaries while proposing the workers receive a 6% increase. ESKOM can't even keep the lights on and the CEO earns half a million rand a month despite his poor performance.  Meanwhile, this country has collected more taxes than ever before;  most departments do not even spend there budget in a financial year. This is what it means to be living in a society approaching Gamma.

 

Ahhh..to be born an African….  

Dropping Knowledge: A Global Q&A

An ambitious project, dubbed "Dropping Knowledge" takes place on Sep 09, 2006. Quote:

"On September 9, 2006, 112 of the world's most compelling thinkers,  artists, writers, scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers and  humanitarians from around the world will come together in Berlin,  Germany, as guests of dropping knowledge.

Seated around the worlds largest table in historic Bebelplatz square,  these inspiring individuals, renowned for their lasting creative or  social contribution, will engage with 100 questions out of the  thousands donated to dropping knowledge by the international public.

Using dropping knowledge's question-rating system, the public  identified 500 questions as those most likely to initate open dialog  on a social topic of most relevance to them. This group of questions  will yield the final 100 Questions — representing a truly global  sampling of cultures, themes and ideas — to be asked at the Table of  Free Voices and beyond."

You can submit questions to them, and look at and rate current questions here.

Video of each participant answering the questions will be shown on the site after the event on Sep 09. The goal of the experiment/project is to ignite global discussion about social issues.

Us and Them

Paul Hartzog posted the following quote to Smart Mobs (originally posted at PSOM blog by Dan Jones):

New research published in Nature shows how biases towards members of our social group, and against those outside it, shape how generous we are to people and how we punish others for transgressing social norms.

Humans are socially sticky: we bond into cohesive groups that commonly share a common identity and, often, similar values. This applies to social circles and local communities as much as to nationality and global religious and political affiliation. Such unity can encourage people within the group to pull together, to help one another when in need – in short, to get along.

But there’s a downside to human ‘groupishness’: a mental division between members of the ingroup, to whom social and even moral obligations apply, and various outgroups, to whom they do not. People who live in different groups — geographical, social or ethnic — often treat outgroup members as ‘others’ (something viewers of Lost will be familiar with), frequently arousing enmity and stoking conflict. Note how groups really come into their own and pull together when pitted against other groups in the human speciality of war.

Students of the work of Clare W. Graves know that this can be further examined by looking at "why" any given group draws these divisions between themselves and the "others".

Dan Jones goes on to write:

One of the most crucial findings of this research is the extent to which people will incur a cost to punish non-cooperators, and how powerful a force this is in eliciting cooperation from those tempted to defect. Studies with economic games across the world have revealed that the degree to which people will take a monetary hit to punish the unequal division of a sum of money (provided by the experimenter) increases as the split becomes more unequal.

But this isn’t the whole story. Behind the general trend lurks much variation. Perhaps the most important way in which punishing behaviour varies is in the threshold of selfishness that elicits punishment from others. Players living in certain societies won’t punish until the outcomes of dividing money in economic games is grossly unequal, whereas other are much quicker to lay down the law. Some societies even have norms that lead to the punishment of unequal but hyper-fair splits of the money stash (so that the person controlling how much is given to another a player gives away more than 50%), which is something of a puzzle.

I would say that this puzzle might be solved by looking at Graves's "Levels of Existence Theory".  Graves created a framework for understanding why some societies might be motivated to punish non-cooperation in different ways. Dan continues:

The new study addresses a different question, one about altruism, altruistic punishment and groupishness. Do we respond to transgressions of social norms by our ingroup differently than violation of those same norms by members of an outgroup? Are we more forgiving of the former and harsher on the latter by virtue of their group allegiance? The answer looks like a qualified ‘yes’.

Students of Graves's theories and Spiraldynamics will probably recognize the thinking observed by the study. The polarization can be found in different forms throughout the first six levels of thinking. But, in general, we can see that the research discussed above tends to display that fourth level thinking is still widespread in group interaction. Is it possible that when people with many different levels of thinking form or participate in a group, that they might collectively under some conditions tend to default to the level that allows everyone to work together? 

Featured Post: What produces the “guru-addicted personality"?

The following is an interview between Chris Cowan and Natasha Todorvic, and Geoffrey Falk. Geoffrey is the author of a book called Stripping the Gurus, which Susan Blackmore described as a "...gripping and disturbing book [that] should be read by anyone who finds themself revering a spiritual teacher."

Globalization and Cultural Shifting

The Mathematical Structure of Terrorism from PhysOrg.com  makes reference to a paper titled Universal patterns underlying ongoing wars and terrorism. From the paper's abstract:

"We report a remarkable universality in the patterns of violence arising in three high-profile ongoing wars, and in global terrorism. Our results suggest that these quite different conflict arenas currently feature a common type of enemy, i.e. the various insurgent forces are beginning to operate in a similar way regardless of their underlying ideologies, motivations and the terrain in which they operate. We provide a microscopic theory to explain our main observations. This theory treats the insurgent force as a generic, self-organizing system which is dynamically evolving through the continual coalescence and fragmentation of its constituent groups."

 

Collective Action vs. Collectivism

The P2P Foundation Blog has an excellent blog posting by Michel Bauwens on Jaron Lanier's new essay for Edge. 

The basic ideas of Lanier's essay are (quoted from CommunityWiki):

• There is a resurgance of the idea that the collective is all-wise, and that this is bad.

• There is an attempt to erase the individual, and this is dumb.
• AI is dumb. The Internet is dumb. Only people are smart.
  

The P2P foundation blog posting by bauwens borrows from his own P2P Manifesto, which looks at human collective action through the lens of Clare W Graves's theory of human nature. Clare W. Graves's theory shows that the fundamental nature of communist "collectivism" is different from the collective action of people voluntarily cooperating, as discussed by author Howard Rheingold here.

I also talk about this in the discussion section of this CommunityWiki page. I talk about how we are lacking a general "literacy of human nature", and how I believe that this lack of understanding is what is driving people to place labels where they do not belong. The reasons "why" people voluntarily collaborate are different than the reasons "why" people go along with state-imposed "collectivism" rules.

Immigration, American Style

North of San Diego along the I-5 freeway are large yellow signs with the outline of a string of three people running: a woman holding the hands of two small children. These warn drivers that migrants might suddenly dash in front of vehicles in an attempt to evade authorities. A few miles out of town, traffic slows as vehicles heading north fan out among what look like toll booths. There are no tolls, but those with brown faces or who look suspicious are checked carefully. Drivers with white faces are sometimes asked if anyone else is in the vehicle; more often they are simply waved through. This is another reminder of Life Conditions faced by Mexican immigrants struggling to find a foothold in California and the US, and of the crisis facing the USA.

Study: Groups outperform the best individuals at problem solving

[via Cooperation Commons Thanks Madtom]

A study by Patrick R. Laughlin, Erin C. Hatch, Jonathan S. Silver, and Lee Boh of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, published in the APA Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that group problem solving is more effective than problem solving by even the best individual expert.

[via Cooperation Commons Thanks Madtom]

A study by Patrick R. Laughlin, Erin C. Hatch, Jonathan S. Silver, and Lee Boh of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, published in the APA Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that group problem solving is more effective than problem solving by even the best individual expert.

P2P (Peer to Peer) and E-C Theory

[via Social Synergy Weblog]

The P2P Foundation blog has posted a little quote from both myself and Spiraldynamics author Chris Cowan. This was partially from a discussion about the Cooperation Commons project, and how the theories of Clare W. Graves might give another lens onto the concepts of peer to peer dynamics and cooperation.

Chris' response is very interesting. Here's a small quote:

The presupposition of many P2P discussions at your level seems to be collaborative, open minds with a shared goal of building better systems capable of adaptation and knowledge gain with individual ambitions attenuated while individual rights increase. The pitfall is that open systems nearly guarantee a mix of minds with multiple agendas - a hard fact often unacknowledged. Some motives are overt while others are cloaked. Thus, the motive field is a complicated one, and it is part of the whole when the system is open to all and the distribution of systemsis ‘normal.’ Motive recognition and management is a challenge in the P2P arena quite as much as the knowledge spread.

Our own small adventures with the Wiki world have demonstrated for us how the psychology and motivations of contributors can sway ‘truth’ and their approach to its promotion. If there is a culture of open inquiry and sharing, things have a chance to work. If there are fanatics with agendas - either ideological or financial - or fixated minds stuck on particular ideas, then the outcomes turn into products of endurance, competitiveness, and alliance-building. If you’ve got a couple of folks who believe themselves without peer, it’s a problem. And for those who find such things unpleasant or not worth the effort, truth inevitably suffers. It doesn’t take but a couple of rotten apples to spoil an egalitarian barrel. There has to be a mechanism for rotating the fruits and monitoring process, as well as content.

Read the rest at P2P Foundation Blog

The Cooperation Commons project is at least partially about creating an open literacy of cooperation. This is a sorely needed resource in our world right now. Chris Cowan's statements above reflect the value of also having literacy of epistemology/human psychology/human nature, in my opinion.

Social vs Environmental Tipping Points

[via Social Synergy Weblog]
Over at TerraBlog, there is a story about a race between two "Tipping points" in regards to the issue of global warming:

On the one hand we have the argument that awareness of the issue will soon reach a critical mass that pushes us past the current political stalemate. On the other hand, we have handwringing over a coming environmental catastrophe from which there will be no return.

So, one of these two "tipping points" will come first. Either it will be that lots of people will start to realize that there is a real problem with the global climate and do something about it, or it will be that lots of people cause the environment to reach a tipping point due to our human activity actions causing global climate reactions.

[via Social Synergy Weblog]
Over at TerraBlog, there is a story about a race between two "Tipping points" in regards to the issue of global warming:

On the one hand we have the argument that awareness of the issue will soon reach a critical mass that pushes us past the current political stalemate. On the other hand, we have handwringing over a coming environmental catastrophe from which there will be no return.

So, one of these two "tipping points" will come first. Either it will be that lots of people will start to realize that there is a real problem with the global climate and do something about it, or it will be that lots of people cause the environment to reach a tipping point due to our human activity actions causing global climate reactions.

Did Cooperation Give Early Humans A Competitive Edge?

                [via Cooperation Commons and  New Scientist] Augustin Fuentes at the University of Notre Dame hypothesizes that Paranthropus went extinct because early Homo(human ancestor) species were more adept at cooperating:

...Paranthropus suffered from increased predation because Homo, and other early humans even more closely related to modern humans, learned to use cooperation to avoid being eaten. He says all would have feared the same predators, such as big cats. To test the hypothesis, Fuentes's team designed a computer program based on classic ecology models to simulate how teamwork could have tipped the scales in favour of Homo. They found that just a moderate amount of teamwork gave Homo a dramatic advantage over its close competitors, causing the extinction of Paranthropus. The computer simulations add to real world evidence of co-operation in early humans. For example, the common use of stone tools by early humans suggests they shared information on the location of suitable stone. These sites are sometimes 30 kilometres away from where the tools are found and would not have been easy for individuals to find on their own. "This implies some sort of information transfer that's not language yet, but is much more extensive than that available to other organisms," Fuentes says.

Indeed, it seems that this primitive form of cooperation is now a central part of human existence world wide. Simple, narrow objective Human cooperation of the type Fuentes describes has been so successful, that it is now driving a huge portion of other species to extinction. It is cooperation based around physiological satisfaction. Cooperating to meet the very basic survival needs of existence.

DRAWING LINES ON PAPER AND SAND: ANATOMY OF A CARTOON CLASH

Lines get drawn in many ways. Some are pen strokes sketched by artists; others are concrete forms laid out by architects. Many are abstract - dearly held values and unwritten social norms sketched indelibly in our minds, not with our hands. These days, cartoon drawings are crossing a lot of lines and pointing to divisions between worldviews in conflict.

A recent case of this in the U.S. involved actor and Scientology spokesman Tom Cruise who reportedly threw his star power around to persuade Viacom/Comedy Central to suspend rerunning an episode of the animated South Park satire that skewered the beliefs of Scientology. Fellow Scientologist Isaac Hayes left his voice-over role on the show in protest, as well. The event entertained many Americans, enraged loyal South Park fans, and got lots of attention for both the Scientologists and the show. The affair discredited Cruise in the eyes of some fans who see the church based on sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics as a self-important mega-cult, while fellow Scientologists viewed his stand as a heroic defense of their religion. This fusion of animated characters with matters of faith made perfectly good sense on Hollywood terms.

In contrast, many people scratched their heads in utter confusion and dismay when the publication of a set of pen-and-ink newspaper cartoons in Denmark caused outrage because quite a few Muslims believed they had crossed the line. For many non-Muslim observers, the intensity of the reaction made no sense at all. Subsequent reproductions of these inflammatory drawings fanned anger since they were taken as extreme insults and deliberate, in-your-face defamation. Protests and riots ensued as Islamic true believers took to the streets in righteous anger to demand respect for their beliefs. They were countered by calls for freedom of expression and an equally self-righteous refusal to buckle under to threats and intimidation.

What does ‘emergent’ mean in context of Graves/SD?

(This article was originally posted to the Spiraldynamics FAQ)

This question has caused lots of head scratching among  scholars of chaos and complexity theories, as well as Gravesians  and serious students of Spiral Dynamics (SD). The lack of a clear  answer leads to protracted discussions and considerable  frustration. In the SD world, that's especially true for the analytical sorts who want - even demand – a single 'true  meaning' and would like to impose one on Dr. Graves post mortem.

Rather than that, we will look at how he employed the word  and its relatives. While that will not satisfy those searching for  a definitive answer, a brief discussion with some examples drawn  from his writings might better clarify the usages of the  term in a Gravesian context – at least some operational definitions for those prepared to accept a bit of semantic  relativism.

Welcome!

Welcome to Humergence, our blog about the ongoing process of human development and emergence. We (Christopher Cowan and Natasha Todorovic) have been working with, teaching, and writing about the Gravesian approach to changing human systems since 1978 and 1991 respectively. Ten years of it has been under the Spiral Dynamics brand. Now we move forward with Humergence, which builds on the foundational work of Dr. Clare W. Graves plus the popular Spiral Dynamics approach and other exciting theories of human development. Along with our colleagues and friends, we will share insights on the process of human emergence and change. The newly available Graves text, The Never Ending Quest, and the increasing curiosity about developmental models like the Levels of Existence Theory, opens a door to share our thoughts and observations. 

The Quiet Kingmaker

Download SisuluDialogue.mp3

In the minds of most people, Nelson Mandela is the name synonymous with the end of apartheid and beginning of South Africa's transition over the last decades. Yet societal change of this magnitude cannot be the feat of a single hero riding in like a knight in shining armor to save the day. There were many others whose dedication, sacrifice, and yeoman service pre-Mandela made all of it possible. In the foreword to this book, Mr. Mandela writes that if one life story were to be told about South Africa's liberation, "…that story would have to be Walter Sisulu's."

      Elinor Sisulu has told that story.

Why We Fight

Why We Fight, a documentary film by Eugene Jarecki

Sharing its title, Why We Fight, with Frank Capra's series of seven propaganda films made between 1942 and 1945 to shape American opinion, Eugene Jarecki's new documentary looks at American militancy over the fifty years since, culminating with Bush's occupation of Iraq. While the film doesn't offer any shocking revelations or analysis for those who have been following American foreign policy and especially the Iraq invasion and its rationales from anywhere besides atop the Bush/Blair bandwagon, it does consolidate a lot of information to which the 'mainstream' population is either oblivious or in deep denial. Thanks to Fox News (a.k.a. the Ministry of Propaganda) and other embedded corporate media outlets who have covered truth with spin so very effectively, the ideas brought to screen by this film will be shocking and awful to far more Americans than ought be, though the majority will likely not notice anything amiss. That's what's genuinely frightening about Why We Fight - there is too much room to question how many citizens will be open and aware enough to grasp it, or even to care.

Book Review: The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. This book discusses the theory that  a larger group of diverse people can make better decisions, and display more intelligence than any smaller collection of experts. Surowiecki's central concept is that the insights of a diverse group of individuals working independently can be aggregated together. He contrasts this with the group dynamics/social psychology studies done by Stanley Milgram in previous decades, which looked at how large groups of people can be influenced by the actions of a few, causing information cascades, and "Tipping Point" effects. Suroweicki's concept avoids the "tipping point", and information cascade effects by employing a diverse group of individuals who work largely independently of one another.

Graves and Maslow: Levels of Existence and Hierarchy of Needs Compared

(originally published in this newsletter)

We are often asked about the relationship between Clare W. Graves's Levels of Existence theory and Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs framework . Well, there are some similarities, but there are more differences.

Maslow's theorizing is often reduced to the familiar pyramid with physiological needs at the base, then safety, belonging and love, esteem from others then self, and self-actualization, sometimes with 'to know' and 'to understand' or transcendence at the tip, sometimes stopping with self-actualization. Yet calling that Maslow's theory is like saying a spiral with eight colors is Graves. Both SD and the pyramid are simplified models derived from theory. Just as the eight levels described by Graves as his nodal states (color coded in SD) represent only artifacts, the needs hierarchy is only a small chunk of Maslow's overall philosophy.

There are definite similarities because Graves began his research trying to rationalize Maslow's findings. They were contemporaries in psychology. At the surface, the needs in Maslow appear to relate with Gravesian levels; but they appear in different forms and in an order Graves eventually could not accept, based on his own data.