Integral Christian
Stages & Lines of Development

Evolution

Evolution occurs in each of the four quadrants.




When science studies the right-hand quadrants, it finds the evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, and species. When psychology studies the upper left quadrant it finds developmental stages we all pass through. And when social scientists study the two lower quadrants, they find the evolution of cultures and societies.


Stages of Development

The integral model often uses the stages of development identified by Dr. Clare Graves to make general statements about stage development in the upper left and lower left quadrants. These stages are explained in detail the book Spiral Dynamics, by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan. Spiral Dynamics gives each stage a color, and the integral model modifies some of these colors to make them more closely follow the colors of the rainbow and the chakras.

The stages in Spiral Dynamics (using the colors from the integral model) are:

1. Infrared: The Instinctual Survival Stage
Characteristics:
  • An autonomic state of existence centered around the satisfaction of biological needs.
  • Energy is devoted to staying alive and meeting basic physical needs.
  • Food, water, warmth, and safety have priority over everything else.
  • Behaviors are driven by deep brain programs, instincts, and genetics.
  • Essentially amoral: do what you must do to stay alive.
Where Seen:
  • The first humans
  • Newborn infants
  • The senile elderly, late-stage Alzheimer’s victims
  • Mentally ill street people
  • Starving masses
  • People in "shell shock"
2. Magenta: The Magic Stage
Characteristics:
  • "The way of the ancestors."
  • Began about 50,000 years ago, and tends to be the home of egocentric drives, a magical worldview, and impulsiveness.
  • Allegiance is shown to elders, customs, and clans.
  • People begin to ask why things happen, and find answers in invisible natural forces and the actions of powerful spirit beings.
  • The lines between what is fantasy and what is real are blurred.
  • People are superstitious.
  • People rely on tribal customs and taboos for direction.
Where Seen:
  • Halloween, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy
  • Saturday morning cartoons
  • A toddler with a security blanket
  • Ethnic superstitions, Voodoo-like curses, religious relics, crosses, a dashboard Jesus, a lucky rabbit's foot
  • The placebo effect
  • Chanting, trance dancing, dream walking
  • Nepotism, blood oaths, blood brothers
  • Parental bonding, the nuclear family, family rituals and reunions
  • Religious ritual and ceremony
3. Red: The Power Gods Stage
Characteristics:
  • "My way or the highway."
  • Began about 10,000 years ago. Power is based on "might makes right."
  • Aggression rules: strong individuals take unilateral control, and use charisma, intimidation, or physical force to impose their will without guilt.
  • There is a limited capacity to take the role of an "other."
  • Survival of the fittest. Life is a jungle and you have to take care of yourself first. The weak deserve to lose because they are weak.
  • People break free from any and all domination or constraints to please themselves, and stubbornly resist any power exercised over them.
  • People act on immediate impulses, and actions are not always connected to consequences.
Where Seen:
  • The terrible twos
  • Bullies, violent crime
  • Rebellious adolescents who feel they are immortal
  • Political dictatorships
  • Jim Bridger, frontiersmen, epic heroes, soldiers of fortune
  • The NFL
  • Prison populations
  • In the movies: James Bond villains, The Godfather, Rambo, The Terminator, Troy
  • Wild rock stars
4. Amber: The Law and Order, Higher Truth Stage
Characteristics:
  • "The one right way."
  • Began about 5,000 years ago, and indicates a worldview that is traditionalist and mythic in nature. Mythic worldviews are almost always held as absolute truth.
  • Amber ethics help to control the impulsiveness and narcissism of red.
  • Belief in a single Higher Truth, Power, or Authority who rules the Universe, sets human destiny and limitations, prescribes what is "right" and "wrong," and gives meaning and direction to human existence.
  • Black and white, polarized thinking. Understanding and tolerance are limited.
  • There is an absolute belief in one right way, and unquestioned obedience to authority.
Where Seen:
  • Religious fundamentalism (my God is right no matter what)
  • Fascism (my country is right no matter what)
  • Ethnocentrism (my people are right no matter what)
  • Hierarchical organizational structures
  • Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, Andy Taylor’s Mayberry
  • Puritan America
  • The military, codes of chivalry and honor
  • The Salvation Army
  • The Boy and Girl Scouts
5. Orange: The Rational, Scientific Stage
Characteristics:
  • "The most effective, successful way."
  • Began about 500 years ago with the European Enlightenment.
  • Individuals begin to break free from amber conformity.
  • Faith in dogma is replaced by experiential data and evidence.
  • Ideas and actions are evaluated based on how intelligent or effective they are, not on whether they are orthodox or heretical.
  • Ethics begin to embrace all people: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
  • Value is placed on individual accomplishments and achievements.
  • People are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
  • The belief in human perfectibility through intelligent hard work and the constant testing of ideas.
Where Seen:
  • Multi-party democracies and free markets
  • The Enlightenment
  • The Industrial Revolution
  • Scientific materialism
  • Corporate America
  • "Success" ministries, both religious and secular; motivational seminars
  • The self-help industry, The Power of Positive Thinking
  • Wall Street & Rodeo Drive
Click here to hear Ken Wilber talking about the Magic, Mythic, and Rational stages of development. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.

Green: The Pluralistic, Multicultural Stage
Characteristics:
  • "All ways are equally valid."
  • Began roughly 150 years ago; came into its fullest expression in the 1960's.
  • Where orange sees universal truths ("All men are created equal."), green multiple universal truths – different universals for different cultures.
  • Green ethics continue, and radically broaden, the orange movement to embrace all people.
  • Focuses on problems of inclusion, equality, and large-scale harmony in the world.
  • Focuses on the need for controlled growth and protecting endangered living things.
  • Believes the earth's resources should be spread equally among all.
  • Rejects the displays of affluence and success so necessary to making orange happy.
  • Relativistic and low in dogmatism. Many different beliefs are acceptable, and no single truth is "It." Everyone is right in his or her own way.
  • There is tolerance for differences and a legitimizing of alternative lifestyles and behaviors, so long as they do not harm others.
Where Seen:
  • The Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and Animal Rights Movements
  • Feminism
  • Environmentalism; the Sierra Club; GreenPeace
  • Doctors Without Borders; Amnesty International
  • Canadian health care
Green marks the last of what Clare Graves called the 1st tier stages of development. In 1st tier, people at each stage believe that their worldview and values are the"right" ones, and that all of the others are wrong. We see this conflict today in our culture wars. Green values reject both orange capitalism and amber fundamentalism. Orange values reject green for being hypersensitive and overly "politically correct," and amber for being irrational. And in the amber worldview, those who hold both orange and green values are going to hell. Even green, which is characterized by greater sensitivity and inclusiveness than the previous stages, still rejects capitalist, fundamentalist, and patriarchal values.

Click here to hear Ken Wilber talking about our current culture wars between amber, orange, and green values. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.


The Move to 2nd Tier

The first 2nd tier stage is the teal/integral stage.

7. Teal: The Integrated Systems Stage
Characteristics:
  • "The best way for now, all views considered."
  • Marks the transition from 1st tier stages to 2nd tier stages.
  • Honors the insights of the green worldview, but places them in a larger context that allows for healthy hierarchies, ("holarchies") and healthy value distinctions.
  • Can explore many systems, cross compare them, and select appropriate bits and pieces from each.
  • Sees that each one of the previous stages (infrared through green) has an important role to play in human evolution.
  • Is tolerant of the needs of people at earlier stages of development, and respects each stage's worldview, values, systems, and culture.
  • Works to make possible the healthy coexistence and expression of all of the previous stages.
  • Works to facilitate the movement of people through stages, when they are ready.
Where Seen:
  • Carl Sagan’s astronomy
  • Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time
  • Eco-industrial parks (using each other’s outflows as raw materials)
  • Early episodes of TV’s Northern Exposure
  • Governance which supports and facilitates the progression of individuals and organization through increasingly higher stages of development, when they are ready
In 2nd tier, for the first time we are able to see that all of the previous worldviews fit together in a larger evolutionary pattern. We see that the values of each 1st tier stage represent an important step forward in human development. For the first time, 2nd tier to see the value and necessity of all of the previous stages. For example:
  • Mythic consciousness must establish some higher authority that takes people beyond the selfishness and egocentrism of red, before orange science and rationalism can emerge.
  • Both amber stability and orange technology must be present for effective green social transformation to take place.
2nd tier thinking also sees that everyone is born at stage one, and this means we will always need healthy institutions at every stage, in order for each new human being to evolve through the stages and reach their full potential. This 2nd tier realization results in a befriending of all of the previous stages of development: 2nd tier lets amber be amber, orange be orange, and green be green, and doesn't contend with any of these worldviews. Clare Graves called 2nd tier the "universal donor" stage, because it gives to each stage whatever is needed at that stage.

Click here to hear Ken Wilber talking about the momentous leap to 2nd tier. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.

It is important to keep in mind that growth through stages does not happen in a rigid way. If an individual is "at" a stage of development, that means that about 50% of the time they act from that stage. About 25% of the time they act from the stage before that one, and about 25% of the time they act from the stage after that one.


Healthy and Unhealthy Expressions of Each Stage

Each stage has both healthy and unhealthy expressions.

Infrared: Archaic
Less Healthy:
  • People in war zone "shell shock"; post traumatic stress
  • Mental illness; senility
More Healthy:
  • Sensitivity to intuition about impending harm
  • Heightened physical senses and abilities
Magenta and Red: Egocentric Values
Less Healthy:
  • Baseless superstitions
  • Tyranny, violent crime, dominator hierarchies, exploitation of the weak
  • Indifference to the harm you inflict on others
More Healthy:
  • Rich imagination
  • Personal empowerment, courage, the inner strength to overcome challenges and explore new territory
  • The free flow of liberating, creative energy
Amber: Traditional, Ethnocentric Values
Less Healthy:
  • Rigid dogmatism, close-mindedness
  • Self-righteousness, judging others, intolerance, hypocrisy
  • Unrealistic demands for perfection
More Healthy:
  • Stability and order brought to chaos
  • Service to a noble cause, having a higher purpose in life, integrity, fulfilling responsibilities and keeping commitments
  • Honor, integrity, and discipline
Orange: Modern, Rational, Worldcentric Values
Less Healthy:
  • Scientific materialism (denial of inner realities)
  • Extreme competitiveness that damages relationships
  • Manipulation of others to advance one's personal success, unethical shortcuts
More Healthy:
  • Healthy independence, finding your own voice
  • Rational objective thinking and scientific discoveries
  • Personal achievement and excellence
Green: Pluralistic Values
Less Healthy:
  • Hypocrisy: the exclusion of those who do not share pluralistic values
  • Extreme relativism, an inability to make any value judgments
  • Being a slave to "group-think," an inability to take individual action when it is needed
More Healthy:
  • Working for the inclusion of all, including the disenfranchised
  • A commitment to the environment
  • Tolerance: the ability to hold and see value in multiple viewpoints and respect multiple beliefs systems
Teal: Integral Values
Less Healthy:
  • Arrogance
  • Elitism
  • Isolation and alienation
More Healthy:
  • Mental and emotional flexibility
  • The ability to perceive the whole and understand how all of the parts interact, big vision thinking
  • The ability to accept, appreciate, and respect the values of all of the previous stages, the and people who hold them
At 2nd tier or integral, the "prime directive" becomes ensuring the health of the entire developmental spectrum and ensuring that there are avenues for the healthy expression of the values of each stage.

Click here for a more in-depth summary of these stages.


Growth Through Stages

What causes a person to move to a higher stage of development? Psychologists who study human development find that in childhood and youth we move fairly quickly through the stages of development up to young adulthood. But when we reach our mid-twenties, development tends to stop, often for decades.

Robert Kegan, a developmental psychologist at Harvard, has said that growth to a new stage happens when "the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject at the next stage." What does this mean?

To understand, we must first understand the distinction between subject and object.


Subject and Object

"Subject" is something I identify with and experience as "me." "Object" is something I experience as "not me." "Subject" is something I can only take a 1st person ("I") perspective on. "Object" is something I can take a 3rd person ("it") perspective on. In other words, I can stand back from it and view it objectively.

The chart below illustrates some of the differences between subject and object:


Here is another way to picture the difference between subject and object:


So, how does the "subject" at one stage of development become the "object" of the "subject" at the next stage? Let's take as an example a person at the orange rational stage of development:

This person is embedded in the rational worldview. At present the rational worldview is not something she can get outside of and reflect upon (or make an "object" in her awareness). Rather, the rational worldview is the invisible "lens" through which she sees the world. Her move to this rational stage of development happened when her previous mythic worldview became something she was no longer fused with or embedded in, when it became something she could stand back from and reflect on.

In this audio clip, from NPR, David Dickerson describes his shift from amber to orange in his Christian beliefs. He describes making his amber mythic beliefs, which he was previously embedded in and subject to, into objects he could examine and reflect upon. This is what is happening when he says, "For the first time, I saw myself from the outside." And, "Basic facts about the nature of Jesus, of God, of our duties on this earth seemed to me less like eternal truths and more like things I happened to believe."

When this person develops to the point that she can step back from and reflect upon (and critique) the rational worldview, then she will have a new subjective "self": a green, pluralistic "self." In other words, she will then see the world through an invisible green lens.

Click here to hear Ken Wilber talking about the move from amber to rational and then pluralistic. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.


A Culture's Center of Gravity

The stage an organization or culture as a whole is at acts as a developmental magnet for the people in that organization or culture. This means that the culture will tend to pull people up to its level -- up to its cultural "center of gravity." But if individuals try to move beyond the level of their culture, the culture's magnetic center of gravity will try to pull them back down to its present level.


The Shadow

At any stage of development, we may unconsciously shut off part of our subjective "I" experience from our own awareness. When this happens, the repressed part of ourselves becomes what is called a shadow element of our personality.


For example, a child who is in the red egocentric stage of development experiences strong aggressive impulses. When the amber stage emerges, it's all about control and discipline, so amber tends to clamp down hard on red impulses. If, as a child, every time I had an angry outburst I was severely punished by my strongly amber parents, or taught that God was unhappy with me, then out of self-preservation I may learn to completely block my angry impulses from my conscious awareness. I may actually cut them off and not even let them enter my conscious awareness.

Let's look at what going on with subject and object when we have a shadow element. We can only make a shadow out of something that is still on the subject side for us. It has to be something we have not yet developed the ability to stand back from and reflect on.

If we have repressed our angry impulses and no longer consciously feel them, then we can't learn to make anger an object in our awareness and then let it pass, because on a conscious level we don't even know it's there. We have to actually experience something as subject in order to then make it into an object in our awareness.

Even though we don't consciously feel our anger, that doesn't mean it is gone. It's still there, in a cut-off and repressed part of our mind. And now some really interesting things start to happen. It's as if our repressed anger has a mind of its own, and it wants to be expressed. If we won't let it out the front door, through our conscious awareness, they it will find a way out through the back door. It does this by acting itself out in covert ways that can actually sabotage our conscious self.

For example, when we see angry people around us, we may feel lucky to be one of those rare people who don't get angry, all the while unconsciously acting out our anger in passive aggressive ways. Or, we may project our anger outward onto others. Now we no longer get angry, but we sure seem to experience there being a lot of angry people out there in the world around us.

Shadow elements remain at the developmental level at which they were disowned. This means that when our conscious awareness moves on to the next stage of development, the shadow parts of us will lag behind, at whatever level they were repressed at. They then become areas of our lives where we are not fully functional. Our ability to express our shadow elements in healthy ways is stunted and immature, because they remain at the earlier level of development at which they were disowned. Whether the repressed part of ourselves is anger, fear, our need for others, or any other emotion we find challenging, the fact that our ability to express it remains at an earlier, less mature of development will create dysfunction in our lives.

Shadow elements can be hard to spot, because, by definition, we're unaware of them. If we were aware of them, they wouldn't be shadows. One clue that you might have a shadow element that is acting itself out covertly is when those closest to you who know you best see a characteristic in you that you don't see in yourself. Another clue to a shadow element is when someone close to you who knows you well tells you that the reason you can't get along with another person is because you and the other person are so much alike. Or, when you find yourself having a strong negative reaction to another person. This is because what we disown in ourselves we tend to dislike in others as well.


Lines of Development

We each grow through stages of development in many different "lines" of development. For example:

 

  • Jean Piaget mapped stages of development in the cognitive line.
  • Jane Loevinger mapped stages of development in the ego or self line.
  • Erik Erickson mapped stages of development in the psychosocial line.
  • James Fowler mapped stages of development in the faith line.
  • Clare Graves mapped stages of development in the values line.
  • Howard Gardener's "multiple intelligences" (linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, body-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal) are also examples of lines of development.
A person can be at different stages of development in different lines of development. For example, the stereotypical "computer nerd" may be at a high stage of development in the cognitive line, but at a lower stage of development in the interpersonal line. We can illustrate this uneven development in a diagram called a "psychograph."


Each line of development can be viewed as answering a different fundamental question:

  • The Cognitive Line answers the question, "What am I aware of?"
  • The Ego or Self Line answers the question, "Of the things I am aware of, who am I?", or "What am I?"
  • The Moral Line answers the question, "Of the things I am aware of, what should I do?"
  • The Values Line answers the question, "Of the things I am aware of, what do I think is most important or valuable?"
  • The Needs Line answers the question, "What do I need?"

Necessary But Not Sufficient

Some lines of development are "necessary but not sufficient" for development in other lines. For example, development in the cognitive line is necessary but not sufficient for development in the interpersonal line. And development in the interpersonal line is necessary but not sufficient for development in the moral line.

This means that a person cannot be at a higher stage in their interpersonal or moral development than they are at in their cognitive development. This is because cognitive development provides the raw material upon which interpersonal and moral development are built. If the moral line of development answers the question, "Of the things I am aware of, what should I do?", then the answer to this question can only come from among the "things I am aware of" (in other words, my level of development in the cognitive line).

This means that a person can be highly developed cognitively, and still have a low level of interpersonal and/or moral development. But individuals at high levels of moral development will always have high levels of cognitive development as well.

The following chart shows the cognitive levels of development necessary for corresponding moral levels of development.


Click here to hear Ken Wilber talking about the relationship between "necessary but not sufficient" lines. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.


The Pre-Trans Fallacy

As we can see in the developmental chart above, there are stages of development before the orange or rational stage (pre-rational stages), and stages of development after the rational stage (post-rational or trans-rational stages). Pre-rational and trans-rational stages have something in common: they are both non-rational. If we do not understand the difference between pre-rational and trans-rational stages, we may lump everything into two broad categories: rational and non-rational. We are then in danger of taking something that is pre-rational and elevating it to the trans-rational level of development (as some aspects of the New Age spiritual movement do). Or, we might take something that is trans-rational and reduce it to pre-rational levels of development.




To purchase the book this diagram is from (The Integral Vision), click here.

Freud had a tendency to reduce all non-rational phenomenon (both pre-rational and trans-rational) to infantile pre-rational levels of development. Jung, on the other hand, sometimes elevated pre-rational impulses to the trans-rational level. Understanding the difference between pre-rational and trans-rational can help us avoid making this mistake.

Click here to hear Ken Wilber talking about the pre-trans fallacy. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.


Next: Personality Types

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