Chapter 9 --  Spiral Dynamics:  Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Beige (SurvivalSense)  The Instinctive Meme

• Automatic, autistic, reflexive
• Centers around satisfaction of human biological needs
• Driven by deep brain programs, instincts, and genetics
• Little awareness of self as a distinct being (undifferentiated)
• Lives "off the land" much as other animals
• Minimal impact on or control over environment

At the core of Beige:

• Survive at the most basic level
• Satisfy physiological needs
• Form protective/supportive bands
• Entities exist as biological units
• Simply make it through the night/day

Beige is a virtually automatic state of existence

The Most Basic Human Needs

Beige is concerned with satisfying basic biological needs.

In the Beige zone emotions are few.

Beige does not necessarily mean a stupid or deficient human being.

The Beige meme seems to have intuitions about impending events and to possess a unique spatial awareness.

When Beige is in control, people form bands, just a step above the herd.

The objectives are survival and procreation.

When a tragedy occurs and there is a large loss of life, some of the survivors and loved ones regress into a Beige state of being.

If heavy Beige is relatively fixed, a caretaker system should be employed.

BEIGE/purple: Exiting Phase

• Informal band-type human existence is seriously challenged by competition over food resources, mates, and territory.
• As LC1 basic survival needs are met, new brain connections from which create a distinct awareness of "me, Myself, and I" as different from other people, vegetation, or animals.
• With time to think about why things happen, direct observations begin to link cause with effect.

As we leave the core BEIGE would of infancy and illness, LC2 appear.  With them comes the recognition of danger.

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Beck, D.E. & Cowan, C.C.  Spiral Dynamics:  Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change.