Spiral Dynamics
05.2023
There is an idea about the order of things called Spiral Dynamics. It’s a method of tracing our evolution through a spiral shape. characterized by value systems human beings evolve into, in both our individual journeys and our collective journey as a species. It traces our history, both biological (i.e. the instinct to survive), and cultural (i.e. discovering material wealth does not bring peace) through sets of values we create and live by.
It traces the patterns humans create to impart order onto the chaos of existence.
Each human starts their own journey up the spiral from the first value - the instinctive value - survival. From then on, we flow up and down and back up and back down until we learn how to move forward in a more sustainable way, or never leave a certain area of the spiral. Our collective self does this, too. The crusades, the holocaust, capitalism, enlightenment, the counter culture of the 60s. All exist on a certain point in the spiral, creating a dynamic in which the collective is either individual-focused or species-focused. Both are crucial to our evolution. It’s a constant balance of shadow and light in order to move up the spiral.
![]()
We come into this earth neanderthals but leave as creatures full of knowledge of human mythology and culture, we have so much to look back upon in disdain and so much to look forward to with fear. I’m not sure where we are right now. Maybe for some, metamodernity is an era of a collective “we are saved” by technology, by liberalism, by whatever. Covid took our collective back into “I Survive”, vaccines and the 2020 election (depending on who you ask) shot us into “We Are Safe”, Q-Anon and woke culture indicate “I Control”. I dont know if anyone on earth feels that “we are saved”, but our systems are acting in a contest to keep pretending we are saved- resulting in a chaotic world that is getting more chaotic every day. Maybe the “we are saved” lie puts us in a kind of swirling vortex within the spiral that keeps us disillusioned in one place forever.
Jonas Salk
![]()
Spiral Dynamics to fit nicely into Jonas Salk’s ideas of evolution. He saw the patterns in nature and in humanity as opportunities for the wisest to advance our growth as a species: he asked the question, “are we being good ancestors?”
He was a pioneer for his contributions to medical science, but has been cherished as a figure who maintained spirituality within his theories. He coined the term “biophilosophy”:“...someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and understands that we have become the process itself, through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from among alternatives”
![]()
It traces the patterns humans create to impart order onto the chaos of existence.
Each human starts their own journey up the spiral from the first value - the instinctive value - survival. From then on, we flow up and down and back up and back down until we learn how to move forward in a more sustainable way, or never leave a certain area of the spiral. Our collective self does this, too. The crusades, the holocaust, capitalism, enlightenment, the counter culture of the 60s. All exist on a certain point in the spiral, creating a dynamic in which the collective is either individual-focused or species-focused. Both are crucial to our evolution. It’s a constant balance of shadow and light in order to move up the spiral.
We come into this earth neanderthals but leave as creatures full of knowledge of human mythology and culture, we have so much to look back upon in disdain and so much to look forward to with fear. I’m not sure where we are right now. Maybe for some, metamodernity is an era of a collective “we are saved” by technology, by liberalism, by whatever. Covid took our collective back into “I Survive”, vaccines and the 2020 election (depending on who you ask) shot us into “We Are Safe”, Q-Anon and woke culture indicate “I Control”. I dont know if anyone on earth feels that “we are saved”, but our systems are acting in a contest to keep pretending we are saved- resulting in a chaotic world that is getting more chaotic every day. Maybe the “we are saved” lie puts us in a kind of swirling vortex within the spiral that keeps us disillusioned in one place forever.
Jonas Salk
He was a pioneer for his contributions to medical science, but has been cherished as a figure who maintained spirituality within his theories. He coined the term “biophilosophy”:“...someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and understands that we have become the process itself, through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from among alternatives”
I Live My Life In Widening Circles
RANIER MARIA RILKE
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one but I will give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?
![]()
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one but I will give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?
The Second Coming
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?