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In this episode, Jeff Salzman and Ankur Delight look at some of the questions involving the emerging workplace: Will artificial intelligence be able to create? How do we integrate the goals of achievement and growth with the goals of equity and sustainability? What is the role of people who can’t or won’t fit into the system?

Hey folks,

As integral practitioners, we have insights that help us harmonize cultural polarities, which is why it’s too bad Bill Maher didn’t invite me on his recent show with Elon Musk where they decried the “woke mind virus”.

Woke is the activist/fanatic arm of the emerging mass culture of postmodernity. Every stage of human development has activists and fanatics whose job is to fully bring forth the worldview (call it the “mind virus”) of their age.

Our job is to see what they so desperately want us to see and to critically consider what they want us to do. We do the same with their opponents, cultivating the integrated wisdom that arises when one is able to hold multiple perspectives.

I hope you enjoy the episode, edited from the ‘fireside chat” I hold regularly with the Integral Life Practice Community. Next chat is June 7th at 1 pm Pacific Time, Zoom link here. Join us!

A brand new iteration of “This Week in the News”. Ankur Delight, who hosts one of my favorite podcasts, 10,000 Heroes, joins me to bring an integral take to the headlines of the week.

This week, we look at the big shakeup in the mainstream news media. Days ago, and within an hour of each other, Fox News and CNN fired two of their biggest stars: Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon. What does this say about the modern news business, the evolution of our culture … and the possibility of a President Carlson?

Hope you enjoy.

Hey folks,

This week I look at a rising star in the mainstream commentariat: Peter Zeihan.

To me he is a good example of a proto-integral thinker in that he is a master synthesizer, weaving compelling narratives about our world that include economics, demography, geography, politics and history. He gives me a far more integrated understanding of a variety of issues from the Russia / Ukraine war to the workings of the drug cartels, to “Is it Oklahoma’s time to shine?”

Yet, as with so many contemporary thinkers, his analysis misses the core value of integral thinking: that human consciousness and cultures have evolved and that they continue to. In this episode, I look at this missing piece that integral thinking offers, and which adds an invaluable element to any analysis of human events.

I hope you enjoy the episode! – Jeff Salzman

This week I look at the hubbub surrounding the introduction of large language chatbots, the latest evolutionarily-potent development in artificial intelligence.

A long-time listener asked ChatGPT to write a poem expressing Ken Wilber’s developmental stages. The result (below) is mind-blowing. How is it possible for a machine to create three verses that capture the essence of developmental theory so well?

Mind-blowing, yes, but is it beautiful? Can it be beautiful when it was written by a machine? Welcome to humanity’s next stage of understanding itself and our place in the cosmos.

ALSO, it’s Trump’s turn in the dock with his indictment in Manhattan. Is this good or bad for democracy? For the answer, we look to the old Chinese farmer …

I hope you enjoy the episode! – Jeff Salzman

PS – This is an edited version of a live “Fireside Chat” I do with the Integral Life Practice Community every first and third Wednesday of the month. Join me this Wednesday, April 19, at 1 pm Pacific Time (Zoom link).

On Ken Wilber’s Developmental Theory

by ChatGPT

Ascending the steps, we embark,

In the spiral of growth, we find,

From the shadows to radiant light,

Hey Folks,

In this Daily Evolver I explore a variety of topics: 

This episode is recorded from the live “Fireside Chat” I do twice a month (1st and 3rd Wednesdays) for Integral Life.  Join us live if you can this coming Wednesday the 29th at 1 PT, 4ET. 

Integral Life is building an impressive community of integral practitioners, and you can check out all the opportunities to participate here.  

I hope you enjoy this episode!  

Jeff Salzman

In this episode, I analyze Elon Musk through the lens of developmental theory, which maps the “spiral of worldview evolution” within people and cultures.

There are three major worldviews currently in contention in our culture:

They all have goodness, truth and beauty to offer, and they all hate each other. Most people live in one worldview, can function adequately in another, and polarize against the third. If you can embrace the polarization and inhabit all three, then you are entering the next emerging worldview: Integral (evolutionary synthesis).

If you can integrate all that (adequately, not perfectly) and add the lagging-edge worldview, the pre-traditional Warrior/Empire worldview, then you may be Elon Musk. In this episode, I explain. Enjoy!

– Jeff Salzman

PS: I’m posting more on Twitter theses days. You can “follow” my feed @dailyevolver.

Do We Care More About People Who Look Like Us? – Some thoughts about moral development from my series of episodes on the war on Ukraine. Full episode is here.

This week political philosopher Steve McIntosh joins me to discuss global warming through the lens of cultural evolution. We focus on solving the “political will problem” that is currently stymying our collective response to the climate crisis. Steve argues that the progressive agenda on climate needs an upgrade:

“Preserving the health of our natural environment is crucial for our collective well-being, which is why we can no longer indulge in the idealistic fantasy that America’s economy and energy systems can be immediately and radically transformed. Some prominent progressive voices are calling for the overthrow of capitalism, but this kind of absolutistic rhetoric only serves to block the formation of a larger national consensus around the most timely and realistic near-term approaches.”

Steve’s ideas are fully fleshed out in the Institute for Cultural Evolution’s Policy Paper on Climate Change. It is one of a series of innovative “Win-Win-Win” policy analyses created by the think tank that address the issues of the day with the goal of providing key “wins” for each of the three major worldviews. I hope you enjoy the episode! – Jeff Salzman

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Steve McIntosh is president of the Institute for Cultural Evolution and author of Developmental Politics, How America Can Grow Into a Better Version of Itself. I am a senior fellow of the Institute and a member of its board of directors.

In this episode of the Shrink and the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss a powerful realization emerging at the leading edge of culture regarding the role of trauma in our lives. Dr. Keith is writing a book on the subject and has mined various psychotherapeutic modalities to create an integral approach to using trauma as a portal to health and higher consciousness.

In our wide-ranging conversation we address: Trauma and resilience as forms of memory * The differences – and similarities – between ongoing trauma and “major event” traumas such as accidents, violence and illness * Trauma through human history * Sensitive vs sensitized: the healthy and unhealthy poles of postmodern consciousness * What child-centered parenting misses * The biological drive to have a spiritually-awakened brain * Updating your autobiographical narratives * Trauma and the self-transforming mind.

I really loved this conversation and I hope you do, too! – Jeff Salzman

You can find out more about Dr. Keith Witt here.