The Daily Evolver

This week Jeff takes a look at the movie American Sniper and Fox News’ rising star Megyn Kelly, to make the case that conservative culture is evolving by taking on the best of green altitude values. And it’s not just a one way street. The left also evolves by taking on the best values of amber altitude traditionalism, such as the gay rights movement’s argument for marriage and military service. This year’s Super Bowl commercials also moved the ball…

This weeks Jeff looks at President Obama’s annual “State of the Union” address to Congress. He makes the case that Obama is pushing for the developmental move from an Orange modern economy to a Green postmodern economy. Obama’s policies won’t prevail, at least in the short term, but they will spark the conversation (okay, fight) between the advocates of freedom vs security, right vs left and Republicans vs Democrats that will lead to more integrated solutions.

In this week’s podcast Jeff explores the Muslim/Western fault lines exposed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, where twelve people were killed in an attack on the satirical magazine by Muslim extremists who were offended by their depictions of Muhammad. In the 2nd half of the show, Jeff is joined by special guest Amir Ahmad Nasr, author of The Future of Islam In the Age of New Media, and My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind--And Doubt Freed My Soul.

2014 has been described as a turbulent year in the media, but there isn't really a turbulent-free option, is there? Is there anything about turbulence that is good? Also, Jeff answers a listener's question about the moral nature of red. When is violence healthy and when is it pathological?

Frank Visser is arguably the chief critic of Ken Wilber, integral theory and the integral community as a whole. Based in Amsterdam, Frank is publisher of the website INTEGRAL WORLD: An Independent Forum for a Critical Discussion of the Integral Philosophy of Ken Wilber which hosts over a thousand essays by mostly dissenting voices in the integral scene. Contrast this to Jeff Salzman and his work with the Daily Evolver. Jeff is an unabashed Wilberian and self-described integral evangelist who “sees the animating power of evolution, inside and out.”  Frank and Jeff spoke by phone before the holidays while Frank was getting ready to head out to an island on the coast of the Netherlands. Visser was once an enthusiastic proponent of Ken Wilber’s AQAL model. In 2003 he wrote the book Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY Press), a chronological overview of Ken’s life and work through 2003, and has recently released a new online chapter, “Reaching Out to the World”, covering the intervening years. This new writing is far more critical of Ken and the integral movement and has sparked new controversy, most notably a fascinating and fruitful back-and-forth between Frank and Joe Perez, creator of the outstanding Integral Blog. Joe’s first volley is entitled “Properly Integral: A Response to Frank Visser’s Three Disappointments”, and leads to the rest of the debate. In this podcast Jeff and Frank talk about their differences, which primarily boils down to the question does Spirit exist? Is there a loving intelligence at work in the kosmos? Jeff says “yes”, and Frank says “not so fast.” For Frank, the idea that there is an intelligent force driving evolution, that the substrate of existence is consciousness, or Spirit, is where the line is crossed. To make such claims requires an unhealthy mixing of science and religion. “Wilber is a complicated figure, because he argues for spirit but he includes so much scientific material to back up that case…it’s only natural for people who are in the sciences to hold him accountable for how strong is his case.” Of course, the integral project is to integrate the realms of science and mysticism, which have different injunctions and different validity claims, and which have long been estranged. But Frank is skeptical; are we integrating or are we mixing? Probably both, says Jeff, but this is how we move forward. I think you get stronger when you can engage your opposing views, there’s no way out of that. Otherwise you create a bubble and you repeat what you already think and that’s not very fruitful to me. There came a point when I was stepping over to the dark side, so to speak. I was so immersed in all this critical writing that I took up that role to become a focus for it and that’s basically how the website Integral World has received its reputation. I must say that I always am a bit surprised by people who say, well, this is just a junkyard of Wilber bashing or whatever.   ~Frank Visser Part of Frank’s skepticism comes from the fact that spirituality is comforting for us. It’s always been there to explain things that we can’t otherwise understand. When the questions get too difficult, insert “God” and the equation is balanced. And isn’t it nice to know that no matter how troubled the world seems, at the end of the day it’s all okay because, after all, it’s in God’s hands. “If you feel there is a kind of spirit behind everything then of course you’re safe,” says Frank, “because then it will work out in the end. If you don’t have that drive, which is my feeling, things can still progress but you can always fuck it up mightily by depleting the world’s resources and so on.” Do we really need a spirit, an animating force in the equation, when the universe is already wonderful and mysterious beyond comprehension? What does it add? We might even understand reality better without it, says Frank. Jeff counters that such a view ignores the interior dimensions of reality, including consciousness itself. The presence of Spirit doesn’t negate the scientific view, but to take it away diminishes our experience of life because it is an intrinsic aspect of existence. To see this requires spiritual insight, which is generally the result of a spiritual practice. Science works with the principle that seeing is believing, and spirituality works with the converse: believing is seeing. On a good day I can still relate to the idea of a cosmic evolution and a spirit behind everything and the hope that it gives that things will work out and so on. On a bad day (or a good day, depending on how you look at it) I see different things and I’m not so sure anymore and I’m not necessarily unhappy with that. I’m kind of role-playing, I sometimes think. I play this role of the devil’s advocate and I still feel myself connected to the integral field. I don’t know where that ends, but it could also be that in a couple of years I’m done with this and I become more positive in my writings or in my expressions. ~Frank Visser Frank and Jeff go on to discuss the idea of free will, politics and current events, the Big Bang, and artificial intelligence. They disagree plenty, but this is how things work themselves out, says Jeff, “If you look at the history of any significant movement…we need to manage the polarities in order to provide the juice for continued evolution.” Frank adds that we should be playful with our positions and not hold them too seriously. “And of course, there’s a common ground between two positions where you want to have the best for the earth and humanity and all that lives; even a humanist can consent to that. Then you don’t even need to have a spirit behind everything. There’s a common ground for people with good intentions.” Listen or download the podcast below, and here’s to the juice of continued evolution!

In this thirteen minute excerpt of a conversation from September, Jeff  speaks with Ken Wilber about the pain and suffering inherent in a human life, which begins with the nature of emergence itself. The more we develop, the more aware we are, and the more capacity we have to feel pain. If you go back thousands of years, Ken says, a person just had to get from  infrared (Archaic) altitude to magenta (Indigenous) altitude. There are a limited number of things that can go wrong there. But as time goes on: Our own history gets thicker and thicker. There are more and more levels to us, there are also therefore more and more things that can break down, more and more things that can go wrong.That’s why if you look at the whole 14 billion years as a one year calendar, humans appear in the last few minutes of the last hour of the last day, because we had to transcend and include everything that came before. And all of those things that can go wrong involve pain — but not necessarily suffering. Wherever there is an other, there is fear, so the more we are able to transcend our individual selves the better things get. Pain still happens, of course–in fact we’re even more sensitive to everything–but we’re less identified with it.

In this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit, Dr. Keith reveals what he’s learned in over forty years as a psychotherapist about cultivating integral love relationships, what the shift to a 2nd tier “love operating system” looks and feels like, and how you go about teaching couples to love completely.    Everything is relationship. Only a small sliver of our brains has to do with our sense of individual self—we’re designed to be social, to interact. We’re designed to love. Our development depends upon it. And yet, it isn’t always easy. Lofty concepts aside, what is the most practical way to teach people how to love and be loved? In this conversation with Jeff Salzman, Dr. Keith Witt–our Doctor of Love himself–shares some of what he’s learned in over forty years as a psychologist and therapist, where, he says, “it’s always about teaching people how to love more completely.” So what does an integral view show us about love? In first tier structures of consciousness we tend to focus on what’s broken. The orienting question is how do I fix it? This extends to our relationships with our families, therapists, friends and lovers, and of course ourselves. We are biased towards looking for problems. There is a wisdom in that orientation, naturally—it will help you—but only up to a point. And then it will hold you back. On the other hand, if we enter into relationship with a bias towards showing up and seeing what arises, more often than not what arises are our strengths and virtues. The orientation here is not fixing what is broken, but asking instead what can we create? Dr. Keith calls this a positive, flex-flow approach. The bridge from a fear-based operating system to a love-based operating system is built by fostering a dialectic between these polarities. As aspiring integralists, growing into second tier structures of consciousness, we want to expand our natural curiosity into those places that keep us from loving completely and welcome the conversation between fear and love. “In higher stages of development you want to turn towards your pain, to deconstruct it until it turns into love,” says Dr. Keith, “and then you have to embody it. It takes courage, and usually a lot of help.” Freud’s seminal idea of the unconscious reveals a rich field of practice in intentional development. A hundred years ago people didn’t get that our psyches are influenced by forces outside of our awareness. But now most of us do, so much so that as Jeff says, “by the time we reach the postmodern stage we can’t stand the idea that there’s a place inside of ourselves that we can’t see.” So we get more and more interested in our shadows. The most difficult type of shadow is the kind that we resist. Defensive states cut us off from our sense of self-reflection and are the main impediment to investigating parts of ourselves that may be fragmented and unloved. Changing our defensive states into states of healthy response is one of the main areas that Dr. Keith covers in his teaching because it’s so crucial to loving completely. To learn about defensive states, Dr. Keith suggests you write down the last time you felt threatened. “What was your amplified or numbed emotion, distorted perspective, destructive impulse? Where was your empathy and self-reflection?” As you write, you may notice the balance of emotions changing. Over time your mental and emotional states start to become objects in your awareness. A little bit of daylight is all you need in there to begin making adjustments from a defensive response to a healthy response. People bridging into 2nd tier structures of consciousness begin to do this instinctively—the noticing, the turning-towards. When we think about markers or qualities of 2nd tier consciousness, we think of a radical acceptance of the human condition and an affection for all of its craziness, including our own. Turning towards awareness of self and embodying a change will put your attention less on fixing yourself or a partner and more on appreciating and cultivating both of your strengths. Like the simple Buddhist practice of noticing, it can transmute your suffering into wisdom and love. Listen to this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit podcast below. Click here to find out more about Dr. Keith’s new self-directed web course, Loving Completely, 5 Ways Relationships Work…or Don’t.

This week Jeff looks at Interstellar, the new movie from Christopher Nolan that explores love as a force in the kosmos akin to the force of gravity. Bringing love to Earth, Jeff comments on the spirit of the holiday season, and how we may be able to create a more generous and meaningful experience.

This week Jeff looks at the process by which historically oppressed people, such as women, racial minorities and gays gain full acceptance in the culture. It’s not just a matter of changing laws, but hearts and minds. This process starts in modernity and becomes one of the main projects of post-modernity. What is the integral view?

In this week’s podcast, recorded on election night in the U.S., we explore some thoughts on the big Republican gains in Congress and what might be next. Also, Jeff responds to Joe Corbett, a critic who published an essay making the case that Jeff, Ken WIlber and the integral community in general lack an appreciation for social justice.