The "green meme"

In his version of Spiral Dynamics, Ken Wilber takes up the notion of meme, which was first introduced by Richard Dawkins. Memes, in his context, correspond to levels of consciousness and every level builds on the adoptations of previous ones. Therefore, each level transcends its predecessors, encompassing or including them at the same time, in much the same way as cells include the atoms they consist of etc. Each and every level, then, is fundamental to all levels that come after it and should be acknowledged with compassion.

The green meme is the last of first-tier memes and forerunner to second-tier ones, which involve a refocusing on the being or essence. Thus, it serves as an epilogue to, say, the scientific materialism of the orange meme, the mythic fundamentalism of the blue meme and the magic-animism of the purple meme.

Through the exact same processes with which evolution manifests, differentiation and integration (e.g. one cell splits into two, then four, sixteen etc.; at the same time differentiated cells integrate to form tissues, organs, etc.), the green meme differentiates the essence of its preceding memes and integrates the result into a tapestry of multiple frameworks, each comprising pluralistic views and individualised parts, thus paving the way towards a truly integral world. What the green meme says is this: "sacrifice self interest in order to gain acceptance and group harmony".

No man is an island, nor should he behave as one.