The Structure/Content Fallacy

Dear Readers,

What follows here below is a very “inside baseball” critique of what it generally known as “Integral Theory,” an impressively immense effort for better sense-making perhaps best known via the great work of Ken Wilber and current efforts of many “integrally informed” contributors like Steve MacIntosh and others. My piece here was originally written as a letter to an interested “Integral Influencer” way back in 2018 or so (please forgive my Trump, Clinton, Sanders references), but I’m posting it here to buttress a recent podcast appearance where I speak about it all more broadly. It lacks all helpful context for most of my regular readers, so apologies in advance.

Dear XX,

Thanks again for your interest in hearing out my take on the Structure/Content Fallacy. I’ll do my best to go through it as quickly as possible below, and I’ll include some examples that I feel illustrate how this tweak to the Integral model eliminates some of the confusion that seems to continuously plague Integral discourse. I think what is most relevant about what I am offering to current cultural conversations is spelled out briefly below, with 2 charts provided for illustrative purposes.

Namely, they show how “Green” and “Progressive/Liberal/Democrat” and “developmentally advanced human” are NOT AT ALL synonymous while also showing that many who subscribe to more “Traditional” belief systems that center around Religious or Patriotic content are not simply “Blue” close-minded regressive conformists.

Apologies for ALL CAPS, but I’m pretty frustrated at this point at how this fairly simple distinction of Structure vs Content – common amongst many developmentalists whom Ken Wilber often cites – is ignored. Those charts are on pages 4 and 5 if you wanted to skip ahead. In the last 2 pages I try to show how both Steve MacIntosh and Wilber pay too little attention to this distinction and how their models are each limited as a result.

For context, I’ll start with Steve MacIntosh’s book, Developmental Politics, and hope to fairly represent it here. I’ve listened to several recent podcasts where Steve is the guest and agree with about 95% of what he says in this new book. He correctly identifies many of the current major cultural themes, values systems, overlapping interiors, and several other things. I’m also in complete agreement when he follows Integral in how each of his 3 described Value Systems (borrowed from Paul H. Ray’s work on “Cultural Creatives”) seem to follow and emerge from the groundwork created by the previous ones. Broadly speaking, each subsequent one is more complex, allows for an expanded frame of identity (and therefore potential equality), and expands the “circle of care” wider and wider.

Very clearly developmental, and perfectly reasonable. I see his suggested Post-Progressive Value System as further emerging content, probably from Yellow structure (or at least Yellow cognition), and clearly 2nd Tier in that it explicitly stresses the need for recognition and appreciation of all of the preceding levels’ strengths while also calling for the attention-to and limitation-of each of their respective downsides. Again, so far so good.

Steve continues by covering the 1st Tier Value Systems see themselves in direct competition with one another. They tend to highlight the downsides of the others while failing to acknowledge the respective upsides. Furthermore, the 1st Tier systems fail to see how both the downsides and upsides are inherently baked into each system, that they come complete as a package deal. This particular insight into the inescapability of the “package deal” is the very essence of Kegan’s “Self-Transforming” level of development (Green/Yellow/Turquoise in SD, or Green/Teal/Turquoise “altitudes”) – that holons emerge as polarities, and we identify with one side or another as we grow, only to find ourselves requiring integration beyond Self-Authorship (Orange) in order to continue our development.

MacIntosh again correctly intuits, in my opinion, that his suggested Post-Progressive Value System needs to explicitly see and appreciate the respective upsides of each level while also limiting or curtailing entirely the downsides contained therein. While noble, and perhaps understandable in theory to most who have versed themselves in Integral to some degree, this aspiration is doomed to end in failure as a political or cultural movement due to the Structure/Content Fallacy. How so?

Let’s go back to Ken Wilber and Integral Theory. Wilber correctly points out that all of his primary research sources specifically state that you have to work your way up through each of the successively emergent levels and must go through them sequentially. Using the color system from Clare Graves/Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics, we are all born at Beige and work our way up through a combination of culture, opportunity, ability, and experience. Nobody is born at Orange or Green or even Red. 

That developmental process takes time, and is very closely linked to age and experience. Again, you don’t just turn 18 and get the Orange “download” for your birthday. This is the part of Integral Theory that correctly identifies how Structural dynamics work. In sum, you start at the beginning, no skipping stages, and you arrive at the later ones through age, experience, and abilities.  

This structured and sequential developmental process is also borne out by Robert Kegan’s research and that of Suzanne Cook-Greuter as well, two leading researchers in the field of Adult Developmental Theory frequently cited by Wilber. They each have their own terminology, but for simplicity’s sake we will go with the colors popularized by Spiral Dynamics of Blue, Orange, and then post-Orange (including Green and Yellow) to cover the main ones we are discussing here.

While the specific stage names, distinctions, and percentages vary a bit, averaging their voluminous research studies shows less than 7% of college-educated adults are at post-Orange Structure, around 35% with some achievement of Orange, and 58% anchored in Blue. Basically, over 90% of the college educated population is not beyond Orange, and the vast majority aren’t even fully at Orange! And this data comes from “college educated” adults in the US. The implications for extrapolating into the larger populations are quite dire.

They also find that in addition to post-Orange being very rare overall, those stages of structural achievement are almost never found in anybody under 40. So, given this data, what percentage of non-college educated angry young protestors do you think may be coming from the highest, post-Orange levels of adult development? In other words, how “Green” or beyond could they possibly be? Almost ZERO. Yet, based on elevating content expression to developmental achievement, Integral imagines that large swaths of the population are highly developed due to the growth in popularity of Progressivism.

This brings us over to where much of the specific confusion lies regarding Integral Theory and its appraisal of how “Green” is manifesting in today’s world. Here are some simple questions for the Integral community to ponder:

1.     How come the “Mean Green Meme” is so prevalent?

2.     How come those young “Green” Progressives are out there rioting in the streets, completely disregarding the perspective of others?

3.     How come “cancel culture” is erupting on college campuses, places normally considered liberal havens for these “Green” Progressives and their ideas?

4.     How come those who chant about tolerance and diversity and inclusion are so angrily intolerant, singular, and exclusive of alternative perspectives?

5.     How do these “Progressives” imagine equality is reached by closing down police stations, especially in those areas where minorities are most at risk of personal harm?

6.     How come Free Speech is being shouted down and canceled?

The list of ways that these “high” values are being enacted in very “low” manners goes on and on. But why?

Let’s look back at what the research shows – namely that post-Orange structural achievement is very rare, and pretty much is only ever seen in folks over 40. Now let’s look at all these “Green” protestors, marchers, college students, and the “Twitterati” seeking to “cancel” those that have opposing viewpoints. There are A LOT of them, and they are heavily populated by younger demographics, mostly in their late teens, 20’s, and 30’s.

Guess what? Not post-Orange!  How can we make sense of this? They almost all identify as Liberal/Democrat/Progressive, and are all shouting slogans of pro-diversity, pro-equality, anti-racism, and anti-discrimination, right? Yet, their actions seem illiberal, authoritarian, and regressive in practice. I guess they all must be “Mean Green Memers,” whatever that is!

Wrong.

The interpretation that best fits the most accurate developmental lens is that Blue Structure young folks are parroting and promoting what sounds like a higher complexity “Progressive” Value System’s words, based on insights originally derived from “Green” structural level insights in other people (Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, and others), that they then smash, twist, and deform to fit into their lower complexity Blue Structural mindset. As Kegan writes, they are conforming to the Post-Modern Progressive message the only way they can – in a true Blue hue, sans the complexity of the original message (as are any Blue or Orange colleagues of the original messengers).

Back to my hardware/software analogy from a previous letter to you, they have Blue Structure hardware and are trying to run a Green-derived “Content” software known as the Progressive Value System. The very same characteristics that we always see with Blue Structure show up here too. We see demands for conformity, virtue signaling, and appeals to authority figures (White Fragility and other “anti-racist” dogma). We see the world divided up into Us vs Them, Good vs Bad, In vs Out, and other absolutist dichotomies. We see those who are Out, Bad, and “Them” labeled as heretics and treated accordingly with the standard Blue practices of blaming, shaming, shunning, censoring, and “cancelling.” All very typically Blue.  I put together 2 simple charts to illustrate how the Structure/Content Fallacy resolves much of the confusion around these issues on the next 2 pages.

Here’s how most folks in the Integral sphere commonly tend to see things.

Vertical Development = Value Change???

Wilber/Integral has these 3 stages stacked up on top of each other and MacIntosh does the same with his 3 main Value Systems. Each successive one is built on and emerges from the preceding ones. Each emergent one then imagines itself as both correct and complete and then attacks the others as wrong and limited. This chart exactly illustrates how things look when making the Structure/Content Fallacy. From this theoretical framework the young self-identified Progressives clearly aren’t Blue/Traditionalists nor Orange/Moderns, so they must be Green/Progressives.

But how can we account for their sheer numbers, their age, and their contradictory and destructive tendencies? I thought Green was supposed to be “nicer,” and focus on pluralism and relativism? Even if we accept that all “first tier” levels are absolutist and can be either “good/open” or “bad/closed,” the numbers just don’t add up – not by age, and not by volume.

Now let’s apply the Structure/Content Fallacy corrective lens and put MacIntosh’s Value Systems on the lower horizontal axis and bring in Kegan’s Structural Stages on the left vertical axis.

Vertical Development & Value Stacks as separate but related.

** Percentages derived from study of “college educated adults” in US in 1994, and numbers condensed into clear categories for visual simplicity. “Real” numbers show lots of gradients in between stages, but still suggest 80% of “College educated adults” are somewhere in between Blue and Orange, and therefore, not even fully Orange, much less beyond it. 

Notice that by separating out Structure and Content that the overlapping squares seem to more accurately capture some of the more prevalent dynamics at play in today’s culture. The Blue folks in all 3 Value Systems are functionally much more similar underneath the very different Value Systems professed. Same with the Orange and Green. Their operational dynamics are the same underneath the surface appearances, but manifest differently when expressing each of the 3 Value Systems.

This chart also accurately helps identify how people can often flex from one Value Stack or System to another, like MacIntosh’s example about how somebody can be a Traditionalist on Sunday, then a Modern at work on Monday, and then a Progressive in their reading group on Tuesday night. But as Lisa Lahey showed in her doctoral dissertation research (with Chris Argyris and Robert Kegan advising her), people are structurally the same even though they and others see them as different at work and home.  It is very easy to flex horizontally through the Value Systems as social circumstances shift; it is almost impossible to flex vertically due to how Structures work. For what is a structure if it is not consistent?

This chart also helps explain some of the Right/Left, Conservative/Liberal frameworks that people employ to make sense of the world. On both sides of the aisle, people scratch their heads about “why on earth would those people vote in such ways that seem to go against their own interests? Why would blue collar Traditional conservatives vote pro-corporate when those same corporations are moving all the blue collar jobs to China? Why would “enlightened” liberals vote for politically correct measures that hinder free speech and promote explicit racial hiring biases? Have they gone mad?”

No, they are being structurally consistent.

In this chart the Conservative Right largely aligns with the Traditional Value System throughout the Structural Stage stack. You have folks at all 3 vertical Structural Stages who have different understandings and emphases on what it means to have and support Traditional Value Systems. On the other side the Liberal Left largely aligns with the Progressive Value System, and the Centrists line up with the Modern Value System, again manifesting differently from individual to individual according to their underlying developmental Structures.

When we reflect back to the early questions I posed to Integral-minded folks, some of the answers become quite clear. “Green” altitude does not equal “Progressive” attitude, and you can see the Blue Structure Progressives are the guilty party for most of the unhelpful cultural disruption we see.

And this is exactly what we should expect from the less complex structure. Many of them are anti-free speech, anti-free inquiry, anti-constructive dialogue, anti-let’s look at the evidence, pro-shunning, pro-shaming, pro-cancelling. Same dynamics as the more familiar Blue Traditionalists and their religious fundamentalism.  So, it’s not “Green” that is “mean,” it is in fact Blue.

Same as it ever was.  Whether it comes to The Bible, The Science, or The DEI, Blue requires that good conformist Believers be kept IN, and bad corrupted heretics, deniers, and racists get kicked OUT!

This larger framework also allows and supports vertical development up through any of the 3 main value stacks. For example, it helps us see, appreciate, and value the insights shared from Orange and Green “Traditionalists” who bring autonomy and critical interpretation and authentic embodiment to certain religious teachings and traditions and helpful emphasis on character, wisdom, community, family, and other so-called “Traditional” values. It allows us to deeply honor all the contributions made by those who lived before “Modern” times, like Jesus, Buddha, Confucious, Socrates, and so many others who were clearly vertically developed to post-Orange levels. Why would we think that high development is only accessible to those very few humans who have gone through a “Modern” enculturation process?

As a side note, there is a strong natural pull or resonance between true Green and Blue due to their collective orientation to community and the collective, mirrored by the strong pull connecting Red to Orange to Yellow due to those Structures’ orientation to the individual. This is another topic for another day however.

Hopefully the above chart shows the clear benefits of not using “Green” and “Progressive” interchangeably, and same with Blue/Traditionalism and Orange/Modernism. Looking at the true Green Structure, one can more easily see how it also manifests in the Traditional Value System through such initiatives as Interfaith Outreach at some of the more “Progressive” Protestant denominations, and for those whose Traditionalism is more on Country and less on God, the Green Structural inputs there can perhaps be seen in certain NGO’s such as Doctors Without Borders and Peace Corps. 

In the Modern Value System you see all kinds of Green Structurally sourced initiatives such as Conscious Capitalism, Sustainability, Renewable Energy, and Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). Green and Progressivism do indeed overlap in the upper right corner square, and the entire Progressive Value system can be said to be derived from Green Structural insights, but again, they are NOT at all equivalent. The Structure/Content Fallacy is my attempt to help us all get past the problems that come from being less than clear about this distinction.

You could propose any number of questions and then fill in each of the 9 squares on this chart with different answers. Some questions would probably show higher similarities across the horizontal categories, others throughout the vertical columns. How would these squares look if you asked “Where is your source of authority?” or “What economic system makes the most sense?” or “How should education be conducted?” or any number of other such questions. What about “What are your thoughts on burning the American Flag?” or “What do you think about professional athletes kneeling on the field during the National Anthem?”

You could also fold other frameworks into this chart, such as the Otto Scharmer/David Brooks take on Open vs Closed. Each of these 9 squares obviously has its more Open characteristics and more Closed ones, the Closed ones animating them more in times of perceived cultural distress such as now. Alternatively, you could just add a “Healthy vs Unhealthy expressions” divider into each box to help us make less technical distinctions.

If you really wanted to take a deeper dive then you could add the Red and Purple lower level Structures to the bottom of the chart to explore how the 3 Value Systems might manifest through them too. Filling those extra squares in to illuminate the most fundamental elements of each Value System, as well as the most unhelpful when energy is being directed through their respective unhealthy expressions. Lots of interesting lines of inquiry can be pursued when using this chart as a starting point.  

Wrapping up, let’s go back to Steve MacIntosh and his proposed Post-Progressive Value System. While it is full of great aspirational content, his idea has 2 main flaws which can be seen much more clearly through the application of this chart:

1)    It’s all Content and no Structure, so it’s just going to end up being a 4th vertical column on the chart, and will be mis-interpreted by lower level identified folks that somehow get motivated by it (unlikely anyway), just like the Progressives have shown, and Moderns also to a lesser extent.  

2)    It is way too complex to be appreciated at all by the lower structural levels. What does the Blue version of Post-Progressive look like? What is the story here that can attract and organize a movement? Who is Us and who is Them? How do we then treat those who oppose us? These Blue Structural dynamics are here to stay and must be navigated by everybody who comes along, regardless of the content. The Blue Structure’s “Procrustean Bed” demands simplicity, and it will have it, no matter how much that simplicity contradicts the stated values.

Back to Integral, Ken Wilber was doing great up until this Structure/Content Fallacy gummed up the works. He got twisted when he made “emerges from” equal to “is synonymous with.” I look at the whole concept of the “Mean Green Meme” as the moment where he hit a dead end with that thinking. The “Meme” part is largely the same as MacIntosh’s concept of the Value System, and it’s “Green” to the degree that much of the Progressive Value System is built on insights derived from the Green Structural level’s altitude. But the “Mean” part is neither Green Structural nor inherent to the Progressive Value System, it’s more a function of Blue (and perhaps to some degree Orange) trying to jam the Progressive Value System through its Structure. Not gonna work.  

Robert Kegan makes this point over and over in both of his texts on development. The Blue folks will “hear” a Blue version of an Orange or Green (or beyond) message. The Orange folks will “hear” an Orange version of a Green (or beyond) message. We all interpret the world structurally, whether we act in traditional, modern, or progressive ways. To claim otherwise is to abandon developmental psychology altogether. One of Kegan’s favorite lines is how the Golden Rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” gets bastardized by Blue into “Do unto others as they have done unto you.” Justice gets perverted into Revenge.

Wilber has published very little new material that has substantially advanced Integral Theory since Integral Spirituality (when he introduced Wilber-V and post-metaphysics). Most of his books since Sex, Ecology, Spirituality were various simplified titrations packaged for specific audiences.

His “Trump and a Post-Truth World” piece clearly shows how stuck he is here. In that entire piece he barely mentions the Bernie Sanders campaign at all, much less highlights how Sanders was polling as beating Trump by a significantly higher margin than was Clinton before the DNC nomination was finalized.

He also never mentions any of the Northern European countries as positive examples where Green Structure has manifested some healthier expressions in Economics, Political Structure, Healthcare, and Education. It is almost as if that whole massive element is invisible to him. How could this be? Why does Ken hate Green so much? He always claims that criticisms of his work are due to his inclusion of other views – this is not that! This is a criticism of ignoring data that is inconvenient at best for the Integral idea that the “Mean Green Meme” is the worst thing ever.

If he spent some time separating out Green Structure from Progressive Content, and discussed the other Structure/Content distinctions as well, he would have been able to make a lot more sense out of Sanders’ popularity as well as Clinton’s ultimate failure to galvanize enough of the people to beat Trump.

I’ll stop here for now, but I figured these few pages will help you get a better understanding of my thinking on the Structure/Content Fallacy. Many further implications unfold from here, including the perpetual high population distribution of people at Blue and how to approach them, the difficulties of moving from Blue to Orange and how to best enable and support this growth, and how the “mean Green” youth are best handled with more Blue-level appropriate means and measures for starters. But that’s a whole ‘nuther letter! LOL  

I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on it. Like I mentioned in my introductory email, I’ve just started to pivot my attention and thoughts back to the Integral enterprise and am trying to think more clearly about what I see happening in the world today. Any and all critiques are welcome and appreciated.  

Best wishes,

David