"8 Shocking Signs of American Excess"
presumably criticizing American excess. It began thus, "Here in America, we do everything bigger. Our skyscrapers are taller, our toilets have more-powerful flushes, and even our beauty queens are prettier than those from the rest of the world."Sadly, the (no doubt well intentioned) author seem pretty steeped in delusion - more powerful flushes may be (sure need it) but, taller skyscrapers and prettier beauty queens? Seven of the top ten tallest buildings are in Asia, US has 2 (placed 7 and 9), China has 4 (3,6,8,10; not counting HK(4)/Taiwan(2) ). When it comes to beauty (granted, less objective than building heights) the rest of the world beg to differ - for the last 10 years, *not one* of the Ms Universe came from US. Needless to say, I deemed it wasteful, to spend another moment, in continuing on with the article.
Today, when Spiral Dynamics was brought to my attention by a well informed metropolitan, I was curious enough to look it up.
Unless Wikipedia so mis-characterized it, here again, is another load of nice sounding crap. Not sure what people smoke to come up with these things... I need some just to cope with the brain trauma caused by such affront to my intelligence.
First off, the breakdown of the color vMeme (value system) is simplistic. But that has nothing on the so called "Time of origin". To say that this is Euro-centric would be quite insulting to the Europeans.
Use categories Green and Yellow as an example:
Green
- Summary: Relativistic-personalistic—communitarian/egalitarian
- Time of origin: From 1850 on (surged in early 20th century)
- Description: "Sacrifice self-interest now in order to gain acceptance and group harmony." Expressed in 1960s pluralism and systems theory.
- Summary: Systemic-integrative
- Time of origin: 1950s
- Description: "Express self for what self desires, but to avoid harm to others so that all life, not just own life, will benefit."
Confucius' (551 – 479 BC) social philosophy could be thought of as Yellow-Green based on the summary descriptions. Wiki, 'His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity [harmonious individual/family/society]. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism (法家) or Taoism (道家) during the Han Dynasty[3][4][5] (206 BC – 220 AD).' That's over two thousand years ago!
