"Trust in Who?"
by Suzanne Maxwell

When we talk about trust for others, some faces spring immediately to our mind, beings who we trust implicitly and who have never failed us. Most often these trusted faces hold values and beliefs similar to our own. But what about those with values and beliefs ostensibly so different from how we perceive our own that we simply don't know how to trust them. A conceptual framework called Spiral Dynamics is providing a way to see the differences that often separate us from others in new light. Perhaps in seeing differently we might learn how to trust differently.

Don Beck and Ken Wilber, two who teach, research, consult and write about Spiral dynamics, describe its elements in terms of "memes". Memes are comprised of core value systems, organizing principles, world views, decision-making systems and various expressions of culture, each distinctly unique, and each uniquely similar as a part of our evolutionary whole. Memes or mematic structures evolved historically as natural responses to changing life conditions in our evolutionary experiences and help shape the way each of us interprets the world. Memes are also distinctly at work in a larger way via various cultures, religious beliefs, nation states and political views. While the whole, at either the individual or the collective level, contains elements of all mematic structures, we operate most often out of preferred and familiar mematic stances. It is these preferences that cause us to clash so strongly with some and connect so easily with others.

See if you can recognize your most preferred individual values in one of the following meme descriptions:

First-Tier Memes (Most of us)

BEIGE—Expresses self automatically so as to meet the basic physiological needs of food, warmth and reproduction.

PURPLE—Sacrifices self to the wishes of the elders and according to the ways of the ancestors to gain safety and security for the tribe or group in a frightening world

RED—Expresses self guiltlessly—to hell with others—so as to find immediate pleasure and avoid shame in a world of domination, threats and ego

BLUE—Sacrifices self now as to obtain reward later, in a world driven by a quest for order, meaning, and purpose in a universe controlled by a single higher power

ORANGE—Expresses self calculatedly so as not to arouse the ire of others in a world full of opportunities, to compete, win, and make things continuously better

GREEN—Sacrifices self now to obtain equality for self and others in a world where love and affiliation are paramount, where everything is relative, and truth is a matter of context and situation

Second-Tier Memes (As yet, only a handful of us)

YELLOW—Expresses self, but never at the expense of others or the earth, so that all life (not just the individual's life) may continue in the most natural and fitting ways...mind with heart

TURQUOISE—Sacrifices the interests of self and others when necessary, so as to reach balance and harmony among humans, the planet and generations to comeÉheart with mind

CORAL—Emergent and as yet, unknown

Reading these descriptions, you probably found one or two that more closely match with your own values than do the others. And you probably noticed descriptions that sounded like people you know, some who were described in either the same mematic structure as yours or in a completely different one. These distinctions and differences are where the absence or presence of trust usually begins. We get tunnel vision about our own current preferred value system and tend to trust those that are more like us than those who are different. We may see the differences as a threat to our safety and well-being and withhold trust as a consequence.

Seeing Differently
What constitutes trust? Trust may be something that can be earned even in the face of differences and it may be something that is automatically conveyed by reason of comfort and familiarity. What we fail to consider is where the experience and consequent extension of trust rests within ourselves. In considering it we might ask, "Where is my half of individual responsibility in the realm of trust, where am I casting my trusting gaze and where am I withholding it? What must I see differently within myself that results in trust showing up more often?"

To explore these questions, let's consider philosopher and teacher, Ken Wilber's challenge to us, so that we may be active participants in our own evolution, as individuals, as a nation and as a whole. Wilber, in his writing, exhorts us to "transcend and include." What he means here is to recognize within each of us, the presence of all the mematic structures and potential that exist in our lexicon of being human, from the rudimentary BEIGE to the emergent CORAL. Taking it one step further, to not only recognize these structures, but also include them in our view of ourselves through accepting and embracing the fact that every one of us is all these things and more. Then bringing it to the personal, the "transcend" part comes when I see myself as you and you as me and BOTH OF US AS MORE. I can only find something to trust in you when I can see and trust similar qualities within myself. Rejecting them within me guarantees my rejecting them in you.

Where does this leave us? It leaves us at the door of Second Tier, and deposits us firmly in the realm of the higher brain functions of conscious choice. It is this function of choosing from a place of consciousness that enables us to transcend and include, for where First Tier sees every other meme as "wrong" and only itself as "right," Second Tier recognizes and embraces the value of each and every mematic substructure and seeks to integrate for the good of the whole. As we embrace Second-Tier thinking we begin to see differently, to trust differently and begin to align our minds with what our heart already knows.

Suzanne Maxwell is president of About Changing, a firm specializing in change, from the individual to large-scale organizational in government, Fortune 50 and non-profit organizations. She resides in Placitas, New Mexico and may be reached at suzanne@aboutchanging.com.