Grave(s) Thinking ...

Howdy folks,

Last we met I began opening a topic I consider to be of the greatest possible concern to the unfoldment of the world as we are currently experiencing it today.

Way back when, as early as 1959 and fully presented by 1970 in his major published article, “Levels of Existence: An Open System Theory of Values” in The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Fall 1970, Vol. 10 No 2, pp 131-154, Dr. Clare W. Graves began developing and presenting a theory of values that he later referred to as: “The Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of the Adult Human Biopsychosocial Systems.” In simpler language what he was expressing was an idea that humans evolve socially within the cultures they exist within and develop as individuals. In turn the culture that is made of up these individuals evolves as well over time as it becomes populated by those evolved individuals.

What Dr. Graves proposed was a model of alternating levels of evolutionary development in regard to the values that individuals internally hold and operate from and express behaviorally. I hold that this expression is the more significant aspect of the cultural form than the internal value set held, as it is only through the externalized behavior that the values become manifest.

Possibly the most critical comment that I can make here is to point out that the Graves Values Model (as I’ll refer to the “Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of Adult Human Biopsychosocial Systems”) is not a static personality typology. It is not a statement of what a person “is” in some essential way that fixed. Instead it first references the expression of a set of values held as they are behaviorally expressed. This expression can and does can with some degree of fluidity in any given individual, to some extent within sectors of any given society/culture and less so within the society/culture at large. The expression of the values sets as behavioral manifestations is dynamically available to the individual/culture to the extent and degree that they have evolved, i.e.: up to and including the values they have internalized and have built the capacity for holding and operating from and in relation to. I hold that these behavioral expressions are linked to the operational capacity of the brain structures and their interactivity and integration (or lack thereof) of the individual in question or the individuals comprising the society/culture in question.

Ah, how quickly we complicate things, eh? However let me restate all this as simply as I can:

Every individual, and by virtue of the individuals who comprise it every society/culture as well, has a given developed capacity for response that they have evolved in regard to the values that they hold in the particular form in which these values are held.

There is proposition that I am putting forth that there is also a component of neurobiological cognitive access as a function of that particular individual’s neurobiological development that is available to any given individual, which limits the perceptual capacity of that individual and therefore the values that can be realized, held and acted upon by them (JSR, not Clare W. Graves). This neurobiologicial development precedes the epistemological form in which the values of any given individual are held and therefore acted upon by them.

This all leads us to the consideration of what this all means:

Dr. Graves’ “Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of Adult Human Biopsychosocial Systems”
The application of this model to the considerations of human life
The neurobiological capacity of the individual, and
What are the possibilities for developing increased neurobiological capacity and therefore the associated cognitive access available when there is greater neurobiological capacity – and the resultant behavior repertoire that would likely be present as well

Well all this for another time ... next we meet. In the meantime I recommend:

http://www.clarewgraves.com
http://www.spiraldynamics.org
http://www.spiraldynamics.net

As a few of the sources where you can begin to develop a greater understanding of this model on your own as I begin to expand upon it with you from my own particular point of view.

For today ...

Joseph