The Daily Evolver

How much consciousness do animals possess?

Rivers are people, my friend. And they’ve lawyered up.

This week I’m sharing another episode of what I plan to be a regular feature: my conversations with Stephen T. Harper. Steve and I are calling this new offering “The Integral Chat”, a series of topical conversations we’ve been having on politics and culture, and which we will cross-post to both the Daily Evolver and Steve’s new podcast, “What’s your Theory?” This week the topic was obvious: Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the dual storms that battered Texas and Florida in the last couple weeks. In this episode we look at how the climate debate has exacerbated the polarization of our culture, particularly between traditionalists and postmodernists. How is it that the political right and left can have such radically different views of what’s happening with our global climate, and what, if anything, should be done about it? Are we deadlocked? Can we fight our way forward? And why can’t science just settle things? As always integral theory helps us sort things out. I hope you enjoy the podcast!

In today’s episode I am the guest of Stephen T. Harper as he kicks off his new podcast, “What’s Your Theory?”, where he interviews people who have “good answers to big questions about how the world works.” And do I have a theory for him! One of the key tenets of integral theory is that human consciousness and culture evolve, and that’s where Steve and I focus. With his enthusiastic curiosity and flex-flow mind, Steve helps me map the “evolution of the interior” from the dawn of humanity to the present day where integral theory is so helpful for making sense of our world. While this podcast is an introduction to the principles of consciousness and cultural evolution, we use plenty of up-to-the minute topics and headlines to tell the story. Established students of integral theory will get a refresher, and newbies will get a good download of a foundational integral insight. If you have friends who are interested in an integral on-ramp, this is a conversation you might consider sharing with them as well. Here’s more about Stephen Harper and his new podcast: “What’s Your Theory…?” is a conversation and interview podcast featuring smart people with good answers to big questions about how the world works. Science, spirituality, politics, philosophy, physics, metaphysics, current events and culture… no topic is off limits as long as there is an interesting theory behind it. Are human beings only flesh and blood? Do we live, die… and that’s it? What is consciousness? What is the soul? How did we get here? What are we supposed to be doing while we’re here? Is life a school? A prison? A particularly awesome vacation spot? Is anybody actually driving this boat? Why can’t science and spirituality get along…? My name is Stephen T. Harper. I am the author of the Kings X Saga, a series of novels blending contemporary fantasy and world history to imagine the single greatest conspiracy of all time – the only conspiracy – the ancient and ongoing work to prevent you from knowing who and what you truly are. A lot of research goes into writing these books – a lot of questions and then a lot of answers that often create more questions. This podcast is my chance to ask and discuss them all with very smart and interesting people.

In this episode of Shrink and Pundit, integral psychotherapist Dr Keith Witt and I talk about how intimacy, longevity and happiness are programmed into the human genome, and accessible to all of us. But at a cost. Keith recently participated in an extraordinary conference called Plenitude near Sintra, Portugal. The conference brought together experts from around the world to explore a multidimensional approach to aging well. Join us in our discussion of some surprising and not so surprising data about the current state of longevity research and how it relates to intimacy and happiness from an AQAL perspective. * What is the secret of the “Blue Zones,”–the five places on earth where people live the longest, happiest, most active lives? * Why is social isolation more deadly than all the other problems of modernity? * Why does it get progressively more challenging to satisfy our instinctual needs for satisfying social embeddedness as we develop? * How do we maintain the marital friendship, marital love affair, and quick repair capacities in modern marriages? Join us as we discuss all this and more!

In this podcast we’ve spliced together the audio from three Facebook Live videos I’ve done over the last couple weeks. I’m really liking these quickie videos as they are giving me a chance to comment on current events in real time, particularly handy now that the news is coming at us so fast. Here are the three topics I explore in this podcast: (02:36) Trump is Irredeemably Red – There is just one thing that Donald Trump likes better than winning: fighting itself. His lashing out is hurting his agenda but he can’t seem to stop himself. (This segment was previously posted as a single, so if you’ve already heard it just fast forward to the other two segments.) (19:18) Loyalty vs Law – Pre-modern government is built on patronage and loyalty, while modern government is built on law and bureaucracy (the “deep state”). Trump operates in the former system and is at war with the latter. (37:53) The Uncivil War – Every developmental shift in consciousness and culture is accompanied by great conflict — including the political polarization of today. A few decades ago both the left and right occupied the same established developmental territory, traditionalism and modernism, so policy differences could be compromised. Now the left is occupying an emergent stage, postmodernism, and the fight is about identity. Full Podcast

Beena Sharma is one of the leading practitioners in the field of adult integral human development, specifically in mapping and assessing the levels of adult maturity. Beena has founded The Center for Leadership Maturity, in collaboration with Susanne Cook-Greuter, internationally known authority on adult development. Beena and Susanne have been working together since 2004. They work with individuals, teams, and organizations to facilitate vertical adult development. She is also a dear friend, who I have known and worked with for over 10 years. Beena brings to her work the rigor of a practitioner-scientist focused on good theory, concrete evidence, robust research and lived experience. She combines that with the reverence of a true spiritual practitioner who is herself in awe of the dynamics and the miracle of human growth. In this podcast, Beena and I discuss what she and her team are learning about how adults grow through the predictable stages of adult development while still remaining true to their own journey. We examine how we can consciously participate in our own evolution and growth in a way that creates a more fulfilling, healthy, conscious and fruitful life. I particularly appreciate Beena’s focus on mapping the later, Integral stages of development and how they show up in herself and people she works with. She offers some insights on how we can actually grow to those later reaches of maturity while also appreciating the triumph of where we have already arrived. Beena and I also touch on one of the essential tools of the developmental journey, that of working with polarities – the interdependent and seemingly opposite qualities we continually encounter on our path – and how we can begin to meaningfully navigate those qualities and paradoxes in an increasing profound way. Beena, as you will hear, is actively engaged with advancing both the theory and practice of vertical development in practical, profound and creative ways. For those of us who fancy ourselves as Integral practitioners, Beena provides illuminating insight into the territory that we aspire to explore and ultimately inhabit. If you are interested in engaging with Vertical Development, you can contact Beena Sharma at beena@verticaldevelopment.com.  

In this episode I am the guest of my longtime friend and integral comrade, Jason Lange, on his new podcast Do The Evolution. We hit some juicy territory in our conversation so I’m sharing it with you here on The Daily Evolver. There are certain questions that evolutionary thinkers ask themselves and each other constantly: What does integral consciousness feel like? How is it different from the postmodern worldview? Can we develop integral capacities through intention and practice? How does integral thinking apply to everyday life and of course … sigh … Trump? Having a good conversation on topics like these is itself a form of integral practice, and I felt literally expanded by this one with Jason. I hope you do too!

Diane Musho Hamilton is at the forefront of one of the most significant spiritual emergents in contemporary culture: the realization of the power of our everyday relationships, even troubled ones, as a means of awakening. For many progressive spiritual practitioners it no longer feels like enough to merely follow an individual meditation practice, as valuable as that is. We want to apply our enlarged selves, skillfully and in real time, to the circumstances of our complex lives, and particularly to our relationships with others. The spiritual potency of relationship is a subject Diane Musho Hamilton explores in her new book, The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone. Diane grounds her teaching in the enduring cosmic polarity between difference and sameness. It is the sameness we share with others that provides comfort and safety, and the differences we have with them that bring liveliness and creativity. As integralists we are called to integrate these polarities into a deeper mutuality. Diane’s approach is particularly relevant to the contemporary social challenge of relating to our American family as it continues to polarize both culturally and politically. I always feel a little bit wiser after a conversation with my dear friend Diane. I hope you do too! Diane Musho Hamilton is a Zen teacher in the White Plum lineage as well as a renowned professional mediator. She is the author of Everything is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution. She, along with Terry Patten and Jeff Salzman, host The Integral Living Room, an annual weekend gathering in Boulder, Colorado.

Life is wounding. For some of us our wounds are inflicted in the form of major traumas such as a serious injury, painful divorce, career failure or act of abuse or violence. More often, however, we are merely called on to suffer the slings and arrows of everyday life, which can also leave their mark. Contemporary psychology has revealed two major insights into trauma. One is that trauma is pervasive: two-thirds of Americans report experiencing a major trauma in their lives. The other is that trauma is toxic, often kicking off lifetime patterns of depression, anxiety and addiction. One study showed that people who suffer six or more of ten categories of adverse events lived on average twenty years less that people who had experienced none of those categories of adverse events Whether large or little, some trauma is inevitable and necessary for healthy development. Shocks and setbacks shape who we are and can provide the opportunity to develop resilience and a larger perspective. Yet we tend to feel ashamed of our wounds and naturally shrink away from them. We clench around our pain physically and/or mentally, and deny it so it can’t hurt us anymore. In some cases we may do the opposite, by indulging our pain, using it to control other people, or by playing the victim of our own life. In this two-part podcast Transforming Trauma Into Power, integral psychotherapist Dr. Keith Witt explores what we now know about trauma and how it affects us. He also charts an empowering course forward, so that we can metabolize the traumas of our life in a way that liberates us from their grip and reveals exciting new territories of our ongoing development.

In this podcast I ask Integral philosopher Steve McIntosh a question on the mind of many integral practitioners: how do we relate to the nationalist passions that are arising in many developed countries around the globe? Nationalism is often expressed as “love it or leave it” nativism, or in the case of the election of Donald Trump as a promise to take America back to an era of perceived past greatness. On the other hand many Green-stage postmodernists reject patriotism entirely. As Steve says, “it is like nails on a chalkboard for people of postmodern consciousness to contemplate the good that America has done in its history.” Neither of these positions have much to offer the evolutionary thinker. To cultivate a more Integral worldview we must seek to find the truth in each perspective, and thereby reactivate the positive values of Amber-stage traditionalism within a larger system that appreciates the heritage of all humanity. Steve makes the case that “Until we, as progressive globalists, learn how to better integrate the values of nationalism into our discourse then we’re going to be empowering those regressive forces who keep pulling us back.” In this podcast Steve helps us rise to the challenge of creating more truly inclusive leading edge sensibilities – and societies. Steve McIntosh is the author of three important books on Integral theory, including his latest, “The Presence of the Infinite: The Spiritual Experience of Goodness, Truth and Beauty.” Steve is also founder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution, where you can find more of his thinking on integral politics in his new essay “Appreciating the Upside of Nationalism.”

Steve Bannon is Donald Trump’s favorite philosopher. Trump sometimes jokes that he doesn’t know “whether Bannon is alt-right or alt-left,” but either way Bannon has given voice to the visceral impulse of populist nationalism that Donald Trump has expressed for decades. So what does Bannon believe? A pillar of his worldview is contained in a school of history called Strauss-Howe generational theory, developed by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which states that human events can be loosely organized in terms of recurring eighty year cycles, or saecula, which unfold in four twenty year turnings. The first turning is a season of rebirth, social unity and building new institutions. In our current American generational cycle the first turning is the post World War II period. This is followed by a second turning, characterized by a spiritual awakening and a general rejection of the previous turning’s values, which we saw begin in the 60’s. The third turning is a time of unraveling, where society loses faith in institutions and business as usual. And the fourth turning, which for us began with the financial crisis of 2007, is a time of breakdown where social institutions collapse and the way is cleared for the next first turning. It’s an elegant philosophy, which the Strauss and Howe seek to embed in deep human patterns such as the saeculum, which is an ancient term for the length of one long-lived human life. When released in 1997, their book The Fourth Turning was embraced by liberals like Al Gore, who gave a copy to every member of Congress. I like it too upon first contact, and think that it could reveal another useful pattern in the human condition. As an evolutionary I have no problem imagining that an oscillation between the two poles of creation (the first two turnings) and destruction (the second two turnings) is an engine moving humanity forward. But herein lies a big problem: Strauss-Howe generational theory has little appreciation for the forward movement of history. In fact Strauss and Howe spend the first third of their book explicitly rejecting what they call “linear time” in favor of “seasonal time,” an endless wheel of turnings that goes nowhere. Paraphrasing Nietzsche they write that “every event is perpetually reenacted, that everything anyone does has been done before and will be done again forever.” That is not only depressing but terribly limited. How about we consider that historic time may have aspects that are circular and aspects that are linear? Well it turns out we can, by contemplating the unspooling of time as a spiral, which is an oft-employed image in the evolutionary movement. Adding the dimension of forward movement changes the theoretical calculus enormously. Without it you are left with a worldview that reveals, for instance, that major wars are virtually inevitable — after all, we have had three “fourth turnings” so far in American history: 1) the Revolutionary War 2) the Civil War and 3) World War II. And indeed this is how Bannon has talked about what he sees as the epic and historically recurring conflict between western civilization, built on Judeo-Christian values, and its enemies, foremost of which is Islam. Or perhaps China, which Bannon predicts will be in a war with the US over the South China sea within ten years, and “there’s no doubt about that.” So apparently our fourth turning is just now kicking in and we’re headed for institutional demolition. Worst case: nuclear winter. Or with a little luck maybe Trump, the human wrecking ball, will prove to be fourth turning enough, all by himself, to get us through to the next promised land. Enjoy the podcast!

The Trump Presidency is an evolutionary correction for a culture whose leading edge “is in a 50-car pileup.” This is the thesis of Ken Wilber’s excellent new eBook, Trump and a Post-Truth World, and the kickoff point of a wide ranging conversation I had with Ken last week. Here’s Ken’s argument: Every now and then, evolution itself has to adjust course, in light of new information on how its path is unfolding, and it starts (apparently spontaneously but with this deeper morphic field actually operating) by making various moves that are, in effect, self-correcting evolutionary realignments. The leading-edge of cultural evolution is today—and has been for four or five decades—the green wave (“green” meaning the basic stage of human development known to various developmental models as pluralistic, postmodern, relativistic, individualistic, beginning self-actualization, human-bond, multicultural, etc.—and generically referred to as “postmodern”). Beginning in the 1960s, green began to emerge as a major cultural force and soon bypassed orange (which was the previous leading-edge stage, known in various models as modern, rational, reason, formal operational, achievement, accomplishment, merit, profit, progress, conscientious) as the dominant leading-edge. It started with a series of by-and-large healthy and very appropriate (and evolutionarily positive) forms—the massive civil rights movement, the worldwide environmental movement, the rise of personal and professional feminism, anti-hate crime, a heightened sensitivity to any and all forms of social oppression of virtually any minority, and—centrally—the understanding of the crucial role of “context” in any knowledge claims and the desire to be as “inclusive” as possible. But as the decades unfolded, green increasingly began veering into extreme, maladroit, dysfunctional, even clearly unhealthy, forms. It’s broad-minded pluralism slipped into a rampant and runaway relativism (collapsing into nihilism), and the notion that all truth is contextualized (or gains meaning from its cultural context) slid into the notion that there is no real universal truth at all, there are only shifting cultural interpretations (which eventually slid into a widespread narcissism). These cultural forces have created an anti-green backlash which Donald Trump, our most unlikely candidate, rode all the way to the White House. In this podcast Ken and Jeff explore how the Trump phenomenon arose, and how an integral sensibility can help us respond to the unique challenge of Trump’s political and cultural movement.

Inaugurated with bogus crowd claims and tales of voter fraud, the post-truth presidency of Donald Trump is upon us. Trump lives in a Red “warrior” worldspace alive with apparitions, rumors, conspiracies, and above all, scheming enemies. Placed in the context of cultural evolution Trump’s view actually represent a pre-truth mentality, typical of the world prior to modernity where warlords and monarchs ruled unconstrained by the divisions of power. This is a world where “might is right”, a world of plunder where the goal not just to defeat the enemy but to take their oil. A world where we don’t just build a wall, we make the Mexicans pay for it. (Take heart though; in an actual Red world Trump would not just make them pay for it, he would make them build it, as slaves. So there is that.) Modernity is fighting back against pre-truth thinking with objective facts, evidence and a plea for regular order, but it has been hobbled by the post-truth worldview of postmodernity, where all truth claims are suspect and feelings are privileged over facts. For a brilliant analysis of this phenomenon, check out Ken Wilber’s new essay Trump and a Post-Truth World on Integral Life. Also, look for my interview with Ken on the topic which will be posted in the coming days. The Trump presidency begs a crucial question: can a government that has evolved beyond Red consciousness contain a leader who hasn’t? If so, Trump may be the disruptive force we need to break up some calcified habits and thinking. If not … well, there are only 206 weeks left in his first term! In this podcast I look at how integralists can understand and relate to the fight over pre-modern, modern and postmodern conceptions of truth, and how a new integration of the three can help us build a more authentically inclusive world.

Ok, folks, we’ve had 45 consecutive mornings of waking up and wrapping our heads around the fact that Donald J. Trump is going to be the next president of the United States of America. What do we know now that we didn’t know before? To the degree that we can discern a pattern, we see that Trump will govern the same way he campaigned: as a disrupter. And he is doubling down on that approach with a team and cabinet of disrupters. What will happen? Here is where I’m grateful for my Buddhist training in “don’t know mind,” a practice of watching one’s mind try to make sense of something that is unknown. The fruit of the practice is the realization that you are more happy and effective, and life is more rich and vivid when you recognize that every moment is unknowable and thus full of possibility. We do, however, know the past, and from history we can see that disruption is essential to evolution, whether it is the Acraman asteroid clearing the decks for mammals, or the emergence of postmodern world-centrism after the horrors of World War II, or the new and better person you became after your painful divorce, job loss or illness. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Yes, probably, in the long run. How long the Trump era will run we don’t know. What we do know is that it begins in one month, and it is going to be a different world when it’s over. (Sorry, folks, for the echo-ey sound on the podcast. I’m still in a learning curve of doing this myself. Will be better next time …)