The Daily Evolver

A few years ago Alan Watkins noticed, while watching a new story about a global crisis, that he kept hearing about the same problems over and over again. "Why is it that these problems are intractable?" he asked himself. Thus was born "Wicked and Wise: How to Solve the World's Toughest Problems", which he co-wrote with Ken Wilber. In "Wicked", Alan and Ken use climate change as an example of a wicked problem, which they define as a situation with multiple dimensions, multiple stakeholders, multiple causes and symptoms, and which is evolving. Using the integral map they explicate its component parts and provide solutions, which is where the "wise" part of the title comes from. "Integral coherence", or applying the integral map in a coherent fashion, is the essence of the solution. "Wicked" is the beginning of a series of books applying integral wisdom to our thorniest problems. The second book, "Crowdocracy", has already been published as well. In the podcast, Jeff and Alan discuss climate change, the problems of globalization and democracy, getting CEO's to do the right thing, and even Donald Trump! We hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation. The paperback version of Wicked and Wise is available now on Amazon. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

Gender norms have never been fixed. The emerging edge of this conversation is gender expression. When famous people transition (Chaz Bono, Caitlyn Jenner, the Wachowski siblings) we're fascinated. Some people are just scared. States have passed laws barring people from using the restroom that doesn't match the gender on their birth certificates, (if there was ever a solution in search of a problem…). Some say the fight for transgender equality is the last civil rights movement. Under the cultural milieu of the bromance (love between two straight men) and men-in-heels is the polarity of masculine and feminine, the most basic, primal typology there is. These qualities are distinct from gender, and yet rooted in them. Dr. Keith has been working with men for decades as a psychotherapist. When he talks about masculinity, he focuses on the Warrior archetype, and beyond that, what he calls the "Man of Wisdom". The Warrior is that part of us that is willing to put our own welfare second to our principles or our passions, he says. (It originates in a man's primal desire to defend his family). If all goes well, the warrior eventually paves the way for the Man of Wisdom to emerge. These archetypes are embodied at every stage of development. In the podcast, Dr. Keith and Jeff expound on: • The nature of masculinity, and how evolution is creating bigger categories for us to inhabit • The move from adolescent to Warrior, and from Warrior to Man of Wisdom • Inhabiting the Warrior in body, mind and spirit; expressed in self, culture and nature • The Warrior's relationship to violence • How men are programmed, genetically, to explore these archetypes, and the feminine version of the archetype • The pitfalls of doubt and endogenous shame that occur along the way We hope you enjoy this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

Activity in the Mormon church seems to be declining – particularly in the West – and Thomas McConkie is witnessing what he calls a "faith crisis." Many people are questioning the stories being passed down to them, especially Millennials, who are effortlessly modern or even postmodern. Gold plates with Egyptian writing on them? Lost tribes of Israel in the Americas? Where is the proof? (And what about the sexism, racism and homophobia?) Thomas, who was born and raised in the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City and comes from pioneer ancestors, left the church at thirteen. This was unprecedented in his family at the time – a major transgression. When he returned to the Mormon church twenty years later, he brought an awareness of Buddhism, integral theory and adult development with him. It became clear that this faith crisis was systemic, and not just isolated to the individual. He was moved to find a way to re-integrate his Mormonism, perhaps providing a bridge for a new generation of Latter-day Saints to authentic worship. "A faith crisis might just be a developmental shift gone unrecognized," he tells Jeff. "I hope that we can normalize this process of falling apart and coming back together again as new beings that see and experience the world in a new way." The Mormon church has a strong amber (traditional) base, but developmentally, a lot of orange, modern consciousness has emerged and is looking for evidence of the religion's supernatural claims. Is there a way of going through this stage without completely leaving your religion behind? It's unclear. Why do some people stay and some people go? "Someone who has more of an atheistic bent, how can we honor their Mormonism?" Thomas asks. "What does a 'strategist' or a teal Mormonism look like? Someone who's into turquoise, indigo and beyond, what is that experience – to relate to this tradition from those levels?" Some of the things Thomas and Jeff discuss include: • The center of gravity of Mormon culture, and how to honor those who are different • The Mormon practice of "ongoing revelation"—receiving inspiration from God • The Mormon doctrine of "eternal progression" as an early evolutionary viewpoint • What happens after we die. Does any part of us go on? • Allowing a faith crisis to be an opportunity Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

The ability to remember the past and to imagine the future sets us apart from other animals. A zebra doesn't worry about the lion until the lion is upon it, at which time it reacts. If it escapes it will shake for hours afterwards to release the trauma, and then it's free. But humans have the special ability to imagine that lion attacking over and over again. It must give us some kind of evolutionary advantage or else we wouldn’t have developed this ability. Anxiety is part of the price we pay for our imaginations, and a self-aware consciousness. This subject is close to Jeff's heart. He describes a four-year period in which he suffered debilitating anxiety as "a black hole of self-focused rumination". He tells Dr. Keith about the medications, the treatments, screaming his head off, and what finally drew him out of that terrible place. Chögyam Trungpa used to say that anxiety is just the feeling of being a separate self. Research has shown that when we’re connected to each other our anxiety goes way down. Other things that help are assertive action and deep relaxation. Regardless, all emotions have relevance to our lives and we want to act on them in a healthy, functional way. We can begin by looking at anxiety itself with compassion, acceptance and caring intent. Some of the things that Jeff and Dr. Keith talk about in the podcast: • The different types of anxiety disorders and especially the difference between anxiety, fear, and panic • Alleviating anxiety at difference stages of development • How our culture supports dissociation in the face of unpleasant emotions • Turning toward anxiety and coming into the present moment • The two best anxiety regulating techniques ever developed We hope you enjoy The Shrink & The Pundit series. Send your questions and feedback using the orange Speakpipe button to the right, or send an email to jeff@dailyevolver.com.

In this conversation, Steve talks to Jeff about the new paper he released through the Institute for Cultural Evolution, titled "Overcoming Polarization by Evolving Both Right and Left: How Polarity Theory Provides a Path to Political Progress." Looking at the current political climate in America, Steve writes, "Polarization now extends far beyond the uncompromising logjam in the legislature. Numerous studies have shown that much of the American public is afflicted by 'affective polarization' wherein opposing political camps increasingly dislike, and even loathe, their opponents." The American political landscape is a big polar contest between the political left and right, and inside these polarities exist other, more refined polarities with values that tug and pull at each other—a "dialectic fractal". Realizing that these naturally-occurring polarities exist, and that they’re meant to be there, can make the whole system friendlier and open up space for greater cooperation. The ideas that Jeff and Steve explore in this podcast include: Why we should we care about political polarization Why centrism doesn't work How Spiral Dynamics and polarity theory shed light on the challenge How suppressing one side of a polarity empowers its shadow How the upside of one pole checks the downside of the other The practice: increasing the scope of what we are able to value Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

Einstein's general theory of relativity got its final proof this month as scientists detected the bending of space and time that he predicted one hundred years ago. The world that Einstein showed us is so much stranger than what we could have imagined. It blew up our safe perceptions about time and space and light and gravity. But the mechanistic universe we inhabited until then wasn't wrong, it was just partial. General relativity includes and transcends Newtonian physics. So what effect does a four-dimensional reality, one that is interpenetrated with time, have on our view of the world? Is everything that has ever happened still reverberating in this very moment? Jeff looks at general relativity through the lens of integral theory and considers the implications. In the second segment Jeff is joined live in the studio by Steve McIntosh, integral author and president of the non-profit Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE). It's a perfect time to discuss Steve's new paper "Overcoming Polarization by Evolving Both Right and Left: How Polarity Theory Provides a Path to Political Progress". Within a hour of the announcement of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia last week, the Republican leadership announced they would not even consider a nominee put up by President Obama to replace the conservative icon. This is an illustration of just how divided and dysfunctional our political process has become. Is it any wonder that the two "revolution" candidates, Trump and Sanders, the ones that want to blow up the system, are surging in the polls? Steve and Jeff talk about progressive and conservative as indestructible polarities that need each other to grow and become better – like the poles of masculine and feminine—they'll never merge, but they do change over time, taking on the best aspects of each other. So how do we help the left and the right evolve on their own terms? Listen to the podcast, and for those that want a deeper dive, you can find Steve’s new paper here. Lastly, Jeff takes a question from a listener, Marilyn, who lives in Canada and works in Oklahoma, and is wondering if she’s taking her life in her hands every time she has a layover in Dallas. "...I find the apparent strengthening of the gun lobby, very, very troubling. I am looking for an integrally informed point of view…and some hope. Thanks for any insights you can offer on this particularly American dilemma of the Second Amendment." Why are we so different in this regard to every other advanced Western nation, including our gentle neighbors to the north? Jeff explains the American psychograph to Marilyn, and why guns are still such an important part of our identity. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

"Republican Party leaders are loath to tangle with the threat-flinging firebrand for whom there are no rules of engagement." --New York Times, July 9 With Donald Trump currently leading the Republican presidential field, the race is finally getting interesting. Few people think he will ultimately prevail, but Trump can absolutely affect the outcome -- and not in the Republican's favor. By alienating young and minority voters he exacerbates the party's demographic decline, and if he mounts a third party candidacy it would virtually ensure a Democratic victory in November. (Which may be fine with him, as he has supported many liberal causes in the past including Hillary Clinton's senate campaign.) What makes this eccentric, egocentric billionaire so popular among Republicans, the very people whose interests he threatens? Simple: he's strong, he's capricious, he shows no fear and has little respect for the rules of the game that so many see as rigged against them. He's vainglorious, thin-skinned, surrounded by beautiful women and apparently willing to offend anyone and say anything, whether he believes it or not. In integral terms he's "red meme", operating from the warrior stage of development that still lives in the belly of our collective beast. As such Trump is a tonic for the poll-driven drivel that most professional politicians deal in. In this short audio Jeff Salzman reveals some of what integral theory can tell us about the cultural -- and now political -- phenomena of Donald Trump.

There are good reasons why, traditionally, politics and religion are not discussed in polite company. "It's because they express very deep patterns of our thinking and feeling," Jeff says, "if you start screwing with my spiritual beliefs and my politics, you're screwing with me and my whole sense of identity." In the podcast, Jeff talks about what he calls "integral political practice," the act of observing our attractions and aversions to different political ideas and even to particular candidates. In so doing we are engaging in the most potent practice of consciousness evolution: turning subject into object. He describes what he calls "the remote control test", which is noticing his instant compulsion to change the channel when Ted Cruz appears on the TV. What exactly is happening there, and more importantly, what's underneath it? Jeff plumbs the depths of his revulsion and finds some surprising truths! Also in the podcast Jeff talks to author Thomas McConkie about his new book, Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis. Tom was born and raised in the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City and comes from pioneer ancestry. He describes his own crisis of faith and the falling out with his family. "That set me on my path in Buddhism and eventually integral adult development. It was just in the last few years that it felt like a deep soul urge of mine to really, on a personal level, integrate my own Mormon identity." If you think you know about Mormonism, you might be really surprised by Jeff's conversation with Tom. Find out more about Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis here. Lastly, Jeff addresses a listener's frustration with the Big History Project, which seems to be trying to answer a lot of the same questions as integral theory, but with much less explanatory power. So why is it so successful in spreading its message to the public? "I'm a little frustrated about the inability of integral theory...to penetrate public discourse in a similar way," the caller says. So are we! In the podcast, Jeff talks about the strengths of the Big History Project, it's shortcomings, and why, for the time being, books on integral theory are still relegated to the New Age ghetto. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

In a healthy intimate relationship, the partners don't have to be turned on by each other all the time, says Dr. Keith, "but they do need to be turned on by each other regularly." Every couple has a balance of how much sex is needed to keep things vibrant, and it's the responsibility of each partner to make it happen. For many couples, this is something that must be learned and practiced. In the days of our grandparents, there wasn't much need for sex therapy. Sexual fulfillment was not an expectation for a traditional marriage; it was how you made babies. The dawn of modernity (orange) brought with it a value structure that focused more on the individual. With changing morals and the advent of birth control, the focus of sex became less about procreation and more about pleasure. Our personal sexual fulfillment took priority over social convention, and divorce began to skyrocket. With the dawn of the postmodern age, couples are faced with additional challenges. The main challenge is how to keep the erotic energy alive when couples are focused on minimizing male/female differences and elevating equality. 'These couples need to practice taking and being taken," says Dr. Keith, "where one person's masculine really focuses on the other person's feminine. One person leads the other person—and the other person allows themselves to be led—into the dance of eroticism." In some relationships, such as with many gay couples, the roles of masculine and feminine can even be exchanged. Some of the main topics that Jeff and Dr. Keith discuss in the podcast: The predictors of happy relationships and how to turn those into practices, the energetics of arousal: Giving masculine direction to feminine radiance, the kind of fantasizing that is productive and the kind that isn't, the relationship between sex and shadow, how to raise our children to be sexually healthy adults. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

Bernie Sanders started his campaign to be the Democratic nominee for president back in April, "as a 74-year old rumpled, grumpy, self-described old school democratic socialist," says Jeff. "Today he has included and transcended those qualities to transform himself into a sleek political populist taking on a system that he sees as rigged against the people." Jeff puts Bernie's extraordinary rise into a larger evolutionary context that includes culture, politics and economics. He draws on the work of integral economist Said Dawlabani to describe the way value systems of different developmental stages oscillate between a focus on the individual and a focus on the collective. "The polarity is indestructible," says Jeff, "but as the clock moves forward, these values are expressed in newly emerging ways." Sanders is an authentic, committed expression of the green, postmodern value system. With its emphasis on the collective, green is a proponent for a strong safety net, highly subsidized or even centralized health care, and education. "It's just generally a move to a social contract that distributes more of the pie to more people," Jeff says. Is it our destiny in the U.S. to move toward democratic socialism á la Northern Europe? Should we get behind the true believer and take our chances on Bernie's crusade? Or ought we opt for Hillary Clinton's incremental approach, which she describes as "sensible and achievable"? And how about the perennial Republican model of private enterprise, smaller government and lower taxes? Is there an integral approach that might honor the best of what each of these worldviews has to offer? Also in the podcast: A viral video of a wedding in Auckland, New Zealand, where a newlywed husband and wife watch their family members perform the Haka, a dance from the Maori tradition. "This is an example of the power of integrating developmental levels in a healthy way, as a work of creative expression and performance art," says Jeff. Plus, Jeff recommends a new series on PBS called "First Peoples", which hits two bullseyes for integralists. First, it unfolds a beautiful narrative of the evolution of early humanity, showing how we arose out of Africa 200,000 years ago to take over the world. Second, it reveals how contemporary scientists are incorporating non-rational ways of knowing, featuring Arturo Gonzales, the celebrated Mexican paleontologist, who discovered Eva de Navarone, the oldest skeleton ever found in the Americas, with the aid of a shaman and a psychedelic drug made from the glands of a Mexican toad. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

As we see with integral theory, art is often the leading edge of cultural and consciousness evolution, and jazz today continues to lead the way. In this two-part series, "The soul of jazz", Greg takes us through the history of jazz from its roots in the magic, mythic and traditional interiors of African Americans at the turn of the last century, through the modern and postmodern strains of the mid and late 20th Century, to the more wild wooly contemporary scene. He points out the evolutionarily potent and ultimately integral qualities jazz conveys as it confronts enduring human polarities such as the individual vs the group, tragedy vs comedy, competition vs cooperation, and structure vs freedom. This is part two of a two-part series. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.

"Green sensitivity makes us worthy of becoming integral." ~Clare Graves Jeff begins the podcast with a few observations about Obama's final State of the Union address, where the President invited us to look not just at the next year, but further "to the next ten years and beyond." And to see that the key feature of our journey is change, change which is influenced by the actions we take. Obama then sets up America's challenges, as he sees them, in a series of polarities: how do we broaden opportunity and not widen inequality? How do we stay safe and not become the policeman of the world? He explicitly pushed back on the Republican "apocalypse narrative" that has our economy collapsing and the world on fire, by pointing out that we have the strongest economy in the world and no existential threats. The idea of change as a fundamental feature of reality—the potency of polarities ... a challenge to move beyond fear—these are all markers of integral thinking. Obama's last year in office is going to be fun to watch. Moving on to the main story, Jeff starts by sharing a question from a listener about an exquisitely complex and contentious topic in the culture: political correctness. Chris in San Francisco writes: "I've been fascinated and a bit confused by the recent activity at Yale University. There's a lot going on there regarding race, discrimination, free speech, developmental stages, safety, vilification of those who disagree, entitlement technology, et cetera, and I would love to hear your thoughts." The current Green, postmodern wave of political correctness, speech codes and cultural sensitivity is part of a long history of words and ideas declared acceptable or anathema in any given time, place, and culture. Jeff takes us on a tour of how speech has been regulated and codified for hundreds of years. There is political correctness, it turns out, at every stage of development, from the capitol crime of blasphemy at the traditional/amber stage to the prejudices and microaggressions you may not even know you've inflicted at the postmodern/green stage. "Trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" have become a regular part of our vocabulary in the last decade, and easy to deride. Many see the young student protesters on college campuses from Yale to Mizzou as coddled and effete—the entitled offspring of a generation of narcissistic baby boomers—demanding their feelings be taken into account by the wider world. And no doubt the green warriors of political correctness can be strident and self-righteous (as can people at all first tier memes). Yet Jeff shows how they are pushing humanity into new, ever more humane and compassionate territory. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on dailyevolver.com.

By Jeff Salzman I’ve long enjoyed music critic Greg Thomas's insightful posts on Integral Life, where he write about jazz. Not that I like jazz music. Truth is, I've always found jazz to be annoying. I can't tap my foot to it. I can't sing it in the shower. Like a lot of artforms, when we don't understand them, jazz has shown up to me as noise. Of course like all good integral practitioners, I want to turn toward the object of my annoyance. I know it's not the fault of jazz that I don’t get it. Millions of people are ecstatic over it, and I want to have what they're having. So I was thrilled when Greg came to one of my programs at the Integral Center last summer, and I invited him to stay with me. During downtimes we had some great one-on-ones where Greg did his best to initiate me into the jazz idiom. He explained how jazz expresses American culture. He told stories of various artists and songs. He played some of his favorite pieces and schooled me in what was going on. He turned out to be just the teacher I was looking for, and I began to get the beat. Greg's mastery is obvious, and he is indeed one of the nation's leading experts on jazz. For several years Greg was a jazz columnist for the New York Daily News. He's a consultant with the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and with Jazz at Lincoln Center, the largest organization in the world dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of jazz. As we see with integral theory, art is often the leading edge of cultural and consciousness evolution, and jazz today continues to lead the way. In this two-part series on the soul of jazz, Greg takes us through the history of jazz from its roots in the magic, mythic and traditional interiors of African Americans at the turn of the last century, through the modern and postmodern strains of the mid and late 20th Century, to the more wild wooly contemporary scene. He points out the evolutionarily potent and ultimately integral qualities jazz conveys as it confronts enduring human polarities such as the individual vs the group, tragedy vs comedy, competition vs cooperation, and structure vs freedom. This is part one of our conversation... Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.

One of the blessings of an integral consciousness is the ability to embrace the gifts of earlier stages of development. In this short holiday message, Jeff encourages us to practice being enchanted, once again, by the beauty and goodness of the world. Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.

The popular picture of the midlife crisis is the man in his 40's or 50's who's lost his job, his wife or his health. He's dyed his hair, bought a Porsche and is dating a much younger woman. We feel sorry for him, maybe in the same way we would feel sorry for an active alcoholic, a mentally ill person or anyone who is out of touch with reality. Losing your job or your partner, having major health issues or just the general feeling of existential ennui can be terrible and even traumatic, but they are not necessarily unique to midlife. The midlife crisis has a flavor all its own. It kicks in with the realization that you’ve crossed the halfway point of your life and are on the downward slope. To make it worse, you may discover that the things most important to you -- your relationships, your career, your purpose in life -- have begun fraying around the edges if you haven’t put in the effort to sustain them. We negotiate one transformation after another during our lifetimes, beginning with birth and extending into old age. How we learn to handle them is what shapes us as people and fashions our fate. "The difference between a crisis that makes us stronger or one that makes us weaker and diminishes us is how we resolve it," says Dr. Keith. In the podcast, Jeff and Dr. Keith discuss: -The history of the midlife crisis, from Freud and Jung to our current integral understanding that takes into account adult development -The feeling of loneliness and separation that can characterize this time for people, and how healing it will need to be accomplished in relationship -The resolution of the crisis at a mature age is likely not quantitative (doing more of this or less of that) but instead will require a qualitative shift, a shift in consciousness -How to get the support you need to cultivate resilience and find out how you can be of better service to the world Send your questions and comments for the show to jeff@dailyevolver.com. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.