The Daily Evolver

On the surface, the story of the unrest in Baltimore recently is a familiar story about police brutality and racism. But the glowing embers of civil unrest that were fanned into flames last week by Freddie Gray’s death is likely a systemic problem in America whose karma can be traced back to slavery. And more recently, four decades of middle class and working class jobs leaving American cities and the economic devastation that’s caused. In West Baltimore, where Gray lived and was arrested, more than half of people between 16 and 64 are unemployed. In this podcast, Jeff feels into the anger and hopelessness in impoverished communities stripped of opportunity, and how that resentment is expressed at different stages of development, as well as responded to by the powers that be. Excerpt | The media’s role in the story of the Baltimore protest The long game of overcoming racism isn’t just a matter of how people are treated by the police or how the laws are written or enforced.  The final piece happens in our hearts and minds as we really, really look into what it is to be like another person, and engage the venerable spiritual practice of exchanging oneself for other.   ~Jeff Salzman Measured in terms of death, destruction and injury, Jeff points out, the violence last week was about one tenth what it was during the riots in 1968. We can talk about how bad things are, and we can talk about how far we’ve come, and both perspectives are true. A funny thing happens as we develop–we become more sensitive to injustice, and act to rectify it. As we act to rectify it, we become ever more sensitive to it, and on it goes, so that the gap between our ideals and our reality never closes. The result is that less and less violence gets more and more attention. The news on TV is intended to hook our nervous system so we stay tuned, Jeff says… “Obama talked about the peaceful protesters, and how sad it was that one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, which is what happens. Yet, thousands of demonstrators did it the right way. Obama said, ‘The overwhelming majority of the community in Baltimore has handled this appropriately. Expressing real concern and outrage over the possibility that our laws were not applied evenly in the case of Mr. Gray, and that accountability needs to exist.’” The unfortunate fact about violence is that it actually works—in the short term. A week of protests in Baltimore didn’t get near the level of attention as they did when they started to turn violent. It was announced on Friday that the state attorney of Baltimore has brought homicide, manslaughter, and misconduct charges against the six officers involved. Hopefully justice gets done in this case, both in regards to the police officers, as well as the looters and arsons. But the larger conversation this engenders is the engine of our evolution. “What’s ultimately going to overcome racism on this planet is the increased ‘mongrelization’ of the human race, which is well underway” says Jeff. “That will continue with the increasing number of bi- tri- and multi-racial babies. I think this is a characteristic of the sacred world to come.” FULL TRANSCRIPT (RIGHT CLICK TO DOWNLOAD)

People are always sending Jeff questions, which he loves. Some of them he answers privately, others make for good podcasting and are worth sharing. The common thread running through most of them is an inquiry into: how are we to live more consciously and integrally? Not surprisingly, this is Jeff’s favorite topic of conversation! “We’re exploring this new territory intellectually,” he says, “but we also have integral awakenings that we can feel in our own bodies. We experience living in a new worldspace.  But what is it?  What does it feel like?  How does it call us to act? How do we settle here, become stabilized and take up residency?”  That’s at the core of the listener questions Jeff ponders this week … * Is fundamentalism fundamental? Graham from British Columbia writes, “I’m curious if perhaps a certain level of fundamentalism is a necessary part of development across the spectrum and primarily shows up when a new level of development is achieved.” * How do we encourage development? Peggy from New England is asking the perennial question in the integral world. “What’s the line between inviting and forcing? Is it possible to make anyone grow up?” * What’s up with the whole Illuminati, alien, reptilian shape shifting conspiracy? Rob from Frankfurt’s friends send him videos and he’s baffled.”I don’t understand the draw to it, but a lot of my relatively developed friends are really into this stuff.” * How do we engage with young people who are often despondent about the state of the planet? “They’re all so aware of what’s going wrong,” Marie from Montreal says. Integral theory provides a way of putting things in context for a more realistic (and hopeful) view. * “As we move into a turquoise value system and the concept of evolutionary spirituality, what does the ‘it’ and ‘we’ spaces of Integral spiritual community look like?” This question from Beth, a Methodist minister in Minnesota who participated in the recent Christian conference here in Boulder. Thank you to everyone who sends in questions and comments. Please keep them coming! Our favorite way to get them is through Speakpipe, the orange tab to the right. You can also write to Jeff at jeff@dailyevolver.com. FULL TRANSCRIPT FULL PODCAST (PLUS EXCERPTS OF EACH QUESTION)

As the P5+1 reached the outline of a deal with Iran to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, modernists (orange altitude) celebrated in the US and in the streets of Tehran. Traditionalists (amber altitude), on both sides, warned that the other couldn’t be trusted. As Dr. Phil points out to heartbroken lovers trying to reconcile, you may not be able to trust the other to do what they say, but you can trust them to be who they are. In this podcast Jeff points out that governments have evolved into greater complexity and cooperation—from clans to tribes to empires to nations. We are seemingly on our way to a federation of nations, a de facto world government, and you can see it happening now in many spheres, including the way the world has cooperated to keep the pressure on Iran, from the US and Europe to China and even Russia, a formal ally of Iran. …there’s a modern America and a traditional America, and there’s a modern Iran and a traditional Iran. And all of four of these entities are negotiating with each other in a very interesting way. ~Jeff Salzman Nobody wants more nuclear weapons on the planet, but especially nobody wants one in the hands of the theocratic Iranian government, so much so that it has trumped other geo-political considerations. Maybe Tehran wouldn’t consider using them as official policy, but the possibility that they could find their way to someone who would is terrifying. In the podcast, Jeff invites us to feel into the scenario of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Chilling, no? Excerpt | Why are you negotiating with the devil? The premodern mind and the dangerous other Modern technology in the hands of premodern cultures is one of the greatest challenges of our time (ISIS, North Korea, etc.). A pre-modern mentality is ethnocentric and is organized around defending against an enemy. At the traditional/pre-modern stage, Jeff says, “we are in a cosmic struggle with those who are on the wrong side of things. Not only other people but other powers, including transcendent powers.” The traditionalists in Iran and in the US want to dig in their heels and fight the good fight. Meanwhile, the modernists are engaging with sanctions and diplomacy, which seem to have worked well enough. A deal was reached and thousands of people in Iran were celebrating on the streets and on social media. They are about to get relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran for a decade. A staggering 63% of Iran’s population is under 30 years old and they are dying to fully participate in the modern world, to share their “Persian-ness” as Jeff puts it — and we want them to! While the keyhole view that the West has into Iranian culture via social media can skew our perceptions, according to New York Magazine the “tiny hardliner counterprotest” outside of the Iranian Parliament—200 men carrying handwritten signs—was “lifeless by comparison.” Celebrations last night after #IranTalks #Tehran (AFP) pic.twitter.com/EfRM15gcvZ — Sanam Maher (@SanamMKhi) April 3, 2015 The tension is clear in Iran. But the key question is: can this deal delay their progress towards a nuclear weapon long enough for cultural evolution to deliver a decisive political tilt toward modernity? Theocracies are tough to change, and even tougher to change peacefully. Jeff talks about all of this in detail, and brings in a spiritual perspective. Plus, don’t miss the birthday dedication at the end from Ken Wilber, the crew at Integral Life, and a host of friends and fans… Check it out, and join us on Tuesday evening for

Jeff begins this first podcast of the 2015 Spring season by talking about the relationships we have with every precious form of life, from his garden tulips with their sensual unfolding in his ikebana arrangements … to the Great Mystery, the loving intelligence at the center and circumference of the Kosmos. “One of the projects of being an integral spiritual practitioner is to re-enchant the world. To see that everything that is alive is also conscious; it has awareness, volition and yes, even longing,” Jeff says. He reports on last weekend’s Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness conference, put on by Integral Life, which drew over 250 people (plus several hundred more via the web) to the St. Julien Hotel here in Boulder, all of them looking at this question of how we humans relate to a personal divinity. The 2nd person relationship with Spirit changes dramatically as individuals and cultures develop. Generally, our connection to the spiritual realm is lost when we move from the traditional stage of development (the amber altitude) to the modern stage of development (the orange altitude). We are unable to reconcile God’s presence with science and rational thought. And then comes post-modern (green altitude) spirituality, which embraces first-person, nondual spiritual practices like meditation. It also embraces third-person spirituality such as deep ecology and nature mysticism. But God as creator, friend, lover? Not so much. There are still a lot of allergies, even with integralists, to the idea of a personal God. Excerpt | Losing your religion In the second half of the show Jeff is joined by Steve McIntosh, author of Integral Consciousness, Evolution’s Purpose, and his new book The Presence of the Infinite, which will be coming out later this year. Steve describes post-modern spirituality as progressive spirituality, and explains that it favors the nondual conception of ultimate reality. Evolutionary spirituality, which emerges at  integral consciousness, is a dialectical step beyond the postmodern worldview, and reintroduces us to a theistic, 2nd person relationship with the divine — but one that is post-mythic and trans-rational. Steve says, “… nonduality is based on a very deep, real, replicable, and ancient spiritual experience. But the theistic side also has its own sort of spiritual experience, which is not the same thing. This is the experience, as I argue, of the love of God. The love of a universe that cares. The love of a higher transcendent form of reality that exists within you. It’s immanent and transcendent.” But then, if God is so loving why is there so much suffering? Jeff wants to know. Steve says “the shadow of consciousness is suffering,” and does his best in the last part of the show to address the philosophical problem of evil–in five minutes! Check it out, and join us on Tuesday evening for The Daily Evolver Live on Integral Radio. FULL TRANSCRIPT

Look at the Perfect One At the Circle’s Center: He Spins and Whirls like a Golden Compass, Beyond all that is Rational, To show this dear world That Everything, Everything in Existence Does point to God. ~From “A Golden Compass”, by Hafiz The bloody, incendiary conflict between the modern world and radical Islamism has captured the world’s attention, and Steve McIntosh’s new paper for the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE) shines an integral light on this challenge. Fostering Evolution in Islamic Culture is a good example of just how powerful the integral perspective can be in sorting this stuff out. Muslim societies in the Middle East, that once carried science through the Dark Ages, are now entrenched in a dialectical antithesis with modernity. In Christianity, the reformation preceded the enlightenment, and it’s time, many argue, for Islam to have its own reformation. Excerpt | The problem of reverse orientalist in Islamic scholarship Is there is role for us to play in helping traditional Islamists to reform their religion and reclaim a reason-friendly Islam like the one that flourished in the Golden Age? “The majority of peaceful Muslims who love their religion may very well be persuaded to come up with a more modernist friendly version if they were assured that secularism was not going to be the end result,” Steve tells Jeff. Secularism and atheism are not the end of history, but that’s not clearly visible in the Islamic world. ~Steve McIntosh There is a deep, heroic impulse in many Muslims to rescue Islam from modernity, because they can’t see past the secularism and atheism that modernity ushers in. To traditionalists, cultural evolution feels like an existential threat. But God survives, and we meet God again on the other side. As Steve says: “Evolutionary spirituality reclaims the notion of a loving creator, but at a post-mythic, post-secular, and post-postmodern level. It can begin to recognize the deep theistic truths of Islam with new eyes and at a new level.” An integral perspective reveals Islam to be an ancient, venerable, necessary line of spiritual development within human history. We can begin by acknowledging this truth, and making room for a robust theism so moderate reformers can evolve Islam for the better, not just for Muslims, but for all of humanity. Enjoy the podcast. If you’d like to know more about the work of ICE, including a panel discussion at the Integral Center next month with Islamic scholars, visit the website.

On this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit, Jeff and Dr. Keith talk about one of the oldest and most dreaded of human afflictions. They consider not just the suffering, but also the wisdom and growth potential that depression offers. They look at the qualities of modernity that magnify the condition, the mixed blessing of pharmaceuticals and neuroscience, and how depression is experienced and best treated at different stages in the developmental journey. It seems that humanity is paying a heavy price for the “spectacularly tangible” achievements of modernity. The current generation has four times more depression than the last one, and ten times more than the one before that. Part of that story is increased self-awareness and over-diagnosis, but only part of it. Antidepressants are the most widely prescribed drugs in America. There is so much of these drugs in our waste that we’re actually poisoning the fish. What’s going on here? Generally, if you’re sufficiently bummed so that you can’t live the life you want to live, you could be depressed. But that includes a huge spectrum, says Dr. Keith. “When therapists talk about depression it’s like Eskimos talking about snow. There is a panoply of experiences that fall within the zone of depression.” All mammals have the capacity for it, but humans are particularly vulnerable because of genetic mutations that gave us an awareness of ourselves in the stream of time. The tradeoff for remembering a past and imagining a future is an increased capacity for depression and anxiety. Trusting your feelings only works when you are centered and connected with your higher self. ‘Trust your feelings’ does not work when you’re anxious, depressed or frightened. ~Dr. Keith Witt In the upper right quadrant of the AQAL maps (the physical body) there are many things that can contribute to depression—low testosterone, hyperthyroid, hypoglycemia and other endocrine imbalances, as well as chronic lack of sleep. The integral view is that there are causes of depression in each quadrant. It’s a bio-psycho-social condition, with genes, culture and individual choices all in play. Put any mammal into a situation of learned helplessness and they’ll get depressed, so groups of people with low socio-economic opportunity and a sense of oppression become very susceptible. Another way to depress people is to gradually give them more and more stuff to do so they never feel they have enough time to do what has to be done. Excerpt | Mammals have a natural capacity for depression, humans especially But the number one cause of depression is a sense of isolation. It’s an oft-remarked irony of the modern age that as connected as we are, we also experience more loneliness.  With increasing numbers of the population living in urban centers, uprooted from family and culture, there is a more pronounced sense of social isolation. So what to do? One in ten people are diagnosed with major depression at some point. Only about half of them get treatment and the most common treatment is drugs. In the podcast Dr. Keith tells Jeff how the drug companies hijacked the neuroscience back in the seventies to sell us the idea that depression is a biochemical imbalance, which is a partial truth. It was an easy sell, of course, because who wouldn’t want to believe that taking a pill could make everything better? Yet, they work barely better than placebos. “In 2007 the drug companies spent 23 billion dollars promoting antidepressants and 16 billion of that were free samples that they spread to doctors around the country,” he tells Jeff. And once you’re on them, it’s not so easy to get off. Of course, occasionally they do work. And when they work,

After Jeff talked about the movie American Sniper on a recent podcast, we received a voice message from a listener who was himself a Navy SEAL sniper just like Chris Kyle. Jake Bullock was in the military from age 18 to 26 and did four tours of duty (three in Iraq and one in Afghanistan), retiring from the military in 2011. What a unique opportunity; a window into warrior consciousness from someone that has a developmental perspective. We quickly arranged a call with Jake and Jeff, and it turned out to be a very interesting conversation! It starts with the story of how a teenage integralist chooses to go off to war. As Jake explains, the warrior identity had always been strong in him. His father was in the military, as was his father’s father. But it wasn’t an obligation to his family or his country that drew him into service. It was the challenge: “I wanted to prove to myself I could do it.” If you haven’t seen American Sniper, you might be familiar with Navy SEALs through any number of heroic, high-profile missions in the news, such as when SEAL Team Six went into Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden. SEALs are elite, special operations forces trained to operate in all environments (Sea Air Land). “I went through probably two and a half years of training before I even touched a battlefield,” Jake says. “You go through that mental training as well as the physical training, where you are really indoctrinated into this warrior culture.” And yet…during that rigorous training he was reading Sex, Ecology & Spirituality by Ken Wilber. Jake had discovered integral theory at the age of 17. “Everything I learned always seemed to be incomplete,” he said.  “[Integral theory] really tied everything together, with such a comprehensive view of reality.” Excerpt | The most difficult part of being a Navy SEAL sniper So, how accurate is the movie American Sniper? And what is it really like to wake up each day and your job is to kill people who are trying to kill you? Jake gives us first hand-insight: “When you’re in extreme danger…or you’re forced to take a human life, you really do your best to play these psychological tricks on yourself where you take something that…is very, very intense and sometimes life-changing, and reduce it to something that you can deal with multiple times a day, or multiple days out of a week.” Basically, SEALs are just doing the job that they trained for. “When you’re in these special forces units, you’re going overseas and you’re the best equipped soldier on the battlefield,” Jake says. “You’re next to the best warriors on the planet. You know the United States will move mountains to see that you come home safely. You know you’ve got so much training under your belt that you’re very, very prepared for what you’re going to see.” I would be in firefights with these individuals and come face to face with them after the firefight had resolved itself. But I never felt that raw sort of hatred that you would think you would feel when somebody is quite literally trying to kill you. It’s definitely an interesting experience to watch from an integral perspective…to see what I was doing and be the observer for it, and for those that were going through it with me. ~Jake Bullock These soldiers are turned into lethal weapons, sure, but the most interesting thing about modern warfare is how they’re taught not to shoot. They’re trained to use discretion and restraint. Prosecuting war with such moment-by-moment intelligence is a new feature of human development. As Jeff comments, “It’s always dicey to talk about the relative humanity of war, but it does continue to create less and less collateral damage.” Jake concurs,

The Christian story is remarkable, in part because it’s so unlikely. David Riordan explains: You look at some of the other avatars, like Buddha or Krishna, they were around for a while. For Buddha it was almost forty years that he taught and went through evolutions of that teaching and got feedback. With Jesus you basically see a ministry that was maybe a year to a year and a half, from the time he was baptized by John at the river to the point that he’s crucified on a cross. That’s an extraordinarily short period of time. In that short span, he planted a seed that would grow to resonate with billions of people around the world. In certain times and places, of course, people didn’t have much choice but to accept the Christian doctrine–it was spread by the sword. Many of us—like David and Jeff— were born into it and had to leave it behind for years before circling back and re-discovering the gifts it has to offer. It offers the story of love. “Ken [Wilber] would say that Buddhism is really about the mind and emptiness,” says David, “and Christianity is really about the heart and relatedness, and both those things inform his path.” Excerpt | A postmodern view of miracles Modernity seemed intent on verifying the historical person that was Jesus, emphasizing his humanity. Postmodernity is focused on the message of the heart: love and service, and caring for those left behind. So what does an integral Christian practice look like? In addition to bringing forward the best of modern and postmodern values, it might be bringing back something that we thought we lost: faith. In this recording, David speaks about his awakening to the Christ Consciousness later in life, while he was working as a film producer. For Jeff, a longtime Buddhist practitioner, God came back into his life when he discovered integral theory. “I can’t imagine my spiritual life without both god and emptiness, even though they are doctrinally opposed to each other. With an integral perspective we can hold the tension of those polarities, and find that it’s all the richer.” Integral not only gives us permission to cultivate first, second, and third person spiritual practices, but it tells us we are missing out if we aren’t exploring these perspectives, each representing a unique and irreducible dimension of awakening. An integral inquiry into Christianity brings up many questions. Do you have to believe the stories to get the gifts? Do you need to subscribe to the virgin birth, the walking on water, the crucifixion and resurrection? Do you need to believe in miracles? “I would say there is a postmodern view of miracles,” David says, “because what are most of the miracles about? Most of the miracles are about healing.” Listen to the conversation below, and find out more about the Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness conference, March 27th–30th at St. Julian Hotel & Spa in downtown Boulder, here. Daily Evolver listeners receive $75 off by using the code DERHCC110 to register.

Yes, folks, I went to see Fifty Shades of Grey…by myself…wearing an overcoat (it’s cold here in Boulder!). I sat off to the side by myself with a tub of popcorn on my lap. It was creepy, but this is what I do for you people. I wish the movie had been creepy. Actually, I wish the movie had been anything at all, besides empty and boring. It read like a two-hour fashion commercial where the characters were modeled rather than transmitted. But, alas, this isn’t a movie review. If you want to know just how bad Fifty Shades of Grey is you can go to Rotten Tomatoes and see 198 reviews averaging a 25 out of 100 rating. Far more interesting is the subject of the movie: BDSM. BD stands for bondage and discipline, and SM stands for sadism and masochism. Fifty Shades of Grey is mainstreaming these practices into the bloodstream of our culture. The movie itself made close to $250 million in less than a week and is expected to exceed $600 million when all is said and done. The Fifty Shades trilogy of books is a huge phenomenon in the publishing industry as well, selling over 100 million copies worldwide. For perspective, the last big publishing blockbuster was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which sold a mere twenty million copies. Why the success of Fifty Shades? Because we’re ready. We’re comfortable with gay everything at this point and send nothing but blessings to Bruce Jenner. But God is too good to let us rest, so … meet the kink community! Don’t you love the name? The kink community! These are the folks who tie other people up, hang them from the ceiling and flog them with a whip. Who bring back the master-slave thing, complete with boot-licking. Who burn, brand, force-feed and sexually penetrate each other with objects including their fists, as we learned in a strangely blasé scene in the movie. [Spoiler alert: regarding anal and vaginal fisting he was pro and she was con.] It sounds like an expose of the secret police in some third world country. But, no, it’s the kink community! In this week’s podcast I bring an integral lens to the emergence of kink into the popular culture. I look at how BDSM allows us to bring primitive energies — including juicy polarities such as predator / prey, and dominance / submission — back online as art and play. And how “experiences of extremis” break us out of our contracted identities into a larger sense of self that is more connected, fluid and fulfilling. Kink is a tonic for the denatured nature of modern and postmodern life. Think about it: when do any of us get to express our pure red energies? When do I get to slap anybody around? Who trembles when I walk into the room? Who begs me for anything? Who in my life is just there to serve my every carnal desire? Nobody, that’s who. And from the submissive polarity: when do I ever get to just really give myself up to another person, to submit utterly? When do I get to lose myself? When do I ever consciously experience pain, humiliation and surrender–these things that I’ve been exhausting my life force trying to avoid? The rise of BDSM in our culture feels like it is right on schedule, not just as sheer experience, but as a therapeutic vehicle for healing into more energy and power. I’m no aficionado of kink, and have never been particularly attracted. But I must say I’m interested, as are a lot of people these days, apparently. In the podcast I explore the fascination, the challenges, and the character of the emerging kink community. I’m joined for the last half by my long-time friend in the integral scene, Robin Reinach, who is a wise and seasoned explorer of this new territory. Who knows? In the sacred world to come we may be busy beating the crap out of each other. Devouring each other. And the lion will lay down with the lamb.

    This week Jeff covers a range of topics, focusing on the controversy over Obama’s remarks about the historical sins of Christianity such as the Crusades, the Inquisition and slavery. Jeff also explores the mindset of the perpetrators of such brutalities, which we saw erupt anew this week with the immolation of the Jordanian pilot by ISIS. In other matters, Jeff notes the explosive growth in Chinese cinema, and it’s evolutionary power. Plus we revisit vaccines…and get to meet the Integral community’s own Navy Seal sniper. Did Obama blow it in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast? He certainly got blow-back, especially for the following comments: Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Murderous extremism is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. I must say, when I first heard he had said this I thought, “No Barack, please! You let me say this shit, not you. You just stand up there and praise Jesus for another two years, and I’ll take care of this other stuff.” But he never listens to me, and so he has gotten creamed from pretty much all sides. Especially from the traditionalists (amber altitude) because his comments feed into their fears that this Obama, which rhymes with Osama, is not really a Christian at all and is actually tilling the land for the Enemy. But even moderates saw it as a gaffe, simply for the unfortunate timing and lack of context of larger events in the world. Indeed, his speech took place two days after the world saw a shocking demonstration of non-Christian atrocity: a thirty-minute, four-camera video edited like a video game with quick-cut graphics, sound effects and a grandiose narrative that led to a stark, brutal scene: a steel cage holding a man in an orange jumpsuit soaked in gasoline who is about to be burned alive. So two days after this, at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama brings up Christian atrocities of a thousand years ago. Bad timing in my opinion but I will defend his comments on one count: they are 100% true. Christians did all of these things — in numbers that dwarf the deeds of today’s Muslim fanatics. But all of this is so much better understood in a developmental context — and Obama didn’t provide it. His explanation of ISIS was basically that they are evil criminals who are perverting Islam. This explanation represents the orange/green sweet spot that Obama generally tries to hit as President. I’m not sure how much he believes it versus how much he thinks espousing it is proper leadership for the country. The former view would be orange/green and the latter would be integral. Here’s how the view of ISIS evolves according to the altitudes of development: Amber traditionalists: For traditionalists, evil is evil. It’s what the Devil and his minions do in their battle with God and God’s people. For them the whole religion of Islam is evil. Conversely, for Islamic traditionalists Christianity is a religion of heresy and infidels. There’s one true faith and you’re either with us or against us. Orange modernists: ISIS is evil but Islam isn’t, and in fact ISIS is perverting a great religion. This is a more mature and complex view, but we’re still stuck with evil. Green postmodernists: This view of ISIS is that they are power-mad psychopaths. The Obama administration,

This week Jeff takes a look at the movie American Sniper and Fox News’ rising star Megyn Kelly, to make the case that conservative culture is evolving by taking on the best of green altitude values. And it’s not just a one-way street. The left also evolves by taking on the best values of amber altitude traditionalism, such as the gay rights movement’s argument for marriage and military service. This year’s Super Bowl commercials also moved the ball… You can listen to the entire podcast at the bottom of this post. Or if you prefer to read, the full written transcript is there as well. For a quick listen check out the excerpt below which focuses on the controversial new movie, American Sniper. Excerpt | “Chris Kyle is no John Wayne” American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle, “America’s deadliest sniper in the Iraq War”. Kyle is credited with a record number of kills: 165 “confirmed kills” and another 95 “claimed kills” (which is where the bullet hits the target but death cannot be confirmed). Let me stop here and let our liberal blood curdle over the fact that there’s such a thing as a count of “kills” … that such distinctions are even made, and that racking up a high number makes you a hero and a legend. This is just naturally repulsive to liberals. Moving into the green altitude of development requires that we at least try to take on the perspective of other people, especially victims. This realization forms the essence of the liberal critique of American Sniper: the movie doesn’t consider the humanity of the people it’s fighting and killing, the Iraqis. It doesn’t consider their motivations, their context, or the fact that they love their families and value their lives as much as we do. But like it or not, conservatives (amber altitude traditionalists) do indeed see killing enemies in war as something to enjoy and take pride in. It makes perfect sense because at the traditional level of development life in general is seen as a universal battle between the forces of good and evil. We are the people who are on the right side of things, thank goodness. We are the chosen people of God. We have a blessed way of life, and we are — and this is always the case in the traditional stage of development — we are under attack by the forces of darkness. This is why for the vast majority of human history people have found killing to be deeply fulfilling. Every dead enemy just makes the world that much safer for us, our people and for the Kingdom of God we are building. There are few things so sweet. This is the essence of the traditionalist view presented in American Sniper. Yet, in American Sniper the traditional “god and country” view is leavened with a sensitivity that recognizes the collateral damage of war, not just for the Iraqis, but for the military families and the soldiers themselves. This is evidence of the evolution of the conservative view. John Wayne never worried about PTSD (and “shell-shocked” veterans of earlier wars were seen as weak and pitiful), but now it’s unpatriotic not to. The integral view is that every perspective is both true and partial, so even though integralists are steeped in green sensitivity, we also seek out the piece of the truth that the traditionalists bring in. And so the question becomes: what in this world is actually worth fighting for, and dying for, and yes, even killing for? Full podcast below includes the excerpt plus further commentary In the rest of the podcast Jeff examines this year’s Super Bowl ads, finding more evidence of cultural evolution, this time as an integration of the polarities of masculine and feminine. He ends by making the case that Fox News’ breakthrough anchor, Megyn Kelly, is likewise widening conservative values to include territory that had been previously held by liberals. Why? Because it works — her ratings are stratospheric and leading the way in Fox’s g...

Above: “Obama’s 2015 State of the Union in Two Minutes” In last Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, President Obama charted the course for the developmental leap from a modern “orange altitude” economy, which is where we are now, to a postmodern “green altitude” economy. He argued for policies such as: * Free higher education for everyone who wants it * Maternity leave and increased child care * Paid sick leave * Extending health insurance to more people * Higher minimum wage, so that everybody who makes an effort can make a living.  I love how he said it: To everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise. * Higher taxes on the rich Now I know what many of you international readers are thinking, “Really, this is what you Americans are still working on?” It’s true, America is a good developmental half a stage or more behind other developed countries in regards to family care and even safety net issues. Fundamentally, Obama’s economic vision is to catch up to what is already happening in other rich countries of the world, particularly in Western Europe. I saw elegant evidence of the difference between American and European thinking in a Pew Poll this week which asked people from the United States, as well as people from Germany, France, Britain and Spain, which is more important to them: 1) The freedom to live your life without state interference? or 2) The security of having the state guarantee that everyone’s basic needs are met? It turns out that the views of  Americans and Europeans were perfect mirror images of each other on this basic “security vs freedom” polarity. Europeans choose security over freedom by 60% to 40%. Americans chose freedom over security by 60% to 40%. And that’s how Americans choose the modern Orange system, which is oriented to the individual, over the Green post-Modern system, which focuses on the community at large. The latter is the choice of the Europeans. Paradoxically, America’s relative Orangeness may be one reason for its economic success, which outpaces Europe’s in two important ways. The first is our long-term success: over 70 years America has had the richest middle class in the world. The rest of the developed world is gaining on us, but we’re still out in front. Also second is our success in the short run as well, with America leading the developed world out of the recent Great Recession both in terms of growth and employment. But the inequitable distribution of America’s wealth is too high. It just doesn’t feel right when 90% of new wealth created by the economy is flowing to the top 2% of citizens. That offends the moral sensibilities of modern and postmodern people. So how do we solve this problem? We integrate! The way forward is to harmonize the polarities — freedom and security being two of the primary polarities of life. As we mature we realize that it’s not that we are to choose one over the other.  It’s that we are to see the wisdom in both poles, and be ever more able to tease apart what is best about each. Using this thinking we create a less ruthless meritocracy and a less stagnant collective. We develop a more entrepreneurial flavor to government services, and an ever more humane and flexible workspace provided by private companies. The goal of this integration is a system where people are free to move through their lives and make decisions for themselves and their families unencumbered by unnecessary rules and rulers. Yet at the same time they are connected to and supported by a meshwork of intelligent and responsive systems that catch them when they fall. I think an economy like this is evolutionarily inevitable,

In this week’s podcast Jeff explores the Muslim/Western fault lines exposed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, where twelve people were killed in an attack on the satirical magazine by Muslim extremists who were offended by their depictions of Muhammad. In the 2nd half of the show, Jeff is joined by special guest Amir Ahmad Nasr, author of The Future of Islam In the Age of New Media, and My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind–And Doubt Freed My Soul. Remember, this season we are offering not just the full podcast (in the player at the bottom of this post), but also an edited written transcript, as well as some bite-sized excerpts. EXCERPT 1 AN ASSAULT ON MODERNITY JEFF: “From an evolutionary perspective, Charlie Hebdois less a story about the crazy, violent elements in our society, and more a story of how small a part of our world the crazy violent elements have become.” “I think of it as the pain-versus-gain ratio. As we develop (as cultures and individuals), it takes less and less pain to give us more and more gain. Last week I talked about how Nazi Germany conducted an industrial genocide of six million people, one of the most horrific events in human history. Today, Germany is one of the most civilized, intelligent, pacified, industrious nations on earth, as well as officially the most admired nation on earth. Just seventy years later — it’s astonishing! “Did the historic horror create the present peace and prosperity? I’d say yes. One of the engines of evolution is the realization of the painful consequences of one’s own actions. We realized that there is a better way forward. That there is new insight, new wisdom, and an ever larger circle of compassion available to us. This is built into our development.” EXCERPT 2 INTERVIEW WITH AMIR AHMAD NASR AMIR: “Something big that’s really emerging [in Muslim culture] is the change in the media landscape that has happened over the past two decades. I’m not just talking about the internet and social media, I’m also talking about satellite TV because that’s how it started. Take for instance the series Friends. Friends is subtitled in Arabic and is extremely popular in the Arab world. “You had certain episodes in which Russ and Monica would express their Jewish faith. For some viewers, it’s like, ‘Wait a second. They’re Jewish characters…how interesting;’ but then you just go along and laugh. When American pop culture started being broadcast a lot of people started asking questions like, ‘Why do they get to live like that? Why do they get to do these things? Ooh,let’s tune in.’ “People began to just understand the world differently. And they see that they have a certain kind of individuality that they can express, and they want to express it. And then comes the social media, and now it’s a two-way conversation. It’s not just information being broadcasted at you. You can go and seek information. Saudi Arabia is where you will find the highest consumption of YouTube per capita in the world, often young women educating themselves.” FULL PODCAST BELOW INCLUDES BOTH EXCERPTS PLUS FURTHER COMMENTARY ON: * How Integral thinking helps us hold multiple perspectives * How the pre-modern Muslim mind is wired for magic, not logic * How myth conquers and organizes magic to support more complex consciousness * The spirit of blasphemy and it’s place in the ascent of humanity * Am I Charlie Hebdo? Yes, as long as I remember I am everybody else as well The Daily Evolver | Episode 109 | Am I Charlie Hebdo? An Integralist Considers the Events in Paris

2014 has been described as a turbulent year in the media, but there isn’t really a turbulent-free option, is there? Is there anything about turbulence that is good? Also, Jeff answers a listener’s question about the moral nature of red: when is violence healthy and when is it pathological? EXCERPT 1 THE LESSON THAT IS, AT FIRST, TROUBLING, THEN REALLY QUITE RELAXING “This is the existential human dilemma: none of us knows for sure whether we’re going to live through the night. There’s no turbulence-free option. I promised I would do an integral view of 2015 so here it is: 2015 is going to be turbulent. Stuff’s going to happen, that’s life on earth. The question is then, ‘How turbulent? In what ways turbulent? Is there anything about turbulence that we can see is actually good?’ With that lens brought into the situation, it turns out that 2014 is certainly a candidate, if not a shoo-in, for being the best year that humanity has ever lived through.” EXCERPT 2 THE MORAL NATURE OF RED: WHEN IS VIOLENCE HEALTHY AND WHEN IS IT PATHOLOGICAL? “We would describe something as being healthy if the person or organism is operating mostly at the leading edge of their capacity. For the vast majority of human history, wiping out the enemy is what healthy societies did. The healthy tribe, the healthy leader, in indigenous red cultures is the one who provided the most calories, safety, warmth and security for his tribe. At red consciousness you would feel toward any competing tribe the same way that people in modern consciousness feel toward an Ebola virus. You just kill them as fast as you can and good riddance.” FULL PODCAST BELOW INCLUDES BOTH EXCERPTS PLUS FURTHER COMMENTARY ON: * The Taliban massacre of the Pakistani military’s children * The U.S. Senate Torture Report * Terri O-Fallen’s insight into ISIS and Al Qaeda * Seth Rogan and James Franco Interview Kim Jong Un * On living in a Golden Age: let’s be grateful and heartened FULL TRANSCRIPT The Daily Evolver | Episode 108 | Goodbye Turbulence, Hello Turbulence! FULL PODCAST

Frank Visser is arguably the chief critic of Ken Wilber, integral theory and the integral community as a whole. Based in Amsterdam, Frank is publisher of the website INTEGRAL WORLD: An Independent Forum for a Critical Discussion of the Integral Philosophy of Ken Wilber which hosts over a thousand essays by mostly dissenting voices in the integral scene. Contrast this to Jeff Salzman and his work with the Daily Evolver. Jeff is an unabashed Wilberian and self-described integral evangelist who “sees the animating power of evolution, inside and out.”  Frank and Jeff spoke by phone before the holidays while Frank was getting ready to head out to an island on the coast of the Netherlands. Visser was once an enthusiastic proponent of Ken Wilber’s AQAL model. In 2003 he wrote the book Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY Press), a chronological overview of Ken’s life and work through 2003, and has recently released a new online chapter, “Reaching Out to the World”, covering the intervening years. This new writing is far more critical of Ken and the integral movement and has sparked new controversy, most notably a fascinating and fruitful back-and-forth between Frank and Joe Perez, creator of the outstanding Integral Blog. Joe’s first volley is entitled “Properly Integral: A Response to Frank Visser’s Three Disappointments”, and leads to the rest of the debate. In this podcast Jeff and Frank talk about their differences, which primarily boils down to the question does Spirit exist? Is there a loving intelligence at work in the kosmos? Jeff says “yes”, and Frank says “not so fast.” For Frank, the idea that there is an intelligent force driving evolution, that the substrate of existence is consciousness, or Spirit, is where the line is crossed. To make such claims requires an unhealthy mixing of science and religion. “Wilber is a complicated figure, because he argues for spirit but he includes so much scientific material to back up that case…it’s only natural for people who are in the sciences to hold him accountable for how strong is his case.” Of course, the integral project is to integrate the realms of science and mysticism, which have different injunctions and different validity claims, and which have long been estranged. But Frank is skeptical; are we integrating or are we mixing? Probably both, says Jeff, but this is how we move forward. I think you get stronger when you can engage your opposing views, there’s no way out of that. Otherwise you create a bubble and you repeat what you already think and that’s not very fruitful to me. There came a point when I was stepping over to the dark side, so to speak. I was so immersed in all this critical writing that I took up that role to become a focus for it and that’s basically how the website Integral World has received its reputation. I must say that I always am a bit surprised by people who say, well, this is just a junkyard of Wilber bashing or whatever.   ~Frank Visser Part of Frank’s skepticism comes from the fact that spirituality is comforting for us. It’s always been there to explain things that we can’t otherwise understand. When the questions get too difficult, insert “God” and the equation is balanced. And isn’t it nice to know that no matter how troubled the world seems, at the end of the day it’s all okay because, after all, it’s in God’s hands. “If you feel there is a kind of spirit behind everything then of course you’re safe,” says Frank, “because then it will work out in the end. If you don’t have that drive, which is my feeling,