What is Spiral Dynamics? Here’s An Executive Summary But I promise you: choose to delve into the background first, and you’ll be rewarded with a rich, nuanced understanding of this powerful theory and avoid all the common traps. Do skip ahead if you’re dying to read about them.
We’ll get to the stages later in the article. It is the weaving together of people and environments that leads to the variety of stages that are out there – not merely one or the other. To quote the Spiral Dynamics theory itself, “Life Conditions awaken vMEMEs which may emerge, surge, regress or fade in response.” So this theory is an attempt at a holistic perspective on the human being where the individual and their environment dance and flow together. Later value systems are also naively set as a goal for all humans. This means we see them as ignorant or unwilling to grow if at relatively low stages, and as wise and highly developed if at a relatively high one. Here’s A Secret: Spiral Dynamics Goes Way Beyond The Stagesīesides leading to a loss of complexity and nuance, just focusing on the Spiral Dynamics stages puts too much emphasis on the individual, ignoring the other factors the theory posits.įor one thing, we often paint individuals as wholly responsible for their dominant value systems.
