FAQs > Questions About Spiral Dynamics and Memetics

• How do the ^vMEMEs in Spiral Dynamics, memetics and Dr. Graves's work connect?
   
• How do schema and thema interact in Spiral Dynamics?

How do the ^vMEMEs in Spiral Dynamics, memetics and Dr. Graves' work connect?

Dr. Graves didn't speak of memes or memetics. That terminology was added with the Spiral Dynamics application in the 1990s and incorporated in the 1996 book.

The usage for Graves's levels in Spiral Dynamics is vMEME or ^vMeme—a sort of meme-maker that anchors a coping or value system. That symbol distinguishes value-system attractors—vMEMEs—from the memes they attract. 

Many of the findings of the memeticists help to explain how the replicators - behaviors, things, ideas - wrapping around the ways of thinking in Spiral Dynamics migrate and spread among minds. At the same time, Spiral Dynamics provides a framework for analysis of memes and an understanding of why memes attach to some minds, at some times, and not to others. Metaphorically, the principles of meme spread can be applied to vMEME spread, as well.

Some people continue to confuse the terms, but the two constructs are quite different. One is an idea and content, the other a container and empty framework in need of contents. To expand the semantic confusion by suggest they refer to the same thing and to overlap the language is to confuse the fields horribly. Memetics and SD can be complementary; but they are not interchangeable. 

Mind you, recent works by the versatile scholar Susan Blackmore and others formerly in the field of memetics discuss consciousness as a move closer to the Spiral Dynamics sense of a biopsychosocial energy field than the original notion of a virus-like meme as a self-replicating thing. (Video of Sue Blackmore's TED presentation.) However, that does not diminish the value of memetics, and Blackmore has returned to it. We continue to argue that both ideas—memes and vMEMEs—are useful bits for analysis. As described in the 1996 Spiral Dynamics book, vMEMEs are like attractors and containers for memes. 

For more on Spiral Dynamics and memetics, click on About Spiral Dynamics at the top of your screen and look in the Theory section.






How do schema and thema interact in Spiral Dynamics?

An ongoing dilemma in using and teaching Grave/Spiral Dynamics is the differentiation of artifacts (memes playing out as schema---actions, beliefs, behaviors, mental scripts and anchors for perceptions) from vMEMES (the underlying thema—ways of thinking about things, worldviews, coping systems), then pulling them back together into a coherent picture of human nature in its various contexts.For example, Dr. Graves described the first level of existence like this: "As A and N interact, the resultant is the automatic psychosocial way of living. This is a general way (thema) which can be specified into many particular forms (schema) of problems A, and many variances in the N neurological system." Each level of existence (nodal color in Spiral Dynamics language) has a unique thematic form that is both like and unlike others in the hierarchy. 

Though many disagree, we continue to believe that the meme/vMEME differentiation is important because using "meme" as a generic conflates the symptoms with the underlying causes—the thema with the schema—and leads us to miss nuance and generate troublesome stereotypes. It's very Korzybskian in its levels of abstraction and parallels the old problem of distinguishing values (as attitudes and content) from value systems (as cognitive structures).

Research into both areas is important so that an even clearer sense of thema (per Graves and other theorists) can be derived, as well as applications dealing with the schema observable in individual and group behaviors.