Yellow thinking?
When you ready to move on from the red of what you want, what blue thinks that you should be doing and the orange balancing act in-between the two, when you stop chasing the big green idea that solves everything and a perfect outcome, that is when you are ready to start understanding the world as it is not as how you want it to be. That is when you are able to move into integrated thinking, the ability to see the whole and how it fits together, not an ideal version with a set of assumptions that creates an unreal parallel world but how we actually work as individual actors with our own set of inherited values even when our version of good is more limited than others, we all see our own actions as good. Yellow thinking blends these thinking colours together with each other, not in a competition or suppression of them, instead it allows each colour to bring the best version of itself to the table so that we can join together as a family rather than war over the carcass of the world.
Spiral dynamics has a technical, and even worse mathmatical ring to it that scares a lot of people away but it is no more terrifying than a rainbow, as each ring of colour in the sky layers naturally on top of each other in the sky so too does our development of our society and our own personal growth. We give each ring of development a colour as it makes it easier to remember and talk about. Beige is the innocence of birth our starting point in any line of development where you know nothing and are just observing and reacting to the world, red is where you act for your own want and everything you know of the world is magical, you are aware that there are forces at work but they are beyond your understanding. In blue you start to bring order to the world and the individual become a tribe and collective, the world is still mystical, you understand that there is a greater power and you give it the label of being the actions of Gods, either of fate, rain, winter or even a single Gods that rules all the actions of the world where we become banded together as subjects of our lord.
In orange the individual returns, we start to understand the world from observation, repeatable experiments that anyone can undertake and get the same results, we see that individual effort is not uniform, that we are not units of production rather we are unique and that we should be valued and protected as individual beings. Which leads to green where there is the realisation that just acting as individuals is little better than the law of the jungle, that action without purpose does not make the individual or society happy, that without alignment with a mission and meaning we are just defending what we have, so we start looking for the big idea that solves everything, we look for causes, ideal models that we can repeat to create paradise on earth, which is the same mission as blue which asked you to sacrifice for the collective soul.
As we move up the stages of development a pattern emerges there is a swing between each stage from the collective to the individual, and each one understand the world from that point of view, which is why each one hates the level below and above it. Though it should be clear that none of the levels are better than another they are simple ways of knowing and making sense of the world, just as a baby becomes a child, then a teenager, young adult, mature and then old, we past through stages and just because we are orange in one aspect, we can still be blue in others.
It is only when we get to yellow that we see that all the stages are equally important and valid, yellow returns to the individual but with an understanding that we are part of an interconnected whole, it does not try to have one big idea to rule them all, instead it begins to see every idea as a tool to be used for the right job. Where orange and green would look down on faith, yellow sees it as an important tool, as a powerful intention setting tool, and if you do not believe in the power of faith, you have to ask yourself why every single piece of medical research has to account for the existence of the placebo effect (which is so called because scientist are embarrassed to use the word magic, which it is by any other name) it is the single most reliable repeatable experimental result confirmed every time there is a person present to perform the magic. Yellows might call it intention setting but they do not deny that it is a force that we do not understand, and yellows are fine with not knowing, it is what they expected when faced with the whole of reality, there is just too much of it to understand it all, that is the opening of the heart that happens at this stage.
We start to see that we do not have all the answers and that whatever answers that the other colours bring to the table are valid in some sense depending upon your interpretation and point of view (which is influenced by the stage that your society is at, it is difficult to be green in a blue world). It is hard to be judgemental when you do not know, orange finds it easy to criticise blue because either things are provable or not according to the scientific method, whereas blue regards personal experience as being supreme, the witness is all that matters and the relationship to God trumps all. Whereas Green sees God as a big idea that is metaphorical and a teaching method, it is only when we get to yellow that we recognise that we just do not know and that it is unknowable, we do not deny that the witness exists and is important, science tells us what is provable and we can live with the gap, indeed we find that a source of beauty and mystery.
Not that we ignore the personal witness, we can not pretend that it is reliable in every circumstance, however where repeatable actions are taken that lead to repeatable results, that are common experiences that has reoccurred in virtual every society that has existed in the history of mankind and in every known religion, it is worth taking note of that experience. There is no denying that this is spiritual knowing, it is not provable in a laboratory, you can not look at it through a microscope, but knowledge is knowledge and to disregard it is leaves us with an incomplete picture of the world and when your aim is to integrate ideas and people together leaving knowledge on the table means that you never get the whole picture. If you leave pieces out the thing just unravels, it has faults that tears under the strain of real people acting from their own best interests.
As every society, even an ideal one will have different people with different colours who are developing through time on their own learning curve, a good society should have mechanisms for helping people through these changes, there should be a place of value for everyone within this society, especially in an imperfect world which it almost always is. This is a difficult task as the different colours have such variety in language, even the same word can means different things depending on their colour, the concept of God is a prime example, a judging God is quite different from a God who is knowing itself through our experience, and it is difficult for one colour not to judge and the other not to know it is better, which causes it own problems. The whole situation can be no winning stand off where God fight with itself through it's different set of believers, just as the individual fights with the notions of the collective.
Individual greed can seem to be in conflict with the collective good, but it does not have to be, and it is only at yellow where you can start to resolve the conflict. Gandhi is a classic example of yellow thinking he could integrate the needs of poor Indians and the British need to live up to the moral standard it had set itself (but were not living up to) through a policy of passive resistance, it gave them a dignified exit whilst gaining independence. Yellow will be a tiny proportion of the population for a long time which gives them an opportunity to fill a niche in bringing communities together, to resolve difficult issues and act as peacemakers when the world seems to be at it's darkest. It can bring hope to the world and mark a new dawn if it is not excluded by those who see it as a threat, and that starts with an open heart and honesty about what yellow is trying to achieve as it can appear to be manipulative, when really it is trying to help.
Yellow is the future but not everyone wants the future, orange and blue loves the good old days, when they were powerful and if they are not they suspect that yellow has the power now, which is far from the truth, as the only power yellow has is the acceptance that very little is under it's control and the only way through this world is together, that is the root of yellow thinking and let hope it can convince the others. As in a complex world we need people who can bring it all together, who can see the different wheels turning and make sure we do not get crushed by them, they are the ones who can see the unexpected consequences, they are the long term planner who can get us ready the the next disaster, bring on the yellow, they are the ones who can save us from ourselves and doing so is all they want to do.
