Why Is Any Of This Important ... Values|Part 3:

Morning all ... I actually wrote a whole post yesterday that I lost :-( Anyway that post was off-topic from this thread ... so I took it as a message from the Cosmos. Here I am back on track (with this thread) today ... So Welcome Back! I can sum up where I left off last with two line from my previoius posting:

If we truly want to know ourselves, we must first know the group/culture/society within which we have been formed.

Virtually all value sets, regardless of what they are or who holds them, are built on the premise of very specific and particular illusions accepted and held as being real as defined by some particular group/culture/society.

I had those separated with the following paragraph in the original:

The values we hold are often not our own, but rather those we have been told are how the world simply “is” … fait accompli. For all intents and purposes the ‘reality’ we are presented with becomes our reality … THE REALITY! This illusion … maya … becomes real when we accept it as real, regardless of the evidence perception overrides any extant experience. (Formatting added)

Well I covered that well enough to set the frame in that last posting (if you missed it, you can read it here: Why Is Any Of This Important ... Values|Part 2). Now I want to jump forward one step in the Graves Model of value sets ... to the Graves Level Five. Fives are organized to seek, find and respond to opportunities in the environment. They are sometimes referred to as entrepreneurial types because they tend to specifically notice for economic opportunities ... openings for them to acheive and succeed personally. Often for Fives my observation has been that this will be associated as much with status as with actual monetary or material gain. In fact I'd said that the idea of economic opportunities actually fits this type particularly well when you apply the equation, economic = control of resources. I'd personally say that as often as not Fives are driven by a fear of shortage ... even to the extent of poverty as much as by anything else that could motivate them to action. This includes BTW the fear of being status poor - not getting the recognition they want and often believe they deserve. Fives are often driven to garner acclaim and fame for themselves I think of some famous Fives as folks like Donald Trump (who I mentioned before) and Martha Stewart. I find it interesting that this trait, being driven to acclaim and fame also haunts many Sixes in the Graves Model who have come through and retain the value set of Five, while acting out of a Six position ... think: Oprah Winfrey. Again, my observation has been that what drives this folks as much as their desire for economic success has to do with a fear of being (or becoming) status poor. Now I've clearly stated that the Graves Model as I understand it wasn't designed as a personality typing instrument and only loosely applies to individuals at best. In any given moment ... and possibly in a particular context ... someone may be acting out of what appears to be a fixed value set. However, Dr. Graves stated in his work that a person always has access to every value set prior to the most evolved one they have incorporated in themselves.

People are NOT LIMITED to a single value set that contains them, they have the option to move fluidly through many value sets to the extent their personal flexibility allows them to do so.

I like the way Ken Wilbur refers to this when speaking about the Graves Model. More or less he says that people have a zone of comfort where they most naturally reside in regard to the value set they operate from most easily (at any particular point in their life). I'd call this their value set strange attractor ... like a dip in their values landscape which draws and pulls them to it more than other features in their values landscape ... like kind of gravity sink of sorts. So then back to the core of our original stated mission in this thread:

If the Graves Model doesn't really apply to individuals as a typology system then what makes it valuable or important?

Well for me first and foremost the Graves Model does represent a societal typology. What makes this so important has to do with how the societal value set influences the members of the society where that value set holds sway. In most of the modern, highly industrialized world (e.g.: the G7-9 countries) the Graves Five position has become the dominant value set. The domination of the Graves Five value set in these countries has produced societies which hold out economic success as the greatest achievement to be sought after, and the collolary of those with the most fame as being the role models of what it has become to be successful. One of the challenges with this has been that these same countries/societies are also the most able to export their values and impose them upon others who might and do hold alternative values. Of course one of Clare Graves other comments was that someone or a society at a lower level in the evolutionary values model will not be able to perceive the values models that are evolved beyond their own as more evolved. He said it will only be possible to perceive values that are at or below the level to which you have evolved yourself (as an individual or a society). Therefore, Fours will perceive Fives as successful Threes and determine they need to be stopped as the early civilizations stopped the barbarian attacks upon their cities and societies. When we begin to get how our own values determine first our abiility to respond by shaping our perceptions as they do we begin to attain the possibility of other choices in our responses. However, we are often most blind to that which we hold as most obviously REAL ... the way the worlld "IS" for us. These become our ubitquitous truths ... all but invisible to us. Yet by looking outside and beyond ourselves we may glimpse the reality that contains us ... and in so doing the mirror of ourselves ... maybe taking the first step in setting ourselves free ... TO BE! ... as the good Dr. Graves was so fond of saying. Best regards, Joseph Riggio, Social Ontologist Princeton, NJ