Having obtained an understanding of the model offered through the Seed Logos / Matrix / Spiral Dynamics / Culture of Sustainability, some things may become more clear, and some things may seem more complex.
Remembering that Don Beck brought the Spiral Dynamics understanding into South Africa, and that was a component of the transition there away from Apartheid, there is obvious application of the MATRIX understanding in the political sphere - it can literally reframe the way people understand each other.
But what the MATRIX uniquely offers is not just an ability to understand how people might be processing their experience through a particular vMeme world view. . .
It is a Mapping and Diagnostic Tool
Scanning a group, of any scale, across the 12 sectors will enable evaluation of the vMeme status of that group for each sector. Any typical group will have a center of gravity at a particular vMeme cell for each sector, and in addition, may have leadership activation at a higher vMeme for that sector. It is common for a given group to have different vMeme status for different sectors. For example, in Boulder, Colorado, we might observe that the Economics sector is weighted in Red (trust funds, family property investments), Orange and Green. We might see that Planning and Earth Stewarship sectors are solidly Green, even Turquoise, and for many, the Spirit sector is even up into coral. Agriculture is largely Green and perhaps even Turqoise. Social Justice sector is Green and Yellow. So this analysis, if correct, reveals that the limiting sector for this community may be economics - the personal/family identification with money and financial assets influences to a great degree how many community-wide decisions are made: City and County councils are constrained in their forward thinking plans by the need to address impact on personal scale property interests. While changing this dynamic may be very difficult, here we have a clear tool to understand with some specificity what may be going on. An additional insight might be that while a significant amount of the economy in this college community is driven by un-earned income, eg trust funds and the like, and while the management of those funds may be more conservative in nature, the ultimate consumers of these funds tend to be vMeme Green and higher. This insight could lead to leverage into an accelerated evolution of the community at large.
The Seed Logos / Matrix model has been applied quite successfully in Solstice Institute's experimental Culture of Sustainability Mini-Grants program, where roughly equal sums were distributed among the sectors, after the grant applications were mapped onto the Matrix and rated, with special emphasis given to high-leverage second tier projects.
Planning Tool
Once the mapping has been done, the total picture can reveal the general dynamics of a group. So in the case above, the leadership cell for the broader community is found in two places. In general, we see Earth Stewardship and Planning has leadership and perhaps a significant bulge in turquoise with pretty much the whole community at least at Green. A subset of the community has spiritual interests with leadership at least in Coral. So in this communicy grand success on difficult land use planning has been had typically by drawing on the fact that the majority of the community will support Green/Turquoise initiatives: there is almost always support for funding Open Space parks programs. Recycling always gets support. Appeals to the values and codes in these sectors is very effective for politicians, those that speak the codes and get the support of the Sierra Club will usually get elected, and the only other faction that gets elected is speaking to the codes of Business/Financial interests, Economics at Red, Orange, and these days, possibly Yellow. Furthermore, when Coral Spiritual leadership engages in an issue, many people rally to that cause - so for say, an environmental group, this is a key point, because while their base is Green, Coral Spirit and Values could really turbocharge their efforts - and this exactly what happened with the hippies in the 60s and 70s. While this may not be special news, changing the weight of this community in the economic sector from Red and Orange more into Yellow is a high priority. Most of the other sectors are well on their way into second tier. Leadership is largely there already. Engaging dialogue with the business community not just about Green Values, but at the level of becoming leadership in Yellow and Turquoise is a key activity. Fortunately there are a number of folks in the community who are spiral wizards and are well into discusssions of this nature. Unfortunately, the Red-Orange faction is deeply rooted in the Red-Blue-Orange Republican Party mindset, a way of thinking that is now about 1/2 of the United States' political make-up. Even the People's Republic of Boulder is not immune from the pernicious vMemes of Red-Orange when it comes to the root of people's fear - the financial assets they or their families hold as security against an uncertain future. Sector Six, Economics may be the most closely related to the Root Chakra, which specifically relates to physical survival.
In Boulder, Colorado, one of the great challenges is the affordability of housing for ordinary people. Property taxes continue to rise, as do real estate values. Addressing the issue of physical security may be one of the most challenging topics, one that has come up often in public discourse, and many policies have been put in place to increase affordable housing throughout City and County, with mixed results. So how could leadership in a place like Boulder help ease the entire logos into second tier? One possibility would be for leadership in Coral and Pearl to encourage those holding onto more private equity than they really need for personal use to divest some of that asset into public infrastructure that would provide basic needs for those who are in real danger of losing basic requirements for shelter, food, clothing, etc. One direction for this is the classic ashram / monastery model, where anyone who truly needs support can go to a place of spiritual practice and renunciation. This would of course not be the Blue variety of religious institution, but something different — so different that even the rich who had more than they needed might enjoy some time in retreat at the facilities they helped pay for. In a sense, this is happening to a certain degree with the Tibetan Buddhist community in Boulder, but to make a real change community-wide on the scale of Boulder County, we would be looking at a larger scale phenomenon, large scale enough to be a part of everyone's life — everyone would have to know they had options, that basic survival needs were taken care of, no matter what. In a sense this is what has happened in the Social Democracies of Northern Europe, where taxation rates are quite high. If you are lucky enough to spend significant time in Scandinavia or spend a lot of time with someone from these higher latitudes, then you know the product of a Yellow society— the Red/Orange survival fear, the extreme focus on individual wealth, it has been taken away and replaced with something more sophisticated, a general concern for the common weal.