• This Level One foundational course content is taught by Dr. Don Beck world-wide, to ensure that all SDi workshop participants receive the same thorough, 3-day theoretical grounding.

• SDi Level Two training courses move into hands-on application of the Level One theory and are therefore predicated on an assumed working knowledge of the entire theoretical model.

• Suggested preconference preparations for SDi Level One: Read the book Spiral Dynamics – Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change by Don Edward Beck and Christopher C. Cowan (Blackwell, l996). Available from amazon.com and other leading online and regular book retailers.

DAY ONE:  return to top

Origins, Foundations, and Common Tributaries (A focus on the critical mechanism that generates human value systems over time — the streaking comet!)

1. The Graves Technology

• Clare W. Graves Basic Research — Early Findings — Later Conclusions —First Contact — Ten-year Relationship — Historical significance

• The Graves Technology — “Emergent, Cyclical, Double Helix Model of Adult Biopsychosocial Development” — The theoretical underpinnings. Segments from the video tape: “In conversation with Clare W. Graves.”

• The new “science” of memetics. Richard Dawkins. vMEMES as the programming dynamic in memes. Differences among Genes, vMEMES, World Views, Mindsets, and Semiotics — memes ( as ideas, beliefs and causes) and memes (as icons, objects, and places).

2. Spiral Dynamics: A new definition of Human Nature and Complex Adaptive Intelligences. IQ vs. EQ vs. VQ or ValueQuotient the evolutionary human intelligence.

The Four Quadrant/Eight Level View (4Q/8L) based on Ken Wilber’s model of emergence.

A First Look:

• UPPER RIGHT — The Individual Exterior (IT) — Brain and Organism

• UPPER LEFT — The Individual Interior (I) — Self and Consciousness

• LOWER RIGHT — The Collective Exterior (ITS) — Social System and Environment

• LOWER LEFT — The Collective Interior (WE) — Culture and Worldview

• Principles & Processes of simultaneous vMEMETIC emergence from the evolutionary CORE and outward along the Four Quadrants — The Natural Dynamic at work. The Role of the critical BIG FIVE Life Conditions: Time, Place, Problems, Circumstance, and Capacities.

• the vMEME (Value system) code: How it forms in the mind/brain. New research from the International Paleopsychology Project.

• How vMEMES impact all of life’s choices: politics, religion, economics, health care, ethics etc.

• Healthy and unhealthy versions of the vMEME codes: detecting the differences.

• vMEMEs as structures of thinking that determine how people prioritize choices. They differ from what is embraced, i.e. the specific content.

• vMEMEs are “living internal systems” in that they ebb and flow as Life Conditions warrant. “Cometh the time, Cometh the vMEMES!”

• vMEMES zig zag between I:Me:Mine and We:Us:Our poles and problems change.

• vMemes emerge in a wave-like fashion and pass through maturity life cycles.

• vMEMES spiral up and down through levels of complexity.

• vMEMES provide the instructional codes in Howard Bloom’s Pentad of mechanisms that generate the upsurge toward greater complexity.

• Individuals, organizations, and entire societies differ in terms of the awakened core DNA-like vMEME codes, how the codes produce vMEME warfare, and how the entire cluster/stack responds to changing conditions, vMEMETIC success and failures, as well as other dynamics that operate with the evolving human Spiral.

The vMEMETIC Journey through the Corridors of Time (Tracking the Double Helix through time and space — identifying the various value systems that trail behind the streaking comet.)

This day examines the actual structure and form the various vMEME codes have taken in elaborating their respective themes throughout human history.

These codes express themselves as:

• 4Q-IT — Degrees of activation of the central nervous system;

• 4Q-I — Waves of transpersonal emergence;

• 4Q-ITS — Levels of Complexity; and

• 4Q-WE — Currents of Cultural Evolution.

1. The First Tier vMEME Codes and their respective impact:

The Survivalist Systems

• The First Level — AN Beige vMEME Code that produces instinctive skills in the rain forest, the savanna, the bush, on the tundra, in the inner city, as well as in cases of serious deprivation and human tragedy.

• The Second Level — BO Purple vMEME Code that creates animistic thinking, bond humans to closely-knit groups, and enriches inanimate objects with vMEMETIC meanings and magical significance.

• The Third Level — CP-Red vMEME Code that awakens individual senses of the impulsive self while generating powerful images of aggressiveness, conquest, predator/prey relationships, and pontifications from on high perches — high horses, kings of the hill, and queens of the valley, or vice versa. The age of fiefdoms.

• The Fourth Level — DQ Blue vMEME Code that engenders transcendent purpose, impulse control; creates abstract causes, principles, explanations, and orders, while imposing authority-driven command structures.

• The Fifth Level — ER Orange vMEME Code that frees the autonomous person, creates the algorithms of strategic changeability, and shifts the thinking away from fatalistic ideology and into pragmatics and positivism.

• The Sixth Level — FS Green vMEME Code that rejects authoritarian and materialistic codes while awakening the individual to inner states in a search for harmony, and external communities in a quest for peace and caring.
  2. The Second Tier vMEME Codes and their respective impact

The Being Systems

• The Seventh Level — GT Yellow vMEME code that restores human viability to a world of vMEMETIC chaos, while legitimizing and enhancing all of the vMEME codes as they produce healthy whorls along the Spiral.

• The Eighth Level — HU Turquoise vMEME code that detects the holistic energy flows that bind everything together and permeate every aspect of the Kosmos. This code “sees” everything before “doing” anything.

DAY THREE:   return to top

The Change Equation and Practical Applications — (Now that you understand the basic mechanism/formula, and have seen it generate vMEME codes, this final day illustrates how the entire Spiral Dynamics, vMEMETIC, and 4Q/8L package & process can be used in the real world.)

1. The Integral Change Equation: The Equation examines the multiple variables at work when change in a number of different variations is the topic at hand. The Equation will describe eight different Change variations, and will offer a comprehensive framework for mapping change in individuals, organizations and entire societies. The results of the Change State Indicator will be shared, along with normative data from other assessment situations.

The morning session describes a new set of principles and processes that shape “change” along the Four Quadrants. The intent is

(1) to design a 4Q/8L strategy that is legitimately “All Quadrants” and “All Levels”;

(2) to craft a synchronicity initiative that sequences along all Four Quadrants in a simultaneous fashion; and

(3) to outline how to construct a complex structure for large-scale systems change with action steps with all Quadrants and along all the Levels.

The presentation will shift the focus from “All” to “Appropriate” Quadrants/Levels.

2. Practical applications of Spiral Dynamics Integral and 4Q/8L in the “real world”

• Individual vMEMETIC Development and Emergence — Prenatal and child rearing experiences that shape vMEMETIC development. The role of the family, education, law and criminal justice, religion and spirituality, sports, and other community forces.

• Character must be “caught” from the shaping environment BEFORE it can be “taught” by adults in the form of right/wrong, moral prescriptions, or ethical codes of conduct. Adult developmental activities that awaken higher levels of vMEMETIC consciousness. Connecting Spiral Dynamics and vMEMES to Life Cycles.

• Organizational design, development, and enrichment; the MeshWORKS package. This section will focus on specific applications of Spiral Dynamics Integral within organizational theory, organization and work-flow design, as well as specific formula and prescriptions regarding styles, communication, motivation, compensation, sales & marketing, as well as other aspects of organizational life.

• This material is covered in considerable detail in Chapters 6, 7 & 8 in the book Spiral Dynamics. This brief presentation will describe Seven Producers of High Performance Teams as well as specific MeshWORKS-in-Motion projects in the field.

• Societal/Cultural health and well-being, transformation, and large scale systems change. (Chapter 17). The focus, here, will be on how vMEME codes act at the core of cultures to generate various models of community and political/economic development.

• The 16-year South African initiative will be described as a model for addressing reacial divides, 1st through 4th World developmental gaps, the new digital divides, and fresh approaches to “Third Way” or “Compassionate Conservatism” models of societal upliftment.

ADDITIONAL WORKSHOP INFORMATION   return to top

The presentation style employs a number of different media forms, from colorful graphics to illustrative music, actual case studies, and video tapes. The workshop manual contains rich information on Clare W. Graves and Spiral Dynamics Integral theory, various documents that describe Spiral Dynamics Integral, as well as the assortment of testing systems and feedback forms. While we have a great deal of fun in these sessions which are presented in a somewhat festive manner, the workshops require hard work since a lot of information is presented in a fast-paced fashion.

There are some opportunity for small group interactions to deepen many of the learning concepts, but the entire three days are full of rich content that must all be presented to paint the total picture not only of the elegance and internal consistency of the concept itself, but also to chart out enough examples to transform the theory into everyday understanding and behavior.

For many of you, SDi Level One is only the start; hopefully, it will encourage you to continue your own learning, in both informal and formal ways.

SDi Level Two adds the next level of complexity. The various annual Spiral Dynamics Confabs, the Macro*Memetics Project events, Natural Design and other Level Two learning opportunities provide up-to-date information and knowledge to those who already have a working knowledge of the basic concept.