Monday, July 12, 2010

The Mean Green Meme/Boomeritis

The green meme consciousness seems to be a high percentage of people I know and see in the world on a everyday basis and I finally decided to sit down and read through this wonderful book and make some clear directed sense of what it is that is happening, how to process it and what can be done with out feeling lost or negativity for those on the Green stream, that is by far the last thing in my intentions.
I see and feel it ,process it and now i felt it was time to have a clear reference page to share with all.


Because the pluralistic relativism of the green meme has such an intensely subjective stance and because it tried to allow everything and not marginalize anything, it is especially prey to narcissism.
And exactly that is the crux of the problem : pluralism becomes a super magnet for narcissism.

Pluralism becomes a unwitting home for the Culture of Narcissism.
The very high developmental meme of green pluralism becomes a shelter and haven for reactivation of some of the lower and intensely egocentric memes(especially purple and red as we will see.)
In Greens noble attempt to move beyond conformist rules and ethnocentric prejudices – in short, in greens admirable attempt to go postcoonventional – it has often inadvertently embraced anything nonconventional and this included much that is frankly preconventional , regressive and narcissistic.

That strange mixture is bommeritis : high pluralism mixed with low narcissism. And that is the strange brew that has defined Boomers and *closely related generations.
Boomers were the first generation in history to evolve in large numbers to the green meme- an extraordinary accomplishment that brought with it civil rights,environmental protection,feminism and health care reform.

But then as we will also see the Boomers got stuck at green,lost in green and green that very soon began to go pathological. Green pluralism became a magnet for red narcissism and this explosive combination- bommeritis- very nearly destroyed a generation.

As Green became diseased,disturbed and frankly sick- as it became the green meme in all its ugly forms- the shadow side of the Woodstock Nation began to multiply alarmingly. We will see dozens and dozens of examples of this very soon.
As the MEAN GREEN meme began to extend its reach, extreme pluralism began dominating everything,ruling everythiogn,reducing everything to unrelenting FLATLAND-Nothing is better,noting is higher,nothing is deeper- all stances are supposedly equal in the eglitarian mush, and hence
“ Nobody can tell me what to do !” type of mindset and so of course narcissism finds a happy home, here in flatland. And there in one sentence is the tragedy of the ME generation.

Pluralism infected with narcissism – flatland inhabited by a big ego- by another name- Boomeritis.


The many gifts of healthy green are; as the culmination of the first teir mems,greens care and sensitivity breaks up the crustiness of the entire Spiral and thus prepared the leap into the hyperspace of second tier consciousness, where an integral that cherishes the entire Spiral will complete and fulfill the green ideal.

The green meme marks the completion of first tier thinking. What particulary defines the first tier mems is that each believes its world view is basically the only worldview worth embracing. Each first tier meme has thus covertly declared war on all the others. But starting with second tier all of this dramatically changed.
Second Tier Holistic Integral Embrace

Intuitively grasps the entire Spiral of developmental and this understands that each meme is important.

Grasps big pictures , global flows, universal networks

Discovers personal freedom without harm to others or excess of self interest

Sees integrative and open systems and holistic notworks

Reintroduces vertical hierarchy or ranking along with horizontal hierarchy

Works for both the enjoyment of self and the good of the entire spiral development


Ken Wilber: Boomeritis