This post is part of a series, see the introduction to Gravsian psychology and Spiral Dynamics for an ordered list of posts.

The earliest value system that Graves defined is the AN system. He summarises it as “Express self as if just another animal according to the dictates of one’s imperative periodic physiological needs (and the needs of the environmental possibilities.)” and sums up AN behaviour as Autistic, Automatic and Reactive.¹

Graves did not identify this system through his research studies on his students, he based it on library research. It is a value system that is rarely encountered in modern life. ² He theorises that it was dominant 40,000 or more years ago. When it is encountered in the modern day it is pathological. ³

Essentially he describes this system as based on humans reaction to the presence or absence of physiological tension and they just react to this tension in a manner that will remove it. ⁴

People centred in this system have no sense of self and are not emotionally engaged. As a result they cannot differentiate their self from others, distinguish actions from environmental consequences and are only aware of space and time local to their current place. ⁵

AN describes humans as animals, rather than human beings. Graves goes as far as to say that people with centralised AN values do not make use of tools.⁶

He identifies this as an ‘I’ centred system by suggesting that AN centred people are essentially operating under the premise that ‘I am in need and if I am to continue to exist, then you must adjust to my signals’.⁷

At the time of his research Graves thought that there were still a few examples of genuine AN as a dominant healthy culture in some remote parts of the world. He theorises that they have not moved on from the AN system because their life conditions have never made it necessary. For example, Graves comments on the Tasaday of the island of Mindanao in the Philippine Archipeliago. Claiming that due to the verdant conditions in which they live, with many caves for easy natural shelter and food that is relatively easy to gather, they have never been motived to move beyond AN.⁸

Graves details the possibility of people in modern culture living an AN existence due to illness or mental disability. He goes on to explore other examples of how the AN system can exist in modern society, exploring both a first world war German soldiers experience and a woman living in a decrepit apartment block. What he identifies as N mind conditions includes an absence of “volitional behaviour”. People living in this state essentially run on automatic, it being very hard to think things through or imagine a different way. ⁹

The AN system is amoral. ethical thinking requires concepts that are beyond this state.

Criticism
Graves demonstrates a poor understanding of evolutionary psychology, although this is understandable as the field was only getting started towards the end of the time that Graves’ was conducting his research. Graves’ description of AN, essentially removes emotion¹⁰, yet emotion is in an integral part of the mammalian brain and has been developing for many millions of years. I think it is likely that there are a multitude of systems between AN and BO that have been lost to history and that the true AN state as Graves describes it never really existed as a human culture, if at all.

Graves Mixes up healthy early social structure with the disabling states of mental illness and old age. I can understand that there may be similarities, but this does not mean that the two states are equivalent.  To his credit, Graves does explore the artificiality of modern versions of AN, he theorises that perhaps the AN system as we see it today is artificially created by later systems, in particular DQ, which enables people who would otherwise have died to survive without enabling them to develop to more advanced values.¹¹

The evidence for the AN system is rather week and circumstantial an requires substantial further research.  This however would be very difficult to conduct. Genuine healthy AN culture is likely extinct and so only existing studies can be cross examined. There has been a great deal of research into mental illness and autism, understanding how society deals with these problems as societies values develop would be useful, but I do not think that this verifies AN as a system.

Notes:
1. The Never Ending Quest p199
2. IBID
3. IBID p200
4. IBID
5. IBID
6. IBID p203
7. IBID p201
8. IBID p203
9. IBID pp204-208
10. IBID p208
11. IBID pp208-211
12. IBID
13. IBID
14. IBID
15. IBID

I still find myself thinking on Jeff Hawkins theory of Intelligence as he explains it in On Intelligence. He thinks that conciousness is simply the feeling of having a neo-cortex.

This begs the question, what is feeling it?

It is mind boggling to think that conciousness is simply an emergent factor of a complex brain, as it suggests that intelligence is inherent in the complexity of matter, in the very fabric of the universe.  But what is the process of its emergence, what is it in our brains that evolved to make this possible.

It is all to easy to see something we do not understand, something that we hold dear, and elevate its importance. Perhaps this is happening in our search for a material understanding of conciousness.

I tend to think that Jeff is going in the right direction, but to understand the source of conciousness we would need to dig a lot deeper.  I think it is likely to have evolved at some point when identifying a boundary between our own organisim and the world outside provided us with an evolutionary advantage. This is an ancient step, tied into the origins of the nervous system.

I often find myself pondering the strangeness of the combination of the second law of thermodynamics and evolution.

On the one hand, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) states that all energy (and thus matter) is slowly reducing to more randomised, simplified forms.

On the other, evolution, and not just biological, but since the dawn of the big bang, has been encouraging increasingly complex arrangments of energy and matter. From the emergence of atoms from the quantum soup in the first blink of an eylid, to the emergence of inteligence.

It seems as if there is an inate contradiction here. Which will win out? My guess is neither. Something different will eventualy emerge from this ancient catacysmic battle between two of the most powerful forces we know to exist. What that might be, I do not know.

I have just been thinking about Jeff Hawkins theory of Intelligence as he explains it in On Intelligence.

I think he misunderstands Zen understanding of consciousness as he describes it on pages 197-198.

A purpose of meditation is to release thoughts about the past and future, through acknowledgement of them, through witnessing them, without following them.

Fitting this into Hawkins theory, Zen meditation is the slowing down and attempted stopping of the memory/predictive process that the neocortex is maintaining. In so doing, conscious experience is felt in a raw present sense. This suggests that consciousness awareness, witnessing, is not a process of the neocortex.

If Hawkins is right then he is explaining how intelligence works, but not how consciousness works.

The more I study the EC framework and apply it, the more I think it is an inaccurate formulation of human values.

It is not that the framework does not work, it is just that I can’t help but feel there is a more accurate way of expressing it. In the same way that Relativity improved on Newtons understanding of gravity, I think there is a fuller, more accurate way of modelling human values.

I do not know what this is but I can point out the flaws and I have an idea for a way forward but do not yet know how to fully formulate it.

The main issue is essentially that the value systems do not represent people, they represent abstractions of aspects of people. A person has multiple value systems interacting and rarely expresses a strong nodal value system. Extending from this there are several of what I think of as mistakes in the interpretations that were made on the SD training that I attended. I don’t want to slate the courses, I learnt a great deal from them and as a result my understanding of FS, GT and HU has changed a great deal.

The first issue I have is with the concept of being open and closed. As described by Cowan and Todorovic on the course. People can be closed or open to the various value systems. For example, a manager can be centralised in DQ and not really understand ER, yet if they are open to ER they can work with people who are centralised at ER and manage them effectively in a DQ way even though they do not understand what it is they do. My problem with this definition is that it contains an inherent contradiction. DQ always sees ‘others’, i.e. those that do not belong to the system that they belong to, as outsiders, and thus the enemy.

One way of explaining this is to say that the manager can follow the absolute DQ law, which says that the ER people are good people who belong to a different ‘caste’. This might work if the ER people were higher up the hierarchy than the manager, but they are not, so I find it hard to believe that this would sit well.

I think there is another explanation: That the value systems do not really exist, they are artefacts of the data and the way in which our minds interpret it.

The method Cowan and Todorovic use to map a persons values is to ask them a series of questions along the lines of agreeing /disagreeing with statements that express particular value systems. They then use this as a starting point to further analyse the person through one on one conversation. The result of this is a series of graphs that show which value systems a person identifies and disagrees with. It also shows if they are closed (blind) to a value system. My problem with this method is that it flattens the complexity of someone’s values into an overly simplified top down view that I do not find useful. They, and Graves, say that this is just a jumping off point and that the experienced consultant learns how to interpret the nuances of a persons values while interacting with them. I agree with this, but it does not help in understanding the process that goes on. I want to make that process concious, to see what makes it work.

A stepping stone to a different way of interpreting the data would be to suggest we have in our minds multiple value systems and apply different systems to varying situations. Therefore a person can be centralised at DQ but have other aspects of their mind that can understand ER enough to be able to work with people who are centralised at it. In the example with the manager, he understands ER in terms of human relationship, but not in terms of business strategy and thus can work with ER people even though he can not define how they work in terms of business strategy. This is the kind of approach that Wilber takes when he discusses multiple streams. I think Cowan and Todorovic used this explanation as well, but memory does not serve me well. The problem I have with this is that the evidence for distinct multiple intelligences is very poor.

A further criticism I have of Cowan and Todorovics approach, is their explanation of values memes as being meta memes and that many people confuse a meme with the value system. For example, just because someone says they are passionate about protecting the environment, which is an FS meme, it does not mean that they have FS values. My criticism of this approach is ironic, because I really appreciated the way they explained it, however I think that the explanation may be overly simplified. Perhaps this person who is passionate about the environment is genuinely FS in their passion and the life process that led them to that understanding, but their knowledge of how to protect it comes from another value system. The system could be more complex than a simple hierarchy of memes to meta memes.

With the above examples I am trying to express how Graves value system consistently collapses into complex chaos whenever a microscope is placed over a particular area. For meaningful progress to be made in the way we examine the details in the interactions of human values I think we need a new approach, one that allows us to understand the microcosm of interactions. I suspect this understanding will grow out of bio-psychology.

I’ve recently been reading On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. It is an interesting theory on how the brains neural network functions. I think it provides the beginning of a more comprehensive explanation for how human values have evolved. He explains that our brains are essentially self reinforcing pattern recognition and prediction devices. Each time we see an image, experience a feeling, hear a noise, it triggers neurons that fired the last time we had a similar experience. This pattern of experience triggers other associated patterns, so for example, when we hear the name of our mother an image of her appears in our minds eye.
I suspect that the values that Graves uncovered are explained by the increasing complexity of neural connections in the aspects of our brain that deals with social interaction.

Our values develop through these self reinforcing feedback mechanisms as an emergent property. This would explain the multiple values operating simultaneously, without fixing them into specific intelligences.

If this is true, then there is not a specific area of the brain that deals with values, but an emergent complexity in all areas. Unfortunately this may be hard to investigate and empirically verify as our brain imaging technology may not be advanced enough to pick this up. On the other hand it may be. When someone is expressing a particular set of values, a particular set of brain areas may light up because they are more heavily interconnected than others. I also wonder if this information may be useful in the development of AI. If true, it shows, for example, that the development of self aware conciousness is intrinsicly linked (at least in humans) to our oscillation between I centeredness and we centeredness . I also wonder if it is possible to make a simplified computer model of values development via simple interacting AI lifeforms that are competing for resource. Does the I/We oscillation naturally arise?

For all its flaws the election in the USA has one great point, the whole world talks about it, or at least the English speaking world. I’m a Brit - well actually I am part of the Yorkshire republic, but that is another story - so I don’t get a say in the November the 4th election, however most of these problems apply to Britain as well. There is a lot of hope being placed in Obama, I’m hopeful he is elected and it seems near certain that he will be, but until he walks his talk and starts to effect real change I will remain a cautious supporter. Here are the top 10 things I hope Obama sorts out in the next four years. It’s a tough target, I’d like to make it tougher, but it’s unrealistic as it is, I’ll be impressed if he just gets a few of these sorted out. These are not necessarily exactly what he has stated he will do, but I think he is largely moving in this direction.

1. Political process.
   a) Voting fraud. Corruption is a bit like bacteria, provide an environment for it and soon enough it will be colonized. Regardless of whether or not the situation with electronic voting machines has already swung elections, there is a ripe environment for corruption and it needs cleaning up. All voting equipment should be made using open source hardware and software with transparent auditing to prevent tampering. A more sophisticated electronic solution could be developed that is secure and anonymous and verifiable, however this would be a bigger task. Please at least stop up the leaks. In Britain we have a similar problem with postal voting, but the situation is not as dire; still, there are so many ways we could use modern technology to shore up the security of the vote. (I’ve written about it myself, and again)
   b) Lobbying. We have our own problems with money corrupting and biasing government process, as the current Mandelson/Osborne situation demonstrates once again. However in the USA, it seems even worse with the government being run by commercial interests taking public office. Bush/Chaney and the oil industry having been a great example but the current obvious conflict of interest lies in Paulson working for the treasury bailing out the very company (Goldman Sachs) he used to work for. There needs to be a much stronger separation between business and state in a working democracy, as there is an obvious conflict of interest that encourages corruption.
2. Economy
   Lets face it, it’s shot to pieces. I can see two main reasons for this shoddy state of affairs. Firstly a lack of sophisticated (not expensive) regulation, that has allowed unrealistic speculation to bloom to gigantic bubble proportions - and then *!pop!*. However this is simply a problem within the current economic paradigm, under which there is a greater problem of how the free-market externalizes the waste and resource streams, causing them to drop off the radar and cause all sorts of major problems such as peak oil and global warming. The best solution I have found to this problem is to move to a steady state economy, where instead of incentivizing more and more resource use, we incentivize more sophisticated usefulness of a fixed resource base. The USA would benefit from this as they have no chance of competing with Asias in product economy - they have too many people who will do manual work for a lot less than the average American. A steady state economy would play to the strengths of the USA ( and the east would do well from it as well). The problem would be convincing the world of this. Who better than the USA, they would need to be a key player in re-writing the rule book for the WTO, IMF and international trade in general. (I think my hopes for Obama to do this are ambitious in the extreame, I put it here because I dearly hope he does.)
3. Media
   A free media is central to a working democracy. ‘Free’ means that the general public have a chance to say what they want about whatever they want to anyone who will listen. Media is power, if it is monopolised in too few hands it has no chance, especially if that monopolised media is presented as fair and balanced when it is clearly not. There are plenty of accusations around of the media twisting stories to gain maximum viewers, thereby gaining the highest ad revenue. The Internet has been the saving grace of current times but steps need to be taken to ensure the freedom of the traditional press. Essentially they need demonopolising, currently just six corporations own most of the media in the USA. In addition, the freedom of the interenet needs to be preserved, net nuetrality and freedom of speech must be preserved. Australia has recently installed a system not all that dissimilar from the great firewall of China, this needs to be stopped.
4. Climate crisis
   This item is really at the top of my list of priorities, if we can’t stop it, then it will cause utter chaos with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of refugees. The only reason it is number 4 is because without action on the first three items I don’t think we have a chance of tackling this one, moving to a steady state economy is a particularly important part of the solution to global warming as it would inherently place ecological limits on all pollutants. We need to do much more than this though. We need to incentivize new technology on every front possible and at the same time transform the way we live our lives so that we are no longer a burden to the eco system. This is doable, it is only the lack of will, both public and political that is preventing us from tackling this.
5. Energy
   Most of our energy is generated from non renewable resources - fossil fuels, not only is this adding to the climate crisis but many of these fossil fuels are nearing the peak of production - they are reaching the point of maximum production capacity, in some cases because the resource is severely depleted and in others because although there are abundant remaining resources they are energetically and economically too expensive to utilize. The renewable energy sector needs to be incentivized and invested in far more than it is now - in both research and deployment.
6. Education
   Education in the UK is in a terrible state, but from all I read on the internet, it is worse in the USA. The essential problem is that when you judge education achievement on simple tests rather than incentivizing education it incentivizes students passing the test and schools corrupting the process to do better in league tables. It has resulted in kids today being significantly less clever than those from before. A more sophisticated methodology of judging education success needs to be employed, but this only the start of the problem. The educational establishment tends to teach kids what to think rather than teach processes of thinking that lead to creative individuals. A bunch of robots is the last thing we need, especially in a steady state economy, we need to revitalise creative exploration, not just in the arts but in the sciences as well. Further more, critical to our society is development of people with values that can push society forwards. At present society is centralised on rational/reductionist values and these are precisely the values that ignores the waste and resource streams, we need to move forwards to create a society that has more pluralistic/relativistic values, education needs to be rebuilt around developing these values.
7. Health
   This problem is very different in the UK, but the solution is essentially the same. People can not help the lives they are born to, but they can help how they look after themselves. We need to incentivize people to look after themselves at the same time as providing health care for issues beyond peoples control. Emergencies should be free with no questions asked. For illness, a more complex approach, where self inflicted harm through over eating, smoking etc is dealt with differently - not just ignored as that does not solve the problem in society. There also needs to be clear and fair limits on the budget for treating illness.
   The relationship between pharmaceutical companies and health care need to be re-thought. There is a clear conflict of interest that invites corruption: It makes better financial sense to develop medicines that keep people coming back for more than medicines that cure everything quickly and cheaply. We need to develop a system that changes this and incentives not just the health of the patient but the quality of life. In addition, non pharmaceutical approaches need to be more thoroughly researched and where there is good evidence they need to be used. E.G. A paper has recently been published showing that the Alexander Technique is a very effective treatment for chronic back pain. The Alexander Technique has been around for over a hundred years, yet it is only now that this has been confirmed; this happens because there is no control over teaching the Alexander Technique, no patents or copyrights and therefore the market economy does not incentivise its investigation.
8. Technology
   I think that one of the greatest problems that the current economic paradigm has brought is still not really recognized. It is very centered on progress in the present and does not really care about problems it creates for the future. Global warming is one very good end result, but there could be many more subtle effects that we are just not noticing. Most of the systems that our society depends upon, from the eco system to the complexity of our own bodies are chaotic systems, and these systems are all interlinked. It is impossible to predict all the interactions in a chaotic system, it is like predicting if it will rain on my house one year from now; it is mathematically impossible. Yet we are developing new technologies at breakneck speed. I am not anti technology, I just see a problem that needs to be adjusted for. One solution would be an institution, with the necessary funding and power to take action, to constantly look for unexpected interactions in the technologies we develop through modeling and statistical correlation. I want us to take command of our genetic heritage, to create nano machines that can cure any illness, but we need to get there safely and the free market does not incentivize this, it is just too short sighted.
   In addition we desperately need a rethink of intellectual property laws. We need to think up a way of incentivising research and development without locking the insights of that development down. A steady state economy goes a long way towards this.
9. Military
   Just get out. Out of everywhere. Stop being the bully boy.
   I know; who are we to talk. We need to stop being your sycophant.
10. Global peace. Yeah, a tough order, but Obama is the man, lets give it a chance.

I am not an expert in economics, yet I don

(This is one of a series of posts exploring EC Theory / Spiral Dynamics. If you read this post alone you will get a very distorted view as to what spiral dynamics is as the post is written from one particular viewpoint. To read them in sequence, please start in the Spiral Dynamics introduction.)

It has come to me recently that in the past I did not consider the consequences of my actions. I would just see something that I wanted and take it. I am glad I have found the Party. I have been given my rightful station and a task to complete. I am to study the truth of the Spiral Dynamic

There are religious heathens on our border who believe in God being the ultimate source of wisdom and knowledge. Infidels. Do they not know that wise party member Claregreve knew the truth. Using the ancient way of consulting the Spiral Dynamic at midnight. Claregreve has the esteemed honour of being prime amongst us mere mortals before the absolute truth of all.

A few years have passed. Party be blessed. I still hold the esteemed position in the order of all things. The party has successfully eradicated the godly heathens to the west. We have conquered their land and brought it under the true rule of the Party. We tortured the animals who would not repent. They clearly have not evolved enough to see the one truth.

No sooner than we put down the godly heathens that a faction has broken away to the south claiming that there is a new way divined though the way of the Spiral Dynamic. They claim that our way is inferior. We will win, as defined by the true Spiral Dynamic. The faction is not far from our location. I have been commanded to write down the truth so that it can be saved should our position be temporarily overrun.

The Spiral Dynamic commands thus:-

There are two kinds of human. Those that follow the true way of the Spiral Dynamic and those who do not. Of the heathens there are four subtypes.

1. The savage. These are designated the colour beige. They wander the wilderness looking for food and shelter. They are rare even beyond the borders of the empire of Spiral Dynamic.

2. The tribespeople. These are designated the colour purple. They live in the far reaches of the known lands. On an expedition last year we encountered one such tribe, their heathen ways were very strange. I suggested that we put them to the stake, but my leader said that we should study and catalogue them and see if they could be saved by the Spiral Dynamic. He was a wise leader, his words were true, praise him. These people speak backwards. They see the past in front of them when clearly the future is what lies before us, as the great spiral ticks forwards each unit of time moves one more step into the future. Purple people are always found in small tribes together. The heathens believe that their dead ancestors talk to them in their dreams, but we that they are heathens and they will have no place in the glorious Spiral Dynamic.

3. The barbarian. These people are designated the colour red. They do as they please. They know no law and just take as they wish. Sometimes when the purples go hungry they head to our cities and are red when they arrive. This transformation is beyond my humble mind but the Spiral Dynamic will reveal its truth when I am worthy. Often they band together into small gangs, raiding the villages. They have no care for the future and no care for each other beyond what is useful to them at the time. The Spiral Dynamic states that one of them will take great risks to save one of his own gang, only to turn around and beat the saved man to a pulp for making himself vulnerable.

4. The lost peoples. These people are designated the colour blue. They claim to know the one true way, they claim that God or some other ideal provides the ultimate law of truth. They are wrong. The one and only true way is described by the law of Spiral Dynamic. People who live this way have laws and order, they form towns and cites and the people within them know their places, yet they are heathens and for all their similarities to the one true way they are idiots. Blue peoples, like the godly peoples to the west that we recently vanquished, form civilisations, they understand that the future must be considered in all the actions that we make, yet they do not consider that future in the true way.

I have been trying to place this new faction into the four heathen groups. I am having trouble doing so. The cities they have taken over are reportedly not burning to the ground as they would if red elements had taken over, yet they do not easily fit into blue because the reports say that they do not follow a fixed law. Instead they have people they call ‘lawyers’ who fight with words to decide who describes the truth the most accurately. I cannot envision how this could be so, surely they would just break down into anarchy and start killing each other, yet reportedly this is not what happens. My superior has told me not to worry about it, the Spiral Dynamic will show the true way, but I can not help but feel concerned. I am not trusting my superiors wisdom. This is not good, I will loose my way from the Spiral Dynamic if I keep questioning in this way.

The true way of the Spiral Dynamic is lost. The faction has over ridden us. My supervisor jumped from his window this morning. He said he would rather die in truth than have to live under false rulers. I am hesitating from taking such action myself. It seems that when I think about it, there may be some truth in what the faction has to say. The claim that they are working under a new paradigm, one that they call orange, they also claim that what I saw as the true way is in reality just another expression of blue.

This makes some sense to me now. I need to think about it for myself some more before I come to a conclusion.

(This is one of a series of posts exploring EC Theory / Spiral Dynamics. If you read this post alone you will get a very distorted view as to what spiral dynamics is as the post is written from one particular viewpoint. To read them in sequence, please start in the Spiral Dynamics introduction.)

The way of spirits is failing me. The tribe has grown, many strangers have moved amongst us, one of them took me without the blessing of the ancestors and I am lost now.

The gods have given me the desire to take what I wish from the ancient lore of Spiral Dynamics. My brother told me that I was walking the path of the snake, fool. He is stupid and does not do as I tell him. The others are attacking the tribe this morning. I pick up the boiling pot and kill a man as he is aiming a spear at my brother. My brother is grateful and thanks the spirits. I told him he was a fool and that it was me he should be grateful too, he told me not to disrespect the ancestors and I clobbered him too. I did not mean to kill him, he was useful to me, but never mind.

The elder said that the snake had possessed me and I was dead to them. I am leaving the tribe. I am travelling to city to take what is mine.

As I travel I seduce a man and take his food and, then slit his throat, I will not let a foul beast such as that posses me.

There are many people here in the city. Many men to seduce, the good ones I let take me - for a good price, the bad - I just take their money. I have some women under me who do as I say and I am to be sure they are fed. There are many riches to be had in the city, I just have to take them. A man came today and became violent with one of my woman, I had my pimp take him and dump him in the river, no one does that to me. My woman was grateful to me.

My pimp let me seduce him, the fool. I am boss now and he knows his place. One of my woman tried to drown me when I was having a bath. How could my own do that to me? Never mind she is dead now. I have looked up the lore of Spiral Dynamics and created a few rules. No killing the boss is rule number one.

I must pay taxes to the church for God. It is a good racket that they have there. Everyone obeying the master, even when he is not looking. I do not like paying, but I am told I must or they will bring the law down on me. I am not afraid.

They came to get me this morning. They have locked me in a cell and told me that I am charged with article 127. I do not know what I did.

I have been in the cell for a long time now. I felt confused for a long time, but feel better now. There are three others in my cell. We fought at first but the warden would punish us whenever we did and we could not get back at him so we are getting on now. It is nice in a way, not to have to be the boss any more. I do not like being in here, always having to follow the rules, but I am given food every day that I do not have to kill for.

I have found God. The priest has shown me the holy way of Spiral Dynamics and I obey its every law now, we will all be better for it. I am no longer in prison, God be praised, I can serve my true master now with my devoted brothers and sisters.

(This is one of a series of posts exploring EC Theory / Spiral Dynamics. If you read this post alone you will get a very distorted view as to what spiral dynamics is as the post is written from one particular viewpoint. To read them in sequence, please start in the Spiral Dynamics introduction.)

Spiral Dynamics is a gift from the ancestors through which the clouds of the future become a little clearer behind us. The ancestors have given us this knowledge that we might best know how to live.

The ancestors bring love to our hearts that we may share with one another the spirits of desire as they sing though us whilst the hollow tree beats out its heartbeat upon our hands.

The ancestors show us that when the goddess of the loins wishes to bring more among us than the deities of the forest are willing to share with us, then the spirit of the monkey may come amongst us and we will fight with our blood and entrails and feast upon those who walk the path of spirit.

When the snake speaks through a young man who is possessed to walk alone, then he is no longer of our family and he dies even though his ghost still walks and breathes in the forest.

The man snakes attack us, they do not fight in the way the ancestors proscribe. They kill all, and only to eat the fish that the spirits had deigned to us, then move on, leaving the spirits unrecognised.

I am alone now. The man snakes confuse me. But I feel I am becoming one of them.