The Daily Evolver

There are good reasons why, traditionally, politics and religion are not discussed in polite company. “It’s because they express very deep patterns of our thinking and feeling,” Jeff says, “if you start screwing with my spiritual beliefs and my politics, you’re screwing with me and my whole sense of identity.”

In the podcast, Jeff talks about what he calls “integral political practice,” the act of observing our attractions and aversions to different political ideas and even to particular candidates. In so doing we are engaging in the most potent practice of consciousness evolution: turning subject into object. He describes what he calls “the remote control test”, which is noticing his instant compulsion to change the channel when Ted Cruz appears on the TV.

What exactly is happening there, and more importantly, what’s underneath it? Jeff plumbs the depths of his revulsion and finds some surprising truths!

Also in the podcast Jeff talks to author Thomas McConkie about his new book, Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis. Tom was born and raised in the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City and comes from pioneer ancestry. He describes his own crisis of faith and the falling out with his family. “That set me on my path in Buddhism and eventually integral adult development. It was just in the last few years that it felt like a deep soul urge of mine to really, on a personal level, integrate my own Mormon identity.”

If you think you know about Mormonism, you might be really surprised by Jeff’s conversation with Tom. Find out more about Tom’s work and Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis here.

Lastly, Jeff addresses a listener’s frustration with the Big History Project, which seems to be trying to answer a lot of the same questions as integral theory, but with much less explanatory power. So why is it so successful in spreading its message to the public?

“I’m a little frustrated about the inability of integral theory…to penetrate public discourse in a similar way,” the caller says. So are we! In the podcast, Jeff talks about the strengths of the Big History Project, it’s shortcomings, and why, for the time being, books on integral theory are still relegated to the New Age ghetto.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

In a healthy intimate relationship, the partners don’t have to be turned on by each other all the time, says Dr. Keith, “but they do need to be turned on by each other regularly.” Every couple has a balance of how much sex is needed to keep things vibrant, and it’s the responsibility of each partner to make it happen.

For many couples, this is something that must be learned and practiced.

In the days of our grandparents there wasn’t much need for sex therapy. Sexual fulfillment was not an expectation for a traditional marriage. The dawn of modernity (orange) brought with it a value structure that focused more on the individual. With changing morals and the advent of birth control, the focus of sex became less about procreation and more about pleasure. Our personal sexual fulfillment took priority over social convention, and divorce began to skyrocket.

With the dawn of the postmodern age, couples are faced with additional challenges. The main challenge is how to keep the erotic energy alive when partners are focused on minimizing male/female differences and elevating equality. “These couples need to practice taking and being taken,” says Dr. Keith, “where one person’s masculine really focuses on the other person’s feminine. One person leads the other person—and the other person allows themselves to be led—into the dance of eroticism.”

In some relationships, such as with many gay couples, the roles of masculine and feminine can even be exchanged.

Some of the main topics that Jeff and Dr. Keith discuss in the podcast:

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

Bernie Sanders started his campaign to be the Democratic nominee for president back in April, “as a 74-year old rumpled, grumpy, self-described old school democratic socialist,” says Jeff. “Today he has included and transcended those qualities to transform himself into a sleek political populist taking on a system that he sees as rigged against the people.”

Jeff puts Bernie’s extraordinary rise into a larger evolutionary context that includes culture, politics and economics. He draws on the work of integral economist Said Dawlabani to describe the way value systems of different developmental stages oscillate between a focus on the individual and a focus on the collective. “The polarity is indestructible,” says Jeff, “but as the clock moves forward, these values are expressed in newly emerging ways.”

Sanders is an authentic, committed expression of the green, postmodern value system. With its emphasis on the collective, green is a proponent for a strong safety net, highly subsidized or even centralized health care, and education. “It’s just generally a move to a social contract that distributes more of the pie to more people,” Jeff says.

Is it our destiny in the U.S. to move toward democratic socialism á la Northern Europe? Should we get behind the true believer and take our chances on Bernie’s crusade? Or ought we opt for Hillary Clinton’s incremental approach, which she describes as “sensible and achievable”? And how about the perennial Republican model of private enterprise, smaller government and lower taxes? Is there an integral approach that might honor the best of what each of these worldviews has to offer?

Also in the podcast: A viral video of a wedding in Auckland, New Zealand, where a newlywed husband and wife watch their family members perform the Haka, a dance from the Maori tradition. “This is an example of the power of integrating developmental levels in a healthy way, as a work of creative expression and performance art,” says Jeff.

Plus, Jeff recommends a new series on PBS called “First Peoples”, which hits two bullseyes for integralists. First, it unfolds a beautiful narrative of the evolution of early humanity, showing how we arose out of Africa 200,000 years ago to take over the world. Second, it reveals how contemporary scientists are incorporating non-rational ways of knowing, featuring Arturo Gonzales, the celebrated Mexican paleontologist, who discovered Eva de Navarone, the oldest skeleton ever found in the Americas, with the aid of a shaman and a psychedelic drug made from the glands of a Mexican toad.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

This is part two of a two-part series. Find part one here.

As we see with integral theory, art is often the leading edge of cultural and consciousness evolution, and jazz today continues to lead the way. In this two-part series, “The soul of jazz”, Greg takes us through the history of jazz from its roots in the magic, mythic and traditional interiors of African Americans at the turn of the last century, through the modern and postmodern strains of the mid and late 20th Century, to the more wild wooly contemporary scene. He points out the evolutionarily potent and ultimately integral qualities jazz conveys as it confronts enduring human polarities such as the individual vs the group, tragedy vs comedy, competition vs cooperation, and structure vs freedom.

Greg Thomas is one of the nation’s leading experts on jazz. For several years Greg was a jazz columnist for the New York Daily News. He’s a consultant with the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and with Jazz at Lincoln Center, the largest organization in the world dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of jazz.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

Jeff begins the podcast with a few observations about Obama’s final State of the Union address, where the President invited us to look not just at the next year, but further “to the next ten years and beyond.” And to see that the key feature of our journey is change, change which is influenced by the actions we take.

Obama then sets up America’s challenges, as he sees them, in a series of polarities: how do we broaden opportunity and not widen inequality? How do we stay safe and not become the policeman of the world?

He explicitly pushed back on the Republican “apocalypse narrative” that has our economy collapsing and the world on fire, by pointing out that we have the strongest economy in the world and no existential threats.

The idea of change as a fundamental feature of reality—the potency of polarities … a challenge to move beyond fear—these are all markers of integral thinking. Obama’s last year in office is going to be fun to watch.

Moving on to the main story, Jeff starts by sharing a question from a listener about an exquisitely complex and contentious topic in the culture: political correctness.

Chris in San Francisco writes:

I’ve been fascinated and a bit confused by the recent activity at Yale University. There’s a lot going on there regarding race, discrimination, free speech, developmental stages, safety, vilification of those who disagree, entitlement technology, et cetera, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

The current Green, postmodern wave of political correctness, speech codes and cultural sensitivity is part of a long history of words and ideas declared acceptable or anathema in any given time, place, and culture. Jeff takes us on a tour of how speech has been regulated and codified for hundreds of years. There is political correctness, it turns out, at every stage of development, from the capitol crime of blasphemy at the traditional/amber stage to the prejudices and microaggressions you may not even know you’ve inflicted at the postmodern/green stage.

“Trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” have become a regular part of our vocabulary in the last decade, and easy to deride. Many see the young student protesters on college campuses from Yale to Mizzou as coddled and effete—the entitled offspring of a generation of narcissistic baby boomers—demanding their feelings be taken into account by the wider world. And no doubt the green warriors of political correctness can be strident and self-righteous (as can people at all first tier memes). Yet Jeff shows how they are pushing humanity into new, ever more humane and compassionate territory.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.

This is part one of a two-part series. Find part two here.

I’ve long enjoyed music critic Greg Thomas’s insightful posts on Integral Life, where he writes about jazz.

Not that I like jazz music. Truth is, I’ve always found jazz to be annoying. I can’t tap my foot to it. I can’t sing it in the shower. Like a lot of artforms, when we don’t understand them, jazz has shown up to me as noise.

Of course like all good integral practitioners, I want to turn toward the object of my annoyance. I know it’s not the fault of jazz that I don’t get it. Millions of people are ecstatic over it, and I want to have what they’re having. So I was thrilled when Greg came to one of my programs at the Integral Center last summer, and I invited him to stay with me. During downtimes we had some great one-on-ones where Greg did his best to initiate me into the jazz idiom. He explained how jazz expresses American culture. He told stories of various artists and songs. He played some of his favorite pieces and schooled me in what was going on. He turned out to be just the teacher I was looking for, and I began to get the beat.

Greg Thomas

Greg’s mastery is obvious, and he is indeed one of the nation’s leading experts on jazz. For several years Greg was a jazz columnist for the New York Daily News. He’s a consultant with the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and with Jazz at Lincoln Center, the largest organization in the world dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of jazz.

As we see with integral theory, art is often the leading edge of cultural and consciousness evolution, and jazz today continues to lead the way. In this two-part series, “The soul of jazz”, Greg takes us through the history of jazz from its roots in the magic, mythic and traditional interiors of African Americans at the turn of the last century, through the modern and postmodern strains of the mid and late 20th Century, to the more wild wooly contemporary scene. He points out the evolutionarily potent and ultimately integral qualities jazz conveys as it confronts enduring human polarities such as the individual vs the group, tragedy vs comedy, competition vs cooperation, and structure vs freedom.

Check out this page to hear the songs that Greg and Jeff discuss in this part of the podcast in their entirety.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

One of the blessings of an integral consciousness is the ability to embrace the gifts of earlier stages of development. In this short holiday message, Jeff encourages us to practice being enchanted, once again, by the beauty and goodness of the world.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.

Losing your job or your partner, having major health issues or just the general feeling of existential ennui can be terrible and even traumatic, but they are not necessarily unique to midlife. The midlife crisis has a flavor all its own. It kicks in with the realization that you’ve crossed the halfway point of your life and are on the downward slope. To make it worse, you may discover that the things most important to you — your relationships, your career, your purpose in life — have begun fraying around the edges if you haven’t put in the effort to sustain them.

We negotiate one transformation after another during our lifetimes, beginning with birth and extending into old age and finally death. How we learn to handle them is what shapes us as people and fashions our fate. “The difference between a crisis that makes us stronger or one that makes us weaker and diminishes us is how we resolve it,” says Dr. Keith.

In the podcast, Jeff and Dr. Keith discuss:

Find more episodes of The Shrink & The Pundit here.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

In a world in which there are no mess-free options, says Jeff, “I’m so happy to have an evolutionary view” when trying to make sense of things like the killings in San Bernardino, the first terror attack on American soil with the fingerprints of ISIS. While it’s objectively true that violent deaths in the U.S. (and the world) are declining steadily, public shootings have become horrifyingly common here (26 mass shootings just during Obama’s two terms in office). These create a special kind of anxiety and terror, one that we are evolutionarily programmed to pay outsized attention to.

In this podcast Jeff looks at the range of responses that we’ve seen in the weeks following this most recent attack–responses that tell us a lot about our country, our candidates and ourselves. A predictable (and evolutionarily potent) controversy is underway as to what the U.S. role should be in responding to ISIS, and how we should fight back militarily, culturally, even in cyberspace.

Donald Trump called for a halt to Muslims entering the country, apparently determined to keep anyone from getting to the right of him on issues of national security. He taps a long history of xenophobia when Americans have felt threatened, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Japanese internments during WW2, to Operation Wetback in the 1950’s. But America was a center-of-gravity traditional (amber altitude) country then; we are a center-of-gravity modern (orange altitude) country now. Those of us in the modern majority look back on these historical acts with regret. But the minority of people who are traditionalists feel little misgiving and believe that tough times call for tough measures. These folks now have an unambiguous, unapologetic, tough-guy champion in Donald Trump, to whom they can hitch their wagon…and ride with him to abject defeat. Which will create more modernists (defeated people usually grow). Isn’t cultural evolution wonderful?

Speaking of which, President Obama has taken a lot of criticism for his nuanced, Jeff argues integral approach to dealing with ISIS. Jeff offers his analysis of Obama’s style.

The perennial foreign policy question facing integralists is how to help guide premodern cultures into modernity—a crucially important fulcrum, as violence drops dramatically at this developmental milestone. Jeff advocates an approach similar to that of a parent. “I wish I could think of a better analogy than parenting,” he says. “It feels like it’s condescending. It makes my green alarms go off that one country could presume to be a parent to another. But from an integral perspective, it’s literally true.” He explains in the podcast.

Jeff also touches on gun control, the polarity between security and freedom, and how it is we allow ISIS to use the most powerful tool conceived by modernity: the internet.

Plus, a seasonal message of love and renewal.

Have a wonderful holiday and we look forward to seeing you when the Daily Evolver live returns January 5th.

Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button to the right.

In the previous episode of The Shrink & The Pundit, Dr. Keith and Jeff talk about the history of marriage, what questions to ask as you consider marriage, and above all the challenge of supporting each other’s mutual development—what Dr. Keith calls the marital love affair.

But for half of all couples the love affair will end, and so will the marriage. A higher divorce rate doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with our society. It more likely indicates our changing expectations of a primary partnership, says Dr. Keith. “We’re living twice as long as we did a hundred years ago,” he tells Jeff, “Women have more power, and the standard of marriage is a fulfillment standard now more than a stability standard.”

A fulfillment standard is much more demanding, and people are likely to adopt it without a commitment to the practices that maintain it (see The practice of the marital love affair).

When one person makes the decision “I don’t want to live with you anymore,” from that point on everything is different. For the couple sitting in Dr. Keith’s office, the therapy is no longer about resolving marital issues; instead, it’s about helping the couple separate with as little pain and expense as possible, says Dr. Keith.

Divorce, like marriage, has evolved. No fault divorce is a relatively new option and quite a leap forward from the ritual humiliation of earlier versions of legal separation, when one partner had to prove the other was inadequate or defective in some way. And recently the phrase “conscious uncoupling” entered the popular lexicon when Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Chris Martin of Coldplay, decided to separate earlier this year.

Despite how far we’ve come, it’s still generally painful and expensive, and it’s a huge life transition. But with some work and a little help from an integral therapist, it can be less painful and less expensive.

Here are some of the things that Dr. Keith and Jeff talk about in the podcast:

Thanks for listening! Send your questions and comments for the show to [email protected]. Record a voice memo on your smartphone or use the Speakpipe button on DailyEvolver.com.