2.8 Blue
"TruthForce," Ethnocentric, Believer
(NOTE: If you are new to my site, it helps to read the posts in order. They are listed under the Contents tab here.)
Before we describe the Blue level, I want to introduce the idea of “value neutrality.” As you noticed in our discussion of the Red level, many of the values driving behavior at that level push our buttons.
For sure! At the same time, I’m not sure I want to adopt a neutral or approving stance towards values I disagree with.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and it occurred to me that the way anthropologists think about people in other cultures might provide an excellent model for how to approach this. Let’s try this out. Here are some qualities of the mindset an anthropologist is trained to bring to their work1:
An open and curious mindset that
views the other neutrally
learns the historical and environmental context that shapes them
avoids better or worse judgements
understands others free of our own perspective
understands their internal logic; experiments with their logic
immerses themselves in the daily lives of others to gain a holistic understanding
Treating the values of the different levels like a scientist for our discussions is what I’m suggesting now.
OK, OK, I get it.
Maybe. My point about value neutrality is that we are aggravated about things about each of the levels and in order to deeply understand them, a certain amount of suspending of our values will be necessary.
OK, let’s start with a list of descriptive phrases for Blue like we did for Red.
Purposeful, intentional, goal-directed
Authoritarian leadership; we can vote for leaders, but then they control things and we follow
Leaders are the source of our truth; there is One right way to get to heaven
Obey the rules
Respect your parents, elders
I’ve found (or returned) to my people
Cautious and careful
Law abiding
The just eventually earn the rewards; patience is being developed, impulsiveness is no longer acceptable
Blues are orderly and happy in this place of peace of mind; they have wise elders who answer the hard questions; they have hope, there is meaning and purpose in life.
Those sound really strict. For Red, I said they sound extreme. This is an interesting contrast.
I agree. Remember each level, in part, is solving problems created by living with the previous level’s worldview and set of behaviors. So the impulsive behavior of Red is often resolved by the calming, orderly, and controlled Blue environments of family, church, and job. Reds declare their independence by setting their own rules. Blues make a “course correction” to continue growing up by joining or re-joining groups to identify with and they adopt the group’s values.
You know, some people never really go through a rebellious stage, so I’m not sure this theory really fits all of us.
My rebellion happened within limits that many would not recognize as rebellious, but I guarantee you that my parents saw me in terms of deeply troubling behavior that angered, worried, and embarrassed them. So this stage can be defined in relative terms. They were certainly relieved when my Blue stage behavior started showing up about the time I graduated from college.
Why do you think you began to change then?
For me, this transition happened about the same time a couple major things changed for me. These changes in external Life Conditions seem directly related to my new stage of more calm and conventional behavior. The winding down of the Vietnam War meant I was no longer vulnerable to the draft; that issue disappeared from my personal concerns. I supported the end of the war, but my exposure to risk associated with it disappeared.
That was the first thing. The second thing was my student loans coming due. After a year of looking for a job “suitable for a college graduate,” I became a bus driver for the local transit agency.
Blue seems like a stage that could become pretty comfortable if you find a good circumstance that is steady and dependable.
We called the job “golden handcuffs,” modest though it was. At that time it was a middle class job and the working conditions slowly improved with seniority. But I remember developing a vague, deep fear that I was headed towards Thoreau’s life “of quiet desperation.” I was in danger of getting used to a comfortable life and not exposing myself to new Life Conditions that would lead to further growth.
Being in homogeneous communities, working conditions, churches, and other groups restricts our exposure to new ideas and thus our likelihood to develop. Somehow, even though I’m risk-averse, I sensed that and I could not go down that path. I followed my interests, had the moxie to go back to school for additional training, and had several interesting stops in a varied career. This all exposed me to Life Conditions that led me, sometimes kicking and screaming, to growth.
Blue seems, as a group, to be people who would be great to work with, right?
Well, there are two or more sides to this, aren’t there? People in the Red stage need both motivation (accountability) and direction (instruction), and that requires a lot of attention and time. Blue is a new stage, after all, they are more developed. A supervisor or co-worker generally does not need to motivate Blues as much because they accept that there is a right way to do things, they are willing to follow the rules, and they want to fit in. But, at least initially, they still need a lot of direction, so time is spent training or teaching.
Because Blues are cautious and look to their leaders to solve problems and make decisions, they do show a lot of initiative. When asked for their ideas for solving problems, they often wait to see what the leader thinks before jumping in. Because they rely on the leader to do the thinking and planning, they have not developed strong skills of initiating, curiosity, experimenting, or researching ideas.
I had an employee who I asked to research a proposal she thought would be helpful to our team. A week later, she came to me with a 2-inch stack of articles about the idea, but no summary or recommendation. She said there were lots of good ideas in the articles! Because she was the oldest of her peers, I mistakenly thought she had a more developed idea of what a proposal would look like. As we talked more, I realized she was a good technician, but would not be able to formulate a framework of roles, responsibilities, resources, procedures, training, and so on. Darn!
In the non-job area, Blues are good, reliable volunteers and happy supporters. That is probably why we find so many of them involved in churches. That membership can lead to awkward situations difficult for them to navigate.
How so?
For example if their workplace is more liberal than their church, this can cause friction and moral dilemmas. Even though they are inclined to be loyal to any organization they belong to, they can be stumped when the values of different organizations conflict.
I have seen this sometimes when an otherwise solid employee gets worked up about some issue and finds themselves in the middle of a controversy I never would have guessed they cared about.
I’m curious how big these various Levels are in the US? It seems relevant to politics, but also the economy, our morals, lots of things.
Large-scale social science research, as your question would require, would be expensive. I wish there were good data, because the lack of data undermines the credibility of development theories, especially the predictions and interpretations we make based on them. Here’s a WAG (wild-assed guess) to chew on:
Red and Blue: Traditional and pre-Traditional, 55%, which goes to partially explain why the US still votes so conservatively in many elections.
Orange and Green, 40%
Yellow, 5%
I want to say more about this in the future. For now, I will just say that Integral Thinkers pay more attention to forests than trees. I’m sure most of us would like to see more basic research on the foundational development theories on which Integral is based, but these theories are suffering from the same shortage of verification studies that many other sciences are experiencing.
https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/ten-ways-to-think-like-an-anthropologist