He’s Just Had Coffee

A letter to Michel Bauwens of the P2P Manifesto:

Hi Michel,

My goodness your P2P memeplex is catching on like wildfire! This is excellent. Congratulations for spotting, integrating and articulating this excellent configuration of social and technical moments.

I’m just reading your “A Critique of Wilber and Beck’s SD-Integral” on kheper.net and while I share your frustration with some Spiral Dynamics and Spiral Dynamics Integral (SD-i) fans cluelessly blathering vMeme jargon in unintelligent ways, I read one of the criticisms in a different way than you did or indeed than it’s author seemed to intend. I thought I might share it in case it were of interest.

The line in question is:

“I think this article is a manifesto for the creation of Green vMemetic economic system.”

My issue is that I don’t find that a critcism. I agree with your correspondent that a lot of the thematic material that Beck associates with Green is stuff that shows up in your manifesto - but the point here is that the planet seems to lack a Green vMeme economic system. While Wilber and Beck spend a lot of time criticising Green values in their encounters with academia - for a huge amount of the planet Green values remain pretty avant-garde.

Those later value memes (Orange, Green, Yellow) are world-centric, intrinsically global values… while it’s nice that there are enclaves like Amsterdam and Boulder in which Green represents some kind of centre of gravity (in the same sense that in Hammurabi’s time it was nice that Babylon became an enclave of Blue), it doesn’t amount to much until those values (connection matters, all people are connected, ecosystem is connected to self, etc)become globally predominant and that needs an way to share and distribute resources that has the power to displace the current system.

Wilber’s “post-metaphysical” theories about Kosmic habits imply to me that it’s way premature to start speculating about Yellow or Turquoise economics except in the most general terms, but an ideal time to work actively towards fermenting/fomenting what you’re working on.

You’ve probably thought all that yourself or other people have said it, possibly without as much sympathy for the SD-i point of view, but I thought I’d drop it into a note in case it was of any assistance.

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