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WHAT THIS MEANS from a preeminent Cultural Economist, AND What to Do About it. [1]

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Date: 2024-11-06  

"Don't Mourn. Organize." Many of us are in shock this morning are in mourning, attempting to wrap our heads around what happened, what it means, and what it will mean. I personally knocked on way too many doors in Pennsylvania for this to happen.

Said Dawlabani wrote a sobering piece in his Facebook Group the day before the election, titled "What the Outcome of the US Elections Might Mean for the Future." wrote a sobering piece in his Facebook Group the day before the election, titled

MEMEnomics: The Next Generation Economic System. He is an authority on The Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory, which has been popularized as Spiral Dynamics, a brilliant way of understanding why we do what we do. Dr. Clare W. Graves, the author ofwhich has been popularized asa brilliant way of understanding why we do what we do. Dawlabani has been described as a "human evolution theorist,"a "cultural economist" and a "meta economist," depending on the website. He is the author ofHe is an authority on

For those unfamiliar with Graves or Spiral Dynamics, I attempt to translate what he wrote into plain English.

One way to understand this is to remember Reagan's words in his first inauguration address:

"Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem."

In other words, those who want to do whatever the heck they want are studied by rules and regulations. Spiral Dynamics assigns a color to this way of operating: Red.

If you have seen the movie "Ms. Doubtfire," you may remember that in the beginning of the movie, Robin Williams' character holds a street party instead of making sure that the kids did their homework. Sally Fields, playing his wife, came home and enforced the rules and regulations, including demanding a divorce, because actions have consequences. Spiral Dynamics gives this way of operating a color: Blue. This stage follows Red.

Red is also the System of bullies and others who act as if rules do not apply to them ("When you're a celebrity they let you do it"). A healthy society has a healthy Blue System, as opposed to toxic Blue System, with the Westboro Baptist Church and Sharia Law as two examples.

The next system is entrepreneurial, where capiltalists acknowledge rules and figure out loopholes so they can both skirt rules while they can work within the rules, or work to change the rules to make it easier to "win." They are ok with "win-win" situations as long as they win. Spiral Dynamics gives this a color: Orange. This stage follows Blue. Under stress, they will regress to precede Blue, down to Red, which has no use for rules, and cheat (think Enron, if you are old enough to remember them).

With this in mind, Dawlabani saw trouble ahead had Harris won:

A Harris win like that of Biden, will be viewed by many as good for the country and our allies, but to the cult of MAGA, it will be the work of an even greater devil (Zealot/Flamethrower Red position on the right side of the ACE political spectrum moving to the extreme right). Similar to what happened during the Biden years, the MAGA Red Bulge with its Orange masters will grow even bigger and more dangerous. Expect many more Elon Musks to show their true memetic center of gravity and throw billions at a more dangerous class of upcoming MAGA politicians. A Harris win will be nothing more than a slight disruption in the GOP/MAGA master plan which has been more than four decades in the making. This is the unholy spiral dance that was unleashed by the Reagan Revolution which made the Blue system the enemy of America. It empowered Orange, and – as the case is always in the absence of Blue – it left a wide-open gap for Red to occupy and eventually toxify the entire spiral. Because of this ongoing dynamic, we shouldn’t equate a Harris win with the disappearance of threats to our democracy. The Huns remain at the gate, and the gate is now made of marshmallow. In other words, and a Harris administration would have pushed the Cult of MAGA further into a "Zealot/Flamethrower" mode and further to the extreme right. Billionaires like Musk would alternate between Orange and Red (gaming the rules or outright violating them) knowing how weak our Blue system - "The enemy of America" -- has been weakened and so ineffectual that it could not complete the trials in Georgia, got one of Jack Smith’s cases dismissed and the other delayed perhaps indefinitely, while the strongest force of Blue -- the SCOTUS -- is both corrupt and literally in the pocket of specific Billionaires. The gate would indeed be made of marshmallow. But, apparently, somehow, we massively misunderstood the electorate. And now, horribly, improbable, Trump appears to be set to take a 2nd term. Dawlabani: A Trump win will mean MAGA radicals will be appointed to all cabinet positions. In the words of political pundits: 'There will be no guardrails this time around.' Unlike his first administration, Trump’s cabinet will lack Blue temperance or any connection to establishment Blue. These are self-avowed bigots, racists and misogamists who have no loyalties to any institutions, the military, or regulatory agencies. The above is self-explamatory. He continues: "MAGA’s intent to finish the job on crippling our institutions will send shockwaves through a dying Blue system forcing it to finally wake up and do what it is supposed to do: Regulate effectively. This will not happen quietly and will be very messy. I fully expect insubordination and defiance from long- established institutions, not the least of which will be the Pentagon should Trump order it to ignore our duties to our NATO allies, or ask it to kiss ass to the dictators he so adores.

I sure hope that he is correct that Blue will wake up. This brings us to the chart in the graphic above. We start at "Alpha" where "everything is ok" and we continue as if everything is ok until it's not. Whatever we had been doing stops working and we hit "Beta." We realize "Something's wrong." At that point we either create anticipatory reforms, "evolutionary change," to bring us to the next "Alpha", where "everything is sorted out" and "ok" again, which will continue until we eventually hit a new "Beta"; or we have "Revolt." We fall into "Revolutionary change," or "Gamma" and get stuck in the "Gamma Trap" where "everything is falling apart" until , finally, we create intense energy, a "Delta surge" which propels us up to that next "Alpha." Trump will not lead us to the Delta Surge as shown in the graphic. MAGA is utterly incompetent and its actions will not usher in the transformational phase we need that will eventually lead to a New Alpha Fit. A MAGA revolution will not result in an evolutionary movement up the spiral, but the opposite: a downshift in our [Value Ststems, towards Deep Toxic Red] that favors the unhealthy expression of individualistic systems. This will likely be its downfall. In the absence of healthy engagement from all its activated stages, this is how the spiral cleanses itself. Red has a grandiose vision of its abilities, big ego run amuck. It destroys but has no clue of how to rebuild, or the long-term vision to facilitate the healthy emergence of a society on the spiral. Rebuilding is a Blue function that RED-unhealthy Orange has no capacity for." In other words, Blue will have to Rebuild, because an Orange System infused with an unhealthy RED system in the absence of Blue has no capacity to get us out of that Gamma trap where things fell apart. Greg Palast talks about regulation, about “Red” and “Blue” without using the colors or mentioning Spiral Dynamics, in his book ultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores: talks about regulation, about “Red” and “Blue” without using the colors or mentioning Spiral Dynamics, in his book V Regulation, the rules they tell you to hate, are the way we apply democracy to the economy. Votes versus dollars. I think you can understand that. Yes, I know, the government is deeply fucked up. That's the U.S. government, the UK government, and let's not even talk about the Chinese, Malaysian, and Tanzanian governments. People have been belly-aching about rules and regulations ever since Moses schlepped the first ten down from Mount Sinai. But the Big Problem with government is that we don't have enough of it; the rules aren't tough enough to stop BP from blowing Cajuns to Kingdom Come. Or the rules are corrupted, made by politicians who are greased.... If you're screaming for the "guvmnt to git off" your back, I see your point. But you're still a loser, a cheap mark, a decoy duck, a dim, unwitting stooge for forces even more powerful than that ugly guvmint, a toy for powers who are shitting on you while telling you it's raining chocolate. But then, who regulates the regulators? Well, Shaw Construction for one. Shaw is now constructing a plant that will turn plutonium from old atomic bombs into nuclear plant fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exempted Shaw's bombs-to-nukes plant from anti-terrorist security measures. A commissioner who voted for this take-a-terrorist-to-tea exemption, Jeffrey Merrifield, now works for Shaw. And the Secretary of Energy who promoted the plan, Spencer Abraham, is now Chairman of Areva USA, partner in Shaw Areva MOX Services. Heinrich Himmler's solution to the problem of having to look into the eyes of your kill was to industrialize the process, using gas from I.G.Farben Corporation and ovens from Siemens AG. They just took the orders. But there's a regulator of regulators we must rely on. The Fourth Estate.... That's our job as journalists, to rip away masks...." Palast sees journalism as the “regulator of regulators.” perhaps that’s what we are doing here, writing these posts. I’m not sure journalism, today, amidst the epistemic cloture and charges of “fake news!” is enough. I partially answered that question 8 years ago, here on DK, and updated it earlier this spring. This is worth reading. Dawlabani warns us that we, as Democrats, are not the solution in our present form. We need to do some soul-searching. Why are working class union members, who owe their jobs to the Inflation Reduction Act, support the Billionaire class that oppressed them?here on DK, and Dawlabani concludes: "Evolutionary movement in US politics from this point on will not be the empowerment of the democratic party. Doing so while Blue is in its current diminished state, will keep the system in an arrested weak stage while increasingly empowering MAGA to figure out what it missed in its last failed elections. The Democrats are a part of the problem. For four and half decades, they have turned a blind eye to many of the changes that got us here, from failing to understand the full impact of Citizens United, to not seeing the danger conservative think tanks (like the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025), present to democracy. It is these very think tanks that are funded by billionaires that have been formulating government policies from behind the scenes since the first Reagan administration and the Dems, just like the GOP/MAGA, were more than happy to accept their generous donations." I knocked on doors in my neighboring Pennsylvania in September and October. I did everything in my power to create conditions for a Harris win. I am devastated and in shock, as I imagine most of you, it am guessing. Joe Hill was correct: "Don't mourn. Organize." There is more to Spiral Dynamics than the Systems of Red, Blue and Orange, but that's what you need to know to understand what Dawlabani wrote here. It is a very valuable paradigm to help us create a "Delta Surge" out of this "Gamma Trap" in which we find ourselves.

And, in doing so, we need to figure out who we are as a Party; who we alienate in the process; who we would prefer to embrace instead of alienate; and who we need to alienate in order to both survive as a party, and to thrive as a nation.

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