Blaming our Opponents While Problems Persist

Current Events in the Spiral

The Proposition

There’s a saying that liberals attribute the cause of suffering to systems and institutions, while conservatives attribute the cause to internal defects.

In researching this post, I found the following versions of this notion from commentators on both the left and right:

• George Lakoff (Moral Politics, 1996) frames it as competing family models — the “Nurturant Parent” left, which sees harm coming from unjust social conditions, and the “Strict Father” right, which sees harm as the consequence of personal failure or weak character.

• Thomas Sowell (A Conflict of Visions, 1987) describes a distinction between the problems that are solvable through redesigning institutions and the problems that are rooted in human nature and individual choice.

• Arthur C. Brooks has reported a survey-data version of the idea in print: liberals more often see people as victims of circumstance; conservatives more often hold that hard work overcomes disadvantage.

I’ve usually taken this maxim at face value without evaluating it carefully. It turns out that developmental thinking reveals a richer perspective. Instead of looking at personal vs institutional responsibility as a left or right issue, let’s see how it evolves through the developmental Spiral¹.

Stage Analysis

Blue’s moral universe is intense after having emerged from the chaos of the Red rebellious stage. We learn from our elders (external) that we sinned. We beg forgiveness. Blue is earnest about taking individual moral accountability, often more seriously than any stage. After Red’s instability, this is growth; it is Blue functioning as designed. At this stage, the rules come from outside, but we become very aware of our responsibility for our actions (internal).

Orange picks up the agency theme in a different way. You can rise, build, and make your name. Bootstrapping, achievement, meritocracy, the values that you take on as you begin to move past Blue into pure self-agency. The individual has the locus of control. And if you fail, you know where the responsibility lies (internal, as long as you stay in Orange).

Now Green comes along and sees a bigger picture. There are big systems in which we are immersed. There are patterns of oppression, or sometimes just indifference, that no individual chose and no individual can fix alone. Generational poverty isn’t a string of bad personal decisions. The lauded meritocracy of Orange is now seen as often corrupt. “Just work harder” gets no traction here. Green sees these sins for the first time and pronounces them systemic (external).

Despite its new and revealing insight, Green often over-corrects Blue’s moralism and Orange’s self-confidence by stripping the individual of agency and reducing their plight to a outcome of their identity. In this worldview, everyone’s situation can be explained by victimhood or privilege: one becomes a victim or beneficiary of systems, and personal responsibility plays a bit part. That’s not Green’s gift to the Spiral, that’s Green’s pathology. Thin Green, as I’ve been calling it.

In sum, I’m saying that Blue and Orange’s emphasis on agency without considering the impact of social systems is not sufficient. I’m saying Thin Green’s emphasis on systems without incorporating personal responsibility and agency is not sufficient. Both are partial and incomplete. Both are missing what the other has.

Yellow Shows Up

The consequential developmental move is when Yellow emerges. Yellow doesn’t pick a side. Yellow says: yes, systems shape outcomes profoundly, AND individuals are agents who can sometimes transcend circumstance. Different situations call us to focus on different priorities. A child born into chaos needs systemic intervention. A grown adult blaming everything on systems or institutions needs introspection and perseverance. Yellow does not propose one line of response to different circumstances.

So when you ask whether maturity should produce more self-responsibility — yes, but not by abandoning systems-awareness. By integrating it. The teacher, mentor, manager, and leader know both the system and personal agency must work for us to flourish. They don’t use the system as an excuse, but they don’t pretend the system isn’t there.

Becoming familiar with developmental thinking has revealed that finding a culprit and blaming it, the system or the individual, brings us no closer to solutions. One without the other is empty calories. Some of us know the truth of this: Each political coalition, instead of ending up specializing in part of the picture, would do well to put the picture back together.

1. Five core Spiral Dynamics stages:

RED - Power & Dominance (Egocentric)

BLUE - Order & Authority (Purposeful)

ORANGE - Achievement & Success (Strategic)

GREEN - Community & Harmony (Relativistic)

YELLOW - Integration & Flexibility (Systemic)