Don Beck was voted by the members and visitors of Universe Spirit as our May/June Futurist Artist of the month.
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"Einstein said that the problems we have created cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them. And this is the hope that we have: that in the very dangerous and precarious global situations that we are in today, we could prepare the breeding ground and the fertile soil and the habitats to generate what the next models of existence will be. We have reached that stage where our successes and our failures have produced problems that we simply cannot solve, in the old Einsteinian sense, at the same level that they were created. Now is the time to begin once again, as Clare W. Graves would say, this never-ending quest of ours." ~ Dr. Don Beck |
Don Beck has been developing, implementing, and teaching the evolutionary theory of Spiral Dynamics for more than three decades. Beck has elaborated upon the work of his mentor, Clare Graves, to develop a multidimensional model for understanding the evolutionary transformation of human values and cultures. As cofounder of the National Values Center in Denton, Texas, and CEO of the Spiral Dynamics Group, Inc., Beck is employing the Spiral Dynamics model to effect large-scale systems change in and among various sectors and societies of the world. He is the author of Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership & Change, written with Christopher Cowan in 1996.
Beck's long consulting career has taken him to such diverse settings as 10 Downing Street to consult with Tony Blair's Policy Unit; the south side of Chicago to address the problems faced by inner-city schools; the World Bank to consider the future of Afghanistan; and the boardrooms of major banks, energy companies, airlines, and government agencies. In his 63 trips to South Africa between 1981 and 1988, he had significant impact on political leaders, the business sector, religious leadership, and the general public in order to help bring about the peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. Out of his experiences there, Beck wrote The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future (1991) with Graham Linscott.
Before his work in South Africa, Beck taught for twenty years at the University of North Texas. There he was named Outstanding Professor in 1978, named Honor Professor in 1979, and listed as an "Outstanding Educator in America" in 1980. Beck has also been the team psychologist for The South African Springboks, winners of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and has been associated with the Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, the Texas Rangers (baseball), and the U.S. Olympic Committee for Men's Track and Field. He writes a "sports values" column for the Dallas Morning News. He makes his home in Denton, Texas.
Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change
Spiral Dynamics reveals the hidden complexity codes that shape human nature, create global diversities, and drive evolutionary change. These dynamic Spiral forces attract and repel individuals, form the webs and meshes that connect people within groups, communities and organizations, and forge the rise and fall of nations and cultures.
Spiral Dynamics meshes the new science of memetics with Gravesian value systems to form value memes or vMemes to craft a model of transformational change. By exploring and describing the core intelligences and deep values that flow beneath what we believe and do, the model offers a profoundly incisive, dynamic perspective on complex matters such as:
* HOW people think about things (as opposed to "what" they think)
* WHY people make decisions in different ways
* WHY people respond to different motivators
* WHY and HOW values arise and spread
* The nature of CHANGE
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* Spiral Dynamics This powerful conceptual system has been field-tested in some of the most complex environments on the planet, from inner-city Chicago to racially plagued South Africa. Since the focus is on the deeper vMemetic foundations, Spiral Dynamics suggests ways to move more quickly in the direction of deep dialogue and comprehensive, integral solutions. |
SPIRAL DYNAMICS: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Section 1: Overview of Spiral Dynamics
Different Times Produce Different Minds
The Nature of vMEME Systems
The Mind of the Spiral
Section 2: The Dynamics of the Spiral's vMEME
Change and the Spiral
The Dynamics of Leadership
Spiral Wizardry
Spiral Alignment: STREAMING Visions into Reality
Spiral Integration: Power & Precision in Organization Design and Transformation
Section 3: The Spiral Wizard's Field Manual
The First Tier -- Six Subsistence vMEMEs
BEIGE - SurvivalSense - The Instinctive vMEME
PURPLE - KinSpirits - The Clannish vMEME
RED - PowerGods - The Egocentric vMEME
BLUE - TruthForce - The Purposeful vMEME
ORANGE - StriveDrive - The Strategic vMEME
GREEN - HumanBond - The Relativistic vMEMEStepping Over to the Second Tier -- The Being Level vMEMEs
YELLOW - FlexFlow - The Systemic vMEME
TURQUOISE - GlobalView - The Holistic vMEME
Section 4: Global Order and Chaos on the Dynamic Spiral
Global Awakenings: "New World Order" (and Chaos)
Resources for Spiral Wizards
Spiral Dynamics Integral, or SDi for short, concerns itself with the deep complexity codes that shape our many worlds. The model describes and makes sense of the enormous complexity of human existence, and then shows how to craft elegant, systemic problem-solutions that meet people and address situations where they are.
Conceived and led by Dr. Don Beck, a leading global authority on value systems, societal change, and stratified democracy, SDi is an advanced extension and elaboration of the biopsychosocial systems concept originated by the late Dr. Clare W. Graves of Union College, New York, and later developed as Spiral Dynamics - a model that Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine rather grandly dubbed The Theory that Explains Everything.
For more info on Don Beck and his work go to: http://www.spiraldynamics.net/
Click here for more about our Artist of the Month award criteria or to vote for next month’s Artists of the Month.
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