Welcome to Front and Center, from political battlefields to cooperative playing fields. Hello, I'm Michael Maxsenti. And we have another very important conversation today to help us move through these evolutionary times towards a more beautiful world our hearts know as possible. Let me invite my partner Steve Behrman to make a more formal introduction of today's guests, Steve.
Thank you. Thank you. Our guest today is Steve McIntosh. He was leader in the integral philosophy movement and author of Developmental Politics, How America Can Grow Into a Better Version of Itself. He is president and co founder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution think tank, which focuses on the cultural roots of America's political problems. He is also co author with John Mackey and Carter Phipps of the book, Conscious Leadership, Elevating Humanity Through Business. He has authored three previous books on integral philosophy, The Presence of the Infinite, Evolution’s Purpose, and Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. Welcome, Steve.
Thank you, Steve. And thank you, Michael. It's a pleasure to be with you today.
Okay, well, Michael, why don't you take the first question,
Hi Steve, what I'd like to do to start us off, is I want to quote, if you will, from your December 21 article, which really kind of summarizes from my perspective, and correct me when we're done with if I'm wrong, but your great work on Developmental Politics. December 21, you wrote a column called Why centrosome fails and how to overcome hyperpolarization. Now, I'm quoting here, the hyperpolarized condition of politics in the United States, where the growing intensity of America's cultural war now threatens the foundations of its democracy. American culture and politics remain starkly and bitterly divided. Hyper polarization is not a problem that can be solved under America's current cultural conditions. The only way to ameliorate this wicked problem is to effectively grow out of it by pointing to achievable next steps for America's cultural evolution. intergral philosophy accordingly offers a realistic remedy for America's political dysfunction. Steve M. Let's start here. Can you briefly elaborate? Explain that?
Sure. Well, there are, of course, many problems of hyper polarization, or let's just call it polarization for ease of speaking. Many people point to social media, right, and how the business incentives of those structures encourage a division and divisiveness and hostility, right, that's certainly a contributing problem. Others point to the the campaign finance structure and how corrupt that is, right. Others points to the the fact that it's in the interest of the political parties to sort people into opposing camps to build their, their particular constituencies. And I could probably name a variety of other contributing causes to the hyperpolarization that threatens America's really good friends, our democratic process. Because the founders envisioned a polity that would be naturally in political conflict. But that those political conflicts could be worked out through compromise. Right compromising for the good of the country, right. A sense of civic nationalism or general patriotism, were important cultural agreements that kind of held the polity together, despite the, you know, extensive rancor which characterized, right even the early elections in the American republic. So I think it's important to say up front that I think there will always be some version of Left and Right or a numerous political factions. In it's almost natural. Wherever you find a human political organization, you naturally find divisions, and so it's not as if they're healthy. Polarization is something that I advocate we try to overcome. I think it's a matter of seeing that right now we're in a kind of a stuck polarization. And this idea of growth, which I champion in the book, and which you mentioned is, is, I think the best way to go out of it grow out of it. And that is just despite these contributing problems, the way we see it at the Institute for Cultural Evolution is that hyper polarization is resulting primarily from cultural illusion, from cultural growth. And it's a cultural problem, primarily, despite these other political and economic exacerbating factors. That it's really the divisions are occurring upstream from politics in Washington DC, right. So for a long time, when we started working on this problem in 2013, as a think tank, and for a long time, the idea was that, you know, the Americans just needed to come together. You know, because we're stuck together. And and there's just this sort of admonition that it's going to be better for everyone if we can meet in the middle and, and seek some kind of bipartisan compromise, right. And so the political perspective on it is that so much of polarization is caused by politicians behaving badly. And if we could just get them to represent us, the people, who are not as divided as the media makes it out, then, then we'll be able to overcome, you know, the bitter divisions which are tearing the social fabric of our of our nation. However, with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, those arguments are sort of were refuted to a degree that it's not that Americans are, you know, in general, agreeable. I mean, sure, you can do polls on specific political issues and find broad scale support for many sensible solutions. And again, we we encourage and applaud those wherever possible. But as I argue in the book, the the the cultural dimensions of the problem are often hard for political commentary commentators and pundits to actually see, right. The joke is the, the what's called the spotlight problem, right? The joke about the drunk in the middle of the night. He's looking for his keys on the street corner under the spotlight. And the cop comes along and says, you know, can I help you? What are you doing? He says, I'm looking for my keys. And so the the cops helping him look, and they after about five minutes, the cop says, Well, where do you see your keys? He said, Well, I saw him in the park. They said, Well, why are we looking here? Well, that's where the light is!
And that's kind of the the situation with culture, culture is sort of a black box, people don't understand it. So they naturally don't focus their attention on on helping ameliorate the cultural dimensions of this deep hyper polarization that we find ourselves in. So an understanding of culture, a new developmental understanding, that sees it as changing and growing in history. And recognizes the basic units of cultural understanding. I mean, it's beyond anthropology or social psychology. In order to grasp the fundamentals of culture. As I argue, we're dealing with values. And social science often has a difficult time. Even if you ask people what their values are, they may not be able to tell you with accuracy, or if you just give them a polling question, it doesn't always get to the the bedrock values where the cultural conflict originates, or at least as I argue. So being able to understand the culture is a is a unique perspective that we bring to the problem. And this cultural understanding can act not only as a supplement to other worthy efforts to try to overcome hyperpolarization. But ultimately, I think, the kind of the perspectives that we're going to need if we're going to get out of this mess and avoid some kind of political regression, more than we've already seen.
Why don't we want to go into a little bit? What are the political cultures and how have they developed over time, as opposed to when the country was founded?
Yeah, well, there's been some interesting polling recently, you know, again, not to contradict what I just said about the limitations of social science and getting at the bedrock level of values where people's cultural identities lie. But the back in 2018, the More In Common Organization sponsored a small scale, sociological study, called The Hidden Tribes Report, where they identified a variety of factions, five different factions, the middle of which were Americans who were disengaged from politics, didn't watch the news, didn't vote, but they also identified a several factions that we might characterize as being on the right, several factions that might be characterized on the left. And then last year in 2021, a Pew poll, which had a larger sample size, sort of reproduced The Hidden Tribes Report almost exactly. And so what we can see is that, at the very least, that the polarity that we're talking about is not just a polarity between the left and the right, or red states or blue states. There are actually multiple levels of polarity, right? So there's, we can identify a polarity on the left between what the media is now calling progressives and moderates, right. And so I would characterize that as I'm about to explain, the polarity, the natural dialectical difference between the modernist worldview and the progressive postmodern worldview. And likewise, we can see a polarity on the right between those who are adamant Trump supporters and a more center right Republicans, many of whom recoil from Trump and his, his pathologies. So as I argued extensively in the book, in order to understand culture, we have to identify what I call the basic units of cultural analysis and understanding. And these are worldviews large scale, Major, historically significant worldviews. And these worldviews in a sense track the evolution of human history over the last several 100 years, right. So, so a way of understanding this is that in the enlightenment, you know, between the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century, in Western Europe, there occurred an awakening an emergence, a new kind of cultural understanding, a new epistemology and new ontology. It brought about science, it brought about democracy, it brought about a new way of thinking about society. That transformed the world and invested the European nations that adopted this enlightened perspective, as well as the United States, which was founded on this perspective. It gave them immense new power, which they use for good and for ill. In other words, colonialism, right? Environmental degradation, all of the results of the emergence of modernity, as it's sometimes called, are showing that certainly modernism can't be the end of history, right? That it's not sustainable, environmentally, or even culturally. But it has brought tremendous gifts, and one of the gifts that for understanding that modernity is not just the Industrial Revolution. It's not just the advent of science. What brings about the gifts of modernity is a new kind of consciousness, right? A new cultural agreement structure that coheres as a historically significant multi generational worldview. And this modernist perspective, this modernist way of thinking, is what generates the conditions required for democracy. It generates the conditions required for a robust, a healthy, modern economy, right with it. One of the things that's often overlooked when people think about modernism is that for the countries, despite the inequality, right, despite again, just bracketing the pathologies of modernity, for a moment. One of the things that modernity has brought to the to the cultures and countries that is have managed to adopt it as a as a sort of governing philosophy and, and a cultural agreement, is what's known as the great enrichment.
For pretty much all of recorded history, humans. The average human lived on the modern equivalent of about $3 a day. But beginning in the 19th century, and continuing throughout the 20th, United States, Western European countries, these developed countries, as they're known, the average daily income for the average person went to a $150 a day. You know, that's sort of orders of magnitude greater. So even those who are not rich, right, even those who live in developed world economies that are who you're struggling, are still significantly enriched from people who were living in the developed world, and that is a result of living in a society that is adopted modernity. So again, I could go on about the the dignities, and the disasters of modernism. But the point is that it's a worldview and and that's the best way to understand it. So we recognize that what happened, you know, in the Enlightenment was continued, in varying degrees to this day, is this the structure of history, this worldview. And, that allows us, let me just say one more thing, that allows us to look at the earlier world, is the religious civilizations. All of which can be kind of understood as the traditional worldview. This traditional worldview and the modern worldview, you know, the Lexus and the Olive Tree is Friedman characterize it in the 90s. This is a well established understanding of the world. And in the last 60 years, there's emerged a third major worldview. So I'll let you jump in there. But I'm just kind of laying the foundation of this understanding of culture, so we can get to the politics of culture, that I think we're gonna need to overcome hyperpolarization.
Yeah, and that's gonna be an important part of the conversation that we want to have. But I'd like to back up a little bit. And first off, let me say, Developmental Politics, when I read your book, I loved I loved it, it's helped me evolve my thinking, and my perceptions. But one of the things that that I want to challenge, and not you personally, sure, but the progressive side, those people who come from, quote, The Enlightenment, there's an arrogance about that, that pisses me off. Because of its total whitewash, and that's purposefully chosen word, of the relationship between the cultures that came before, the pre-history. And we talked about this, in some of our earlier conversations, we purposely brought that forward. This understanding that out of Western European culture, came the foundation and as and paraphrase, going back for what you had said, you know, was the basis of this brought forth democracy, the enlightenment, the gifts of it, and generates the conditions required for democracy, and a governing philosophy. Quite honestly, that's where I get, the arrogance of that, has gotten in our way of making the progress that we need to evolve the culture as you so well point out, because we are discounting the indigenous wisdom. The 150 years prior to the foundation of our, the formation of our country, of the influence of those leaders on the culture of the Western Europeans, on the Franklin's, and Washington and Jefferson and others. And, and in the first 50 years of our country. That was a huge impact. Today, we whitewash from the history for almost all of us, including myself, never heard about this until much later after college. Never got even through college to hear this kind of the side of it. And one of my favorite books, The 5000 Year Leap, that was a hugely impactful book for many about the history of the founding of our nation, not one word, not one word. And that entire thesis, mentions any influence and doesn't even mention the word indigenous or the Indians at all! And so that arrogance of the progressives is one of the things that helps keep the traditionalist, as as as the worldview that you frame which I agree, and a progressive, some from coming together is this understanding or lack of understanding of the other influences of other cultures and the history before. And so I wanted to draw that out. And one other point I wanted to make was, when we use the dollar as the basis for judging our standard of living, that's part of what has driven us down this path, where the standard of living is based upon perceived value based upon what $1 sign can be put by it, instead of how people are actually living, how happy are people. And even though we like to say we've advanced significantly in our standard of living based upon the dollar value of things. If you look at the emotion of most people, in our culture in America, in particular, almost every major cultural indicator, we have gone off the cliff in a negative way. Marriages, single family homes, mental health, happiness, suicides, things like that. We're doing a terrible job. And I think we need to get beyond this arrogance of that, that the Enlightenment in Western European culture is so magnificent. We need to be humbled. And we are being humbled to recognize that we're, we have our contributions, but we certainly need to gain the wisdom from the indigenous world and others and other cultures, to help us grow out of this. So.
Sure, well, I appreciate that. Let me say let me start by saying that humility is a prerequisite to growth. So certainly when any form of culture, a person adopts a stance of arrogance, then they're forwarding their own ability to become better, right. So so certainly arrogance is something we can condemn. And we can see arrogance, of course, in almost every cultural structure and situation. But one of the one of the goals of the developmental philosophies, understanding of cultural evolution, that I'm arguing for, is it it gives us a sympathy and an appreciation of every every step of human development. But at the same time, it's not trying to flatten that development in a way that says we've we've made no progress. In other words, progress was arrogantly championed by modernity as the excuse for not only the good things that it did, but the bad things that it did as well. And as these steps of development take place as these worldviews emerge in the timeline of human history. Up until now, that the the opportunity to make things better, was partially defined by the need to get away from the status quo. The need to push off against the pathologies of the existing social condition, right. So there's this natural tendency to condemn what came before or to vilify it. In other words, one way you could say is that, as these steps of worldview development unfold, the god of one becomes the devil of the next. So progress was, in a sense, the god of modernity, and the natural tendency, the understandable and probably effective tendency of this progressive postmodern worldview, which has emerged in America and elsewhere in the world over the last 60 years, this third major worldview, which which includes a whole variety of very positive emergent values. And as we've seen over the past couple of years, some emerging new pathologies as well, right. Every one of these steps can only do so much good for the good that it's trying to do. It sends its over solves in a way and it sort of it by the very nature of it, trying to make things better, it starts to make things worse, signaling the opportunity for a next developmental step, right. That's the way evolution works at every level of its unfolding, from the Big Bang, to our current situation here on Earth. So, so speaking to the arrogance of modernity, certainly is something is, is a pathology of it, a blind spot of it, and the root of many of its pathologies. But we can also of course, point to the arrogance of of traditionalism. Of every they were arrogant notions, ethnocentric notions. In every one of the great religious civilizations, right. Some had them more strongly than others. We could go prior to the emergence of writing and the organization of religious civilization to the tribal level, the pre literate level, and there's deep wisdom, Earth knowing, that has been lost, that we need to recover. So another way of understanding this is that we want to transcend the current situation. But the degree of our transcendence is partially measured by the scope of our inclusion. Not only we have to try to go beyond, we also have to try to better include what came before. And that certainly includes indigenous wisdom, right? So we see this with the emergence of progressive post modernism. It has an affinity for the tribal culture. It romanticizes tribal culture, for good reason, right? It sees it as beautiful and noble and heroic and victimized and lost. And so the effort to reach back into history and recover that wisdom that was lost in the struggle, right to develop. That, that that's, that begins at the progressive postmodern level. And that project of reintegrating indigenous wisdom is something that I think, you know, we can see continuing with this next step beyond the progressive, which are Institute represents.
I know Steve's got some questions that I don't want to take away from that. But you know, something that comes to mind is, is the importance of definitions of words. And that's what kind of started me with Rebellious Truths was in the conversation that led to Rebellious Truths, with with my young co founder, was when we first started to realize is that the modern definitions of words, when I say what I mean, the current definition of a word, really gets in the way of people truly listening to each other. Because when they become labels, these words, such as the word progressive. I used to describe myself when people say after after I started into my major change, that I was a Progressive Conservative, and he'd look at me like, are you crazy? And I'd say, a progressive. The definition of it is to make progress to learn from the past. Take wisdom from the past. And hold on to what worked from the conservative nature of things that traditions that have value of those and recognize and appreciate that you stand on the shoulders of those that came before you. And traditions help you remember that and help keep you humble. But at the same token, we want to make progress. So I'm a Progressive, Conservative. And, and when you use the word progressive, postmodern, it comes to mind with my conversation I had with my co founder, Chris, that the word progressive today gets in the way of a, quote, a conservative, wanting to listen to the next word, the progressive says, Because progressing to them means you're arrogant, you're dominating me, you you're dishing my, my traditions, etc. And, and vice versa. Some of us are progressive, when they say I'm a conservative, I don't want to listen to you, because you're stuck in the past, etc, etc. And it's like, folks, let's define those words so that we don't have to have them as barriers to listening to each other, and moving forward together. And from that, recently, we've come up with a word that we're kind of starting to introduce called constructives. You've got progressives, you've got conservatives, let's be constructives. Let's take the best of both, and construct a new way forward. Be a bridge, be a builder, taking the best of both. Thank you.
Well, I think that the term progressive is something that we've followed the media in, in that in the evolution of that term, right. So there were the you know, Woodrow Wilson was a
negative from from those who aren't, quote, progressive, it's a big major roadblock, by the use of continued use of it because of the definition that's attached to it, the current meaning of it.
Sure, well, we can try to introduce new terms and build new agreement, and each of us are doing that in our own way. But at the same time, we don't get to just make our own language. Language is this sort of inner subjective sea of agreement, and where agreement starts to appear? This is an important point. So let me try to make it. What's what's still oblivious to many of the of the commentators and people who talk about politics in the media today, is to understand that there is what I'm formally defining as the progressive postmodern worldview, is a large scale, historically significant structure of culture and identity and meaning and agreement, a coherent set of values that has a systemic life of its own. I mean, I'm not attributing consciousness to it, but but it has a there's a collective commitment coheres, you know, in the same way that a language coheres as a structure of agreements. So naming this worldview, seeing it clearly begins by finding, groping our way to some kind of agreement about what to call it, right. Most people can't even see it, they think about it as the far left, or people who are woke or other some epithet that doesn't really capture the nature of the fact that it's a significant part of the culture, it's probably 20% In terms of an agreement structure of folks who think in terms of their progressive identity, so.
Well, that's why I suggest it's up here because that's why I suggested that the continuation of putting progressive postmodern narrows the acceptance of it, or the understanding where if you or we, come up with, not us here today, but if we come up with and begin to have a joint understanding of a, of a new term that doesn't put off either side, it helps create a much more open opportunity for all to listen to, or for a broader audience to to listen to. So that's why we came up within this circle of people that I'm working with, in the Common Sense Party, is the term that that we came up with is constructives. You've got because if you've got Progressives, Conservatives, Constructives, is, instead of because we don't like the term or the concept that we'll get into more about compromise as a centrism because that the needs everybody loses. And you're thinking of it and win lose terms again, but anyhow, constructives, ah so.
Okay, well, so you can call it whatever you want. But there's a world historical fact, that is this cultural worldview, which is roiling American politics, its emergence is a real thing and our ability to see it and not just flinch from the fact that there may be parts of it that we don't like or parts that we don't want identify with. What I'm offering, it's a perspective that attempts to stake out higher ground, outside and above perspective. that can see these worldviews not only from within, right. From within our own political identity, but from without as well. So standing outside of the culture war as a whole, and seeing that it's not just a left right, a conflict, that there are actually these three major cultural structures, which are in this overarching struggle to be born and to transcend. And the perspective that I represent. Sometimes we call it post progressive, because that this emergence of progressivism over the last 60 years, while powerful and important and necessary for going to make a better world the values of progressivism are necessary. But progressivism is not the end of history. Something comes after this worldview. And the way of understanding that that I that I like the best is seeing this pattern of evolution, right. The pattern first identified by the idealist philosophers 200 years ago of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You can see this pattern of unfolding at every level and so sort of fractally distributed in all forms of evolution and here in culture, we can see how the thesis of the old establishment, right as in the 60s when progressivism as a worldview is emerging and becoming democratized. The the people tried to distinguish themselves from the establishment, which is the sort of the cultural block of the truce between traditionalism and modernity that characterized American culture after World War Two and prior to the 60s. So progressivism emerges. And now it's it's signaling it emerges as an antithesis. Right? How do you how do you evolve beyond the world of, you know, the early 60s? Well, you you, you push off against the pathologies of that world, you reject the values of status and materialism, you reject the oppression, you reckon with a sins of history. All of the things that progressivism has come to stand for, were the opportunities for evolution that it embraced. And it embrace those by staking out this position of antithesis to the establishment, right. The thesis of you know, America as it had been, throughout the 20th century, a new thing emerged, the antithesis. And that's done good, and it still has much good left to do. But as it now begins to gain its own establishment power. As it becomes a kind of new establishment in the media and in the universities, and in many institutions in American society, for good and bad. That, the fullness of the antithesis signals the opportunity on the horizon of history. For the next step, the next worldview, the next significant emergence, which is a synthesis. It includes, it does what progressivism can't and is able to better include the best of what's come before.
Well, and that's where you include so well, in the book that I like, was the recognition of taking the pathologies of each. That each worldview has great positives and great negatives. And understanding what your negatives are, and using the positives of the other groups to offset these different pathologies, so that you can create, take the best of all, and offset the worst of each.
Sure. Let me say one more thing about the naming of this because it's an important point. Back in 1995, the Institute for Noetic Science, which was just sort of a progressive spirituality, it's an important institution. They released a report that was sponsored by them in the Fetzer Institute by the sociologist, Paul Ray, who did quite a lot of proper social science to try to understand these blocks of American society that we're talking about. And he was really the first to try to frame this new culture not just as a warmed over 60s culture, right that the hippies had grown up that that the emergence of this, (we've grown old), into what is called the cultural creatives. First name for this thing. And here in Boulder, where I live, all of us felt like we were cultural creatives. And for the first time, our culture was sort of being named and recognized. And of course, Paul Ray was himself a cultural creative, and so he kind of glorified that culture, naming all its positives, but being you know, understandably oblivious to its potential negatives. And so for a long time, that was the word that we used in the 90s, Cultural Creatives. But then in the 2000s, as integral philosophy as itself sort of began to gain ground as a movement, the word that came into into use to describe this world it was post modernism by itself. Now, postmodern is a battleground of meaning, right? Some people think of it just as the deconstructionist French, you know, philosophers. But ultimately, we tried to define it, use it, as a defined term to describe this worldview because it says what it is, it's postmodern or beyond modernity. So that term was used for a long time and in the media, in the mainstream media in America, progressive was used interchangeably with liberal, right? Progressive just meant somebody on the left, right. And it was sort of a loose term that didn't really have any sharp meaning. But over the past few years, especially since 2015, the media has evolved its terminology so that now often you hear them talking about the left as consisting of progressives and moderates. Right. And and while I don't like the term moderate, and I agree with you that there's limitations and potential confusions with the word progressive, that has now come to stand for the cultural creatives more powerfully in the minds of most Americans than any previous term. And that's why we're using it as a shorthand to describe this worldview. And why, you know, terms like constructivist might be nice. But ultimately, we're trying to transcend that we want to be constructive at a at a more inclusive level, we want to do a progressivism can't. And that is include the values of modernity and traditionalism as well, because all of these worldviews together make up an interdependent cultural ecosystem. We need the values of all. We can't just pretend that we can dismantle or overturn or erase what came before and start from new. That's one of the pathologies itself of this progressive vision that we see beginning in the the French Revolution.
You know, I got a lot of questions there to my question, I really appreciate that you brought in Paul Ray's work on Cultural Creatives. And I think, to elaborate for the people that haven't that aren't familiar with that. He talked about three groups first, for the traditionals. And the traditionals. Being he would, he would probably put indigenous people there, he probably would put, you know, fundamentalist religious people, people who subscribe to the quote unquote, old conservative values. And then modern, then he said that at that point, 1999, when he wrote the book, that 25% of the population fit into that traditionals category. Then he talked about the moderns. And the moderns, I would amplify, to say that that is the people who believe in scientific materialism, that the current religion, quote unquote, of Western civilization, is scientific materialism, where you can you can incorporate mindfulness, but the idea of some kind of religious or external spiritual force, that's that's sort of beyond the pale. So if you read the New York Times, basically, they're they're focused on this modern view, no matter what. What Paul Ray began to call the the cultural creatives, and you might say, as an as a somebody into integral philosophy that that might read a little bit from the Green Man, that that group is not, is not integrative, but rather looking, looking forward toward maybe integrating ancient spirituality, modern science, into a into a much deeper understanding. So for example, my my partner Bruce Lipton, Spontaneous Evolution Biology Belief, there is no way, no way that Bruce could possibly be interviewed on NPR, or on Terry Gross's Fresh Air. So in other words, the, the big complaint about the the cultural creatives as it began to emerge, is that it didn't really have any presence in our mainstream media that it hadn't come across the radar. So I think this is really very important in evolving his concept of, of cultural, of the cultural creatives, to something that's more integral that brings in the traditionals and the moderns, and include in transcend. So after that sermon, my long winded sleliqu, what I want you to comment on is this notion, go deeper into the idea of why centrism doesn't work. And then how we could actually come to a more integral notion that really, literally does include of, let's say, a wider range of perspectives.
Sure, well, let me say that that again, bipartisan compromise, meeting in the middle between left and right, these are good things, right. That that's in some ways, what's required for a functional democracy is, like I said at the beginning, a willingness to compromise for the greater good of the whole, right. And for in fits and starts right throughout most of American history. There was a middle in American politics. It was a place where a lot of things got done. And especially after World War Two, when there were strong patriotism, there were strong economic growth. And there was what's known in political science as the The Liberal Consensus, right even though you know, Eisenhower was president for eight years in the middle of it, it was still liberal in the sense of, of liberal values and liberal liberal modernity being the cultural agreement of the vast majority of the society. And that meant that the end of World War Two up until 1968, or perhaps the impeachment of, or the mere impeachment of Nixon, that we had this this relatively functional government, we many important pieces of legislation were passed in that environment of compromise, and and that common ground of the center. However, since then, as as the result of cultural evolution, again, as I argue in detail, this, this progressive worldview has emerged, and it's, it's, in some ways rejected many of the values that were necessary for this centrism to cohere. Right. So one example is patriotism. Right? Patriotism was was sort of a given for both modernists and traditionalists in America throughout its history. Right. But because of the horrors of of, you know, slavery, Jim Crow, all the crimes of American society, including the Vietnam War, many of the values of emerging progressivism, were formed in the attempt to reject that, to transcend that. And so with that came the rejection of patriotism and civic nationalism. Right? Although some might say, Yeah, we care about America, there was still this embrace of world centric morality, instead of nation centric morality, everybody in the world counted, American citizens were more morally worthy than people in China or India or anywhere else. And that, again, a very important form of emergence in value. That one of the ways we can trace evolution and claim that it's that it's actually that things are, you know, becoming more complex, and in some ways better in some ways worth but nevertheless, that there's, there's a forward movement. Is we can trace it, the line of inclusivity. Right, the more inclusive a society is, the more evolved it is. I mean, the way you could prove that point is by saying equality women. The more women are included as the leaders of the society, the more evolved that society is. And and so you know, again, that's a strong statement, but I think it's true. And, it's important to, to put a stake in the ground and say, Yeah, we want to be more inclusive. And, and that, you know, begins with women, it begins with people who are marginalized and and victimized. We want to this move to greater inclusivity is a very important move that's ongoing. So the the, this this, move away from the establishment, disrupted the center, right, for good and bad, because the center of it the left and right in America, at least in this period of liberal consensus, everybody, the most of the people who were in that consensus, had this modernist worldview, right, they had a set of agreements about what was valuable, that allowed them to find a middle ground. But with progressivism emerging first as a counterculture, and now as a counter establishment, that that the the, intuitively for the most part. But the idea that we're going to go back to a place where the left and the right can find common ground, that's would be seen as a regression, because those are the conditions of modernity. And progressivism is attempting to transcend modernity, transcend nationalism, transcend patriotism, embrace the world centric. And so of course, that is important and necessary, but it also creates problems for a world that has not yet evolved a, you know, a global civilization and a global polity. We still need nation states as a very important stepping stone for the greater emergence of Law and Liberty in the world. And so trying to hold together a nation state, you know, in the face of a culture that rejects nation states, in general, makes it extremely difficult to find a center, right. I mean, there's a lot of different angles that we could talk about this. And again, there may be some center still to be found. But what I'm suggesting is that understanding progressivism and its cultural mission, its cultural project, its values, can appreciate why we need a bigger container. We need a larger whole that can define the center in a new location that's not within old school, modernity. A center that can include progressive values in a way that can bring them into, the onto, into the, so that they're not just revolutionary, they're not just seeking to burn it down. They don't just see the rest of the society only for its pathologies. These are the kind of value agreements that are necessary in order to reestablish some kind of ability to compromise and make agreement.
I couldn't agree with you more about we need a bigger container. And I like how you said this trace the line of inclusivity is a indicator of more evolved culture. And boy, is that the truth. And that's where we're at right now is in what we're talking about in with Front and Center where Steven is trying to help us put forth this understanding that we're, we can leave this period of separation, and move to a period of reunion, which is a recognition of that we're all of one family, despite our physical and cultural differences, but the reality is, we truly are from one family. And now let's have a reunion. But within a family, you have very divergent people, you have aunts and uncles that you totally are on opposite perspectives, but you're still a family, and you still have each other's backs. You don't go to each other's throats. You, you have each other's backs.And enter an age of reunion. And needed a bigger container to include all people is an understanding that is is hugely important.
Sure. And there are many voices in the culture now calling for reconciliation, this kind of recognition of oneness, or or National Family, and I commend all those messages. But ultimately, I think that we need a more sophisticated strategy than merely just admonishing people to be nice to each other. And when we think about the details of it, people who are activists in you know, the anti racism movement, last thing they want to do is recognize people who are, you know, in in the MAGA Movement as being part of their family, right. Sometimes there's a time for peacemaking, sometimes the time for fighting, right. Fighting our way forward. Breaking out of oppression, breaking out of old, old structures, right. So right now, a lot of the activists on both the left and the right are not interested in peace, they're interested in winning, crushing the other side. So these messages of, you know, admonitory messages to come together, are not, I think, a realistic strategy given given the cultural conditions that we find ourselves here in 2022.
So I have a I have a question. And it's based on something that you said, Yeah, I believe was in the article. This is really about how we actually can expand the strategy, I want to really get into this strategy for this integral political outlook, You use the phrase "increasing the scope of what people are able to value." So how is how does that become a strategy for creating a new consensus that doesn't deny the polarities, but actually integrates them in a constructive way?
Sure. Excellent question. Um. What, one of, we're coming at this from a variety of angles, right, we would like to see each one of these major worldviews evolve on their own terms, right. To be better at the good things that they're good at, and to take responsibility for their own pathology. So that's one way things can evolve. Traditionalists can be less, you know, bigoted or ethnocentric, right. modernists can be less materialistic, or, you know, status driven, right, progressives can be less negative toward the best of what's come before. I mean, that's just a shorthand way of describing it. But each one of these worldviews is an ongoing kind of culture that is evolving on its own terms. And through lots of our messaging and descriptions and communications, we are encouraging the viewpoint wherein people can step outside of their own worldview without letting go of the values or their identity in that world. Whether their loyalties could still be strong. But they can begin to recognize that as a traditionalist, or as a modernist, or as a progressive, that there are elements of that culture that really as a progressive that door as a partisan of these worldviews, they're in the best position to address these pathologies, right. The other worldviews may point them out. But ultimately, folks are going to have to take responsibility. And the way we frame that, we're developing a, you know, a public messaging campaign around the idea of what we call cultural intelligence. So in the same way, that that emotional intelligence was popularized by Daniel Goleman, in the 90s. And then, you know, leaders and people who aspire to be better, than emotional intelligence was an appealing way of self help, right. Of developing yourself and many people indeed became more emotionally intelligent. And then now emotional intelligence is a recognized, you know, academic discipline in its own right. Well, cultural intelligence, as we define it, is this ability to recognize where you are in this larger cultural ecosystem. And ultimately, the ability to recognize the enduring and positive nature of the values of the people that you oppose culturally. Right. So traditionalists see the left as you know, communists bent on destruction. Right, the left, see traditionalists as you know, Trump loving bigots, you know, you know, perpetrating racism And so regardless of the the accuracy of any of these critiques, with cultural intelligence, you can also begin to understand that there traditionalists have these beautiful values, like, you know, family values and love of country and sacrifice of self for the greater good. All these values are going to be necessary to preserve and carry forward if we want to make a more beautiful world, right? Likewise, people on the right can see progressives as bringing in a level of care, caring values, a degree of sympathy and understanding. That is, you know, that is a remedy for the hyper competitiveness, you know, of modernity and the Dog eat Dog elements of American society, right? So, so everyone's trying to make the world better in their own way. And in some ways, they're living in different times in history, even though we're all alive in 2022. These historical problems are spread out and the solutions are still necessary, right. That the problems which traditionalism solve still need to be solved. The problems that progressivism is trying to solve, those are active problems. So a degree of appreciation for the ongoing effectiveness and necessity for these other worldviews, is at least um, you know, an accessible a general way of describing the kind of cultural intelligence that we're advocating. But there are other angles on how we hope to evolve culture as well. But I'll, I'll let them stop there. And let you.
That leads to another amplifying question, I think. One of the phrases that you used in the article, you say "the modern worldview lacks a strong version of the transcendent." That's intriguing to me say more about that? And is this Cultural Intelligence part of that transcendent? Is it something that's otherworldly, or just worldly or both?
Excellent. Well, I'm really glad you asked that because the word transcendence as it's come to be used in lots of different corners of social philosophy, stands for a sense of people being inspired by something greater than themselves. It doesn't necessarily have to include the supernatural, right or something otherworldly. So for example, scientists, even materialistic scientists are, are have a sense of serving something greater than themselves, because they're seeking truth, right. Truth that can improve the human condition and which has improved the human condition immensely, right. So so anything that. A way of understanding is that people have self interest. And then they also have a need as Maslow understood, of serving something greater than self interest. That is, if you pursue your self interest, you're ultimately going to realize that you can't fulfill your self interest, unless you begin to serve something greater than yourself, right. And then these things work together self interest and greater than self interest. So greater than self interest is after something that is transcendent, right, something that is that is bigger. And so this word transcendence comes as an umbrella term, which can define any kind of goal that people have. And it's possible to have false transcendence, right, that the young Jihads that were recruited to ISIS had a sense of transcendence of the new caliphate. But that was obviously, you know, a ticket to their own destruction. So transcendence is politically very important. It's the basis of political will, it's the basis for social aspiration. And it can take long terms, right. But but one of the ways of refining and defining transcendence in positive terms that can improve things, is by making sure that that sense of transcendence is connected to a notion of virtue, and connects to a notion of value, like the primary value is of goodness, truth and beauty. Right. So if there's something greater than yourself, is inspiring you, you know the best way to tap into that upward current, you know, that form of energy, is to really appreciate that the intrinsic goodness, truth and beauty, which is contained into every authentic notion of that which is transcendent, right. So, looking at the history, we see how one of the political significance of transcendence in the great religious civilizations was, you know, God or the flow of the Tao or you know, the ancestors or, you know, whatever it was, that was the, the, you know, the venerated sacred in the great religious, tribal civilizations was the glue that held society together in many important ways. But, of course, that that sense of, while it was civilizing and socializing, it was also oppressive, right. By the time of the Enlightenment, it had, in a sense, achieved everything that it could possibly achieve within that value frame. And, the way forward was to break out of that. To break out of that oppressive communitarianism with an embrace of individualism, right liberal values, right, these these rights that we have, the sovereign space that we you know, we have the protection from the dictates of the collective, at least, you know, in a liberal society. That was an early form of transcendence for modernity that was powerful enough to animate, you know, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, right. That the, you know, the namesake of your podcast or your party is in a sense, you know, a channeling of a sense of transcendence. A new emergence of transcendence that animated, you know, early Americans to embrace a constitutional democracy. And, and of course, there's many forms of, or we could say, currents of transcendence within every one of these worldviews, but because modernity, you know, was tasked in history with pushing off against, you know, oppressive traditionalism, it was able to find transcendence in, you know, the American Dream, the sense of upward mobility, right? If everyone was living on $3 a day, all of a sudden, being able to live on $150 a day, you know, in modern terms, that was, indeed a transcendence. I mean, we can look down on that now, because we have all these, you know, we live in these middle class circumstances, and we have all those things. But if we lived in grinding poverty, and we were able to ascend to a middle class, you know, circumstance that would indeed be a very powerful form of physical transcendence. Now, we can build on that, that that can only go so far, right? You achieve, you know, comfort, you achieve status, you achieve progress, you know, in your upper mobility, you achieve the values that modernity defines as the good life. And you look around and say, Is this all there is? You know, I mean, for a long time, there was a truce, like I said, between traditional, the traditional religion, especially in America, the Judeo Christian heritage of the West, that that's supplied transcendence. So that many, you know, despite the, you know, atheistic materialism, as you mentioned, the majority of people who are in this modernist worldview, were not hardcore atheists. You know, maybe most of the intellectuals or the scientists, but the average person had some notion, whether it was a deistic notion, or a kind of a watered down Christian notion, some notion that there was more to life than things that were material. And so nevertheless, modernity is, you know, leaving behind the intense transcendence of traditionalism and, and finding new kinds of transcendence eventually exhausted itself. And it exhausts itself in history. And it exhausts itself itself in many of the people, in the individual lives of people who have, you know, embraced modernity, climbed the career ladder, and come to the point where they need something more. And so that's something more, that that finding a new kind of transcendence was what it animates every emerging worldview. And it certainly animated progressive post modernist, right. In the 60s, there were many propositions of transcendence that were on offer as part of that cultural agreement. And there were many factors of music, you know, psychedelic drugs, many things that broke the shell of the of the the trance of modernity, and help people see and reach for new kinds of transcendence and define themselves in new ways. And this is one of the most beautiful things about this emerging progressive worldview, right? Let me just say one more thing. And that is, from the beginning, one of the stronger currents of transcendence within this progressive worldview, as we're now calling it, was progressive spirituality, right? Or, you know what, what came to be known as New Age spirituality. Now nats That term has kind of fallen out of favor. But in the 90s, I was a enthusiastic proponent of New Age, culture, right? I started a business whose tagline was Cultural Artifacts of the Spiritual Renaissance, right here in Boulder. It really felt like there was this was an authentic spiritual Renaissance going on. And in the 90s, progressive spirituality lead the way in the progressive worldviews emergence, right? There were that that progressive spirituality was the biggest category of book sales, by far, dwarfing every other category of book. You know, 1000s of New Age, bookstores opened across the country. You know, Marianne Williamson, and Deepak Chopra, rose to national prominence. So progressive spirituality was a beautiful thing. And I was thoroughly committed to it throughout the 90s. And it was only towards the end of the 90s, when I began to become somewhat disillusioned with it, because it was failing to produce the kind of spiritual renaissance that I'd hoped for. You know, it became increasingly prone to magical thinking and intense commercialism. And that was what attracted me to this integral philosophy because it promised to eventually point to the kind of renaissance that I was hoping for and disappointed by you know, in the 90s. So let me just say one more thing about transcendence. So in progressive, to this progressive worldview, although there are many different ideologies within it, right environmentalism, feminism, anti racism, a progressive spirituality, these are all maybe not ideologies, but but but themes within the larger progressive worldview, which does cohere as a worldview despite these different, you know, elements of it. And begin in the the decade of the aughts. Progressive spirituality as a cultural movement between began to lose steam, it began to shrink as a market, it began to become less vibrant than it had been in the previous decade. And that's when many young progressives, especially millennials, they were not attracted to progressive spirituality. It didn't, it didn't deliver the kind of transcendence that their hearts were seeking for. And they began to find forms of progressive transcendence in other movements. You know, in environmentalism and feminism. And now over the past few years, in, you know, anti racist ideology, or however you want to define that. The movement for racial equality, very important, very beautiful in many ways, but also, of course, you know, disruptive and revolutionary and radical in ways that are not helping its political prospects. So that is, there's been a gusher of transcendence. You know, we're in 2020, right after George Floyd's murder, and that's beautiful in many ways, but there's also ways in which it's unconstrained by some of these other very important notions of transcendence. And ultimately, you know, is is, it is ripe for the emergence of a new kind of transcendence which this next worldview, this this integral, or or, or developmental worldview offers. And that is this transcendence of understanding that we can actually heal the wounds of history, we can, we can find a non coercive and gentle way of persuading people to increase the scope of what they're able to value, right? That cultural evolution itself aligns our endeavors to make the world a better place with the trajectory of evolution in the universe that's been going on for 13 billion years. So again, I can say a lot more about that. But that's a mouthful.
Before I let Michael, I have some questions, too, I can I pay into it. But I really want to acknowledge that because I think that's really the juice of where we are right now, two phrases that you use, in your article, quote, "a renewed vision of the common good. And the other is the new American dream." So what you just said, in essentially looking for this common transcendent sense, I mean, our joke is, we want to bring left and right front and center to face the music, and dance together to turn the funk into function and leave the junk at the junction. That's our playful way of saying it, but in reality. There's something else that you mentioned that I think we've learned about in our previous images that I want to amplify. And that is the impact of trauma on our psyche, on our collective and individual psyche that has caused us to submit to mass formation movements to devolve into hatred of the other side. And all of these things that we want to feel safe and protected in our little polarized silo. What do you see are the prospects and avenues for now allowing this new, new American dream, this new culture develop?
Sure, will trauma. Recognizing it, healing it, working with it is is a very important element. You know, there's certainly a psychological aspect to this, and many folks who are working on polarization approach it from a psychological perspective, or, or, you know, look at it, you know, through through polling or political slogans or through, you know, libertarian paternalism or, you know, whatever strategy dejour may may seem promising in overcoming the polarization? I think until we deal with the the actual content of the conflict. As long as we're trying to think that it's going to be solved through some clever process, and not deal with the content of the conflict, the values that are animating people to, you know, resist and struggle with each other, then, you know, we're not going to get past that. And so, a big, woven in to these cultural identities, of course, are deep traumas and traumas that are that are intergenerational, right. It'd be almost, you know, the you mentioned epigenetics, right in your book, and then that might have a role to play in the in the intergenerational transfer of trauma. But of course, trauma results in fear, right fear, the mastery, intellectual fraud, that is, you know, at the base of so many of our problems in society, right. But fear can't be just, you know, wished away are admonished away, because people, you know, there are things worth protecting. And so, you know. This is an important part part for me to talk about. What underlies the political polarity itself, not just across the spectrum, but the polarities that we see on the left and on the right. And that is this natural human proclivity that there's been some interesting science on this interesting research that shows that there that people People are born with a, you know, at least a faint proclivity to be focused either on fixing what's wrong, or preserving what's right. Sometimes people can, you know, move, they start out with an eye focusing on what's wrong, and eventually they're in their older age, they're more concerned about what you know, preserving what's right. But this inherent, it's not people or it's not determinative, people are not hardwired to be conservative or liberal. But there are these tendency, just like you know, the the population is born naturally is about half male, half female. There's this proclivity that seems to be born into people. And that's why almost every human, Paul, whether it's, you know, you know, ancient history or modern, you see this polarity emerging, and we can trace it back to these basic proclivities. Again, not determinative, but nevertheless influential, that are ultimately interdependent. That this is the one of the big pieces of what we hope we eventually recognize as kind of a new truth, is that this this proclivity to preserve what's right, the conservative proclivity, and the proclivity to fix what's wrong, right? The progressive proclivity, that those actually they need each other, right? Because if you if you go too far, if one tries to exclude the other, or fails to see this inherent interdependence between these value propositions, then the pathology of you know, the preserving what's right means you ratify the status quo and become stagnated. And stagnation in a moving world eventually, you know, leads to decay, yeah. But on the other side, fixing what's fixing what's wrong, ultimately, that, that if it's not moderated if they're not a relationship of challenge and support, right, by the other side, it too, can lapse into a kind of pathology. And that is the pathology I mentioned, where we think we can just kind of wipe away everything that came before and start fresh. Like we can just overturn the old society, and we can make a brave new world. But of course, then you have to make all the same mistakes, again, starting from ground ground zero, right. So so we want to preserve what's right, because the way evolution works, is that something more keeps coming from something lasts. But the way that something more emerges and takes hold as it It builds on and includes what came before you know, this evolution is a chain of emergence. And these emergencies ultimately make it a large scale system. That's why I mentioned that our culture itself is kind of an ecosystem of values. And so understanding that if we wipe away just like in a biological ecosystem, if we wipe out the plankton, the whales are going to die. And if we wipe out the values of these earlier stages of historical foundation, then the society is going to collapse into warring tribes. So, again, I'm compressing a lot of, you know, philosophy that needs to be unpacked in a more generous way that I'm doing now, but at least begins to point to this idea that, that healing trauma is a very important step in reducing the fear that allows people to embrace a larger scope of values.
Very good. And I pre- and I, Michael, I know you have questions. One quick comment. And that is that what you're what you're really talking about, is a combination of this new political intelligence, that you're, well, what are you calling cultural intelligence, which bleeds over to political, that's cultural intelligence. And at the same time, it involves appreciation of the like, like we say, if what if we had a conversation, progressives and conservatives? How do we want to progress? And what do we want to conserve? You know, so we're looking at the functional iterations of each of those, each of those approaches. So it sounds like this cultural intelligence, simultaneously is dealing with the actual ideas and ideals that people have, and at the same time, allowing people to deal, face and release the traumas that have caused the most extreme, narrow expressions of this.
Sure, I mean, there's more to it than that, but that's definitely part of the process.
Okay, Michael, I know you have a question or two here.
Actually, kind of switch gears here for a second. From your article there. Back in December 21, you gave an example of values integration. And with some very specific political issues, one I think is really important, which was the example you stated here was the prime example this kind of values integration is found in the issue of gay marriage. And I'd like you to elaborate on that before you do. I want to offer something that my son said to me because when we were here in California, prop 208, I believe it was, voting to allow gay marriage or not? I being a traditionalist in the term of the use of marriage, I suggested to my son who was in the end of high school years or early college. And he said No, Dad, he says, think of it. It hasn't worked. It hasn't worked. take the high road, let loose of that. of it didn't work. I'm trying to think of the example that he gave. But in civil rights, I think it was, it didn't work, you know,
Separate but equal, that's what it was called.
separate but equal, thank you. Exactly. That was the example separate but equal didn't work. And as soon as he said that, it clicked with me. That yeah, and then I totally turned my ideas and thinking around, it was totally for it. And now in hindsight, as we see it, it's worked out wonderfully, the acceptance of it. But please elaborate is where you were used as an example of this values integration, because I think that's really important.
Yeah, thanks. Well, in the book, I outline this method by sort of what's hopefully a pragmatic, yet philosophically sophisticated method of approaching specific issues by integrating values. So in our fraught political context, at the moment, it seems that interests can't be integrated, right, that political, you know, the interests of one party or the interests of another, they're dead set against it, right. And that they vote against it. And so at least in this situation, there are very few issues in which you can find common ground between opposing interests. However, if we go below the level of interest to this level of bedrock values, as I've mentioned, it becomes more possible to integrate the values of those we oppose, because ultimately, an enduring value is something that that the society that everyone, you know, can agree with deep down or at least partially agree with. So gay marriage, right, it was, it was a taboo issue seemed out of the question, even to many of the more adamant gay activists at the time. But the reason that it was able to succeed at least one of the major reasons in, in this otherwise stuck political environment where seemingly, you know, a few issues can move forward. Gay marriage move forward, because it integrated values from across the spectrum by the proposition of allowing, you know, LGBTQ people to marry, integrated of course progressive values, who are champions of gay people, it integrated the fairness values of modernity, you know, there was a sort of basic, like, you know, these people aren't a second class citizens. But crucially, it also integrated the the traditional family values that are normally associated with social conservatives. Even though social conservatives, most of them remained against or opposed it, you know, for what they saw as biblical reasons. As they, as it became more and more in the mainstream, they saw that, wow, that's just basically the right to make a family commitment. And, and that's something that, you know, a loving Creator would wish on everyone. Right. That is, that is the family values, the values of the the rationale that opposing gay marriage was protecting the family was shown to be overturned by the fact that that supporting gay marriage actually expanded family, was good for family, right, families everywhere. And then that family was a basic human right, and that marriage was the foundation of the ability to make a family, even if you don't have children, it's still a family relationship, which is is forwarding, integrating, and indeed championing that these deeply traditional socially conservative values. Right. The other example that I use is the legals the legalization of marijuana, that, to a lesser extent integrates values from across the spectrum, right, even though many on the right may be opposed to it. There's this idea of federalism or subsidiarity, where states ought to be able to make their own decisions regarding questions like prohibition. And that shouldn't be a question that the federal government involves itself with, allow there to be you know, local control of such things. So that that, you know, important right wing value was there, at least most of the time was was one of the elements that made the legalization of marijuana move forward politically and legally and is gaining ground. And so using this proposition of values integration at the Institute for Cultural Evolution think tank, we are developing a platform, a political platform of issue positions or policy recommendations, and each one of these policy recommendations gives a win so to speak. To progressive values we explicitly say progressive values are forwarded by this elements of the policy. Mainstream modernist values are formed by this element and socially conservative traditionalists are honored for this element. That the policy is crafted, maybe not to get everyone everything they want, but in a conscious way that actually integrates their values. And this is taken from the practice of stakeholder integration, as it's known in business, where you're not just trying to make profit for your stake your stockholders, but you actually realize that the stakeholders in your company are, of course, your investors, but also the management, the employees, the customers, the community, the environment, the suppliers, that everybody who interacts with the business has a stake in it. And then all of their interests are actually interdependent. So working to integrate those interests is a way of doing conscious business. And integrating the values of America's major worldviews is a way of recognizing that traditionalists, modernists and progressives are each stakeholders in our democracy, and deserve to be recognized and honored on their own terms, because they all have very important values that we're going to need going forward.
That's excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Great. that points us in the right direction. Michael, do we have one final question? Or do we have something before that?
With this thing that, you know, I totally understand the evolution. And that, and that takes time for humanity to evolve, we need to do the things and utilize the values integration as you bring forth and and the understanding of those worldviews will help people see the pathogen and as cultural intelligence would be hugely helpful to be taught to people so they can begin to look at their worldview and start to recognize their limitations, and there, and then look for ways to overcome those. And that takes time. It takes time. And right now, in our political, this is kind of shifting gears, in the politics, this is what is so crucial right now is we've got people who take, are taking their worldview, which is not one of the three that that we've talked about here. But their worldview, their vision of the future. And their willingness to dominate and subjugate humanity, to their, their own self interest. And if we don't get government, on the side of the people, truly on the side of the people, and out of the hands of the special interest, we won't have the time to do this integration that we have begun. And we're in the early stages of this reunion and this integration. So that's where all of us need to, to step back and recognize the bigger picture, the meta view of what's going on around us. And see that we have people, that if we stay on this course, we're on, most of us have all read the books or seen a movie, The Hunger Games, that's, that's what it is, it's not left against right conservatives against progressives, the real, to give us the time to integrate, we've got to recognize that immediately that we're dealing with is those people who and I refer to as the Hunger Games Society elites, their vision of the world. And the rest of us, the ordinary, normal people out here are, our humanity doesn't even count to them. And we've got to get government on the side of the people. Out of their hands, so that we can have this time to, to form a type of governance to evolve our governance, to serve the people. And that that's,
I've seen a lot of commentary in the you know, the pundit sphere, the sort of advancing this idea that there are these, you know, nefarious elites, and then there's the people. And I think I resist that characterization. I mean, certainly, it's true, and in certain circumstances, you can point to a clear example of it. But I think many of the people who are elite propositions are people who have good sense and good faith and are not trying to establish a new Dominator hierarchy. Although these larger structural forces can can sweep people away and bring out negatives in their in their view. But you when you ask, you know, we got to give power to the people or recognize the people apps in which people? Right, does that mean, you want to get power to, to, you know, the Trump supporters. I mean, does that mean you want to give power to, you know, the people who want to, you know, dismantle our society? I mean, that is there are, there is this, this demographic sense Americans of still caring about America and her people, again, everyone a good sense and good Goodwill or good faith can be can can recognize that that set remaining sense of identifying with the whole. And we want to encourage that as much as possible. But at the same time, finding a scapegoat blaming the elites, or blaming the deplorables, or blaming the wokest, or blaming any kind of group that we can separate, you know, out from ourselves and say they're the problem. I think is is part of the problem itself. That this, at the traditional level, right at this this level, it's not only a worldview or a set of values, it's also a psychology. When it emerges in history 1000s of years ago, its job is to subdue the intense warring conditions. And it does that by being the strongest, right, by by bringing it into conquest by the final conquest that that creates a kind of a civilization that can be ruled by some degree of law. And that same mentality creates what are known as Dominator hierarchies, right? Feudalism, as a political system is just one big Dominator hierarchy. And almost every religious civilization that we can identify in history had some version of a feudalism, right. And so so and that was based on what was next, coming out of the conditions of lawless, you know, war and chaos. So Dominator hierarchies are with us till this day, and many people either who identify with progressive values or modernist values, individuals themselves, can find themselves pulled in or maybe never grown out of this, this psychological tendency to create a dominator hierarchy, right. So even, you know, intersectionality, right, as that whole philosophy is, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna turn the tables. You know, those who've been most marginalized, they're gonna come to dominate, that's just a traditional level form of Dominator hierarchy that's being perpetrated within the progressive worldview. And it's something that we need to resist, we need to resist Dominator hierarchies. And one of the reactions to it has been to decry, or or condemn all hierarchies, as if we could just level every, you know, cut down every hierarchy. And I would say that's a pathology also, because there are different kinds of hierarchies. Some are Dominator hierarchies, where the elites or whoever you want to name, the ones at the top of the domination are, you know, oppressing, or, you know, negatively influencing those below them. But they're also positive hierarchies, growth hierarchies. Hierarchies, where those who are, you know, better off, help those who are not as well off, right. That as nature itself, when it gets it right is a growth hierarchy. That's what an ecosystem is. It's not just a food chain, right? It's a way in which there's this interdependent support, a process,
And you said a key word, they're interdependent. And this Dominator, concept, we've got to go move beyond this idea of anyone in a dominator position. And not that the quote, group together just the elites and say that all elites are part of that. But there are definitely some whose focus on their own self interests, and their disregard for their impact on humanity is where we're at. And that's those are the ones that I'm speaking to right now. Who have gamed the system who gained control of the, our political system, to the furtherance of their self interest at the great detriment of the masses of people. And that's where where we are seeing right now.
Well, true the selfish people ethnocentric people, people who would take on this role of Dominator, right, or they don't socially take advantage
They don't see themselves as as the next Hitler's or any of that, they see themselves as benevolent, wonderful. We were gifts to the to, to the planet, and we have the opportunity to help save humanity. But it's their vision which excludes the majority of, of the humanity.
You know, as I was saying, while it's it's it's important to to resist domination from every quarter and call that out whenever you know, necessary. It's also I think, a cop out to blame it on the elites or to blame it on those bad guys or you know, those people over there who are causing our problems. I think the most constructive way of dealing with polarization is to recognize that every one of us is part of the problem. We are all polarized in are thinking to some degree. And that that that that is if the, you know, it's a cliche, right. But Gandhi, you have behind you there, you know that is you want to become the change you want to see in the world, right? Even though that has been overused, it's deeply, deeply true that those of us who feel called to try to help heal the rifts in our society, overcome the trauma, bring back some kind of minimal political cooperation, avoid the regression that looms, all of those important tasks begin by recognizing within yourself, the tendency to polarize is there. So when you you know, you blame any group as the bad guys that are causing all the problems? I would say that, that that's an opportunity to look inside and say that's a form of polarization that I'm perpetrating.
Good point.
Yeah, exactly. This is this is really key. There was a wonderful book, written about vampire ism called 'Unholy Hungers' by a Jungian psychologist who said that every culture has this archetype that they characterize as vampire vampiric archetype. And that each of us has this as the word she uses as a a mild infection. And when situations or the new word shituations occur, were we are put into fear or we're polarized or manipulated by media, manipulated by narratives, we can do that part of ourselves that is that that socio pathogen, as we also call it, gets activated. And so, you know, if you, the best BS detector is detecting the Bs in your own, in your own belief system. Of course, BS 'belief system' that, you know, that should actually tell us all we need to know.
Yes, sure. Sure. Well, you came in, we just like we have to use language, we have to use, you know, these cultural structures. But the key is to hold them lightly. And I identify with the whole as much as possible. And that's the kind of intelligence you know, whether you call it cultural intelligence or values integration, or the evolution of consciousness, another way to understand it. That is, a key point that I want to make, is that from a cultural perspective, the rancor and the turmoil and the hostility that America finds itself in now, both politically and culturally, is the result of growth, we've been stretched out, right! Through the emergence of new forms of culture, we no longer cohere as a governable entity. But the good news is that, again, the way evolution works at every level, I'm not conflating cultural evolution with biological evolution, it's not automatic. It's not some, you know, materialist turn crank phenomenon, it occurs because people are trying to make the world a better place. And sometimes they make it worse. But nevertheless, we've been making it better generally, you know, for the last 40,000 years. And and as we make it better, we're faced with new problems. But but the key I think, is, is understanding that, that that our, our ability to evolve our consciousness is is partially dependent upon our ability to see ourselves in the larger whole. To identify with a larger whole. And to begin to understand that it's growth that has got us where we are. And it's further growth, from antithesis to synthesis. That is the next opportunity, you know, although it's not guaranteed, although, again, regression is always possible, the way evolution works at every level. And it was first understood even before Darwin, that there's first this, this differentiation, and that can lead to a higher level of integration, differentiation, integration, or, you know, transcendence and inclusion. Right. So we're in this period of intense transcendence, where part of the culture is transcending. And the other part is, you know, resisting that and try to hold on to what came before. And that is the perfectly problematic life condition that creates the evolutionary pressure necessary for this next historically significant emergence, which we're working to participate in.
Was that takes us to a place that I'd like to ask, kind of as a wrap up question, I think is a perfect transition to. What is your vision of the more beautiful world your heart knows as possible?
I love that phrase. I've used myself my own writing. And so hats off to Charles Eisenstein for titling his book that and bringing that meme into our appreciation. Because it's, it's a fresh wind of hope, right? That we that it's an acknowledgment that in our hearts, there is a that that not only a more beautiful world, but a better and a truer will that goodness, truth and beauty are our, are these in some ways the direction of evolution right in the realm of human history. Again, plenty of bad stuff along the way. Plenty of new challenges, but people are trying to make the world better. And the way the world can be made better is it becomes we discover more truth. We make things more beautiful, we increase morality, right? These have been recognized since antiquity, as the sort of domains of human improvement, philosophically understood. So to be specific, in terms of the beautiful world that my heart hopes and in deep down knows as possible, is a new golden age, a new period of cultural emergence that brings about new new truth, new beauty and new goodness, right. And this is something I talked about in detail in my books, and and describing this, not as some, you know, unrealistic, idealistic utopia. But as the adjacent possible, right, that it's, it is possible that American society will collapse, or that as a new civil war will occur, that will break apart are all kinds of negative scenarios that are being painted in the, you know, in the media now. It's also possible that, just like in the enlightenment, or just like in the 60s, or the Renaissance, or the fifth generation, fifth century BC, or any of these periods of human history, were a cultural emergence of significance, where new truth, new beauty and new goodness entered the world and brought about the evolution of consciousness and culture, that this is a real possibility. And it's based on my examination and analysis of this historical record. And the problematic life conditions that we're facing right now. The pressure for growth is there. And so the possibility of an evolutionary emergence, something that's partially unpredictable, but that nevertheless, gives us new powers. Gives us new, a new, an inclusive new set of values and a new perspective, a new kind of. The best way I can describe this more beautiful world, is by pointing to the things in the previous major emergences, the emergence of these new worldviews when they were new, that that gave them that new truth and new beauty and new goodness. Now, the emergence of various forms of traditional religious civilization are mostly lost in history. But there are great forms of art, whether it's the you know, the Upanaishads, or the Psalms, or, you know, the New Testament, or, you know, these kind of foundational texts of the great religious civilizations. That that these were examples of, sort of this new truth that helped build those civilizations. That brought about those emergent new worldviews. Likewise, during the Enlightenment, you know, it wasn't just liberal values, it was this new understanding of truth, the scientific truth, that led to, among other things, the emergence of scientific medicine. Again, another thing we take for granted. But we could probably say that the emergence of scientific medicine by itself has improved the condition, the human condition more than anything else in the entire 200,000 years of human history. I mean, you know, we've all we'd all I would predict, all of us, three of us would be dead right now, if it wasn't for scientific medicine that we've been saved multiple times by that. And so of our children, the untold anguish of the world that had an infant mortality rate, that was sky high. These are things that the horrors of history have receded from our view. But the fact that these were overcome though a new truth, is is something that I think should be celebrated. Because there's a new truth emerging in our time. It's emerging from this understanding of the evolution of consciousness and culture. And I think it's something that can make a more beautiful world, starting with a more cooperative polity, and a more a fairer economy. Right, all of the things that we hope will make America better, those will be brought about with with power. When this emergence of new truth, beauty and goodness occurs through the cultural revolution that we are advocating.
You summarize greatly. What Bobby Austin and one of our earlier interviews called seeking, or no, it was, Randall Paul, 'seeking the whole truth together.'
That's a great phrase, I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
Seeking the whole truth together. Steve, you have a final question here.
No, I think I think we have really, this has been such a deep and broad conversation. We've we've covered a lot of territory. And I think this is a big topic, because this is exactly the challenge that we face right now is a certain sense keeping the, amplifying the the great values that were coming from wherever that is, and at the same time having the humility to recognize the limitation of those. And as you would, as you suggested in your article, expanding our, our value, our values to recognize the functionality of the values of people with different points of view and coming to this integral space in these very exciting, transformational times. So thank you. Thank you for all of this. Plenty of, as we used to say, when I lived in Texas, plenty of grist for the mill.
Indeed, let's go to the pleasure to speak to both of you. I appreciate your point of view. And I very much appreciate the work that you're doing with this podcast, and the work that you're doing with the Common Sense Party, Michael, and work you're doing in all kinds of cultural efforts to make people laugh at the reduced trauma, Steve. So it's a pleasure to be with you. And we're definitely in this together.
Well, thank you. Thank you so very much, Steve, because your work and this understandings of integral values and how we can do this and is contributing significantly. So I'd like to say, again, thank you for those who are watching. If you're on the LOCALS platform, please consider becoming a supporter. So Steve, and I can continue our work and continue to pay our rent. And if you're watching on YouTube, or on our newly launched audio podcast, please subscribe, please like and of course, please share with your friends and followers. From political battlefields to cooperative playing fields, It's a long journey to the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible. Let us go there together. Thank you
