American Unitarian Conference Forum

Read a real interesting piece in our local newspaper last week to the effect that the newest Pop Culture Icon is the Nerd. From Peter Parker (Spider Man) through many of the new TV heros and heroines to Harry Potter, the Nerd seems to have truly captured the imagination of the current 10 to 30 year olds in this country. No longer do Nerds need to worry about revenge (do we all remember that great comedy from a few years back?), they are becomng the dominant social group in American Society. As Huey Lewis told us awhile back, it has indeed come to be "hip to be square".

My son Rick will be attending University of Missouri - Rolla this Fall. This college is truly "Nerd University". The head of the Chemical Engineering Department told us so in so many words when we visited the campus several months ago, saying, "This college is one place where Nerds can feel completely comfortable". This comment, probably as much as anything, decided Rick on UMR.

What I find really telling is that 23% of the incoming Freshman Class is Female. This would have been unthinkable as recently as 10 years ago and is a new high-water mark for female attendance at UMR.

As many here are aware, I've been reading a lot of Ken Wilber lately. Who am I to criticize Wilber?....... but I must say thatr I believe this is a phenomenon that he has totally missed. My own take is that Nerd spirituality is HEAVILY Orange and will NEVER move to Green. Assuming Nerds will move on without assuming a totally different sort of identity in the process, Transrational spirituality will, in my opinion, become their next stop with no passage through Green at all.

Does this have significance for AUC? I certainly believe so. If there is a religion in the world today suitable for Nerd sensibilities, I believe it must be AUC Unitarianism. My son Rick, for example, is, at this point a "Flatland Agnostic", which I see as entirely appropriate at 17. AUC Unitarianism I can really see as a next step for him, with the Mormonism he was raised in a lost cause in terms of his spirituality.

Fred  

Fred, good observation; this whole Spiral Dynamis color coded stuff is under huge debate....charges and countercharges re the validity of the mean green meme etc.  
I may argue that the values assigned to each level reflect the bias of the developer...Clare Graves and his exponents over the years....there is a tendency to assume that one stage is inherently less complete than the next higher due to assumptions that those values in the next stage are superior....I see room for argument.  Of course, the proponents would argue from their lofty positions that a predominately "Orange" level person feels that way because they just don't get it....etc. etc.
For some back ground on two of the stages see below (and I am not all that familiar with the theory beyond the descriptions):

http://www.wie.org/j22/beck.asp

"First Tier: "Subsistence" valueMEMES

GREEN Communitarian/Egalitarian MEME - starting 150 years ago
Basic theme: Seek peace within the inner self and explore, with others, the caring dimensions of community
The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma, and divisiveness
Feelings, sensitivity, and caring supersede cold rationality
Spreads the Earth's resources and opportunities equally among all
Reaches decisions through reconciliation and consensus processes
Refreshes spirituality, brings harmony, and enriches human development

ORANGE Achievist/Strategic MEME - starting 300 years ago
Basic theme: Act in your own self-interest by playing the game to win
Change and advancement are inherent within the scheme of things
Progresses by learning nature's secrets and seeking out best solutions
Manipulates Earth's resources to create and spread the abundant good life
Optimistic, risk-taking, and self-reliant people deserve success
Societies prosper through strategy, technology, and competitiveness"

So, can "Blue/Orange" engineer nerds become "Green"? Or, is it a stage that most will never arrive at? I suppose "civil" engineering and architecture would be the most likely to produce people who may adopt those "Green" values.

Hi, E!

I always find your comments interesting. In regard to the current topic, for some reason, I find my thoughts turning to the issue of whether mankind will always live in some degree of resource scarcity. The Green mentality seems to take it as a given that the world has or soon will have plenty of material goods for all to live in comfort and that the only real economic problem is distribution of the world's abundance in a way that all can share in it. Creating prosperity is an issue that is only a figment of the Blue and Orange imaginations and providing economic inducements to do so the result of selfishness and insensitivity to the joys of serving mankind selflessly. A sort of pathology of less sensitive folk.

A view easy to take if your talents have little relevance to actual value creation and you don't have any real understanding of how prosperity actually comes to exist. One more variation on the age old theme of the natural superiority of that part of mankind destined to govern those that are mere producers of goods and services.

Fred

Didn't feel so hot today and, after sleeping for about 3 hours, watched "Top Gun" on Turner Classic Movies, an old Western made, I think, in the late 1930s. Starring Sterling Hayden as a young man, it is a classic. Hayden plays Rick Martin, a young and very sympathetic cowboy cheated out of his inheritance by a slick banker who also frames him for murder. Rick is known principally for his honesty and for being the quickest gun in the area, but is greatly misunderstood by the local townsfolk and the prettiest girl in town who, by the middle of the movie has become engaged to the banker through misunderstandings and force of circumstance. She feels sorry for Rick, who is clearly her true love, when he is thrown into jail as the result of being framed by her banker fiancee, but recognizes justice must be served.

Happily for Rick, a local gang of bandits lead by a real, but surprizingly witty and even sympathetic bad ass villian is threatening to take over the town. After a furious gun battle, they kill all the locals willing to put up a fight (not including the slime ball banker, of course), and encamp at the local saloon, with all the town residents cowering in the local church.

Fortunately for Rick, because, of course, the town must now turn to him for its salvation. Rick proves up to the task and, in the process of taking down the gang and its leader, the truth comes out about the Banker's behind the scenes machinations and his complicity in the bad guy's take over of the town. Final scene: Rick and the town beauty are mounting up to head for a new life in California. The town's folk want them to stay in the worst way, but adventure beckons and the allure of a fresh start further West.

I LOVED this movie.

After reading Wilber, how do I see it? An Orange Meme Morality Play. The bad-ass villian a classic Red Monster threatening Civilization in the form of the Blue Meme Townsfolk. Yet, he commands a certain sympathy and his flair and wit have a certain attractiveness. And, he speaks and is spoken of in a way that make it clear that he is representative of an earlier time when he and his sort ruled the stage of History. As much as anything, his problem is not as much Evil Personified as that his time has passed and he represents the past.

The Blue Townsfolk are represented as plodding objects of virtue and conventionality, the sort of people that may be approved of but provide little that really captures our hearts or imagination. They seem to exist primarily to be protected and taken care of. They may provide cannon fodder at moments of crises, but really have little in the way of resourcefullness or valor.

Rick Martin is the one who really captures our sympathy. Orange to the core, loyal to his personal vision, enormously capable and resourceful, the sort of figure admired and imitated by my generation.

The banker is a truly enigmatic figure that I have difficulty type casting. He is pretty close to representing the figure of Satanic Evil. Does he represent Orange Sensibilities gone wrong, a cautionary comment on the potential for evil in the world coming? He does NOT seem in any way related to anything Green, arguably a sety of sensibilites so far in the future as to be unavailable for consideration at this time in the American Consciousness. Who and what he is escapes me.

Is my love of this movie and admiration of Orange qualities merely one more example of how outmoded my thinking has become by the year 2007?

Fred

Fred....you should submit a movie write up to Wilbers I-I section where they are seeking interpretive pieces!
http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/252

The cynic in me sees many of the values of the Green and above as very utopian and or idealistic.