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Thinking in Numbers

Posted by Joseph Riggio on Monday, July 31, 2006

Considering the work of Dr. Clare Graves and the semantics of his “values set” positions ...

Mornin’ All,

I just sent a letter off to a colleague about the work of Dr. Clare Graves and his, “Emergent, Cyclical, Levels of Existence”. This is just one of the names Dr. Graves used to express what he thought his model could/should be called. A great quote from a website devoted to the work of Dr. Clare Graves from him about what his attention was on in his work is:

“The psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems change.”

- Dr. Clare Graves

That’s quite a mouthful and I think much of how Dr. Graves wrote himself follows the trend to “psycho-scientific speak” which was very much the mode of the day ... take a look at B.F. Skinner’s work for more examples if you like. Yet I also think his message has profound implications and represents the brilliance of his work as well.

Let’s make it simple, eh? Over his professional career Dr. Graves a professor of social science (a social psychologist specifically) at Union College in New York developed his model of evolutionary value sets that show up in societies around the world. He posed that as cultures evolved, becoming more capable of addressing what they found confronting them in their world as they knew it to be - especially in regard to the people occupying the world around them - they built values that served them in dealing with the context they operated within. In each place at different times, different values would serve the people living there. As they used these values to progress themselves and the world as they knew it to be, while old issues dropped away, new issue arose. As this evolution of the context occurred they required different values to adjust to what was going on.

For example, at some point in every culture we could speculate that getting enough food was a primary priority of the individual, group, tribe, society, nation ... and then at some point food in that culture became abundant as the technology of the people adapted (think “agricultural revolution” or “genetically modified organisms"). Then the issue of the abundance of food became a background issue - i.e.: it had been addressed and for all intents and purposes resolved. For most people in the U.S. there is no consideration about how food happens beyond whether it is “organic” or “free-range” maybe. Food just “is” for most folks living in the U.S. - the money to buy food might still be an issue for some, but not the relative abundance of it. Dr. Graves speculated that when this kind of shift occurred there was a corresponding shift in the values of the people in that context.

So continuing our example, we could say that the issue more currently confronting us here in the U.S. is making sure more people are well-fed than how to make food happen. It’s more a matter of distribution than farming. This requires a different values orientation according to Dr. Graves. I agree.

What I was writing about are the most common “numbers” of values sets we are confronted with in the U.S. according to Dr. Graves’ system. What he described as level “Five” and “Six.” I would argue, although probably unnecessarily with folks who know the system, that we’ll also engage with “Threes,” “Fours” and even some “Sevens” in the U.S. population, but in a bell-curve layout the “Fives” and “Sixes” would rise to the top of the curve without a doubt.

So what are Graves’ Fives and Sixes all about? And, why does it matter to us today?

(To be continued tomorrow ...)

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Joseph,

Thanks for this series.  I really appreciate you making this material more accessible.  I found Prometheus Rising quite accessible to me.  Ken Wilbur, I must admit at this point is a bit much for me. While I grasp the overview, I definitely want to be better versed on the details in a context that I can digest.  This serves me.

Mark Schwimmer

MarkS on Monday, July 31, 2006

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