A GRAVESIAN PORTRAIT OF THE U.S. ELECTORATE
DECENTRALIZING TENDENCIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Like many in the Spiral Dynamics integral (SDi) community, I have been struggling to understand the recent U.S. Presidential election, and the political environment since 2016. Among some of us, there is an overarching question of the state of play of the emergence (or lack thereof) of Second Tier value systems.
This short essay is a first cut on the political questions, but I believe this analysis also speaks to the character of the emergence of Clare Graves’ 7th Level (SDi Yellow) in response to life conditions in the 21st Century. The key premise is that stated by Graves toward the end of his career:
“Those things which are now centralized will be decentralized and those things that are decentralized will become centralized.” Clare Graves, Quetico Centre Lectures, 1974.
The other thing to remember is that in Gravesian terms, each level, including Second Tier, have healthy and unhealthy aspects.
I want to emphasize this paper is an assessment of life conditions and of an SDi characterization of the current U.S. electorate. It ends before any strategic prescriptions — I’m interested in feedback on the assessment before presuming to proceed further.
Decentralization — Life Conditions of American Voters in the 21st Century
Clare Graves career was winding down in the late 1970’s, largely due to poor health. He had observed significant percentages of his undergraduate and graduate (many from ranks of General Electric management) students demonstrating higher value levels over time, in particular growth in 6th and 7th levels (corresponding to SDi Green and Yellow). This came at what in retrospect we see as the end of rapid economic growth and social progress in the U.S. between 1946 and 1970, very favorable life conditions for the emergence of these levels. And then he witnessed the energy crisis of 1973 and sensed the beginning of the problems emerging from the very successes of earlier value systems, as he taught was observed and expected at each level.
Politically, instead of policies designed to solve the new problems as Graves might have counseled, the election of Ronald Reagan in the U.S. heralded a reaction against social liberalism and regression and toward policies of unrestrained economic liberalism and the restoration of the (white, male) “American way of life.” There followed rollbacks of environmental protections, pressure on civil rights protections, and pursuit of geopolitical pressure on the Soviet Union. After a brief celebration, we saw the failure of the New World Order to materialize in favor of a decentralizing “New World Disorder” (copyright author Bruce Sterling, circa 1995.)
One can argue details of this telescoped history and presumed causations, but it is obvious that we in the U.S., and the rest of the world, are facing significantly changed life conditions in the 21st century compared to fifty years ago, and political systems and shared beliefs have been fractured. It seems important to lay these out at a high level before trying to assess the political era we now are in, which I would contend, per Graves, is not polarized so much as it is increasingly decentralized. And this, despite being chaotic, is not necessarily a bad thing.
My first observation is that life conditions these days are not themselves decentralized, but rather global in nature. What is decentralized, I think, is how different value systems react to those life conditions.
Population — The global population recently passed the 8 billion milestone, doubling in size in just one human lifetime (my own at least), and heading toward 10 billion in the next 25 years before leveling off. The sheer numbers, in Gravesian terms, reflect the success of previous values levels in solving life problems ranging from food supply to health care.
In recent years, it seems that success has been accompanied by decentralizing tendencies in terms of political maps — Eastern Europe “Balkanized,” (pardon the expression) undermining the triumphalism of the New World Order, nd the Middle East fractured in the wake of the U.S. response to 9/11.
Climate — You can “drill baby drill”, but climate is already killing you regardless of political affiliation: Texas (winter storm Yuri); California (Paradise fire and now, since I started writing this, the Pacific Palisades fire); Colorado (Marshall fire); and Asheville, North Carolina (Hurricane Helene.) Indirectly, climate is a contributing factor to population movements generally, if not always toward the U.S., e.g., desertification in Africa.
Economic Concentration — In the U.S., concentration of wealth has been cyclical since the trust-busting era in the early 20th century but has been increasing for the last 45 years.
Political Fragmentation — This is the focus of this essay, focused on the U.S., but happening in Europe, Asia and Africa as well. This drives not only decentralization of political structures as noted above, but also the rise of autocracy (Putin, Orban, Maduro, each with political coalitions similar to Trump).
These global life conditions frame individual responses to the variety of political issues that have been part of the U.S. political discussion since at least 2016, as seen in the hot button issues of our current era:
- Race
- Immigration
- Gender
- Energy/Environment
- Violence
- Economics — inflation, jobs
Decentralizing Tendencies in Responses to Life Conditions
What I’m thinking these days is informed by Clare Graves as I’ve mentioned. I learned Graves’ system as an undergraduate, was certified under his disciple Don Beck, and then attended the Spiral Dynamics in Action conference 7 years ago in honor of Dr. Beck. One of Beck’s remarks was chastising the audience for not seeing the positive side of President Trump, saying something like “Only Trump could go to North Korea.” I and some others thought that was kind of bonkers. But…
Now I think Dr. Beck was groping toward something important about Republicans having “better answers” to, or maybe at least appearing to address, the Republican-leaning electorate’s problems and concerns. These concerns are not unitary, i.e. not just “MAGA”. It seems to me the persistent Republican success with voters is enabled partly by the electoral college framework, which in its origins in slave state politics was inherently regressive, but which now reflects a vehicle for Yellow-type decentralization of political behavior in the U.S. (“Sorting” is a second order effect — Florida in particular has gone heavily Red in last 8 years.)
However one views the challenges of the life conditions enumerated above, it appears that Trump and other Republicans are at least speaking to, and assigning blame, for the concerns that are raised, whereas Democrats are focused on identity issues (DEI, migrant asylum, indigenous rights) that a majority of the population, even should they agree, are not viewed as priorities in their life. The Democrats are not wrong on the issues (I believe) but when majorities of voters are elsewhere occupied, it looks to them that Democrats are not addressing near term issues facing the majority of voters.
Shortcomings of Traditional Voter Segmentation
Now I come to the primary focus of this essay, whether a Gravesian view can help understand electoral politics in the last ten years. Traditional electoral strategists, analysts and commentators have strategies for stratification of voters. Organizations like the Pew Foundation include categories like income, education level, union membership, homeowners, military service, urban/rural, gender, age, ethnicity, and religion.
General news coverage tends to conflate MAGA and the Republican party. I would contend that MAGA is not the party, but part of a coalition that has constituted Republican voters over at least the last 10 years, and maybe longer. My intuitive shorthand of this coalition in the past election season was:
- 17% right to life single issue
- 17% cut taxes above all else
- 17% MAGA — no college, blue collar, feisty, not subtle but not stupid
I’ve attached some documentation that seem to validate these guesses in the Appendix below. But it’s worth observing here a shift, summarized by columnist Nate Silver, that economic class (income) no longer predicts Republican voting. In a similar vein, see don’t mistake Democratic partisan orthodoxy for a “coherent” philosophy. This data to me represents somewhat of a decentralization of the typical left vs. right discourse in American politics.
Gravesian/SDi System Mapping of American Voters
In the Gravesian Spiral Dynamics integral model, individual psychological systems and societal centers of gravity shift over time in an oscillating fashion. Values systems alternate between “express self” and “sacrifice self” modes. Any individual generally has a center of gravity at one system, with smaller percentages of the characteristics of the immediately preceding and succeeding systems.
Here’s some shorthand characterizations of how people at each of the Gravesian values systems see some issues, and which on some issues predict polarized voting behavior. (I use Graves letter pairs — for corresponding SDi colors, see appendix.)
Guns
C-P / E-R How I protect myself / Good business opportunity
Votes Republican
D-Q / F-S Thou shalt not kill / Grab the Guns Votes
Democrat
Israel
C-P / E-R Kill the Arabs / Control the oil wealth
Votes Republican
D-Q / F-S Chosen people / Two states co-exist
Votes Democrat
Then here are issues where I propose that voting behavior is more fluid between values systems.
Immigration
C-P / Big government is helping immigrants and not me
Votes Republican
/ D-Q But also, these are the children of God
Votes Democrat
E-R / Cheap labor is useful, keeps wages down
Votes Democrat
/ F-S Welcome to all
Votes Democrat
Gender
C-P / I don’t want my boy to turn out to be a girl
Votes Republican
/ D-Q Trans kids confuse and scare me
Votes Republican
E-R / Just as long as you buy my products
Votes Democrat
/ F-S Everyone has a right to be who they are
Votes Democrat
The “genius” of Trump’s scattershot messaging is that many in the C-P, D-Q and E-R levels hear an answer to their predominant concerns. Especially among the margins of less engaged swing voters, these are voters who stop shopping for candidates (and listening to any messaging or advertising) once they hear their particular hot button issue. F-S level voters and commentators rail at the Trump vision as 100% MAGA, but his coalition is, at the end of the day, precisely of a decentralized rather than unitary, polarized nature.
The Limits of (First Tier) Politics
F-S strategists, who currently dominate the Democratic party, tend not to do a good job tailoring their messaging; they can’t understand those voters in C-P or E-R, who really don’t care about, or at least vote based on, identity issues and positions. F-S voters once again after the new Trump victory react (overreact) emotionally instead of strategically.
As one example of a strategic direction, if my 17/17/17 view of voter segmentation is true, a Democratic strategist (which is really dominated by “moderate” Dems) might reach out to the moderate 17% of Republicans and say, you’re actually the same as us. Ask them what they need to be in the Dem platform — low interest rates, slightly lower capital gains taxes — and which are basically the same as what moderate Dems like and are baked into the platform. (And refer to the linked article above, showing higher income categories now vote majority Democrat.)
But it may be that my observations are strictly first tier, and I am merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
A Second Tier Approach
What if the answer to fragmented (decentralized) politics is not politics at all? I used to think I could envision, and thus aim at, an H-U (Turquoise) level of unity, and act in a G-T fashion to organize whatever first tier skills I have. But now I believe there are no short cuts or skipping systems on the spiral, and definitely near-term pain and angst. Graves once said,
“Well, now notice so what this says, and this, this is the most difficult thing for all of us to accept. We must go through the Nixon and Agnew; this is the only way we’re ever going to get the higher-level behavior, is to behave that way.” (Graves seminar at Quetico Centre, 1974)
Graves observed growth in the percentage of G-T values system from 1952–1969 among his audience of post WWII higher education and young executives. I found this exchange from the same 1974 seminar especially striking.
Question — Could a G-T (Yellow) be elected President of the United States?
Answer — No, I don’t think he could get elected. Adlai Stevenson probably came about as close as anything that has run for it. But you see, for a person to be an effective leader for a group of people, he shouldn’t be more than one step ahead of where those people are. So, if you get in essence that the mass centralization of people in the United States up until about 1952, was in the D-Q level, and that that mass centralization has shifted to the E-R, well, we just couldn’t possibly conceive of G-T being elected because he just did not seem to be a leader.
In fact, one of the problems you have here is that the evidence seems to indicate that people who operate at lower levels see the values and beliefs of people at levels higher than theirs, when I say higher, I’m referring to two systems above and beyond. They see those as immoral.
But this is an answer to an electoral and political question. Graves suggests that a political answer basically falls short.
Now this is precisely what is going on in our world at the present time; it’s one of the problems about this theoretical point of view. We know from the theoretical point of view, its spiraling like character, and the fact that G-T is a seventh level system. That what he is going to create is new institutional ways for man’s living. He’s going to create new governmental systems. He’s going to create new ways of controlling the various forces in the universe of which we are a part.
Now, I think what is going to happen is this, that this is going to be solved in a different way. I don’t think it is going to be solved as much by the electorate, picking these people. But it’s going to be solved by the corporations having to select these people into management because they don’t have anything else to select into management. They want anything to manage in the organization, since this, the numbers of these people are increasing so rapidly, the pool is going to be predominantly made up of G-Ts. And so, the minute that you get this kind of thinking into your corporate organization, then the corporate organization is going to begin to think differently about corporate problems. And then this is going to come back upon the electorate. In the long run.
I think this a pretty interesting view, given current issues. In the life condition of climate change, I have noted that carbon reduction efforts in public policy have not had great impacts, but renewable energy and energy storage solutions were proliferating years before the energy elements of the Inflation Reduction Act. And a recent news item from a competitive energy provider named Octopus Energy in the U.K. is interesting not just because they created a vehicle for investment in renewables/storage/demand management, but because one of their primary backers was Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management. Octopus Energy’s valuation is at $9 billion — non-political climate action, at scale. While Elon Musk in a position close to power might have made sense to me, as head of Tesla 5 or 10 years ago, I’m not sure what his current incarnation will do, but interesting in this Gravesian context how easily he has become accepted by the Trump inner circle.
Related, I would refer to Graves/Beck colleague Elza Maalouf, who also observed a similar dynamic:
Question: How do we bring the Moderates and Pragmatists on both sides to the table, while empowering them to reject the radical Zealots and Ideologues on their respective side?
The patterns that I observed in Israel and Palestine were more successful in business settings on both sides than they were with politicians. Young Palestinians saw that greater business opportunities could result from a peace treaty with Israel. Beck saw identical patterns in South Africa where Apartheid disappeared in the workplace long before it did in politics.
The result of this experience is very important: If BLUE-ORANGE values can be spread through free enterprise and prosperity, the center of gravity of a culture will tend to move towards more Moderate and Pragmatic positions politically as life conditions change. (Source: Maalouf, EMERGE!, 2014.)
APPENDIX 1 — DATA FOR TRUMP COALITION
E-R
54% of income over 100K, of 45% of voters
~ 24% of coalition
o https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184428/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-income-us/
C-P
Self-identified MAGA-33.6% of Republicans, 15.0% of the adult pop
~12% of coalition
D-Q
20% of electorate, 80% voted for Trump
~ 16% of coalition
TOTAL
~52%
Note: A similar perspective: Senator Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Republican, said recently that while Republicans controlled the Senate, the party remained “a third MAGA, a third Republican and a third RINO,” (“Republican in name only.) As a white southern college football coach, his idea of “Republican” is essentially white Baptists, and RINOs are those who vote their pocketbook and don’t endorse evangelical Christian or MAGA positions. (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/13/business/rumble-trump-bongino-kirk.html?searchResultPosition=1)
APPENDIX 2 — KEY
Graves — SDi
C-P Red
D-Q Blue
E-R Orange
F-S Green
A’N’ Yellow
B’O’ Turquoise
