The Daily Evolver

In the vision of a future economy the motto is to think globally and act locally. Eco-localization refers to local production and consumption imbued with an awareness of how one’s actions may impact other communities. This includes global trade between local economies (hence the word “glocalization”), which means you don't import things that can be made locally but you may still share culture and “perhaps even have bananas in Hungary,” Szandra says.

This week Jeff looks at a new model of autocratic modernity that is gaining traction particularly among developing countries with weak histories of democracy, such as Russia and China. With the economically and politically stumbling West no longer held up an the inevitable example, we can see the appeal -- and even some of the intelligence -- behind this rising brand of development without liberalism.

The many crises of the world, most prominently the war in Israel and Gaza, evoke important questions for those of us who are not directly involved. What can we do about the suffering? What are we supposed to feel and think? How are we to relate and respond? This week Jeff explores aspects of the interior spaces of integral consciousness, especially those we experience in the face of suffering. But first he looks at a significant new work of integral art: the movie Boyhood.

The two global hot spots this week are, once again, Ukraine, where Russian separatists have shot down a passenger jet from Amsterdam, killing 300 people, and Israel/Gaza, where longstanding tensions have flared into a new intifada. What do these conflicts have in common and how can integral consciousness help us understand them more deeply?

The struggle between the Muslim and Western worlds is not only a clash of civilizations, but also a clash of development. I had a good conversation on this subject with Dr. Aftab Omer, a sociologist, psychologist and integralist who was raised in Pakistan, India and Turkey, and who has lived in the US for much of his life.

Sex evolves like everything else, so what's next? This week Jeff looks at the amazing, creative, pervasive phenomena of sex and how it's evolving in all four quadrants. What are the roots of our sexuality, where are we now and what is emerging? He starts with a shout out to his favorite new art form and inspiration for this week’s topic: reality TV.

In this week’s call Jeff explores the issue of cultural identity from an evolutionary point of view. He uses the examples of the World Cup and the story told about Brazil by the international media leading up to it, as well as the continuing drama in Ukraine to illuminate how, even in our globalized world, culture has a unique power to move events. His special guest is Ukrainian integralist Oleg Linetsky.

This week Jeff focuses on the situation in Iraq, where the jihadi group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham) has taken over the Sunni area of the country. Their aim is to install a medieval caliphate throughout the Middle East (“we know no borders,” they say). What does integral theory tell us about these fighters and how to deal with their threat to the country America misguidedly attempted to liberate into modernity?

I met Graham back in the nineties when he ran a web design firm in Seattle. He’s always been on the emerging edge of culture and technology and is one of those people that has an integral mind whether or not they ever use the vocabulary or reference the maps. He has a developmental view and doesn’t see modernity as the enemy, necessarily, but as the foundation upon which a thriving postmodern culture can be built. He founded the popular Treehugger.com and is now focusing his attention on LifeEdited, which designed and built this amazing apartment in Brooklyn — just 420 square feet in size — that is an example of how we can use smart design to cut down on energy, space and resources and still create more health and happiness in our lives. Graham is a pragmatist. His TED talk Why I’m a Weekday Vegetarian, demonstrates an integral way of leading the culture forward through a change that needs to happen. Everyone on the planet can’t eat meat three times a day, but “people don’t want to have their last

Lying is a subtle violence that we perpetrate against ourselves and others, and almost all psychotherapy is concerning where people lie to themselves about themselves. As we develop more self-awareness and transparency, lies become less tempting because they become less useful and actually just plain uninteresting.

Our left hemisphere learns new routines, but it is our right hemisphere where the habits are hardwired — and it changes slowly. The brain evolved to not give up habits that it has associated with a satisfactory life. We are what we repeatedly do. —Aristotle I learn the coolest stuff listening to The Shrink & The Pundit sessions. For example, as you repeat a certain action it activates a specific neuronal network in the brain. Cells go there and wrap the neurons in a myelin sheath (myelin is a white, fatty, electrically insulating substance). The myelinated nerve is up to one hundred times faster! If you practice enough those circuits become heavily myelinnated and then that action becomes habitual, like the way my fingers are hitting these keys — you don’t even need to think about it. Which is great! Until it isn’t. Habits are hard to change. We can use pain and pleasure (the proverbial vinegar and honey) but mostly it just takes time. A habit is a pattern of self-reinforcing processes. A Princeton

This week Jeff took a look at the emergence of some radical new Green ideas in the economic conversation, with an advanced peek at the influential new book “Capital in the 21st Century”, by Thomas Piketty. He also addressed the cultural issues of climate change and a striking new way of dealing with it: give up.

This week Jeff takes a look at new research that reveals how worldview overrides evidence in determining one’s political perspective. He also explores the conservative view of the Russian/Ukraine situation by critiquing an essay by Robert D. Kaplan, Geopolitics and the New World Order in which Kaplan argues that “in geopolitics, the past never dies and there is no modern world.”

If it was just the genes talking we’d have serial marriages lasting on average four or five years, and we’d cheat on each other every chance we got.  ~Dr. Keith Witt Apparently we’re kind of clueless about intimate attachment in general. According to Dr. Keith we aggrandize romantic love, we’re afraid of sexual lust and we have no idea about long-term attachment. We mix them all up, basically. Ninety percent of the people and couples that come to Keith for help present with a problem in their marriage or primary partnership. That tells us a couple things. One, like many other mammals we’re drawn to pair bond. Most people who are allowed to get married, do. And two, it tells us that marriage is challenging and most of us need some help to learn how to do it well. So why aren’t we taught how to do it? Probably because your marriage is not your parent’s marriage. It’s not even the marriage that you had yesterday. As cultures change marriages must change with them, so a successful marriage fifty years ago is not

THE DAILY EVOLVER LIVE EPISODE 88 This week I focused on a topic that is always front and center in the culture wars: the role of the public sector and the private sector in our lives, and the tension between the two. One story that captures this tension in the U.S. is the Supreme Court hearing of the complaint by Hobby Lobby, a chain of retail stores, seeking an exemption from having to provide “morning after” contraceptives in its employee health care plan under the new terms of Obamacare. The founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green, is a devout Christian who donates half the company’s pre-tax earnings — $500 million so far — to evangelical ministry.  An amber traditionalist at heart (though clearly an orange modernist in his ability to build a very successful business), Green specifically objects to birth-control medications such as “Plan B” that would destroy a fertilized egg. This detail is often missed in media reports which represent the company as objecting to providing any contraception whats

I started the call this week by responding to a couple listeners who think I’ve gone a little soft on modernity (Orange altitude). The first, David O’Conner from Australia, critiqued me by saying, “you believe a little too much in the evolutionary goodness of Orange without sufficiently taking into account what is not so good about Orange.” Good point. So let me self-correct a bit. Every stage of development comes online bearing a dignity and a disaster. For instance, on the upside Red brings on the juice of individual power; on the downside it gives rise to plunder and patriarchy. Amber civilizes us, but into a conformity that ultimately becomes stultifying. Each stage experiences radical new powers that are used for both good and ill. The powers that emerge in Orange are jaw-dropping in all four quadrants: in the exterior quadrants, science and technology turn dirt into Chevys, create “the indoors” and triple life-spans. Orange becomes world-centric and modern people are able to mobilize resources from all

A CONVERSATION WITH DR. KEITH WITT (AUDIO) The “shadow” is a Jungian term that means the hidden aspects of our psyche that motivate us but that we are unaware of. For instance, we may experience an anger that comes out of nowhere, an inexplicable attraction or aversion to other people, a depression that descends in times of stress. In this month’s installment of The Shrink and the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt, integral psychotherapist extraordinaire, approaches the subject of psychological shadow from an unusual angle: neurobiology. As good integralists we’re aware that for every interior state of mind (upper left quadrant) there is an exterior neurological corollary in the brain (upper right quadrant). Whatever you’ve repressed or negated, projected or idolized, it’s likely the function of a neural network that served you at one time, but is not necessarily serving you now. This explains why psychological problems can usually be dealt with more effectively when a body-based therapy is included. “When people

Dr. Keith Witt joined me and about 100 integralists from all over the world at The Integral Living Room gathering here in Boulder a few weeks ago, where we explored approaches to creating a higher-level interpersonal space among us. Because Keith’s ideas were so influential to the design of this event, I was interested in hearing about his experience and sharing my own. The Living Room was a sophisticated flex-flow workshop where we tried to hold a framework that was tight enough to give the gathering a structure, but loose enough that it could change as needed. We wanted information and influence to flow both ways, and for the we-space to tell us what it wanted to become. The entity created by the “we” seems to have it’s own destiny. It’s a tricky thing to pull off but we had an amazing group of people present and they were up to the task! In this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit Keith and I talk a little bit about how we felt during and after the event. We talk about the differ

A dialog on Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey with Dr. Keith Witt Before I encountered the work of Ken Wilber, Joseph Campbell was lighting me up with his synthesis of the myths of all cultures.  Like Ken, Campbell had a gift for the meta-narrative, for seeing patterns in seemingly disparate times and systems of thought. In this dialog with Dr. Keith Witt (who is also a huge Campbell fan), we discuss the gift of Campbell’s formulation of The Hero’s Journey, which is his name for the basic pattern of the great myths, and which turns out to be a guide for our own lives. Although told in wildly different ways throughout the world, the basic story is the same. It begins with the “call”, which is often a big blunder or a disaster that leads you to what Campbell called the belly of the whale. If you say yes to the calling you find yourself on the threshold where you have to leave the old ways behind and venture into the unknown. Guides will appear to help you on your journey, and though some may betray y

In this installment of  The Shrink & the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt  and I discuss the emotional constellations of shame. As a therapist who has worked with thousands of clients, Keith has seen the devastating effect shame can have on psychological health. “It can literally kill us,” he explains. It can also save us. Because shame is so powerful and central to our psyches, it is a great leverage point for metabolizing our dysfunctions. Shame is a social emotion and first comes on line in small children as a response to the inevitable disapproval from authority figures. It is the prime engine behind the development of the defensive states and patterns that create amplified or numbed emotions, distorted perspectives, destructive impulses, reduced empathy and inability to self-reflect. As we let ourselves see and feel into the textures of our own shame we can begin to witness the admonitions of our “inner critic,” as well as the subtle energy and somatic patterning that keep it anchored in our psyche. This aware