| Color | Nickname | Social construct | Cause worth dying for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | PowerGods | Kingdoms, Empire | My king. Honor |
This is the stage of empire. The strong ruled over the weak. We are taught to venerate Rome, but by today’s standards it was a hopelessly evil slave empire. It was very Red. Rulers the world over declared themself as God. The Pharoahs built their pyramids and other rulers demanded that their followers commit suicide when they died. And people willingly followed them into death. This is the stage of the Alexander The Great and Genghis Khan. Alexander is remembered as a “great” man, but by today’s standards he would be considered a murdering lunatic. He probably killed his father to gain power. He killed a lot of other people just for the glory of it. Genghis Khan by all accounts was a self-actualized guy who achieved his biggest dreams. Too bad about all those millions his troops killed. But here is the most important point. Genghis and Alexander (and their legions of followers) did not consider themselves evil. They considered themselves the good guys. And you have to kind of marvel at their martial excellence.
There is a real darkness here. Brutal wars of conquest swept across the world. The worship of the Goddess was suppressed and women became property. Slavery took root and flourished. Wealth and power went to the very top. People were forced into a brutal form of agriculture that put them into early graves. Much of the suffering of the world still comes from this stage of thinking. This is not how we want to live, but there is no turning back. Much as we might like to go back to Purple we have no choice. We have way too many people on this planet now to sustain a traditional Purple lifestyle. It is like when Cortes landed on the shores of Mexico determined to conquer the Aztec empire. He scouted the coasts for a bit then determined he had to head inland. So he did something very Red; he scuttled his ships. Can you imagine what it must have felt like to watch that? It made it very clear to his followers that the only choices now were to advance or die. It is the same for us. If we want to get home to the world we long for we have to first accept our reality. Accept this is who we are. Accept the horror and suffering. Accept that we are all complicit.
And yet. We would become as Gods! Without this stage we would not have gone from looking up in wonder at the moon, to landing on it and looking back at the pale blue marble of earth. This is the stage when writing began. Think of what we are most proud of as a species – conquering disease, teasing out the secrets of the universe, learning to fly, exquisite, beautiful works of music, art, and architecture. All of these had to start with the crazy determination to go to that next stage. We were not content to simply stay just as we were. This is the stage of personal excellence. The dedication and courage of an Olympic athlete starts here. The desire to radically change the world is very Red. The warriors who fight to keep us safe have a hot Red core to them. We need this stage just as much as any other of the stages, even despite all the trauma it brought. This stage can provide the courage to keep on fighting even when all seems lost and going on would be pointless. To keep on fighting even if at times it feels like just a futile and stupid gesture. As crazy as it sounds we need that.
But in different regions of the world at different times people woke up and said “Enough! We need something bigger than this! Life must be more than just the strong oppressing the weak”. And something did arise. Something very beautiful.