Healthy vs. UnHealthy — Example

I wrote this draft blog post about a year ago when the last government shutdown was threatened… since that year exactly nothing has changed; if anything, it’s gotten worse now that we have a small number of people expressing flamethrower/ideologue values in Congress, weilding “way above their weight” as the saying goes. So I’m posting it this time as an example of Spiral Dynamics in Action.

In my Broadband International Legal Action Network evolution, I find myself working in the sphere of D.C. influences, and recently (March 2022) it came up in spades… from Politico Nightly: “The Senate approved a two-day spending bill to avert a government shutdown, kicking the deadline to Sunday evening so negotiators have more time to hammer out a year-end spending agreement and COVID stimulus package.”

So here’s the pattern: wait until the absolute last minute before the deadline to do the deal, or in a BBILAN example, finish and file a legal argument. Waiting until the last minute is a cultural meme in D.C.; it’s simply how D.C. works.

So the question is, is this a Healthy expression?

Does it solve the perceived problems of existence? Here is where the key to understanding Spiral Dynamics lies… perception. What am I perceiving, and what meaning am I making of those perceptions? In the arguably Red behavior of a perverted form of “chicken,” it might even feel like a life-or-death negotiation with Congress these days. Not great perception of life conditions for making healthy choices. So I’d put it over to the left (Less) on the horizontal dimension.

Vertically, does this expression support an openness to evolve? It certainly doesn’t feel that way to me. Because this is indeed the “people’s business” when it comes to running our country… literally “the buck starts here.” And we have a strong division of value systems that are, on one level, fighting for survival. So toward the bottom (Less) in the vertical axis.

To connect this to my earlier blog post on the Assimilation-Contrast Effect, you tend to find those kinds of energies toward the extremes of both sides… ideologues and flamethrowers. However, where one extreme side exists, it actually creates the need for the other side’s extreme expressions, especially in today’s media environment where extremes seem to rule the “lead”. So it is a fallacy to say that both sides are equally to blame… typically one side is “leading” the flamethrowing (what progressives call “going low”), when the core value of the other side is to “go high”… meet in the middle, and talk over differences rather than make threats to blow up the world economy, as a debt default would undoubtedly be.

Obviously this kind of last-second haggling over money that the U.S. has already spent (it’s like okaying paying a bill that’s due) is very unhealthy for pretty much everyone.

Yet it is how D.C. fundamentally operates. What would happen if two sides amiably met and figured out what would work best for all concerned, and did it a month before the deadline? Think about it… it would probably be considered a worthwhile, though futile idea. Political Ideologues are more interested in their party taking the reins of power in the next election cycle. Unhealthy Purple tribalism has been at the heart of America’s two-party political system since its inception (by design, though not stated anywhere in the Constitution).

Structure influences behavior… the first rule of Systems Thinking. Let’s design a healthier political structure. All it takes is a change of mind.