The Daily Evolver

The DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) movement is one of the leading edges of cultural evolution, installing green postmodern values which in part seek to correct hidden power imbalances regarding race, gender and identity in American institutions. My guest today is Diane Musho Hamilton, who has been on the front lines of the DEI movement for over two decades, starting as a diversity trainer i...

Hey Folks, In this Daily Evolver I explore a variety of topics:  A telling difference between green art and integral art  – Learn more about the Lost Birds music here. Yes, stages exist but maybe the spiral is spiked Traditionalism’s hot war on modernity in Ukraine Ghosts: an integrally-flavored tv comedy! This episode is recorded from the live “Fireside Chat” I do twice a month (1st and 3rd...

In this episode, I take a look at three cultural artifacts that present worldcentric ideals of sustainability, egalitarianism and gender fluidity through an ethnocentric lens of good versus evil: Avatar: The Way of Water – James Cameron’s latest movie in his great green myth of Pandora, a pristine planet attacked by modernity (and a few pre-trans fallacies). Bros – A gay romantic comed...

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: Traditional (order and conformity), Modern (secular and rational), Postmodern (sensitive and egalitarian). They all have goodness, truth and beauty to offer, and they all ha...

In this episode, Dr. Keith and I take on two hot-button issues in the culture wars, each of us coming up on different sides of key issues. Hopefully our disagreements will be as illuminating to you as they were to us. Transgenderism: The ever-increasing awareness and practice of gender fluidity, particularly among young people, is fueling the culture war. Does it represent cultural evolution? Yes,...

In this episode, Dr. Keith and I notice a growing attempt in the culture to bring meaning and purpose into the realms of science. We focus on English scientist Rupert Sheldrake, who argues that “science should be set free” from the boundaries of mechanistic materialism. Sheldrake is well known for his theory of the morphic field, an evolving collective mind that all living beings are both accessin...

There are at least three distinct sources of human suffering, all related, and none reducible to the others. They are: Nature—the unique combinations of temperaments and constitutional strengths and weaknesses that each of us is born with. Trauma—the Big T and small t traumas that are ubiquitous in human development, and which leave us more sensitized and vulnerable rather than more resilient. Nur...

Dr. Keith and I marvel at an exciting new (to us) typology system developed by Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton: the HEXACO system. Lee and Ashton researched the popular 5-factor system and identified a new human trait, honesty/humility, which determines the adaptiveness and social worth of the other five. Briefly, the HEXACO factors are: H—honesty/humility. E—emotional resonance/empathy. X—extravers...

In this episode, Keith introduces me to his theory of human sociability. As he sees it, human relationships can be seen on a spectrum of playing and fighting. Playing is a cooperative activity with an agreed-upon set of rules. Sometimes play is pure fun, and sometimes winning/losing dynamics are painful. But any engaged activity under an external set of rules is considered play. Fighting is trying...

In this short episode, I am joined by Jose and Lynn Fuentes, who are producing an exciting conference for the integral community this November in Sedona, Arizona. The event is called Integral: What’s the Future and What Can We Do About It? It is designed in the spirit of a lineage of powerful gatherings that I (and perhaps you) participated in many moons ago. Jose and Lynn bring up golden memories...

Who’s Inside Your Circle of Compassion? – A key marker of consciousness development is an ever-expanding circle of people (and other living beings) who you consider to be worthy of moral consideration. Full episode: Psychopaths are People Too.

The Left’s Split, Embracing More  – The political Left is differentiating into “woke” and “non-woke” contingents – and fitfully integrating into a larger emergent identity. Full episode is here.

Reflections on Death – An evolution-inspired contemplation on what dies and what … maybe doesn’t. Full episode here.

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-...

This week I share our collective outrage and heartbreak over the shooting of the Texas schoolchildren and teachers, and manage to offer some hope that this time it will be different, that this shooting will heighten a social pain-point – unstable young men equipped with weapons of war – sufficiently to transcend political polarities. In this episode I ponder: America’s enneatype, front...

Frances Fukuyama is one of our most prominent political philosophers. He is famous for his argument that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism represent “the end of history,” a thesis widely criticized (somewhat unfairly, as I’ll explain) in light of the rise of 21st Century autocracies, especially China and Russia. In his new book, Liberalism and its Discontents, Fukuyama updates his argum...

Sometimes in our psychological development the way forward requires us to go back, to re-explore earlier stages of life to see what is distorted or left unintegrated. This is the theme of the work of my guest today, developmental psychotherapist Kim Barta. He discusses his approach to personal growth, which is based on the STAGES Model of Development created by well-known developmental theorist Te...

This week I address a listener’s question about a fascinating subculture arising in the environmental movement: the “post-doomers”, people who, as she writes, “hold the idea that the collapse of civilization as we know it is already well underway, is unstoppable, and will be felt by us here in Comfortable Land through disruption of many kinds in the not-too-distant future.” Post-doomers find meani...

My guest today, Steve Banks, is an accomplished, integrally-inspired composer who is about to drop a fantastic new piece of music that is both classical and cutting edge. It’s called  Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio and it will be performed for the first time in London next month. Blue Pearl is itself a fascinating example of integral consciousness arising in an established art form. In its...

Today I’m talking with David Fuller, one of the emerging luminaries of the emerging emergence movement (whew!). David, along with his partner Alexander Beiner, founded Rebel Wisdom four years ago, and has built it into a significant, integrally-informed cultural player, managing to thread the needle between – and beyond – the warring ideologies of traditionalism and progressivism. Davi...

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 conversati...

The sexual evolution continues! This week I look at the controversy raging over the dramatic emergence of transsexual identity and gender fluidity, particularly among young people. I place it in the context of the stage transformations of sex and gender through history, and even get a little personal. I hope you enjoy the episode! – Jeff Salzman  

Vladimir Putin’s ill-conceived war on Ukraine reveals a hidden aspect of consciousness evolution: newly emerging stages are seen by existing stages as a regression. Putin the autocrat saw democracies as weak and depleted. So did Hitler and the Japanese before World War II. It’s an old pattern that we can trace back to the warriors of old, who had contempt for the budding traditionalists beating th...

I’ve received many thoughtful and heartfelt comments on the war in Ukraine from my listeners. In this episode, I share their insights and add a few of my own. 0:42 – How the stages of consciousness are arising “simultaneously”. 5:34 – The shocking strangeness of premodernity and its challenge to modern culture. 15:13 – “The world, even Russians, seem to be more unified and sensit...