Bruce Gibb reviews Rifkin's new book

Bruce Gibb, an organizational psychologist and SDi practitioner, reviews the new book. His premise: "[Rifkin's] analysis proceeds from a Yellow, Stage 7 (S:7) stance." He notes a couple of things I've been harping on since forever. One is that while foundations are built upon and not eliminated, nonetheless a "more adequate theory replaces a less adequate one." (My emphasis.) Another is that the socio-economic infrastructure is primarily what drives our evolution, agreeing with Rifkin "that life conditions—and in particular the sources of energy and the technology of communication—are the drivers of cultural evolution."


While Gibb admits near the end that biosphere consciousness is turquoise, he also said right before that statement that the collaborative commons is a horizontal extension of green consciousness into all sectors of society. He led up to that conclusion by noting that green's psychological consciousness extends empathy to larger associational ties to include like-minded others. His own logic doesn't follow here, as the collaborative commons goes beyond associational, like-minded ties into biosphere consciousness, given its expansion of empathy to all people beyond associational ties as well as the entire biosphere.

Also he doesn't provide a description of an SDi yellow cultural mode. His progression seems to indicate we can jump from associational communities (green) to the biosphere (turquoise) with no yellow in between? Granted he's following Rifkin's empathic levels here, which don't account for what Gibbs describes as yellow. But Gibbs doesn't account for a yellow cultural stage either.