Spiral Dynamics

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View books by Don Edward Beck, Christopher Cowan.

A real breakthrough - Rated
Spiral Dynamics provides a framework within which to analyse a whole range of subjects. Together with Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics shows a way to reconcile a whole range of issues in society, management and psychology. Beck and Cowan describe 8 levels of human ideas or vMemes that drive the world. The levels are heirarchical - higher levels transcend and include lower levels in the way that Wilber describes. Once I understand what vMeme an idea is based in I can understand what drives it and where it is going. Then I can see why different ideas often clash and fail to engage with each other. Don't be put off by the first introductory chapter which is less clear than than the rest of the book.

Great read - Rated
Spiral Dynamics explores the development of human conciousness giving excellent examples as to how their map can be used by individually and collectivly. The authors explore where they believe human conciousness is headed and how only "new thinking" will resolve current conflicts.
If you have read and enjoyed Ken Wilber you will probably enjoy this book

Valuable Theory - Difficult Reading - Rated
This book is based on the work of Clare W. Graves, a professor of psychology at the Union College (Schenectady, NY) who developed an evolutionary model of values somewhere in the 60ties. I was introduced to this material through the work of Wyatt Woodsmall, who wrote a more accessible introduction to this material as part of the book "Time Line Therapy and the Basis of personality" (published in 1988). If you are interested in studying values and cultures, I recommend buying both books.

The two reasons why this book only gets 3 stars are 1) the way it is written and 2) because the authors have written it "as if" they are the *sole* owners of this theory, a kind of thinking that shows they haven't reached the highest level of evolution themselves. The second remark may explain why one cannot distinguish between the original thinking of GRAVES and the extensions of the authors. The first remark explains why this book is hard to "digest": the structure of the book doesn't make it easy to collect all information for each level, nor is it easy to derive from the book how one would apply these principles, say in a therapeutic or business context. Also an index is missing, but that is partly compensated by adding a good resource list at the end of the book.

Graves' model is a dynamic model of human consciousness evolution, which includes 7 levels of development, each with particular kinds of thinking and beliefs. At jobEQ we recommend this kind of thinking to find out whether someone you want to hire is "compatible" with your companies culture. Beck and Cowan have been using Graves work on an even larger level: looking at values that are valid across cultures and subcultures in society, for instance helping to resolve conflicts between subcultures in the UK and South-Africa.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"