The Culture Level Human
The Two Faces of Social Chameleons
Culture Level Humans
Everyone is laughing hysterically. It's one of those feel-good moments with a large group of friends that you don’t want to end. We are all enjoying everyone's company, but it's Matt who is the life of the party. His jokes are funny, and his antics are outrageous. He is a little over the top—okay, a lot over the top—but in this context, it works. His energy is infectious, and everyone likes him.
Later, as the party thins out, Matt is surrounded by several of his like-minded friends and a smaller group of strangers, shifting from the larger mix of people we didn't know earlier. Now in familiar company, predictably, Matt's demeanor starts to change. He becomes more opinionated and self-righteous; the jokes turn to subtle jabs, and he is quick to pile on.
I've seen this before with Matt. When we are in mixed company, he is a joy to be around—a good listener, an objective observer, and a great conversationalist. Once he is surrounded by those with his personal beliefs and political leanings, a whole other side of his personality emerges.
I admire the way Matt can be some of the time. He has a special knack for connecting with everyone, being funny and well-liked, while never getting bogged down in substantial, meaningful, or controversial subjects. He avoids taking strong positions and keeps everything light and airy.
Put him in an environment where he is surrounded by his friends and "team members," and his other personality comes out of the shadows. He becomes overbearing, closed-minded, subtly disrespectful, and sometimes overtly rude.
In scenarios where he is unknown and more socially isolated, he is kind, considerate, and jovial. Place him with a bunch of people who share his beliefs, and you get a hard, judgmental, and unyielding personality that can be very much in your face.
It's complicated. Matt is one of those "go along to get along" individuals in some situations. He is rarely confrontational in mixed groups; instead, he seeks to make everyone happy. You know the term "people pleaser"? That’s Matt, except he is better described as a "group pleaser." He is a bit of a social genius and a communication chameleon. It’s hard to pin him down on serious topics when in mixed company.
While he can be incredibly fun in those more varied social situations, in more familiar settings he becomes self-righteous, egotistical, and sometimes downright nasty. I have been able to watch this from the sidelines. We know each other fairly well, so I am only sometimes the target of his attacks.
He leans slightly conservative and is more conciliatory, balanced, and objective when we hang out. That makes sense, as I am solidly unaffiliated politically. But get him around more extreme right-wingers, and you see his strong opinions fly. If he is around a group of hardcore liberals, which happens often in Los Angeles where we are from, he will remain mostly quiet, only speaking up on points of agreement.
What I have learned is that if his team is present, he immediately becomes one of the most outspoken and aggressive people in the conversation. In short, he becomes an asshole. I also know him well enough to know he is a good guy underneath it all. He is just swayed too much by the peer pressure of politics and the hidden cultural undertow of fitting in and getting along.
My friend Chad is a little like Matt, but his culture level behaviors manifest differently. Chad refers to himself as a hopeless romantic. He is always in a new relationship or dealing with a recent breakup. He meets women very easily. And I have to say, the girls he dates are incredibly attractive from a universal perspective, meaning their physical looks would be deemed attractive by most anyone romantically interested in women.
That’s part of the issue. Chad seems to look at women only through the lens of how hot they are based on societal standards. As his friend, I feel bad for him in this regard. He is almost ten years younger than me. I stopped evaluating women strictly on their looks back in my twenties. I value personality now and prioritize honesty, kindness, and good communication far above physical appearance.
I feel Chad's superficiality hinders his connection with girls who may be more suited to him. I have shared this with him a number of times. He meets women, begins dating, and he or they break it off fairly quickly. Most of his relationships don’t go past more than a few months. He has often complained that the women he dates are superficial and only want men who have money, power, and status.
I am all about honesty with my friends, so I have to respectfully remind him that he is doing the same thing when he bases his attraction solely on a female's looks. I point out that maybe by being so into a female’s appearance, he is unknowingly screening out all the amazing women not preoccupied with their appearance and therefore far less driven by societal dictates.
He is a great-looking guy, but he is also not the hot twenty-year-old anymore. He is aging, and I am afraid his superficiality is going to hurt his chances at finding a great relationship. I tell him this, but he says, “I just can’t get past the looks thing, man.”
Chad and Matt also put a lot of emphasis on money, status, accolades, nice cars, big houses, and all status symbols in general.
They tend to talk a lot about themselves and their past accomplishments. Chad talks about what a great student he was, how he was a champion wrestler in high school, how he got a full scholarship in baseball to college.
Matt talks about how he sold his company for millions of dollars in his twenties. He labels himself an entrepreneur and a creator and is impressed by big houses, fancy cars, and bling.
It’s all fine, but if you know these guys well, you will know they each struggle with their own form of unhappiness. Matt feels like a failure because he has a roommate, is not a “millionaire,” and drives a Toyota.
Chad feels like a failure because he does not have the “hot wife,” the respectable career, expensive house, and two kids that his wife picks up from school in their top-of-the-line Range Rover.
Matt has an interesting dichotomy in the way he is with his friends. On the one hand, he is incredibly supportive and loves highlighting the friends he deems are winning. But he also talks in a demeaning way about some of his friends who are struggling financially. It’s as if he takes his own self-loathing out on those who are in a similar, or worse, predicament than him.
Chad has a similar struggle in the relationship department. He meets and connects very quickly, but somehow things fizzle quickly as he continues looking for a “hotter woman,” and/or the girl gets fed up with his mood swings and inauthentic nature.
Both Chad and Matt are culture-driven. They are stuck in a comparison trap, always looking for a way to elevate their status in the way they have internalized popularity. It is almost as if they are still in high school trying to be the popular kids, but missing the point of learning, connections, and memories as a result.
Culture Level Humans like Matt and Chad seek status and standing above all else. Their major emotional driver is acceptance. The Culture Level self seeks a team to be a part of. In Chad’s case, he thinks having a great-looking woman on his arm makes him look better in the eyes of others. Matt thinks money and material things are the ticket to being seen and accepted.
This aspect of human personality is the adolescent side. This side gossips, judges, and is two-faced. Culture Level deems some people as worthy, popular types and others as losers or undesirables. Chad and Matt have different perspectives on what are the most valuable traits for humans.
Chad values looks. It is more than that for Chad, though. He needs to belong. He is deeply sensitive to being rejected by people, but most especially women. Somewhere along his growth trajectory as a human, he anchored solidly to relationships as being his ticket to acceptance and status, and it stays with him to this day.
Matt values money and smarts. This is why he dresses the way he does, dreams of having a fancy car, and brags about past financial success. Matt can become so rude and team-based with some people, but a sweetheart dude with others. It all depends on who he respects and feels has the things he wants and values.
When we operate from the Culture Level, there is an "us versus them" mentality. At this level, we feel jealousy, inadequacy, and a need to overcompensate or boast. Matt and Chad share these qualities. Culture Level behavior is all about trying to elevate our own status while lowering someone else's. This is why you will often see these two engage in gossip (lowering someone else's status) and bragging (trying to raise their own).
The cultural level mindset does not always manifest in such overtly negative ways. In fact, Matt and Chad are really great guys. I see this darker side of their personalities because I have gotten to know them both really well, consider them friends, and have studied psychology my whole life. This is the tricky thing about cultural level behavior. We all have it, and we keep it hidden pretty well most of the time. Even when we are not hiding it, the characteristics of cultural level behavior are so common most of us don’t even realize what we are seeing until we think back.
Whenever you see biased, team-based behaviors, you are witnessing a culture level human. Any activity that tries to position some groups as superior and others as less than is cultural level dynamics at work. Republicans who think all Democrats are stupid exemplify Culture Level behavior. College graduates who feel blue-collar workers are beneath them also exhibit this mindset. A feeling that better-looking people are also better people is a hallmark of the Culture Level. Religion, politics, nutrition teams, fraternities, clubs, organizations, and all the rest are culture level entities set up so we humans can gain acceptance and feel superior. The love of sports and teams is another symptom of culture level psychology.
Prom, Marriage, Kids (PMK)
Culture level humans gain their operating system from the stories of family, culture and tradition. One of the primary cultural narratives is what I call the PMK syndrome. PMK stands for Prom, Marriage and Kids. It represents a kind of unconscious cultural backpack that people are given as children and unwittingly wear their entire lives. It is a story that is so pervasive most people are completely unaware they are living this fairytale until they wake up one day realizing they didn’t live a life of their choosing, but rather lived the life that was dictated to them. You can think of this as being domesticated— a way of thinking and behaving that conforms to the norms of the society one is raised in.
Prom is supposed to represent the transition out of adolescence and into adulthood. This is a nice thought, but as we discussed above, most people go their entire lives never leaving the culture level mindset defined by adolescence.
Marriage comes next, perhaps with a stopover in college. And after that it is about having kids. At this point you have checked all the boxes and are a card-carrying member of the culture. Never mind the fact that many people never stopped to question whether this was something they actually wanted for themselves. Too many of these people wake up at middle age realizing they lived a plagiarized life instead of an authentic one. This realization often is the turmoil behind the midlife crisis, which the philosopher Allain De Botton calls “the last throws and final opportunity to escape adolescence.” Sadly the vast majority choose to stay in that adolescent mindset. Turning a midlife crisis into a midlife awakening to realize ones next level self is neither guaranteed nor common.
Popularity, Gossip & Shit Talking
Learning to spot culture level behavior in yourself and others is critical to personal development. We humans are social creatures above all else and the level we are most likely to manifest can be spotted easily watching individuals in social settings. Culture Level types are allays subconsciously attempting to elevate their status. Their drive for belonging causes predictable behaviors. Culture level types want their status to be at, or preferably above, the status of others.
In order to achieve that, they will often engage in two simultaneous behaviors— humble brags and subtle slights. The reason the bragging is humble, and the slights are more subtle is that culture level types are acutely aware of being watched and judged. They know that if you just come right out and brag overtly, others will find this off putting. They also know that people can feel a little uncomfortable when shit talking is more overt.
Of course gossip is something we all do. It is estimated that 80% of conversations we have with others includes discussions about people not present. Research suggests that those who gossip the most are the least liked and least trusted among their friends. People who gossip more are not only trusted less, but they also trust people less.
At the same time, talking about others is one of the ways we build trust. We tend to share our thoughts about others only with people we feel close to. Social and evolutionary anthropologists even think gossip could have had a survival benefit for ancient humans. They refer to this as the free loader theory of gossip.
We first evolved in small bands of people and survival depended on the group getting along, doing the right thing, and working together.
The primary threats to ancient societies were finding food and avoiding becoming food. Being a member of a group made our ability to do both far easier. In order to benefit from group protection, it required individuals to relinquish some of their autonomy in favor of adopting the behavioral norms of the group. Gossip played a critical role in maintaining group cohesion within these tribes. It aided in understanding. Through constant discussions, people understood who the leaders were, what was expected of group members, who was contributing to the collective, and who was freeloading or taking advantage.
Imagine being dropped off in a wilderness setting with ten other individuals. You have no better prospects or ability to strike out on your own. Your survival depends on the other members of your tribe.
You hunt together, forage for berries, construct shelters, and talk a lot. As a result of all this contact, you will develop relationships with everyone in the group. Naturally you will develop closer kinship with some compared to others.
There will be a lot of connection between individuals, communication within smaller groups, and frequent collaborations of the whole group. Most of what you would concern yourself with is what needs to be done and who is or is not pulling their weight.
You may notice the last time you went out for a hunt; Bob stayed in the back and did not take much initiative. You share this with one of your closer friends. They have noticed some things about Bob as well. Apparently, he has been taking the biggest portions at dinner and often going back for seconds when people have not even eaten yet. You learn from someone else that Bob takes long naps during the day and never helps with gathering firewood. Another group member points out that the last time the hyenas attacked, Bob was nowhere to be found.
In time all this chatter gives everyone in the group a good sense of who Bob really is. He gets labeled as a “freeloader.” Of course this is not something that sits well with the group. If everything works correctly, Bob should easily discern that he is being looked down upon. His need to fit in, not just to save face socially, but in order to survive, will cause him to correct his behavior. If he does not, the group leaders will surely intervene and set him straight.
This is how gossip functioned in early human tribes. This same mechanism is at work in today’s cultures as well.
The trick with gossip is to understand its nuances. What is the goal of the gossip? If the goal is just to connect on the goings on of the day with no attempt at degrading another person’s status, or elevating your own, then this type of gossip is harmless. If however, the gossip is oriented towards undermining the status of the person being talked about, especially while simultaneously trying to bolster one’s own popularity, then you know you are dealing with destructive culture level gossip and a culture level human.
Survival of the friendliest
Like with base-level behavior, culture level psychology is not all bad. It is true that it is not a completely evolved state, but it has actually served humanity well. Without being able to tap into culture level constructs you would be unable to relate or to connect to your fellow humans.
Being culture level is the entire reason we humans are able to form deep and committed bonds. It is both the source of love for our in group and the source of distrust for an outgroup. Evolutionary anthropologists who study our ancient human ancestors have recently found a huge amount of evidence that we humans did not kill each other off as we once thought. Instead, we just as likely merged, mated and joined forces. If you have ever taken a DNA test and noticed a small contribution of Neanderthal DNA, you have confronted this reality firsthand. All of us have this ancestral lineage in us.
In case you are unfamiliar with how we humans evolved let me give you a very basic run down. Humans in their current form, what science calls Homo Sapiens were not the only humans to walk the planet. In fact, there were many different lines of human. Most people completely misunderstand evolution and how it works. They usually tend to think there is a straight line from one animal to the next. This very wrong idea is reinforced whenever you see one of those linear diagrams depicting a slumped over ape moving in step wise fashion from chimp to ape, to hairy human, to less hairy human, to office worker.
Instead of thinking of evolution as a straight line it is more accurate to think of it as a branching tree with certain species branching off from their “parent” or “related” species in slightly different ways. These branches continue and continue leading to many different types of traits. In truth however, a tree is also not a perfect analogy for evolution for two reasons, the large trunk of a tree suggests all organisms are related in some way. Next, with trees the branching gets smaller and smaller, and it always happens in this way. In evolution, some branches become new trees. So it is more accurate to speak of branches and nodes like a mind mapping software. A full discussion about the misunderstandings concerning evolution is not important. It is also not my expertise, so let’s leave the discussion there.
What is important is the different types of humans. As human’s evolved from our ancient ancestors, we branched into slightly different human like versions sharing some traits of the ancestor but developing wholly different traits as well. There were many branches in this human lineage. There was Homo Habilis, Homo Ergaster, Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis and us (Homo Sapiens) among others.
Obviously, I am writing this book and you are reading it, so you and I, members of Homo Sapiens, must have done fairly well. If we take the concept of survival of the fittest the idea would be that Homo Sapiens was the strongest and or the smartest of all the human lineages. The truth is that is not what science tells us. Neanderthals were both stronger than us and perhaps smarter than us. So why are we the ones here and Neanderthals not? Well, technically they are still at least partly here because they are incorporated into our genes.
The evidence points to the fact that we cooperated and befriended others rather than outwitted or outpowered them. In other words, it was Homo Sapiens tendency to cooperate rather than alienate that made us the dominate and now only homo species on the planet. And isn’t that a beautiful way to see things? It was not survival of the fittest for us but rather survival of the friendliest.
Even modern societies bolster this point. While modern day media may make us acutely aware of every tragedy and atrocity happening on our planet at every moment, we currently live at a time with more humans than ever before and simultaneously the least amount of human-on-human violence the world has ever seen.
This fact can be seen in the amazing work of the Our World In Data Organization which consists of thousands of scientists studying, publishing and synthesizing huge reams of evidence on issues related to global problems. In one of the more fascinating compellations of data from this organization entitled Ethnographic and Archeological Evidence On Violent Deaths, you can witness firsthand through expansive charts how violence on the planet is lower than it has ever been despite having populations larger than they have ever been. Another great scientific compilation in this area is the work of Steven Pinker in his excellent book Enlightenment Now, The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress.
Of course it is not lost on any of us that we are also inhabiting a world where just a handful of bad actors could unleash massive casualties. But that is also pertinent to the discussion around base-level and culture level instincts and why we must all strive to be our next level human selves.
And this is where the culture level reality of our society has benefit. First on a personal level, culture level ideas and pursuits are how we find common ground and see our common humanity. Culture level orientations converge in infinite ways. Perhaps you don’t like my sports team, but you do love the same sport. In that case we can relate. Or perhaps you hate my sport but love another sport. We can vibe on that level. Maybe we both love a specific show or movie or perhaps we have completely different tastes in movie genres but can relate to our love of entertainment. There are infinite ways for us to find common interests and common ground.
Culture level is about beers and ball games and socializing and finding consensus. For all of its troubles in keeping individuals from realizing their best selves, the culture level construct does act as a stop gap for society.
If base level humans would pull us backward to our worst societal demons, and next level would pull us forward to a better, more just and moral civilization, then culture level instincts keep us anchored in the progress we have already made.
You can think of it like one big giant philosophical tug-o-war between our base level and next level instincts. Sometimes our base level cultural instincts prevail moving us slightly backward, but the slide is only marginal and temporary because the large mass of culture level humans acts as a moral anchor against our worst cultural instincts.
I like to think of it like this. Let’s say five to ten percent of the world is operating mostly from their base level human instincts, eighty percent of humans have a more culture level orientation, and another minority of humans, about five to ten percent are Next Level in their dominant psychological make up. So its eighty twenty. Eighty percent of people orient into culture level crowd-think. This means that the culture plays a dominant role in moderating where we are as a society. On the one hand it explains why progress is so slow. On the other hand it explains why progress, once made, slips backwards only rarely and usually does so only slightly and for transient periods of time.
Looking at is this way also immediately illustrates the critical balance between base level humans and next level humans. With less next level humans there is an ebb backward in societal evolution. With more next level humans there can be a small march forward.
The mass of culture level mindshare also is a great testing ground for ideas. Ideas are a tricky thing. No matter how good a thing may seem on the surface, there are always unintended and unforeseen consequences when ideas are applied into something as complex as a living breathing society or ecosystem. We have seen this throughout history. Perhaps the most famous more recent historical example is pure socialism. On the surface it is a utopian idea. Everyone working together and reaping the benefits. Who would not find this a valuable and beautiful idea? However, whenever this has been applied at mass scale in its purist form it seems to degrade rather than enhance society. It may have seemed a good idea, but it failed to account for the primacy of incentives in the human psyche. It has always collapsed at the culture level and been a ripe system for exploitation from the minds of base level types. The same could be said for capitalism. It’s an idea that has had much success and created many issues as well. Some has said it is the best of all the other bad ideas.
Culture level orientation is the great experimental ground for the evolution of the human collective. Everything is filtered through the culture level mind. One might argue that a society operating at higher levels of next level consciousness may thrive in a system that has elements of both socialism, capitalism and other systems integrated within it. When we get into talking about the Next Level Human aspect of things you will begin to appreciate that integration of ideas is indeed the Next Level Human way. It is the culture level caldron of experimental soup that is partly responsible for the data that allows that integration to happen in the first place.
If we take the long historical and next level view, it is not difficult for us to see a world that takes the best of multiple systems and throws out the bad. This may prove to be the benefit of the culture level— acting to prove what works best as more and more people evolve to next level ways of thinking and society elevates to next level dominant social structures.
This does however point to the fact that there is always a slight ebb of influence seeking to move us backwards. We should never underestimate the destructive ill-conceived imperatives of base level humans. The more next level humans we have the more we all elevate to our best lives as the culture level mindset orients and evolves towards greater and greater ideals and values. This is why each individual working to live from their next level human instincts is so critical. Next Level Humans push the culture level collective forward working against the base level humans who are attempting to pull them backwards.
Culture Level Politics
Despite the upside of the culture level mindset acting as a stop gap to fall back to previous base level culture behaviors, it can also impede a societies ability to make progress. This is especially true when you live in a society where the political system is built on team think and opinion rather than using evidence and the common good.
Politics can easily devolve to a game of opinion-based, team tit-for-tat. You may say this is a result of politicians, but politicians are raised by the culture they inhabit. They are a product and reflection of the people who elect them. They are extensions of the culture-level mindset. When culture level humans are voting and directing the world, they elect culture level humans to direct and govern the world. It is not the politicians; it is the people electing the politicians.
The culture level way of team is so utterly destructive because it turns everything into a battle of teams. Imagine if the people voting for politicians saw themselves as just humans and did not identify with a political party at all? Imagine if political ideas were not beliefs. Imagine if they were just loose opinions. Opinions people would gladly trade in for better ideas. Culture level mindsets keep that from happening.
The problem with the culture level mindset is it forms an opinion and then, because it ultimately seeks belonging and status, immediately seeks to find team members for that opinion. Once it finds team members for the opinion the opinion is reinforced whether right or wrong. Once that happens the opinion becomes a belief. A belief that is reinforced again and again becomes an identity. Once an identity forms, base level instincts to protect that identity at all costs kicks in. This is why culture level politics are so destructive.
Only a culture level human would make it about the politicians. And only a next level human would know that it is really about the human mindsets around electing politicians. Culture level mindsets keep us locked in a “my team is superior to your team” mindset. Culture level thinking is the one that says you must vote for one of the existing parties otherwise you waste your vote. They can’t see that voting for another party is about breaking the cycle of team-based politics. And that orientation towards life can turn friend to foe. The only way to escape this is to move to a Next level Orientation towards politics. Which we will cover shortly.
The Pyramidal Hierarchy’s
The way culture level type’s view of societal structures is also very important to understand. It is more complicated than a base level perspective. Culture levels individuals see society as a combination of vertical and horizontal hierarchy’s. Like a base level type they see a north to south orientation for society. There are positions further up the chain as well as positions further down the chain. However, because culture level types orient towards groups, they simultaneously see things through the lens of a horizontal hierarchy.
We talked about the idea of a vertical hierarchy being represented by a latter. The best way to think of a horizontal hierarchy is through sports. There are those who play football. They are experts at that game, and it is part of their group identity. There are also those who play basketball, tennis and baseball. They are not less than football players but rather occupy the same position as athletes. That’s a horizontal hierarchy. Because culture level types prioritize groups, they structure the groups (i.e. horizontal hierarchies) into a vertical hierarchy.
If they themselves are university graduate, who played sports and was in a fraternity they will team other individuals with these group affiliations as on a level footing with themselves (a horizontal hierarchy). At the same time, they may see uneducated, blue-collar workers who watch Nascar as beneath them on a vertical hierarchy.
This horizontal hierarchy within and vertical hierarchy resembles a pyramid. Culture level types see their groups, and groups similar to them at or near the top of the pyramid. They don’t mind a someone occupying the same level on the latter as them as long as they are in the same group. However, those not in the same group are seen as much lower down. For example a male Caucasian, Harvard grad frat boy may see himself at the top of the pyramid with people like him. He may see a Caucasian male blue collar worker several levels down toward the middle of the pyramid. He may see a woman, who is also person of color from the inner cities who works as at a lower wage job is at the bottom of the pyramid with a mass of other similar people.
It can definitely go the other way too. A female interacting with the male above could slot him lower down in the pyramid. She would prioritize the virtuous nature of her group at the top of the pyramid and label the Caucasian male above as a member of the evil patriarchy who is responsible for all atrocities ever committed against minorities.
In both scenarios, assigning people group identities supersedes and need or desire to understand the actual individual in front of them. When culture level types are operating out of their fearful demons, they can easily create enemies where none exist. When they are operating from their better angels, they may be able to find some area of common ground. However, the latter only happens when the culture level instincts elevate to next level states of awareness.
The difference here is that culture level people prioritize group structures and see their own identities, as well as the identities of others, primarily through the level of group affiliation. Whereas base level types prioritize the individual as the center of identity, culture level types see groups as the center of identity.
Cultural level types are obsessed with group categorizations at every level. They then use these group categorizations as a way of psychologically labeling good and bad groups. Their entire language is all about the groups they belong too and the other groups that are different too or in opposition to their group. It’s important to understand that if group identity is how, you identify then an immediate consequence of that psychological orientation is both an in-group (your group) and an out-group (the other). And this is both a source of our friendliness, to the groups we associate with, as well as our ferociousness and cruelty, towards the groups we see as bad or other.
As we discussed, base level types view society as a vertical power struggle. They see certain people high up on the latter with others lower down. They also have chief desire and internal drive to tear people off of the higher perches and achieve solidarity at the top themselves. This is why base level types will orient towards technologies that allow them to be all powerful, like guns. It’s also why base level leaders position themselves into dictatorships.
Culture level mindset sees society as more like a pyramid. There are the ground level people and careers that they see as beneath them. Wealthy educated types see themselves in the higher levels of the pyramid and deem other well educated, materialistic types as alongside them. They seek to climb the latter up but also favorably relate to others who have achieved the same popularity or status they themselves believe they have. Of course individuals who have not attended university and who work hard at manual labor reverse this pyramidal structure. They see the elite as greedy untrustworthy types who occupy the bottom of the pyramid, while virtuous salt of the earth hard workers like themselves occupies the areas near the top of the pyramid.
Culture level types identify with a team whose situation looks similar to their own and then organize a lesser-than vertical hierarchy below them and similar-to horizontal hierarchy alongside them. This is a very tough orientation for culture level types to break and is a source of much hostility, distrust and social unrest in the world. Poor conservatives who loathe rich, educated “elites” and distrust any organizations that produce them. Rich educated liberals who have a disdain for what they
Spotting Culture Level Humans
Like with base level humans, try not to see culture level ways of being as a position in a hierarchy. Instead just see it as a position in development. Try to see both the good side and the downside of living in a mindset dominated by culture level.
Culture level makes us fall prey to all manner of delusions about who we are and what we can do. It also makes us pick sides, judge, see things as black and white and miss out on the lessons a nuance frame of reference brings.
Culture level helps us feel connect to others— the members of our team— but simultaneously blocks us from really seeing and knowing ourselves. If you are always thinking and acting in accordance with the dictates of a perceived cultural role, then how are you going to be able to chase the unique life of your dreams?
CULTURAL-LEVEL HUMAN BEHAVIORS CAN BE SUMMED UP LIKE THIS:
1. Major concern: Status/Popularity
2. Emotional driver: Belonging/Acceptance
3. Personality style*: Envious (elevate their status while lowering yours)
4. Reciprocity style**: Matcher
5. Relationship style***: Anxious
6. Motto: Us Against Them
7. Philosophy: Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you)