"Broken Green"
A sympathetic view.
Ken Wilber has a real issue with Green—specifically, “broken Green.” (Other common terms for this cohort include post-conventional, postmodern, and progressive). These are people who, in many ways, embody Green-stage values like inclusivity, sensitivity, and egalitarianism but still carry strong streaks of earlier-stage Red (egocentric) and Blue (traditional, ethnocentric) tendencies: self-righteousness, impulsivity, blaming and shaming, and rigid group conformity. These traits, mostly pre-conventional, undermine Green’s potential.
A healthy transition into Green involves spending meaningful time at Orange (conventional) and developing skills like organizing, collaborating, analyzing, and problem-solving. But when people skip or under-develop these, they bring undealt-with baggage into Green, creating the “broken” version Wilber critiques. His frustration with this often comes out in sarcasm, which—speaking from experience—makes people defensive.
I get why he takes this problem so seriously. In Trump and a Post-Truth World, Wilber points out that Green is the stepping stone to Tier 2 Integral stages—where, ideally, everything starts to harmonize. (Just kidding. Each stage solves earlier problems, but new ones inevitably appear.) I think his urgency comes from feeling that we’re so close to seeing the Integral stages take hold, but instead, broken Green keeps triggering Blue and Red backlash—the kind of backlash that has elected Trump twice.
And what do the the Integral Stages give us? In a nutshell, the Tier 2 stages will enable us to integrate the diverse perspectives of the Tier 1 stages, transcend the limitations of rigid ideological thinking, and approach complex problems with greater adaptability, wisdom, and systemic awareness.
Healthy Green includes a lovely mix of virtues:
• Inclusivity
• Sensitivity
• Empathy
• Fairness
• Tolerance
• Community
These values correct many of the problems of unfettered Orange competition and lack of human warmth. These are essential. I work on them regularly and imperfectly. The issue is that in Broken Green, these virtues get undermined by behaviors that belong more to the Red (egocentric) and Blue (traditional) stages:
• Preaching
• Condemning
• Virtue signaling
• Impulsiveness
• Insistence on conformity
• Language policing
• Canceling
These behaviors do not attract people. They replace one kind of unsafe environment with another unsafe environment. They don’t invite dialogue or build bridges; they push people away. I think Wilber is getting at this with his “pre/post fallacy,” though I bet most readers skim over that phrase because it’s not immediately clear what it means. But his core point is this: if Green wants to lead the way to Integral, it needs to keep the first list and let go of the second one.
There is a lot of confident, well-crafted truth telling, such the JD Vance speech at the Munich Security Conference and Jeffrey Sachs speaking before the EU Parliament. Also, Mike Benz holding forth on several podcasts. And, lest we not forget, Eric Weinstein offers an integral view and his voice is being heard. Weinstein doesn't stick with lockstep narrative, but provides a much more nuanced and accurate analysis that allows not liking and taking issue with many things, and seeing the potential good in the current situation rather than black/white thinking. This feels healthy, and healing. I don't know if this is a harbinger of 2nd-Tier, healthier Blue then we've seen in the past, or something that isn't easily framed in Integral Theory.
Greetings, someone sent me this. I think this is well said - though, I'd love to hear a more expanded account of what you mean in your closing remarks on the 'pre/trans fallacy' :
"These behaviors do not attract people. They replace one kind of unsafe environment with another unsafe environment. They don’t invite dialogue or build bridges; they push people away. I think Wilber is getting at this with his “pro/post fallacy,” though I bet most readers skim over that phrase because it’s not immediately clear what it means. But his core point is this: if Green wants to lead the way to Integral, it needs to keep the first list and let go of the second one."
I wasn't entirely clear on the connection here?
- Dr. Node Smith