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energies · I / XX · Sphere A · Values & Stages · All 20

What if what you take for your values is a developmental stage?

Mendeleev ordered atoms by weight and found a pattern. Clare Graves ordered values by complexity and found eight. Not types, stages.

Do you know the moment when you first understood that the other is not simply wrong, but is seeing rightly from another stage? Exactly there the spiral begins.

I · Structure · Measurable

Spiral Dynamics began as a longitudinal study (Clare Graves, 1960s · 1,000+ adults over 20 years). Beck & Cowan systematised it in 1996. Longitudinal data show reproducible stages, not types.

II · Flow · Tradition

Precursors in Jean Gebser's Ever-Present Origin, in the Vedic Yugas, in Hegel's dialectic of stages. The idea that consciousness unfolds in stages is 5,000 years old.

III · Breadth · Synthesis

Ken Wilber's AQAL integrates Spiral Dynamics with Kohlberg's stages of moral development and Loevinger's ego development. Imaging correlates of stage transitions remain rare. The model is closer to lived experience and industry use than to laboratory validation.

Plate · I What you take for your values is a stage, and higher only means more complex, not better.

Tool · Values spiral

The eight stages

↑ simple below · complex above

Choose a stage: click, or arrow keys.

Higher means more complex, not better. You move through several stages at once, situationally. Not a staircase, a spiral: you return to earlier ones, but one turn higher.

Spiral Dynamics · Graves, Beck & Cowan · educational, not a typology

Spiral · values-system spiral

What is a vMeme?

vMeme (short for Value Meme) is Clare Graves’ term for a values-system stage. Each vMeme is a coherent logic by which a person (or a culture) sorts the world: what matters, what is dangerous, what is true.

The eight classic stages carry colour codes (Beige · Purple · Red · Blue · Orange · Green · Yellow · Turquoise). They are not a character type but a preferred position. You shift situationally between 1–2 neighbouring stages.

Important: higher doesn’t mean better, but more complexly adapted to life conditions. Each vMeme stays active and is integrated into the stages above it (Wilber: transcend and include).

  1. 1 · Higher doesn't mean better. You'll still check where up is.