The Memes of My Life: How Integral Thought Illuminated Personal Experiences

By Duane R. Miller

A meme provides an automatic belief regarding whats important, an unspoken understanding of whom to trust or whom to distrust and fear, a view of what you can expect out of your life. During most of our lives, we are imbedded in some meme and live according to the ways of that meme without being aware of it. In The Memes of My Life, author Duane R. Miller uses the concept of memes and integral thought to explain what hes discovered about his life.

In this memoir, Miller shares his life story against the backdrop of memes, from growing up on a farm in Ohio; to attending college and the seminary; going to graduate school; being involved with campus ministry; working as a minister in urban, suburban, and rural churches; and living in retirement.

In The Memes of My Life, he tells how the understanding of memes has helped him understand his history and why he thought, acted, or valued the way he did. It has also helped him realize why others acted the way they did and why he was successful working with some and ineffective in relating to others. He shows how understanding memes has allowed him to find joy and peace in his soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491755976

Duane R. Miller

Duane R. Miller earned a PhD and a MDiv from Boston University. He worked as a minister in rural, suburban, and urban churches and later founded a community ministry nonprofit organization. Miller is retired and lives in Rochester, New York, with Ida, his wife of forty-four years.

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Copyright © 2015 Duane R. Miller.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5598-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6091-8 (hc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922216

iUniverse rev. date: 05/22/2015

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Memes Help Make Sense of My World

1. Developmental Memes: Growing Up on the Farm, 1934–52

2. Discovering New Memes: College and Seminary, 1952–61

3. Living Orange/Green Memes: Grad School and Campus Ministry, 1961–68

4. Recovering Memes: Putting My Life Back Together, 1968–74

5. Working with Different Memes: Fillmore-Hume, 1974–78

6. Back to Orange/Green: Fairport, 1978–83

7. Another Kind of Blue: Elma, 1983–88

8. Pastoring Bruised Purple: Grace Church, 1988–95

9. Creating Green Support: Grace Urban Ministries, 1995–2000

10. Exploring Second Tier: Retirement at the Lake, 2000–2011

11. Living Second Tier in a First-Tier World: Retirement at the Lake, 2000–2011

12. Living on the Yellow Level: Retirement in the City, 2011—Present

13. Memes and My Life: Reflections

Notes

To Ida, who has been not only my wife but also my best friend for the last forty-four years. She has been there to love, share, support, understand, empathize, encourage, and even prod me throughout our experiences together. I would not have been able to write this book without her encouragement.

PREFACE

When I retired, I began thinking about a lot of questions that had emerged throughout my life. Now that I had time, I did a lot of reading and meditating about what I still believed, why I was the kind of person I was, why I felt at home some places but not others, why our country was so divided, and so on. It was during that time that I was introduced to the thought of Ken Wilber, an American philosopher who seeks to integrate Eastern and Western thought, and I found a kindred spirit.

It’s a part of my nature not to know what I think or believe until I write about it, so this book started out as a desire for self-understanding. Yes, I wanted to tell about my life experiences so my children, whom I hadn’t been that close to while they were growing up, might learn more about their father, and I wanted family and friends to know more about my life. But the writing experience has been primarily one of self-discovery.

Looking back through the lens of developmental levels or memes has illuminated, way beyond expectations, what happened when I was growing up and throughout my life. It helped me understand why I became a religious professional with the commitments I held; it shed light on my various relationships as well as the times when I flourished and when I did not in work situations. It also gave depth to my religious strivings through the years and as I look into the future.

So I hope this work will be enjoyed by my family and friends and they will see the parts they have played in my life. I hope it helps others who have gone through similar experiences understand their lives and their struggles in a new, helpful way. I offer it to the expanding integral community as a beginning attempt to apply integral thought to personal experiences.

INTRODUCTION: MEMES HELP MAKE SENSE OF MY WORLD

Memes Help Make Sense of My World

You are going to hear a lot about memes in these memoirs, so I had better start by telling you what they are. I could say that they are worldviews, but they are more than just a particular way of seeing everything. They are that, but each one is also a way of responding to various situations: an automatic belief as to what is important, an unspoken understanding of whom to trust and whom to distrust or fear, a view of what you can expect out of your life, and so on. During most of our lives, we are imbedded in some meme and live according to the ways of that meme without being aware of it. We can move from one meme to another but can be no more aware of the new one than we were of the former.

I first became aware of these ideas by reading Integral pioneer Ken Wilber. He sought to bring together many different scholars who in one way or another have researched the stages of development we go through as we change from babies, to children, to teenagers, and to adults. Development doesn’t stop there; we can grow through stages the rest of our lives. We go through developmental stages as we separate from our mothers, become individuals who can say no, identify with kids our age, see ourselves as part of a larger community, maybe identify ourselves as children of God, or see ourselves as part of creation.

Wilber didn’t stop there. He also wrote about higher, mystical levels of development and correlated them with studies in moral development and spiritual development. These levels or stages are the memes.¹

Each level of development has its own, normal reason for being, and you go from one to another as you grow up. Each contributes to the person you become. Some people get stuck at one level or another, but if that level brings them satisfaction, that is all right.

We live at one level or meme and feel comfortable at it. A large part of feeling comfortable comes from being part of a community of persons who are at that same meme and who support our living there. But then we encounter an event or idea and become aware that it doesn’t fit in with how we have been thinking or living, or we develop a skill or ability we didn’t have before, so we see our lives differently. We no longer feel as comfortable as we did before with the worldview that had made sense of everything earlier. We begin to differentiate ourselves from the meme we were at and begin to look for another meme—another way to look at, feel about, or respond to life. We find ourselves attracted to some people, some ideas, or a community at the next-higher meme level. We begin to explore that level and gradually identify ourselves with it. Making a healthy move to a new level involves integrating the best of our former meme into the new one. According to Wilber, all the research shows that we go through the levels in a particular order; we cannot skip one without pathological consequences.

Wilber also believes that those levels not only manifest themselves in terms of how individuals see themselves but also in culture and society. There is not just the I perspective; there is also the we perspective (culture), which includes how we believe we should see and treat each other. At each level are institutions and things (a society) we create to support our view of ourselves and others. We need to recognize how all these perspectives are related and support one another.

A radical change in our external situations can change our meme; a painful divorce or a drastic change in our economic situation can cause us to scramble for a different way to understand our new situation; we find ourselves responding from the point of view of a meme we have grown beyond. How we see ourselves and how we relate to one another is very different from before the change. Each meme has its own culture and social institutions that support its way of living in the world.

At each stage, there is also a view of what is out there beyond us: whether it is dependable or whether it is friendly. We find that our meme is so all-encompassing that we find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand someone at a different meme. Many misunderstandings or failures to communicate are due to the fact that people come from different stages. At each level, how one arrives at a particular position on a subject (e.g., gay marriage) is done differently. I may expect others to join me in the way I have decided that a position is true, but they may be totally baffled by how I present my view. When they begin arguing for their positions, their ways of approaching a subject make no sense to me. We find ourselves talking past each other and getting nowhere near a mutual understanding.

To look more at these levels, Wilber directed me to Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan (see former footnote). I see them as focused more on cultural (we) understandings while Wilber is usually more attentive to the psychological (I). Wilber often referred to their work when he was giving his comprehensive overview of the world. Spiral Dynamics spoke of these levels or stages as memes. The authors also use colors to specify the different levels.² Individuals and groups move through a series of levels or memes one after another. So let us now specify the memes you will be hearing about as I seek to understand my life and share it with you.

The first level is archaic (beige). This is the survivalist level at which the main priority is obtaining enough food, water, warmth, sex, and safety to survive. We rely on our instincts and habits. Newborns are at this stage, as were the first bands of people. But also at this level can be the senile, elderly, mentally ill street people, and the starving.

The second level is tribal (purple). This is a magical level at which we band with extended family and others for safety from the hostile world. If we show allegiance to elders, tribal leaders, and ancestors and preserve sacred events and memories, we will be safe together. There was a time in our history when tribes were the primary form of organization, but we see this meme working today in gangs, athletic teams, and some corporate settings.

The third level is impulsive or egocentric (red). Here, the group is not as important as the individual, who does what she/he desires without much regard for the outcome. For the first time, there is the emergence of the sense of self distinct from the tribe. The self now wants to be pleased and attain what it desires. Such persons enjoy who they are without guilt or remorse; they can face a world full of threats and predators and demand respect. Red people want others to look up to them and be known as heroes in a world of winners and losers. This meme often manifests itself in teenagers’ rebellion, frontier-life behavior, development of kingdoms, and the mercenary behavior of soldiers of fortune.

The fourth level is conformist ³ (blue). When people at the red level find their lives are not bringing them as much fulfillment as they think it should, they turn to blue, where giving individuals purpose and meaning is primary. Here, they become part of a group that believes the world has a definite order and meaning given to it by an all-powerful being or God. If they follow the rules that are laid out, they feel sure they will attain predetermined outcomes. If they impulsively stray from the way, they threaten not only their own futures and safety but those of everyone else. They have sinned, so they had better feel guilty and find forgiveness. If they sacrifice or suffer, they are building character and adding to the common good. Religion, especially in its conservative forms, is the vehicle for promoting and enforcing this meme. We see this meme manifested in most mainline religious groups, whatever their faith content.

The fifth level is rational achievement (orange). Its emphasis is on the individual (as were levels 1 and 3). Here, we act in our own self-interest so we can win. The world is a rational and well-oiled machine with natural laws that can be learned, mastered and manipulated for one’s own purpose.⁴ We learn what we can about the world we find ourselves in, especially what works and what doesn’t. We strategize about how we can get ahead, and we optimistically risk, relying on our abilities and skills to achieve the success we know in our hearts that we deserve. The moral code so important to the blue level can’t be allowed to be a hindrance to our achieving what we want in life. We first saw this meme in the Enlightenment but later in the Cold War, on Wall Street, in the Chamber of Commerce, in the majority of modern corporations, and secular humanism.

The sixth level is pluralistic communitarian (green). At this level, it is understood that we must move beyond greed, dogma, and divisiveness for personal fulfillment. Hierarchical thinking is replaced by a focus on consensus, harmony, and enriching everyone’s potential. There is a new interest in spirituality and with caring for others and the enrichment of everyone’s human potential. This meme is found in humanistic psychology, liberation theology, diversity movements, and human rights organizations.

These six levels complete what is called the first tier. What is distinctive about it is that those solidly in one of the levels find it difficult to understand or empathize with those at another. They believe that their worldview is the best one and that those with other worldviews aren’t as wise or right as those who share their meme. They have a hard time believing there can be much positive about those who live by a different meme.

When people move on to the memes in the second tier, they can look at other memes and see their value. They can remember the important part that a meme played in their development. They know people who live with different worldviews and respect them. They appreciate how the circumstances in which they live are coherent with their worldview and know that it brings out good qualities in them. They also recognize that some people and groups use particular worldviews to harm others.

The seventh level is integrative (yellow). At this first level of the second tier, you become aware of the various levels that have gone before and their positive functions, so you delight in the various systems and forms. You appreciate how all these differences can be integrated into interdependent but natural flows. You recognize natural degrees of ranking and excellence. You now desire knowledge and competency.

The eighth level is integral holistic (turquoise). At this level, you seek a holistic, dynamic way of putting it all together so all aspects of life and experience are integrated in one conscious system; everything connects to everything else.

Beck and Cowan maintain there is a ninth level, the coral level, but its qualities are unclear to them. Wilber speaks of higher levels of spiritual development. But the eight levels are adequate at this time to give background for my looking at my personal development and intellectual history.

So while there are distinct memes and any group or person can be understood as primarily at that stage (his or her center of gravity), he or she occasionally responds at higher or lower levels depending upon the circumstances. People may be at one level at work and a different one at home; they may be at one meme at church but at a different one when they participate in sports. People may be at different levels in different aspects of their lives; these aspects are called lines of development. Some of these lines are cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, psychosexual, moral, and spiritual. Someone may be highly developed in one line but not in others.

The above has been a very short introduction to integral thought. Anyone who studies integral thought will soon be introduced to states and types. But the short introduction I have given should be adequate to explain what I have discovered about my life. These understandings have helped me when I have tried to look at my life and understand why I thought, acted, or valued the way I did. It has helped me understand why others acted the way they did and why I was successful working with some and ineffective in relating to others.

I turn now to telling you about my life as I seek to illuminate it with these understandings of integral thought.

1

Developmental Memes:

Growing Up on the Farm, 1934–52

My first memory of thinking I might be someone important in my own right was when I spent a week with Grandmother Miller. It happened four or five summers when I was in grade school. I grew up outside the village of Edgerton, Ohio, three miles from the Indiana state line and about twenty miles south of Michigan. Grandma’s house was three miles beyond the state line outside Butler, Indiana.

My grandmother, Ida Kramer Miller, had been an elementary school teacher in a one-room school. Of course, in those days, when she got married, she had to stop teaching school, but she continued to read a journal with many ideas about what to teach children. The journal offered instructions on how to sketch animals and people in different poses and directions on how to make a device that would allow you to trace a small picture and get a larger one. There were a lot of wonderful ideas, and Grandma Miller devoted much time to helping me accomplish various tasks and praising me on how I did them.

She also told many stories about her family. She told me about when she was young and the escapades she and her siblings went through as well as what it was like to teach in a one-room school. Her older sister had been a prominent, respected elementary school teacher, and her brother, just older than she, had become a doctor. I came away from those summer weeks with Grandma Miller feeling wonderful to be Duane Miller and to be a part of the Kramer/Miller family.

Years later, during college in fact, I realized I thought I was about 95 percent Kramer and didn’t really know much about the other parts of my family heritage. None of the other grandparents told me stories about their families and bragged on them. It helped that I grew up on the same Kramer farm where Grandmother Miller had.

That sense that I was somebody was in sharp contrast to how I felt about myself the rest of the time. I wasn’t athletic or strong. I was very skinny (as old pictures verify), and I wasn’t able to keep up with my older brothers. I did chores around the farm (nothing too strenuous), but I was afraid to try to get on a work horse and was scared to swim in the muck lake on a neighbor’s property where all the neighborhood children did. I felt left behind much of the time. When someone asked me a question or I thought I knew the answer (as in class), no matter how hard I tried to answer, all I could do was stutter and feel embarrassed. While there were neighbors I knew when I went to church and Sunday school as well as regular school, they were members of big families they played with regularly; I was an outsider. I felt alone and scared of most situations; I felt I was a nobody.

Why do those weeks when my grandmother gave almost her full attention to me stand out in my mind in such sharp contrast to the rest of my life? To get some perspective on that, I want to look at my parents, the expectations they received from their families, and the way they approached life when I was growing up. Thinking about that in terms of memes has been very helpful.

I believe my dad grew up in a home that was egocentric (red). My impression was that the Kramers expected to use their skills, abilities, and minds to get ahead. Everyone was expected to finish high school and go to college or normal school. Grandma Miller certainly held up her siblings—Bertha, the schoolteacher, and Albert, the doctor—as folks that should be respected because she certainly respected them.

But the Kramer family with all those red personalities was having difficulty perpetuating itself. Great Aunt Bertha didn’t marry or have children. Great Uncle Albert had one child who didn’t seem to excel intellectually. So next in the family was Grandmother Ida, and her firstborn was my father, Charles Russell Miller. The expectations for him must have been sky high. Two hardcover books passed down to me are inscribed, Russell Miller from Aunt Bertha, Dec. 25, 1914. Dad, at age eight, was being given some extra help by Aunt Bertha. I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t happen every Christmas and birthday.

That home I visited for a week each summer and in which Dad had grown up was in the middle of a primitive farm, but in the house were a significant number of books, an old Victrola record player with records, and a piano. Out in the middle of a rolling, manicured lawn was a rock garden. Dad grew up with all that, and I believe he was expected to go to college and become an important professional. He did have a mind that would have made that possible.

A photo studio picture of Dad taken probably in 1910 must be two feet by three feet, and it is in an elaborate frame. It is of a little boy dressed in sailor clothes and hat and holding a wheelbarrow. The little boy looked very serious as if he planned to take on the world to fulfill what the Kramers expected.

When I was growing up, the picture hung in the stairway to our bedrooms on the second floor, so I saw it every time I took the stairs. Everyone said that I looked just like that when I was that age, that I could have posed for that picture. I let it say to me that I should meet the same expectations, but that’s getting ahead of our story.

My mother grew up about a mile away, perhaps closer across the fields, from where my father had grown up. Her family, the Blakers, lived in sharp contrast to Dad’s. When I was a child and we would visit, the old house was run-down. It needed paint and wallpaper. It didn’t seem to have anyone who really cared for it. I don’t remember seeing any books or a piano. What lawn there was didn’t look cared for, but there was an old tire hung by a rope on a tree limb for the kids to swing on, and there was an old, unused barn across the road that was a wonderful place for kids to play.

It probably wasn’t that run-down when Mom was growing up, but I don’t think the expectations were much different. I don’t think any of them ever had what we called Sunday go to church clothes but just work clothes, and those were usually pretty worn out.

In terms of education, in the Blakers’ minds, getting passing grades was okay, and if you managed to graduate from high school, that was special. The expectation for the males was that they would work in factories, have some kind of day jobs, or become farmers. Females might work in grocery stores or bars until they married and started raising families.

In terms of memes, my mother’s family was tribal (purple). I hardly remember Grandfather Blaker, but I do remember Mom’s mother