The Daily Evolver

The US withdraws from Afghanistan and the Taliban enters — and all so much faster than expected. In this episode, recorded 8/18, I take a look at what is happening in Afghanistan through the lens of evolutionary theory.

Dr. Keith Witt, integral psychotherapist extraordinaire, joins me for another episode of The Shrink and the Pundit, where we explore the contours of emerging integral consciousness. Today’s topic is what Dr. Keith calls the “post-issue relationship”, and here’s how he describes it: In a post-issue relationship, each problem is an opportunity to grow and love. A post-issue relationship may still have problems, resentments, doubts, and selfish or thoughtless injuries, but there is always an adjustment to love in response to pain or distortion. Second-tier living really is more good, true and beautiful! Our conversation starts at 3:16; I hope you enjoy it!. You can find out more about Dr. Keith Witt here.

This week I review the new Nicholas Cage movie, Pig, about a truffle hunter in the wilds of Oregon who goes on a quest to find his kidnapped pig. It is the work of first-time filmmaker, Michael Sarnoski. I am very much an outlier on this movie, which has received rave reviews and a 97% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The rapturous response — The Guardian called a “masterpiece” — gave me pause and made me reconsider a movie that I would have otherwise written off as being shockingly bad. Upon reflection I realize that Pig is not a bad movie, it may even be a great movie if you like your nihilism served up as ugly as possible. There is a strain of postmodern (green altitude) identity that sees modern culture as hopelessly corrupt and exhausted, facing an existential meta-crisis. A significant sliver of them, self-described “doomers,” see a world so degenerated that withdrawal is the only moral choice. This view is defensible, of course, but inadequate. What’s missing is what integral thinking brings to the party: an evolutionary understanding that its meta-crises all the way down. Most of human history has been a rolling catastrophe. Welcome to evolution! The modern (orange altitude) stage of development, for all its soulless avarice, has been a boon to humans in terms of security and wealth, giving rise to life conditions that can generate a social critique like Pig, which is postmodern deconstruction at its platonic perfection, establishing once and for all that there is nothing good, true, or beautiful to be found. In the podcast, I draw a distinction between the aesthetics of ugliness and nihilism, both of which can deeply move me. But you have to give me something more than the told-not-shown love of a pig. These days I require my social critiques to have faith in life, movies like Minari, or even Nomadland. I’ll do a review of these soon! Let me know what you think at jeff@dailyevolver.com. Jeff PS. I love listening to podcasts at fast speed. Last week I learned you can also speed up YouTube videos. It’s great, try it! Just click the gear icon while playing a video and select the “speed” option.

Bill Maher kicked off a cultural meme a few weeks ago with a segment on his popular show Real Time where he skewered the cultural left for progressophobia, which he defined as “situational blindness, except what you can’t see is that your dorm room in 2021 is better than the South before the Civil War.” In this episode, I map the idea of progress in our culture. Maher’s comments were widely praised in the mainstream media, from Morning Joe Scarborough on MSNBC (center left) to Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal (center right). Together these represent the modern worldview (orange altitude). Traditionalists (blue/amber altitude) see no progress in this wicked world, only the opportunity for redemption or transcendence. Progressives (green altitude), who also have a fallen-world narrative, see the idea of progress as an insult to all who continue to suffer. The arising integral stage has a chance to revalorize the message of progress. Not as a march to a triumphal future, but as the ever-widening circle of moral consideration we have, individually and collectively, for each other and all aspects of our world. Onward to upward! On a personal note, many of you may know that our Brother Terry Patten, who I have worked with and hosted on the Daily Evolver many times, is fighting a battle with cancer. I invite you to join me and many of his friends and fans in supporting him at his GoFundMe site. ~ Jeff Salzman

The Post-Progressive project proceeds! In this episode, Steve McIntosh, president of the Institute for Cultural Evolution, joins me to introduce a major new web publication created to transcend and integrate our polarized politics: The Post-Progressive Post. Subtitled, “A Home for the Politically Homeless” the Post-Progressive Post seeks to be a meeting place for integral thinkers, folks who see value in many sectors of the political spectrum and want to join the effort to form an “omni-inclusive” worldview. In this podcast, Steve guides us on a tour through the site, including: * Post-progressivism defined: the 100-word version, the 700-word version and the multi-page version * An ever-growing array of news analysis, opinion columns, blogs and podcasts by leading integral thinkers * Win-win-win positions on the issues of the day which honor traditional values, modern values and postmodern values * Quizzes and exercises to help you explore your own integral consciousness * Portals to the post-progressive Facebook and Twitter feeds, and more ways to get involved The Post-Progressive Project as a whole is an initiative of the Institute for Cultural Evolution. Steve McIntosh is the president of the Institute and I am on its board of directors. I hope you enjoy the podcast, and The Post-Progressive Post! 

In this episode, I point out a heartening trend among cultural commentators: an increasing recognition that people, particularly people fighting a culture war, not only think different things, they think differently. A key teaching of integral theory is that human consciousness and culture evolve through stages of development. Each stage has its own receptors, processors and algorithms, and each reveals a different “worldspace” which their subjects occupy. When conflicts arise among people of different worldspaces, there is limited common ground and deep divisions remain that are immune to influence. Philosopher Robert Fogelin refers to this divide as “deep disagreement” where successful argument is not an option. What is called for is integral consciousness, a worldspace occupied by someone who is capable of holding multiple perspectives, a person that Peter Limberg and Conor Barnes describe as a “pan-tribalist participant, who has the ability to communicate across tribes in a way that seems fair and reasonable to each tribe. They would have the mental agility, empathy, and wisdom needed to shift between a multitude of perspectives.” In this podcast, I place the notion of “integral pluralism” in a developmental context, which I think helps us understand it not just as a psychological capacity but as a movement of human history. I also highlight how it helped me consider the high-profile public apologies offered this week by two of my least-favorite people: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chrissy Teigen. Enjoy! For more on the application of integral pluralism in the current culture war, see Greg Thomas’s excellent new essay “Why I Am a Radical Moderate.” June 26th: Grace and Grit: From Book to Movie to Integral Life Practice On another note, my friends and colleagues, Nomali Perera and writer/director Grace and Grit (the movie), Sebastian Siegel, would like to invite you to a zoom call where they’ll discuss the movie, as well as engage in community practice. It is free and open to all. You can find more details here.  

Today on Post-Progressive Inquiries I explore the contours of the next stage of human development with psychiatrist and futurist Charles M. Johnston. Charles has just released two new books exploring an emerging way of thinking that he calls the “integrative meta-perspective”. As Charles explains, “Our work today is to bring big-picture, long-term perspectives to the human condition. While these kinds of insights can initially stretch people’s understanding, with time, most people find them seeming like common sense. What is new is that this is a degree of common sense that before now we could not have fully grasped — or tolerated. It would have overwhelmed us. Today, it has become essential.” I hope you enjoy our conversation and check out his latest books: * Creative Systems Theory—A Comprehensive Theory of Purpose,Change, and Interrelationship In Human Systems (With Particular Pertinence to Understanding the Times We Live In and the Tasks Ahead for the Species)  * Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord: Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization—And What We Can Do About It. Post-Progressive Inquiries is a co-production of the Institute for Cultural Evolution and the Daily Evolver Podcast. Steve McIntosh will join the series in the next episode.

In this episode, I take a look at the “ultimate questions” of religion and philosophy: Who are we? Where are we going? How does one live a meaningful life in a world that is marked by loss and death, but also goodness and beauty?  Throughout history, humanity has come up with many different and often conflicting answers to these questions. Early humans perceived a spirit world where the ancestors were present and available. Traditional cultures posited a transcendent reality – Godhead or Nirvana – with death as an opportunity for liberation from evil and suffering. Modernity deconstructed religion and spirit but produced the insights of psychology, as well as countless therapies for personal growth. The integral approach is to embrace them all and to be illuminated by multiple truths. In that spirit I created this episode by talking to four of my smartest integral colleagues about their views of the ultimate questions: * Dr. Keith Witt, integral psychotherapist for over 50 years, talks about the psychotherapeutic approach to trauma and grief. * Integral teacher and coach Nomali Perera shares the story of the death of her father and the metamorphosis of meaning it sparked in her. * Buddhist priest and integral teacher Diane Musho Hamilton offers guidance on the meditative approach of compassion and soothing presence. * And integral philosopher Steve McIntosh brings a theistic perspective, seeing death as a passage in one’s infinite cosmic journey of divine perfection. I feel better – and a little bigger – having had these conversations. I hope they help you expand a bit as well! – Jeff Salzman

Part 1: I look at a front-page story in the New York Times about how psychedelic drugs, such as ecstasy and magic mushrooms, are poised to reshape psychiatry. I make the case that this is a significant move in the evolution of human consciousness. Part 2: I play excerpts from a fascinating conversation between John McWhorter and Bill Maher on race relations, and imagine how an understanding of developmental theory would have improved it. Here’s to another week in cultural evolution! ~ Jeff Salzman

In this episode, I look deeper into the Integral project of ”worldview diversity,” where we seek to befriend, appreciate, and be influenced by people and cultures who inhabit different world-spaces (altitudes of development). Topics I hit on: * Alexei Navalny’s heroic, near-death fight for modern values in Russia. * “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others.” Pew research on how Eastern and Western Europeans respond to that statement. * How “mean modernity“ blinds us to the deep identity and fulfillment found in healthy traditionalism. * Practicing to deepen multi-perspectivalism with individuals and cultures. Plus, I welcome Integral teacher and coach Lee Mason to tell us about his new program, The Essence of Integral Flourishing, now available at Integral Life. Enjoy! You can learn more about Lee on www.practicalintegral.com.

This week I explore an essay published in Israel’s newspaper Haaretz that The New York Times said “shook the Israeli left like an ideological bunker-busting bomb.” In it, Nissim Mizrachi, former head of the department of sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, describes what he calls the blind spot of liberals, who, he says, “do not see themselves as ‘classifiable’ from the outside.” “I think the most blatant phenomenon in world politics today is the resounding defeat of the liberal vision,” Mizrachi says. “It’s a double breakdown: one involving the government, in the sense of the left’s inability to gain a political foothold among the masses; and more deeply, one involving an inability to imagine an order that accommodates opposition groups.” Integral theory shows us that all first-tier worldviews, not just liberalism, are stuck in their ideological bunkers. And that the way forward is to explore and open to the world of others, particularly our political opponents. In the second part of the episode, I apply this thesis to the culture war currently being fought within the African-American community, where the antiracists, led by Ibram X. Kendi, are sparring with the anti-antiracists, led by Glenn Loury and others. What does a diversity of worldviews look like? It’s deceptively simple, says Professor Mizrachi, “We think the other side’s concerns are not mine, but they should be because I care about him or her. We share something in common here. We are sharing this land and this nation. It sounds horrible, but he or she needs to become part of us. Because they are part of us.” Sounds kind of beautiful to me, but getting there sure ain’t pretty. I hope you enjoy the episode!

All living processes exist in a rhythm of opposing forces which create conflict, resolving into either cooperation or domination. This dynamic of tension is the subtext of most human activity. The good news is that in the long run friending wins. In this episode of The Shrink and the Pundit, integral psychotherapist Dr Keith Witt explains how sociability is latent in most interactions, even those that are marked by hostility. And how human beings at every scale, from individual children to collective nation-states, invite constraints to provide a delineated space for new growth. Dr. Keith’s insights help us normalize – and realize the potential – in the inevitable conflicts of life. NOTE: We apologize for the buzz you might hear at times from Dr. Keith Witt’s mic.

Every stage of development brings forth new territories in the evolution of human consciousness and culture. A few days ago we witnessed a move into postmodernity (green altitude) in Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Harry and Meghan, the renegade Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Harry and Meghan are exemplars of postmodernity’s most powerful creed: to relieve human suffering that has been unseen in previous structures … * suffering in the collective, with a new dedication to those people and groups who have been previously marginalized or discounted by society, and * suffering in the individual, with a heightened awareness of psychic pain, trauma, and “mental health”. To some, the interview was a display of hypersensitivity and self-indulgence; to others a noble challenge to right the blind spots of history. In this episode, I explore this latest skirmish in the culture war. With a burst of sunshine by John Denver!

Good rationality demystifies the world and bad rationality disenchants it. This week I look at two examples of the casual blindness of mainstream culture to all things divine. * 05:44 – Amy Dickenson, writer of the popular advice column “Ask Amy” counsels a woman who is offended that her sick husband’s caregiver offered to pray with him. * 17:49 – In the essay, “My Generation Isn’t Suffering Enough,” a wise young writer looks at Gen Z (under 25 years old), and asks why they are so hopeless and sad. Along the way, I look at how a divine Other can be brought through modernity, cleansed of fundamentalism, and experienced directly as the 2nd Person of Spirit. The deep meaning this brings to life (and death) is the ultimate antidote to anxiety and depression. Enjoy the episode!

This week I spotlight more of what’s new in cultural evolution: President Joe Biden leads a memorial to COVID victims and offers consolation to their survivors in a way that brings on the best of “good green”. Green consciousness, “the sensitive self”, is drawn to ever-deeper levels of empathy and care, especially for those who are typically unsung in society. It is the leading edge of human evolution and the part of green that we want to integrate into 2nd tier consciousness. Joe Biden, uniquely qualified by virtue of his personal suffering, is leading the way. TwinsthenewTrend is the moniker for twin brothers Tim and Fred Williams, now 21, who have become YouTube sensations recording “reaction videos” of themselves listening to all types of music. Their effortless flow and guileless friendliness to all are magnetic and, I argue, represent qualities of integral consciousness that are native to a new generation of young people, two more of whom I profile. * 13:00 – TwinsTheNewTrend * 24:15 – Zoë Jenkins of Civics Unplugged * 31:15 – Young friend from Stockholm Enjoy the episode! – Jeff