Exploring Ego, Power-over, Impulse Control, Social Control - Through the Spiral
Here are some
explorations and ruminations about the way these change up the Spiral
in First Tier. It's all speculation. Use my thoughts to catalyze your own thoughts on these matters,
for whatever benefit that could bring to your life!
BEIGE
Alpha male in BEIGE does not get ego gratification from his power-over. He is not doing it to cover psychological insecurity. He is not doing it for the joy of lording it over others. He is not actually CHOOSING to do it. He simply got to his position by being who he is, which is stronger and smarter in physical fights than others.
The alpha female gets her position by being the chosen mate of the alpha male. She too is just being who she is. Both are simply living and expressing the impulses that arise in their consciousness, much like human infants.
Others in the tribe seem to internally inhibit some of their impulses for fear of getting smacked, damaged, hurt, or exiled/shunned. But neither those actions toward them, nor their fear, are in any way psychological or personalized. There is not that much consciousness of individual identity.
PURPLE
In PURPLE, social control is via tradition and fear. The fear is not of actions of others, it is of the actions of the spirits that are believed to cause all human experiences, even causing all that happens. Priests and shamans remind people, but do not exert personal power and control and don't get personal gratification from their influence. There is again not that much individual identity. Each is acting according to the role in the tribe that life put them in to.
There are still alpha males and alpha females, and fringe bachelors, etc., but these are backgrounded to the magical, religious, ways of relating and interacting based on "larger forces" that everyone regards as "real" or "the way it is" (but without the conscious thought implied by using those words.)
Impulse
control, to whatever extent it is necessary (because "indoctrination"
of children is quite thorough; rarely does an individual consciousness
rise out of the cultural mindset,) comes from fear of bringing harm to
the group.
RED
In Red, social control is now a mixture of sheer physical force to cause bodily harm, and the power of the religious clergy, the interpreters and messengers of the will of the gods or God, and there does appear to be some personal gratification from the exertion of such power-over, for both the physical-force lords, tyrants, dictators, royalty, aristocracy, etc., and the religious "leaders."
To whatever extent there is a personal psychology that includes long-standing insecurity, low self-esteem, desire for revenge on imposed force early in life, etc., then gaining social power-over (on any scale) can be used to compensate. Scheming to gain power and status becomes possible, probably for the first time in the spiral, in the maturation of the worldviews.
Power-over
is exerted by the religious authorities partly because they have the
power to physically harm people and partly because they can use the
religion to intimidate people and get the people to control themselves.
Impulse control comes from the mixture of fear of physical harm and the fear of bringing harm to the group.
In
Red, the physical power-over of BEIGE is combined with the more
consciousness-based power-over related to religious beliefs, so
societies have pharoahs and other types of monarchs who wield their
physical power-over "authorized" by the gods. Their commands, their
dictates, carry both levels of power-over.
BLUE
In BLUE, social control shifts from predominantly the method of physical force backed up by consciousness-related control via religious beliefs, to predominantly consciousness-related control. Relgiious beliefs tend to get encoded in "the law" which operates by threat or action of physical harm (fines, jail, death) but basically people take on the beliefs and control their own impulses from inside, without direct fear of force.
In other words, society has shifted from an external kind of impulse-controlling to a more internal thought-policing. People regard their own thoughts as good or bad, and repress or suppress thoughts as well as controlling their action impulses.
This results in less physical violence, a more "peaceful" society from the external point of view, but the internal violence goes way up.
And the previous methods of social control, of impulse control, are still present and operating, just more in the background.
The possibilities for exerting power-over are greatly expanded, as there can be personal gratification from one's power to enforce the law, in the criminal justice system, thus compensating for insecurity, or seeking revenge, in ways described above for RED.
ORANGE
In ORANGE the possibilities and opportunities available in the course of ordinary living to anyone for exerting power-over for personal gratification are again greatly expanded.
Those opportunities result from the further shift away from power-over based on strength used for physical harm, away from inherited power-over such as monarchs and aristocracy, and away from power-over based on internal thought-policing based on beliefs adopted from ideological, religious, or other consciousness-based authorities.
Impulse control continues to shift toward internal policing, as many people gain more actual personal control over their survival and well-being, and learn to be aware of the increasingly subtle threats to those: one's boss can fire one, but other jobs are probably available, so the threat is definite, but not definitive.
Power-over is thus exerted in myriad ways, and the ability to use that for personal psychological reasons, becomes almost universally available and universally used. Almost everyone has power-over someone, and is subject to power-over by many.
The psychological strain on individuals, of keeping track of and seeking to mitigate all the potential threats, and of dealing with whatever inner conflicts arise from exerting power-over, probably underlies a great deal of the epidemic "stress" of "modern life."
GREEN
All the above is still going on. There seems to be a sort of reversion to PURPLE in this sense: being included in a group is super-important, so internal impulse control amps up a notch further than even in ORANGE.
Unlike in PURPLE, however, the fear here is of being extruded from the good emotions and good relationships
of one's groups, from the "belonging" experienced by the "self" that has matured through all the previous stages.
Unlike the undifferentiated self-other in PURPLE, self and other are excruciatingly differentiated now, but also excruciatingly undifferentiated in that personal identity is very much dependent on one's identity in one or more groups.
Thus individual internally-generated impulse-control is far more complex, far more related to emotional/personal relationships than ever before--and still involves everything matured through up to this point. More cause for stress!
Power-over includes all the previous and even more possibilities, by manipulating people emotionally subconsciously. For example, advertising manipulation has many more avenues by which to grab people.
The desire to "fit" in, combined with being subject to economic power-over that operates ever more universally and subtly, opens the door for many of the tyrannies and dictatorships operating in various countries that are basically accepted by the people themselves, "voluntarily."
SO WHAT?
I wish I could conclude with words of wisdom based on new insights from the above that would help in maintaining both one's social cohesion and one's personal sovereignty.
Those haven't emerged yet. Surely they would emerge by carrying this inquiry along the maturational spiral, to see "what's next," from YELLOW and later.
Stay tuned here, AND add your own wisdom or speculations, via a comment!!
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