Searching for a Healthy Green V-Meme Politics

[R.Michael Fisher]

Dr. R. Michael (The Fox) Fisher, critical integral theorist, fearologist, educator

In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cTaMtO-45c  RM Fisher is searching for possibilities for a healthy Green v-Meme [1] politics and political leader(s)--no matter what country. Of course, in this video he is focusing on his well-researched topic [2], and now adds his expertise re: Marianne Williamson, who at the time was running for leader of the Democratic Party and for President of the USA. For more on Fisher's Post-Nov. 5th era philosophy and visioning for politics etc., go to his recent video talk. 

What is a healthy Green v-Meme politics is a healthy postmodern politics, by any other name [3]? What is an unhealthy Green politics? [4] What kind of political regimes and leaders and activism are required as the postmodern era opens up and the modern era is starting to fall apart and/or be less relevant to handle the postmodern problems and crises we face as a species. Again, in the North America case, at least, and especially in the USA as a case study, Marianne Williamson stands out for me as the perfect political leader--although, hardly perfectly Green v-Meme or postmodern. In fact, I find she fails on a lot of postmodern aspects, and is anti-postmodern too. But for argument sake, I would say she is at least 50% healthy Green (using Spiral Dynamics [5] and Integral Theory classifications). There are many other aspects and other authors [21 as a matter of fact] I could bring to the table, in order to argue for what a healthy Green meme politician/leader might look like in the near and distant future. I'll leave that for another blog at some point. I just wanted to start this thread on this topic. 

There was a comment on my comment about MW recently: 

@FosterIntegralLiving

"Michael, good news -- Williamson will be coming on soon right here on Integral Stage. I agree she would have been a great healthy green candidate." (Dec. 19/24)

 

(excerpt from Integral Stage, Eps. 3, with Layman Pascal & Ken Wilber, Dec. 2024). 

 

The motivation for this search (as a hypothesis, developmentally is) for a (r)evolution of politics and political leadership, towards fearlessness and liberation. This quest requires that Green meme is well established in a leader and a certain significant % of the population for results--but for Green to get established with a healthy enough veracity, there will need to be other dynamics examined, and one of them is the ways in with Yellow v-meme (Teal (Integral-early), in Wilber's schema) can assist Green in this task. The first 6 v-memes (Beige to Green) are called "First-Tier" organizational structures and after that are the two "Second-Tier" structures and a "Third-Tier" also exists but is not in the figure below. As one moves from tier to tier developmentally, with increasing complexity and capacity, there is a paradigm shift from Fear to Fearlessness overall. Although, one has to keep in mind that each of these stages/levels of the spectrum there is a healthy and unhealthy (pathological) side usually in operation in actual individuals and/or groups and organizations. It is a dynamic complex and complicated phenomenon of v-meme expressions with consciousness expressions. The 'map' is not the 'territory' but I find this kind of mapping and the research behind it very compelling as to truth going on rather universally. So, this can be useful in political analysis and interventions, for example. 

 

See Figure below showing the approx. crude-generalized meaning of the colors of the Spiral of Consciousness development as known at this time: 

 

  

 

End Note

1. v-Meme = value-meme, according to Spiral Dynamics. A "meme" is analogous to a "gene" but the former is applicable to the Cultural Sphere, the latter to the Natural Sphere. See the Internet for more information on meme theory. 

2. I have many articles and youtube videos published on Marianne Williamson as well as a book in 2020--see the Internet. 

3. There are many, not always consistently harmonious, definitions and meanings of "postmodern" (or "post-modern") amongst theorists and historians. You can do your own initial research on that if you wish. But, I have always thought Wilber's (1998) definition of the "truth in postmodernism" very helpful because he identified nicely the 3 core assumptions that operate (motivate) postmodernism: a) constructivism, b) contextualism, c) integral-aperspectival[ism]" (pp. 120-1). Wilber, K. (1998). The marriage of sense and soul: Integrating science and religion. Random House. 

4. To pursue any transformational political agenda as I am doing here, one has to ask how are we going to analyze and discern healthy from unhealthy? What tools assist this? And, suddenly the conversation and project of the search becomes complicated, complex and is an ever-searching of critical inquiry. Wilber and others have identified more so the pathological side of Green v-meme (i.e., postmodernism, pluralism, equalitarianism, Boomeritis, flatland ontologies)--and its ideologies, hidden or not so hidden. That's would require a longer analysis than a short blog like this. I am interested in applying to this critique of the unheatlhy Green, a further and unique fearanalysis (2nd-tier perspective, or critical integral view) which no one else seems to be doing. 

5. Spiral Dynamics (integral) Technology, originated with the psychologist-futurist Clare Graves some 50 years ago, and then was advanced by Don Beck and Cowan and then Ken Wilber, etc. I have trained in SDi Techology at Levels I-II, taught by Don Beck in 2002-03.