Integral Advice for the Next President

On Friday, What Is Enlightenment? Magazine is interviewing me on the topic of “integral advice for the next president.” So now that I’ve had a chance to think this through, it seems like a good subject for a blog entry. But before I offer this advice, I have to say that no matter who is elected, this person will be a “tool of the system” to a large degree. So while I do hope that the next president can help us make progress, I'm not pinning all my hopes on the American federal government to provide the important political leadership we are going to need in the years ahead. Those who have achieved integral consciousness will also be needed to help move America’s cultural center of gravity forward in history by building the social structures of the integral worldview.

Obviously, the next president will need to resolve some basic issues, such as achieving a positive resolution to the war in Iraq, providing for a better healthcare system, and a fairer immigration policy, as well as reducing the deficit and propping up the dollar. However, from an integral perspective, I think there are three main areas where the next president can provide the kind of visionary leadership that will improve the human condition worldwide. These are:

1. Launch a major campaign to shift the American economy away from its reliance on fossil fuels.

2. Inaugurate a new kind of foreign policy that recognizes how every problem in the world is a problem of consciousness.

3. Provide integrally informed leadership in the areas of education and economic development.

I’ll discuss each of these proposals in turn, starting with the first and most important: the issue of energy.

By weaning the American economy off its reliance on fossil fuels, we can solve multiple problems at once: global warming can be ameliorated; air pollution can be reduced; the corrupting influence of oil wealth on developing countries can be lessened; the significance of dysfunctional Islam can be reduced; the U.S. economy can be stimulated; and the eventual globalization of the new energy technology can provide a way for China and India to industrialize without destroying the environment. Moreover, through such an initiative America can fulfill its duty as the leader of global modernism and restore its moral reputation in the world. Indeed, America’s dependence on foreign oil is really our biggest long-term threat, so there is a strong argument that we should use a portion of our defense budget to pay for the kind of “defense” we really need.

From an external perspective, creating an alternative energy economy requires two kinds of solutions: an engineering solution and then an economic systems change solution. The engineering solution involves finding the best long-term alternative to fossil fuels. And to achieve this goal writers like Thomas Freidman have called for a new Manhattan Project, like the program that came up with the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Through this kind of intensive national effort we could identify and develop the most effective form of alternative energy.

Then once we have come up with the best alternative to fossil fuels, the next phase of the solution involves a systems level change that will convert our economy from one that’s based on oil to one that can be run on this new technology. However, this systemic transformation of our economy is something that the free market won’t be able to do by itself, the government will have to get involved to help us through the transition. Then, once the American economy has created the alternative technology and made the transition from fossil fuels, it will be much easier for the rest of the world to follow suit.

However, notice that the biggest hurdle to implementing both the engineering solution and economic solution is the tremendous problem of generating the prerequisite political will. It took the concentrated threat of World War II to generate the political will for the original Manhattan project, and it seems like short of World War III, America’s political will for alternative energy may not be adequate until it’s too late.

Thus, the heart of the challenge is not the external engineering or systems change problems, it is the internal challenge of generating the requisite political agreement to undertake the sacrifices that will be necessary. And this is where the integral worldview’s new understanding of the internal universe can be of great assistance.

Just as Kennedy inaugurated America’s decade long mission to the moon, our next president needs to inaugurate a similar kind of “moon shot” for alternative energy. And he or she will find that “integral technology” can be an indispensable asset in this critical initiative by helping to overcome the primary challenge of building the political will required for such an undertaking.

The next president can also make major progress by initiating a new kind of foreign policy. For example, it’s important to see how war in the 21st century is being fought primarily in the internal universe. The conflicts turn not so much on the actual military engagements, but rather on the results of the battle for hearts and minds. And it’s also important to see how wars are often fought with the tactics and technology of the previous era, resulting in costly losses and bad mistakes. So as we might expect, history is repeating itself in the war on terror—we’re fighting it with the tactics of World War II and the Cold War, wherein torture, secret prisons, and unjustified covert operations by the CIA and others are making us less moral overall. Thus, any gains in the external universe produced by these tactics are more than offset by the losses they create in the internal universe.

So my advice to the next president is to act on the understanding that a more moral foreign policy is actually a critical part of a comprehensive and effective national defense. And by embracing this understanding will see where we need to change our tactics. For instance, we can put an immediate end to all forms of rendition and torture, and we can carefully articulate a more transparent and accountable role for our intelligence services. We can announce this change in direction and the reasons for it, and then we can do some things to help heal the history that is continuing to hurt us today. For example, we could pay for a memorial in downtown Tehran that memorializes our shame at the CIA’s political manipulation of the Iranian government in the 1950s. We could symbolically atone for those sins, help heal that little bit of history, and thereby become more moral ourselves.

We can also strengthen Islamic traditional consciousness by using integral technology to help empower the more moderate voices of Islam. For instance, we could endow a prestigious prize like the Nobel or Pulitzer called “The Qur'an Prize” that could be given annually to the writer in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, who best demonstrates that Islam is a religion of peace, and that violence is un-Islamic.

However, this is not to suggest that we should simply go soft on terrorism or adopt a predominantly left-wing foreign policy. We can’t ignore the very real threats posed by all the unhealthy forms of traditional consciousness in the world. The integral approach to the war on terror thus involves using the solutions of every level simultaneously. For example, we can use a traditional approach by keeping the Navy in the Persian Gulf, we can use an modernist approach by continuing with the diplomacy of economic carrots and sticks. We can use a postmodern approach by apologizing and making amends for some of our past actions, and we can use an integral approach by becoming better at changing hearts and minds through the application of the kinds of integral technology I have discussed.

We can also make our foreign policy “more moral” by insisting that all our foreign aid be focused on the central task of raising consciousness and thereby providing permanent solutions to problems of hunger, poverty, and disease. Moreover, America can articulate a new standard of justice for the way it will treat all foreign nationals—a basic set of rights that everyone is entitled to regardless of their citizenship. America cannot shirk its duties of leadership in the world, and the articulation of a global standard of justice that we are willing to abide by will go a long way toward restoring our moral fragrance and the world’s good will.

Finally, my advice for the next president must include the use of integral technology to improve our public education system and appropriately stimulate our economy. It is in these areas that the integral perspective can help us make major progress in the ongoing development from warrior consciousness to traditional consciousness, and from traditional consciousness to modernist consciousness. Moving America’s center of gravity forward in history must begin with these initiatives to “strengthen the base”.

So ultimately, my advice to the next president is that he or she needs to become fully integrally informed and to surround him or herself with a cadre of integral advisers, including some at the Cabinet level. In the final analysis, politics is always about persuasion, and in this task the integral understanding of consciousness and culture can be used as a new kind of secret weapon, somewhat akin to “remote viewing” into the internal universe.

 

Speaking in Boston, Lenox, and New York City

For the past few days I’ve been on the East Coast giving presentations on integral philosophy. On Wednesday, January 23, I spoke at EnlightenNext’s beautiful Boston Center, and the audience participation (a group of about 80 people) was really terrific. Much of the discussion focused on “free will” — where it comes from, why it is an organ of perception of values, and why it is a critical feature of human consciousness’ role in the “cosmic economy.”

Next, I traveled to Andrew Cohen’s EnlightenNext headquarters in Lenox Massachusetts. Set in the Berkshire Mountains, this former Vanderbilt estate consists of a large “manor house” (in which the offices of What Is Enlightenment? Magazine, the community dining room, and other facilities are located), and several other historical buildings, including a large “meditation hall” where I gave a presentation to another sizable audience on Saturday night.

I stayed at “Foxhollow” (as the estate is called) for six wonderful days, having private dinners with Andrew and Executive Editor Carter Phipps (see the snapshot from my i-phone of the three of us above) on three occasions. Andrew, Carter, and I talked a lot about “integral natural theology” — the aspects of spirit that become “self-evident” from an integral perspective. That is, even though Andrew’s teaching is rooted in Eastern Nondual traditions, and my spiritual path has been Western and theistic, there is nevertheless very much we can agree about, and even directly see from the newly emerging vantage point of the integral worldview. For example, Andrew and I both agreed that evolutionary spirituality yields a kind of “developmental logic” that shows us how the evolution of our consciousness will continue beyond this life, with death changing very little. Also, we both could see that there is really only one “authentic self” in which we all participate. However, in our discussion we did encounter some interesting differences regarding the spiritual importance of originality. From my perspective, even though “we are all essentially one,” we are all also uniquely original. And it is this originality that allows us to be known and loved by God. Although Andrew now recognizes a Divine Person through the concept of the “second face of God,” this concept is not as central or robust in his theology as it is in mine.

Concepts such as the “Authentic Self,” the original and eternal nature of human personality, and the love of God, are obviously beyond the scope of this blog post. So suffice it to say that Andrew, Carter, and I had a very fruitful and heartfelt discussion, which is continuing to resonate and give me a new appreciation of the movement of spirit in the world. I hope to write further about integral natural theology soon.

Overall, I can say that I was very impressed with Andrew Cohen; I found him to be warm, natural, and thoroughly authentic. Despite my reservations about the Guru model of spiritual community, I received a most favorable impression of the Foxhollow residents. Especially edifying was the friendships I established with WIE editors Carter Phipps, Elizabeth Debold, Ross Robertson, Jeff Carreira, and Robert Heinzman (not to mention Andrew). In fact, in my travels to various cities to speak about integral philosophy, I consistently find that the EnlightenNext folks are some of the most spiritually fragrant people I meet. It does seem that Andrew is definitely doing something right.

After giving a variety of presentations and interviews at Foxhollow, Carter Phipps and I took the train down to New York City to give a joint presentation at EnlightenNext’s center near Madison Square Garden. Here again we had a large and receptive crowd and I thought the evening went very well. You can hear a recording of this presentation in its entirety on the INTERVIEWS SECTION of this website. The New York talk was a new format for me — usually I give a prepared power-point presentation followed by questions. But in New York, Carter and I started with a brief statement of what the integral worldview meant to us, and then we devoted the rest of the two-hour event to questions and discussion. This Q&A format helped me see that I am a much better speaker when I can be spontaneous and let the “intersubjective field” of the audience bring out the content.

In the next few months I’ll be giving a variety of presentations at the new Boulder Integral Center (see the SCHEDULE SECTION). Also, we are continuing to work on planning my trip to Southern California, where I grew up.

 

The First Leg of My Book Tour

For the past two weeks I’ve been traveling up and down the West coast giving talks on integral philosophy at various venues. Most of these talks consisted of a 40-minute power-point presentation, designed as a general introduction to integral consciousness, followed by about 40-minutes of questions and discussion. The first event was hosted at the Marin county home of my friends Deborah Boyar and Terry Patten, where I met a variety of distinguished integralists, including Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughn. Some of the attendees had even driven up from Los Angeles, and I was struck by how much enthusiasm and agreement there was for this emerging integral worldview. In fact, many people I spoke with throughout this leg of the tour reported feeling a palpable “morphic field” that is pulling us into this new integral phase of history.

Another Bay area highlight was speaking at The Institute of Noetic Sciences where I was met with a gracious reception. And as expected, I was confronted with some predictable anti-modern comments, such as the “crime of property ownership which the Native Americans could not fathom.” In response, I acknowledged the important dignities of the tribal and warrior cultures of the Indians, but tried to explain how an indispensable aspect of modernism’s dignities includes the economic empowerment of the average individual through advent of the freedom of ownership.

At one New Age bookstore talk I received a comment that the philosophical idea of “the good” did not comport with the principles of “non-violent communication.” The questioner even quoted Rumi as inviting us to “meet in a place beyond good and evil.” My polite response was that the integral philosophy of evolution is chiefly concerned with the improvement of the human condition, and that it effectively transcends the “black and white” conceptions of good and evil characteristic of the traditional level. Nevertheless, I emphasized that the idea of “the good” is a very important concept that we need to hold onto, even as we recognize this value’s dialectical metamorphosis through the growth of the spiral of development.

One of the most frequent questions was: “how long do we have until civilization collapses?” To this I responded that although regression in cultural evolution is always a possibility, and the threat of global warming is perhaps the most dire ever faced by our society, I do believe that it is still possible to evolve our way to a more sustainable civilization. The dynamics of the spiral show us that the pace of cultural evolution responds to emergent life conditions, and the growing awareness of the urgency of global warming is itself a problematic life condition which demonstrates the limitations of postmodernism, and which is itself helping to catalyze the rise of the integral worldview. I explained further that there is a strong current within postmodern culture for a “doomsday scenario” — it serves to relieve one’s sense of responsibility to work for a better world today because it reinforces the belief that “it will soon be over anyway.” However, I expressed my opposition to this way of thinking and emphasized that we have a duty to retain the moral courage of optimism and continue to work to raise consciousness from wherever we find it.

The crescendo of the trip was my talk at Seattle’s “integral loft,” where I gave a more advanced presentation entitled: The Natural Theology of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. The talk was booked solid with a waiting list — I didn’t count, but it seemed as though there were 60 people in attendance. Despite the rigorous philosophical character of the talk, attention was rapt and the questions at the end were great. Afterwards I met many of the wonderful Seattle integralists who were excited to be part of this emerging movement. My integral loft host, Susan Cannon of KORE leadership, was surprised by the turnout for this intensely philosophical subject, but we concluded that philosophy is actually becoming exciting again in the 21st century because people can now begin to use it in their everyday lives. That is, with the rise of the integral perspective people are beginning to use philosophy to raise their own consciousness and the consciousness of others.

For the next leg of my tour I’ll be heading to Boston and New York in January, including a stay with the good folks at What Is Enlightenment? Magazine in Lenox, Massachusetts. After that, it looks like I’ll be going to Southern California in February.

 

Integral Politics for the Mainstream Media

My book covers a lot of subjects, and prior to its publication I was not sure which aspect of it would receive the most attention. However, it appears that my interpretation of integral politics has struck a chord because What Is Enlightenment? Magazine is about to release their September issue, which features an interview of me entitled “Integral Politics Comes of Age.” Moreover, my publicists feel that politics is the best angle to use to pitch the integral worldview to the media. They thus asked me to write a press release that explained integral politics in one page. Well, this is a tall order, and I thought it best to avoid bringing up world federalism at this point and rather focus on how the integral perspective can raise consciousness and help people “move up” from wherever they are. So here is my one-page description of integral politics for digestion by the mainstream media:

Integral Politics Press Release

The newly released book, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution, is garnering considerable attention for its fresh take on politics. As author Steve McIntosh explains, “The integral approach to politics effectively transcends the entrenched positions of left and right; it overcomes the culture war by showing why we need the values and solutions of both ends of the political spectrum.” The integral perspective actually rejects the left-right conception of politics, seeing the American political landscape as consisting of three groups rather than two. These three main demographic groups cohere around the values-based worldviews known as: traditional, modernist, and postmodern.

The traditional worldview is the oldest and accounts for about 25% of the American population. Traditionalists value personal responsibility, decency and honesty, law and order, piety and reverence for their belief system, and respect for traditions and conservative mores. Modernists, who make up 50% of the American body politic, value achievement and personal excellence, science and technology, status, wealth, and prosperity, liberty and individual freedom, higher education, and material and economic progress. And in contrast, countercultural postmodernists (who represent close to 25% of Americans) value sustainability over progress, inclusivity over hierarchy; they value alternative medicine, alternative spirituality and personal growth, and they place increased value on the environment and all things natural.

But unlike these older worldviews, which tend to see each other primarily for their pathologies, the integral worldview more clearly recognizes the enduring contributions of each of these previous perspectives, while also seeing their blind spots and shortcomings. Integralists understand that each of these stages of history offer solutions to different sets of life conditions, so the integral perspective can use the best of each of these worldviews in dealing with the myriad problems faced by our civilization here at the beginning of the 21st century.

Integralists do not advocate a centrist position, their agenda involves the cultural project of getting everyone to “move up” from where they are. But this doesn’t imply that the U.S. simply becomes more left leaning. By showing the evolutionary necessity of the values of each of these previous worldviews, the integral perspective helps postmodernists become more sympathetic to the values of modernists and traditionalists, and vice versa. The integral worldview thus serves to translate and mediate between these significant demographic segments of the American population, which over time diminishes the defensiveness that produces many of the conflicts of the culture war.

Ultimately, America’s best defense is a more moral foreign policy. And in order for America to again become a moral leader in the world, it will require that we skillfully uphold and apply the enduring values of traditionalism, modernism, and postmodernism simultaneously. In other words, the solutions offered by all three of these major worldviews apply to different sets of political conditions. So when we are able to use all of these approaches in “life condition appropriate proportion,” when we are no longer limited to one ideology or one set of values, it gives us a significant strategic advantage. The integral approach can use the inclusive, worldcentric values of postmodernism in a way that is still informed by considerations of our national self-interest, and also balanced with our de facto role as the defender of global modernism. So a more moral foreign policy means not just eliminating torture and foreign prisons like Guantanamo, it also means that we become more proactive in helping to heal the history of colonialism and the abuses of the cold war, in which America was complicit. Integral politics involves working to change hearts and minds here at home in a way that makes it easier for us to change hearts and minds in the Middle East and in Europe.

Because of its enlarged understanding of values and cultural evolution, the integral approach to politics can thus make America safer by helping us be more skillful and effective at dealing with the cultural issues that are at the heart of most of our problems, both domestically and internationally.

 

Illustrating the Spiral of Development in Consciousness and Culture

One of the most significant aspects of integral philosophy is its recognition of the living system of cultural evolution known as the spiral of development. Many of those who are teaching integral philosophy have produced graphical expressions of this internal universe structure, but none of these spirals have truly captured this structure’s essence in my opinion. Although it is more like an ocean current than a piece of architecture, the spiral of development in consciousness and culture is a real system that has a definite structure, albeit an internal one. And the attempt to model and illustrate this internal structure provides one of the important ways that we can employee beauty in the service of truth. So over the last few years I have been working on coming up with a spiral graphic that best describes the contours of this evolutionary system.

The spiral of development is technically a “helix;” it can best be modeled as a three-dimensional series of dialectical steps whereby each turn of the helix is formed through the process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. It is thus the developmental nature of this dialectical process of growth that suggests the helix structure, which is formed as each new synthetic level returns to the position of its original thesis, but at “a higher turn on the spiral”—a position that achieves its increased altitude through the inclusion of both the thesis and the antithesis of the previous two levels. Unlike the helix of a DNA spiral, which remains the same width throughout, the spiral of development grows wider as it ascends as human consciousness and culture becomes more complex and sophisticated as the result of evolution.

Another aspect of the spiral’s structure that lends itself to a 3d model is its inherent self-similarity. Self-similarity is a pattern of growth that is one of the hallmarks of natural evolutionary systems. Just as a seashell grows from within itself, always building each new level in harmonic proportion to its previously existing form, so too do consciousness and culture evolve in this fractal, self-similar way. The result is a structure whose proportions are logarithmic and self-similar, reminiscent of a seashell or a tornado.

Now all this theory is great, but actually producing a spiral graphic that reflects this relationship geometry has proved to be somewhat of a challenge. As illustrated in the “before and after” image above, my attempts to draw the spiral using Photoshop software resulted in an image that looked more like a zig-zagging snake than a logarithmic helix. So after vainly trying to improve this spiral image myself by adding more shading and blurring the edges, I finally gave up and hired a 3d model expert from silicon valley and worked closely with him to create a realistic looking structure. The results are shown in the “after” graphic, which made it into my book at the last minute.

Interestingly, even before I came to understand and appreciate the significance of the spiral of development in consciousness and culture, I had a strange fascination with spirals because of their ubiquitous appearance as a central motif of the universe. Like Richard Dreyfus’ character in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, who found himself carving the Devil’s Tower out of his mashed potatoes as he obsessed about this subconscious attractor, I have actually been making spiral art images since the early 90s. You can see some of these early spirals at this URL: www.stevemcintosh.com/spirals.

SM

 

Inaugural Meeting of The Better World Network

This week I presented a brief overview of integral consciousness at the inaugural meeting of the Better World Network, a group of professionals and consultants who are committed to marshalling their resources to make a positive difference in the world. Their strategy is to identify and evaluate positive social projects, such as micro-finance or volun-tourism, and then work closely with these groups to help them get better connected and better financed.

Most of the 40 people who were invited to attend this inaugural meeting of the Better World Network were already familiar with integral philosophy, including a large contingent of participants from Pacific Integral in Seattle. However, about 15% of the participants had never heard of the integral worldview, so all were not ready to agree that the fledgling organization should explicitly identify itself as integral. As we were hashing out the organization’s vision and purposes, as a generic alternative to the word “integral,” I suggested that we define ourselves as: “having a developmental perspective on consciousness and culture.” However, the group was not quite ready to adopt this language and it was decided that the “who are we” piece would be further developed over then next 6 months as the organization became more established. In furtherance of this goal, the most committed integralists in the group formed a committee to develop a workshop that would serve to better educate all involved about the power of the integral perspective.

Overall I enjoyed the two-day meeting and met a number of talented people who are deeply committed to improving the human condition. Moreover, it was very interesting to observe this group of integrally-informed organizational development consultants struggle to move beyond the limitations of the “postmodern consensus model” that has governed the process of groups like this for the last several decades. And it will be interesting to see whether this well-meaning group can eventually transcend its postmodern center of gravity and become one of the first organizations of its kind to truly embody the integral perspective.

SM

 

New Boulder Center for Integral Living

Last Sunday morning Tehya and I attended the inaugural event of the Boulder Center for Integral Living. This newly emerging social group is being led by Jeff Salzman, a successful Boulder entrepreneur and former executive board member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute. After parting ways with the Integral Institute in December, Jeff has continued his commitment to the emerging integral stage of culture, and this has led to his creation of this new Boulder Center (together with an able crew of integral colleagues).

Many of us here in Boulder agree that this new group is sorely needed and will well-serve the growing community of those who are beginning to identify themselves as “integral.” And I can report that Sunday’s two-hour event was thoroughly enjoyable. So Tehya and I do look forward to expanding our group of integral friends through our continuing participation in the Boulder Center.

Although many who attended this first gathering are directly involved with the work of the Integral Institute, there were many others there who had been previously put off by some of the Integral Institute’s shortcomings, as well as others who were completely unaware of the movement’s politics. But despite these differences, I trust we will all be able to work through any potential friction as we come together to help build integral culture.

SM