Covid-19 and the Mean Green Meme

Reading the Covid-19 coverage, in particular as presented by the New York Times, and looking at the state government responses, particularly California and New York, my Spiral Dynamics “mean green meme” detector went off. It had been a while since I’ve dived deeply into Integral in general and Ken Wilber in particular, so I figured it would be good to check on the health of my mean green meme detector. Perhaps no better source on the mean green meme is available than Wilber’s 2002 Boomeritis novel, and given the quarantine situation, I was able to devour it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, dear readers, there is nothing wrong with my mean green meme detector – mean green is all too alive and all too well.

Mean green meme (aka Boomeritis), is an “odd mixture of remarkably creative intelligence coupled with a dose of narcissism.” It’s also referred to as Boomeritis because the Boomer generation was the first to embrace Spiral green values (origins in the Woodstock/ counterculture of the 60s in the US). It comes from the Spiral Dynamics system that categorizes levels of worldview development (in simple terms) using colors for each level of development (worldviews are also referred to as memes). There are 8 levels. The first six are referred to as 1^st tier. The defining characteristic of a 1^st tier worldview is that it believes that its worldview is the right one, and if only everyone else would adopt it, everything would be fine. The second-tier levels are different in that they do not believe there is one right worldview — but they are perhaps 2-3% of the population. It is a developmental model, which means one works through the various levels in sequence over time – if they so choose. The sixth and final level of tier 1 is the green meme. (BTW, greens despise hierarchies, so if you stop reading here…..) About 25-30% of the US population is green.

It’s useful to note that each meme has a healthy and unhealthy expression. The “mean green meme” is of course the unhealthy expression. The mean greens take pluralistic relativism to an extreme and suggests that no idea or belief is better than any other. Add in a sprinkle of narcissim and you get “no one is going to tell me what to do,” and “whatever I think is best.” Rather than creating a community of togetherness, the world is divided into good and bad, sensitive and insensitive, victims and victimizers. Some standard catch words of the green meme are: pluralism, relativism, diversity, multiculturalism, deconstruction, anti-hierarchy, and so on. These are actually good things, but in the hands of the mean greens, they lead to outcomes such as the politically correct thought police. In Boomeritis, Wilber observes that “with its pluralism and relativism, it has actively fought the emergence of more integrative and holistic thinking (aka the second tier).”

“Boomeritis is simply pluralism (all views are equally valid) infected with narcissism (my view is best). It is often well-intentioned. Super-sensitive mean greens, will try to help, but typically exaggerate their own significance– “If I believe it, it’s true.” And if my actions are somehow ineffective, it is because I have been repressed or victimized, and we need to find out who is to blame (it can’t be my own ineffectiveness).

What set off my detector re: Covid-19 has been the harsh and often nasty response to anyone who dares question the prevailing masks, social distancing, and quarantining approach. What is ironic is that healthy green values participation, equality, and community, but in mean green that only extends to those with the “correct” thinking. Those questioning the mean green meme orthodoxy are shouted down or ridiculed. This leaves us with an “us-and-them” approach to what is so clearly an “us” challenge. – Andy Hines