Centerfield

Of course, the underlying assumption in that model is that progress is unidirectional; "human progress is one upwardly inclined plane; every day, and every way, we get better and better", that we can only progress "upwards", as opposed to going downwards. Because time is unidirectional, in this mental picture we can only move forwards, but it seems to me that if it's a spiral we're thinking of, it should be am interconnected double helix, which permits us to move not only forwards (as we must) and upwards (as a spiral would mandate) but forwards and downwards.

The descent into Dark Ages is less common. Besides the one which occurred with the fall of the Roman Empire, there was also one in the Aegean basin around 1000 BC, when writing, which had been developed by the Minoans and adapted by the Myceneans, was forgotten, and had to be reintroduced to Greece from Phoenicia. That occurred because of an influx of barbarian invaders too.

I think there is an argument to be made that much of the Middle East has trended downward. And, disturbingly, not just a few decades downturn but a centuries long downturn. There was a time when Muslim scholars were the most learned and advanced in the world (or so history tells us).

I don't know if the "dark age" phenomenon ruins Spiral Dynamics though. I still think it's a fascinating way to think about progress. That taking steps forwad often requires incorporating pieces of the past. 19th century French history I think shows a very dramatic example of a culture moving forward but reaching back and forth as they searched for how best to run their society.

Or we can look at our modern culture that is always reinventing itself but often does so by re-thinking styles and motifs from the past.

Spiral Dynamics may not be a sustainable theory if used as a universal theory, but it is certainly a viable theory as to how progress has and can be achieved.

Rick - perhaps it just depends on one's point of view. I know that many liberals would regard the banning of abortion as a move "backwards" - or, in a modified sprial dynamics model, presumably "forwards but downwards". Most conservatives, on the other hand, would regard it as a move forwards. Equally, many liberals would no doubt like to see a more expansive income tax and expanded Federal Government; they would see this as moving forwards and upwards, while most conservatives would regard it as moving forwards but downwards.

So it's a point of view thing, perhaps. But how does one define an objective criterion for measuring what is "up" or "down"? What is an objective criterion for determining whether permitting gay marriage is moving "up" or "down"? What is an objective criterion for determining whether changing the way we treat Gender Identity Disorder from surgery to psychotherapy (as, for example, Tammy Bruce has argued in The Death of Right & Wrong) is moving "up" or "down"? I would submit - Kenobi-like - that there is no such criterion; we can certainly find indicia of change, but whether it's for better or worse is inextricably tied to your point of view.

In my quixotic naivete, I would argue that there is a decisive way to know whether or not we are moving upwards or downwards but its measurement is currently beyond, perhaps even permanently beyond our technology. To take a page from Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics, I believe that the summum bonum of life is eudaimonia, loosely translated happiness or excellence or flourishing. If you were to somehow be able to immerse someone in varying cultural milieux, averaging across the experience of the entire culture, and ask which milieux produced the greatest happiness you would know which one is better.

To also take a page from John Stuart Mill, I think that some happinesses are better than others, and I again have the quixotic faith that if someone were immersed in some drunk-sodden orgy culture and then immersed in a truly benevolent, artistically and technologically advanced one, most people would choose the latter because I believe people are generally truly more happy when they accomplish something wonderful and experience compassion than if they just fed their sense appetites. (Stealing from Eastern Religion).

So I think the spiral idea is a great one but I also think that while the general trend is upward, that is not always the case especially when examined more locally.

What Rick alluded to is the society making the Hegelian synthesis between the oppressive virtue of the 50's and the excessive freedom of the sixties. Society is learning that you can have both freedom and virtue.

Recently, Ambivablog summed it up thusly:But not before correcting the course of American culture back toward true center. Both parts of me would be satisfied to see the decency of the '50s (at their best) combined with the honesty of the '60s (at their best), a quiet, basic moral consensus clothed in all the colors of the sun.

True, as Simon points out, there is a noisy surface tension in American life today, but I believe that we are moving forward if even in a jerky manner. Don't nuance it all up people, it's really not that difficult to tell if society is moving forward, at least not in the long run. And besides isn't that what centrism is all about: finding common ground, as well as covering new ground, amidst dissension and partisan rancor.

The remark about labor unions is a perfect example of a societal phenomenon that could use some kind of spiral--anywhere else than the tired state in which it finds itself. The labor movement has been riding on the past for a long time, only to wake up to the fact that it must live in the future.

I think the idea is a good one if you defining "forward" on the spiral as "the direction in which we wind up going", rather than using it with moral connotations of "the proper/best/good direction".

The basic idea which Rick espouses here is a good one, I think. Too often political rhetoric labels those who promote, for example, family values, as wanting to return completely to "Leave It To Beaver" world, reducing the status of women, racial minorities, or whatever. That of course is not the case (any more than those in favor of labor unions or welfare are in favor of communism). Take women who choose to raise children and not work outside the home.

Much of popular culture for the past 20 years has worshipped women who chose careers over families (the infamous Murphy Brown being the most over-used example). One consequence of this has been a cultural devaluing of women who choose to stay home and raise children. Most proponents of strengthening marriage don't want to keep women out of the workforce, but we also want women who choose to stay out of the workforce to be just as respected and valued for their choice as women who decide to work outside the home.

Centrists should be seeking to capture the best of all worlds. More respect for the family is good. Women being able to work is good. Women being looked down upon because they choose a more traditional role is bad. There are few absolute goods and few absolute bads. The golden ages of yore were never as golden as we mythologize them today.

But we should be able to find a way to promote the good without bringing along the bad.

There's no truth claim that spiral dynamics represents the incontrovertible truth about how the world works, right? So then it''s just a model, useful insofar as it helps you understand things.Good enough. And like everyone is pointing out above, the real world is much messier and noisier. A good model would account for regress too, as Simon points out. And the problem of identifying the criteris on which you base progress vs. regress is the obvious elephant in the modeling room.

do you believe that "primitive" societies are lower on the "ladder of progress" than say our own societies? I get the sense you mean to write that, but I hope not. Those are views that have justified the mistreatment and exploitation of aboriginal people's for over 500 years. there are no higher or lower societies. there are only different societies, and good and bad people within them.

Actually, I think this kind of thing is always going on, but with alot more dimensions to it than just community and individualism. Often things go downwards in certain regions, at the expense of other things getting better. Like the bursting of the Bubble, or blogs coopting some of established media's power.

Is our society "better" than, say the American Indian societies that preceded the US in its turf? No, and the ethnic cleansing that the US engaged in was evil. That said, our standard of living, societal fairness, longevity, and many other important factors, are all a lot higher.

Although it is polite and convenient to say no societies are "better" than others, I think it's plainly false. Invoking extreme cases, e.g. Pol Pot's Cambodia demonstrate this. I think it's true that as Jon pointed out some societies are better than others on certain measures, and I would just say if one society is a lot better than another on most measures, well it's likely to be better overall as well!

I would dispute the claim that this leads to genocide. Just because one's society is more "enlightened" than another doesn't mean that an individual living in the more enlightened society is more valuable. I would agree that it can and has lowered the threshold, however. The problem seems to arise when "enlightened" societies do not extend the rights of freedom and self-determination to the less advanced society.

Just because it is very difficult to determine better and just because people can't agree, it doesn't follow that the concept of better is meaningless or entirely subjective.

For instance, let's assume that we treated native americans significantly better and tried to integrate some of the virtues of their society into our own: care for the earth, etc. Wouldn't it be clearer that our society would then be better because we added their virtues to our own?

To get out of other cultures "trap", don't people think that America is more advanced than say Europe during the Inquisition, or during colonialism?

People may object due to Iraq, but look even if we are trying to "annex" Iraq, certainly we are giving it more autonomy than former powers gave to its colonies. I think that our motivations there are higher than many assume, though I would tend to agree if people accused us of arrogance or mismanagment. And even assuming their possession of oil bumped them up the list of countries to invade/liberate, that doesn't mean that's all we care about.

There's no contradiction in saying we invaded to kick out a problem ruler, secure free flow of oil, and to help them build a more prosperous country. It's called enlightened self-interest.

Objectors should ask themselves the question: where would you rather live, medieval Europe or present-day America? America or some third-world country? I remember Colin Powell relating in an interview meeting some Pakistani who was all: "Death to America! Death to the Zionist Enemy!" And where was he moving, the good old US of A. And I remember a comedian, maybe Bill Maher, proposing a US slogan "Millions of illegal immigrants can't be wrong."

So of course we have our problems, some serious, but we're pretty darn cool too.

Pol Pot was the dictator of a government, and a government is not the same as a society. Cambodian society was the main victim of Pol Pot.

I didn't say that ethnocentrism leads to genocide, I said that it has been used to justify mistreatment and exploitation of supposedly inferior, or if you prefer, less enlightened societies.

I think care for the earth is a virture of our society. Its not a virtue of our government.

Colonialism and Spanish Inquisition were government policies. I don't think they represented European society at that time.

If you ask me where I would feel most comfortably living either present day America or Medieval Europe, I would say, present day America. If you could ask a Medieval European where she would prefer living, she would likely reply Medieval Europe.

People in developing nations, but for lack of jobs, poverty, and illness, would no doubt prefer to remain in the countries of their birth.

You are arguing that there is little relation between a society and its government. While in some cases this is true, it is more the exception than the rule, and in some cases even dictatorships have had majority support. During their heyday, I wonder about popular support for Nazi Germany, Mussolini, WWII era Japan, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, etc. I would bet that at least one of these governments had at one time significant popular support. Even if, in these and similar cases, majority support did not exist, I would imagine that, in some, significant support (say 30%) of the population did exist and that this support is not totally divorced from that societies' culture.

Frankly, and unapologetically, the values of modern liberal democracies are significantly superior to those held in medieval times. Freedom of expression, equality before the law of all people even women and minorities, human rights, religious and ethnic diversity, a preference for objective data over tradition or religious dogma, the modern scientific method etc.. Not only our technology is better, our values and our consciousness are better than they were before. We're more civilized.

Certainly, there are virtues of other types of societies, and we should try to recognize and incorporate them, and in other cases there are tradeoffs. There are many ways that liberal democracies and, America in particular, can improve their culture. In many ways, the spiral model helps us realize that we can go up as opposed to just shifting between liberal and conservative. It helps us realize that we can take society to, well, "a whole new level."

It is critical that a society can honestly admit its flaws and recognize the virtues of other societies, but to advance relativistic moral equivalence arguments between societies is, in my view, embarrassing. I can't take such arguments seriously. You want to claim that that societies are morally equivalent, but that there are merely good and bad people in each. But societies are composed of people and a bad ideology can make a good person bad. If one society thinks that it certain cases it may be acceptable to blow oneself up and kill not only foreigners but fellow citizens, even women and children, because of political disagreement, that society is sick.

It needs some therapy. I know that not all in the Muslim world feel this way, but the existence of Al-Jazeera indicates that a fair number lean in this direction.

DQ, wake up, clear thinking and nuance are in many cases good, but relativism is little more than an embarrassing engagement in pie-in-the-sky intellectual self-pleasuring.

I agree that it's good to take into account many perspectives and that terms such as good and bad can get slippery and that all-too-often people fail to perceive their societies' own flaws and the virtues of others, but an out-and-out declaration that all societies are morally equivalent is really embarrassing.

To drive home the point, don't you think that granting women the right to vote and desegregation
have made up a better society? If you say that "the two are morally equivalent" then no one can save you. It is self-defeating to claim that people can be good or bad, but not societies.