The Integral Spiral

CategoryPolitics

An Integral Response to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

By admin
In Philosophy, Politics
9 Min read
A

My Case for Rejecting President Donald J. Trump

(Photo: Tabrez Syed via Unsplash)

The Integral philosophy has enormous implications for politics, but not in a simplistic way of pointing to specific governmental structures, political parties, or politicians to support. Instead, it provides insights and methodologies useful for checking on the validity or completeness of other political philosophies. For this reason, you can expect that there is no one “orthodox” response to the 2020 US presidential election, and no one correct way of voting.

It is sometimes even said that Integral philosophy is merely a “meta-” picture of world affairs and is itself “content-free” about how it forms opinions. While I think this is the wrong way to put it, I readily agree that Integralists ought to be careful about announcing that their own preferred political approach is the only correct way of enacting views with “meta-aware” complexity.

Truly, Integralists are not merely empty vessels capable of processing political opinions with equanimity. We are active players in politics, as in all realms of life. We are actors in a play of partiality, owning our biases and preferences even as we seek to creatively include viewpoints that make us uncomfortable.

The goal isn’t 50/50 balance, but even-handed wisdom and transforming a broken world to greater wholeness. Politics is a sort of lending our own individual realizations of wholeness to the communities we inhabit. Integralists have our own partisan and ideological tendencies, but we also seek to step into the frameworks of other persons so that we can learn from them and perhaps try to make them better.

Now let me make clear my own stance in partiality, put succinctly.

I believe that Donald Trump is the worst president in U.S. history and the most dangerous leader in the world. I believe he is horrifically unfit and incompetent to lead. He is an abusive spouse, a mad king, and a despotic tin-cup tyrant.

I also believe that there are basically FOUR important issues that are of dominant importance for today’s world:

  • ONE, the global climate crisis, along with ecosystem loss and enormous species extinction;

  • TWO, the global (and US) income inequality and wealth disparity crisis;

  • THREE, the threat to democracy posed by right-wing autocracies (including Trump’s own threat to the US system); and

  • FOUR, the crisis concerning the lack of world governance and human consciousness structures that are capable of finding solutions to enormously complex problems affecting the entire planet.

On some of these crises, I do not know where the candidates stand exactly because no one has asked them the right questions. But I have taken educated guesses.

On all FOUR of these issues, Trump is, as he would say, a total disaster, the most horrible in history, unlike anything anyone has ever seen before, sad!

On all FOUR of these issues (and others), Joe Biden is preferable, though he is not always a great choice. At least, he is a bridge to the possibility of a better future.

If You Are Still Unpersuaded to Reject Trump…

There is something that puzzles me as an Integralist. I have asked myself: could Integralists disagree after considering the facts in “all levels” (e.g., traditional, modern, postmodern, integral)? Could Integralists accurately assess Trump and Biden themselves at radically different “levels” of ego-maturity or cognition and yet support the man with the lower level of maturity?

In my estimation, fewer than 1 in 10 Integralists who have made their views known in our social media forums support Trump. So apparently, the answer is yes. How is it that there are fellow Integralists or Evolutionaries or Metamodernists who have such sharply contrasting viewpoints? So now let us speak to these Integralists for a moment.

Some Integral Trumpists have tried to explain their views, but I have yet to read a single Integralist’s argument for supporting Trump that was convincing. Honestly, I have even found that there were profound misunderstandings not only of politics but of Integral philosophy. But let us proceed in good faith.

Beyond the four issues already noted, there are additional reasons that I believe make it virtually impossible for Integralists to support Trump’s re-election.

Simply put, Donald Trump is not a well man. So far as I know, he has never had a real psychological evaluation (something, which, by the way, should be as commonly performed for US presidents as physical exams). But independent experts with impeccable credentials have told us that (a) they have enough information, based on Trump’s enormous public profile, to make an assessment, and (b) he is seriously mentally ill.

Specifically, Trump has been assessed as a pathological narcissist bordering on sociopathy. He is said to be totally devoid of human empathy and a pathological liar. Even his own niece, a psychologist, has confirmed these assessments based on her close knowledge of Trump’s family dynamics over a lifetime of observation.

What’s more, given Trump’s 22,000+ lies and deceptions since he assumed the presidency, it is very well-established that his inability to tell the truth constitutes a mental health issue reaching crisis proportions. When the president for all US citizens speaks lies at a rate approaching 50 per day, this is a disgusting and dangerous example for others, one that is degrading the moral fabric of our nation and even our ability to function as a democracy.

Trump’s personal morality is of concern in other ways: his admitted and degrading – and criminal – behavior towards women, the dozen accusations of sexual assault, the vanity, the racism and emboldening white supremacists, the xenophobia, and more. Tom Nichols, a conservative and Republican put it well:

Trump is the most morally defective human being ever to hold the office of the presidency, worse by every measure than any of the rascals, satyrs or racists who have sat in the Oval Office. This is vastly more important than marginal tax rates or federal judges.

There is also the matter of Trump’s physical health making him a poor match for a role as demanding as the presidency. He is known to have morbid obesity and to be in recovery from COVID (which can have long-term effects on the heart, brain, and other organs). The risks to brain health include early onset dementia and even psychosis-like effects.

Trump has repeatedly shown many peculiar symptoms (slurred speech, unsteadiness, etc.) and may have a mystery illness. Trump’s refusal of transparency raises serious questions of competency. While other presidents have served in office while having serious health problems, that was in a different era. In modern times, one should want for higher standards for physical competency.

The Mind of Trump

Respected Integralists who have informally weighed in on Trump’s overall developmental level have all said that he is either at a center of gravity of red (egocentric), amber (ethnocentric), or orange (achiever-oriented). Probably his psychograph would show evidence of all three of these, but I would say he seems to me like he is firmly arrested at red (in other words, the maturity of a bratty child), one who is expert at fitting into amber and orange worldspaces through lies and pretending to be more accomplished and talented than he really is. His supposed nationalism and patriotism, for instance, is little more than a sick joke, a con job he does to win the votes of others. His business sense is more that of a Mafia boss than a typical corporate executive.

And then there is Trump’s apparent low IQ. He refuses to release his college transcripts, and no wonder. Linguists tell us that he uses language at grade school level. He thinks at grade school level too (it isn’t a rhetorical strategy). Trump’s niece has said that he is known to have paid someone to take his SATs. He thinks in conspiracy theories and mocks scientists. He ignores his White House briefings and gets his news from tabloid TV and Twitter.

I am saying all this not to pick on him (that poor man!), or because of so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome, but because his inability to handle cognitively complex operations should be a disqualifier for anyone aspiring to world leadership in our day. This is true from an Integral perspective, and should be true from any well-formed perspective.

No one should vote to elect a person with such serious mental and physical defects as Trump has, regardless of any other concerns they may have, policy or otherwise. Trump would never be hired by a corporation for a critical executive role given these shortcomings, and he simply does not even come close to meeting the bar for re-employment.

By any measure, Trump just isn’t a good person.

And a nation which elevates a bad man as its leader, well … one doesn’t have to be a Confucian to see that that nation deserves the calamities that will surely follow.

Some will say with good justification that Trump is not only a bad man, but a very evil man, one of the worst world leaders the planet has ever seen. They will point to his record of aiding genocide, his nuclear footsie with North Korea, his forfeiting the world’s best chance at averting catastrophic climate change, his inaction leading to tens of thousands of needless deaths from a pandemic, his stoking a potential second U.S. civil war, his demolishing America’s democratic institutions and standing in the world, and even his recent responsibility for 700 deaths of his rally attendees. They have some good points. Perhaps Trump is truly evil.

I have briefly noted the FOUR big issues in our day and then expanded on Trump’s individual failings for those who were not yet convinced, but there are many other issues that I haven’t discussed: the pros and cons of deregulation, health care reform, infrastructure spending, deficit spending versus economic stimulus, the merits of lockdowns versus herd immunity in responding to Covid-19, immigration reform, racial inequities, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and the problem of wokeness on college campuses and elsewhere. I tend to agree with liberals on some of these issues and agree with conservatives on some others, but that’s not so important. Trump is already so far disqualified on the grounds on which I have spoken that we may ignore all the rest.

I hope you will vote for Joe Biden on Tuesday if you have not already done so. Biden is a good and decent man who is well-qualified to begin to repair the damage done by an abominable president, and he deserves to be given the chance to do so. I say this as an Integralist whose judgment in these matters has been informed by the values and perspectives of my own philosophy, and I hope other Integralists especially will consider what I have to say.

Read onRead later

Integral Politics As An Expression of Early Causal Consciousness

By admin
In Politics, Spirituality
5 Min read
I

or: Is Integral Politics Merely a Privileged Fantasy?

To my friend who thinks Integral Politics is fantasy and privileged… Okay, got it. You think integral politics is privileged and fantasy. Let’s say, hypothetically that you had a green politics. Doesn’t mean that that’s your center of gravity (COG), just that your politics are green. You’ve got plenty of company! Even in Integral groups the political center is green or lower. The forum administrator of Integral Global said a while ago that the COG of that forum was probably “green with an ‘open to experience’ personality type”. And green is hostile to higher levels, no doubt about it, and it shuns them from its awareness whenever possible, sometimes by actual shunning (e.g., blocking on Facebook).

So one thing this means is that if you have judgements about “integral politics”, be sure they’re based on an actual, truly Integral Politics and not stuff you’ve heard about in Facebook forums. You might want to re-read the classic texts and a Wilber video or two (there’s a good one where he says that IP is almost impossible right now and no one is really doing it…). Read the position papers of Steve McIntosh’s organization. Read Simpol by John Bunzl. Terry Patten’s New Republic of the Heart book too. There are a few others I could add… That’s real Integral Politics, not the pseudo-integral stuff you see in social media.

IP isn’t a fantasy, but it’s not for everyone. It’s aspirational. It’s basically a light form of “causal politics” — meaning finding your Self in everyone and everything, and in building bridges of compassion and connection and peacemaking and generating creative solutions. Not because of some practical pose you’re taking, but because THAT’S WHO YOU ARE. You are the left and the right and the center. You are the North and the South, the Red and the Blue. No anarchists or disestablishmentarianismists though (just kidding, sorta).

As the Atman (Universal Self), you have no choice but to be an agent of whatever is called for most in the moment, given your particular self’s unique perspective and situation. Occasionally this means taking a revolutionary or extreme pose, if that’s the only way to protect the health of the Spiral as a whole… but it never has to mean mean-spirited partisan sniping and complaints and whining and resentment-wallowing like one sees in so many social media posts these days.

In a truly causal state, there’s no one left to resent! Not Trump. Not Berniebros. Not even Debbie Wasserman Shultz. It’s all you!

And is IP privileged? It better be! In the true sense of the word “privilege”, which is that it knows its place and how to make the best use of its unique gifts and qualities. Privilege means owning your personal power, wherever that might be. In our culture these days, the power is in Amber and Orange and a little bit of Green, but Teal+ has little political power. So in that sense, I would even say that IP isn’t privileged enough!

Green’s attack on “privilege” is a false idol; it gets greens drunk on the high of self-righteous resentment and then once they get empowered themselves they are attacked and brought down by folks with even greater anger and resentments. I don’t think you realize how the green language of “privilege” is generating such extreme backlash against postmodernism out there in the real world. It’s a flawed model for activism and not suitable beyond use as training wheels for something more serious and nuanced. Sadly many people use it because of peer pressure to do so and the dopamine high that comes from having their peers hold them up in high regard as woke. That gets lost as one gets post-woke. IP is post-woke.

IP needs to welcome people from ALL stations into its fold who are committed to our shared ideals which include egalitarianism. Because all have a place, and that’s how it’s always happened in America in the past and what’s most likely to happen in the future (unless we are to live through an anarchic dystopia). IP needs to work towards a post-scarcity politics and in the meantime there are likely to be some bumps in the road.

I just wish that more people who have a green politics would realize that IP plays a valuable role already and could be much more powerful in the future, if more postmodernists evolved into a higher stage of maturity. So long as people are strictly identified with their gross and subtle self, and not the causal self, they will battle each other in a politics of winners and losers. It’s only by shifting their state towards early causal, at least, that they are drawn out of what they knew to be true before into a higher truth, and then they will have no choice but to change their political tune. As Gandhi put it, they will “be the change”, and it will be effortless.

Read onRead later

On Gay Wedding Cakes and Liberty

By admin
In Politics
4 Min read
O

The Fight Over Wedding Cakes Is a Political and Spiritual Distraction

Today’s 7-2 decision by the US Supreme Court concerning religious liberty and gay wedding cakes preserves the framework of anti-gay discrimination laws and really doesn’t bother me. I understand the bakers had a nuanced argument (the gay couple also had a nuanced argument too, hence it was not a slam dunk case IMO). And the truth is, religious liberty is a serious issue and we need to tread lightly when it comes to forcing people to do things that violates their spiritual beliefs … especially when it was totally not necessary.

What’s more, I think it’s by and large a distraction from more important things. The LGBT community in countries where basic legal equality has been won — such as my country, the US — are very fortunate. Gays and lesbians are on better footing than ever before. Regarding gay and lesbian rights, we just have some fine tuning to do. Also, we have to support transgender rights. We have to elect Presidents and Senators who will nominate and approve Supreme Court Justices who will uphold LGBT rights, it is true. But we also ought to turn our attention to doing what we can to support LGBT communities throughout the world, turning our attention to global concerns.

It’s also worth reminding ourselves in the LGBT community that the political dimension is only one aspect to our lives. It is a pull towards togetherness and liberation that tugs at deeper, spiritual concerns we have as a community. Although it doesn’t get a lot of ink in the queer press, basically we are all walking down a road of discovering new models for being Love and doing Eros in the world. Thus, done well, our spiritual quests confront the core teachings of the world’s Great Traditions in audacious and disruptive ways simply by being authentically ourselves. As those of us in theistic-based worldviews say, we are all made in the image of God and we are pioneers in unveiling unabashed and unashamed gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender faces of God for the first time in history.

Source: IntegralLife.com

The political dimension of our lives is just one piece of an integral whole. One useful way to picture all the major perspectives on human nature is the Four Quadrants model developed by Ken Wilber. The issue of gay wedding cakes concerns the laws regulating discrimination by private businesses: that’s something with a home in the lower-right quadrant. (Technically, it has aspects in all four quadrants, but let’s keep it simple.)

The lower-left quadrant includes all the ways that we need to shift the culture, philosophy, and worldviews to make more space for the dignity and flourishing of LGBT people. The upper-left quadrant includes all the ways we need to do “inner work” to heal from our psychological wounds, do shadow work, and grow spiritually into wider and more expansive concepts of our relationship to All-That-Is. The upper-right quadrant includes all the ways that we need to keep our bodies healthy and sound and our individual duties to others fulfilled.

When I speak of Integral Spirituality on this blog, what I’m mainly talking about is including all four quadrants of human nature in our priorities. If we are focusing too hard on only one of these angles, we are leaving important things out in other dimensions in our lives, and this can come back to bite. For example, if we devote ourselves passionately to political change but neglect to have compassion for all sentient beings as an enduring feeling in our hearts, something that the gift of meditation can help to further, then we are likely to encounter burnout. Or, if we get totally focused on our physical fitness to an extreme, we may find ourselves disconnected from the pulse of the living community.

As a footnote, since it has come up today in a conversation or two with libertarian-oriented thinkers, my political philosophy (I call it “Integral” by the way) insists on a balance between individualistic and communitarian principles. There are no strong individuals without a strong society, and vice versa. Since government is inevitable (yes, for at least our lifetimes) it ought to be as virtuous, well-functioning, and enlightened as possible. There is nothing “forced” about participating as a citizen when your self-identity is rooted in a higher, more expansive level of self-recognition.

Read onRead later

Romancing Separation: On Nathan J. Robinson’s Progressive Politics

By admin
In Politics
5 Min read
R

A Culture Warrior Who Says Not to Acknowledge Truth if a Conservative Says It

My friend Emilio (not his real name) says he’s having a love affair with the writing of Nathan J. Robinson, and — being the jealous author sort of guy that I am (not really) — I’ve decided to throw some cold water on the romance. Nathan is the editor of Current Affairs; he has penned an argument to soothe the leftist’s soul.

As Emilio puts it:

I’m discovering what seems to be a love affair with Nathan J Robinson’s writing. This article should be read far and wide. Anything to reduce the disturbing “tendency of people who are nominally “on the left” to make arguments based on conservative premises.” Stoppit.

My initial comment was simply:

Isn’t adopting conservative premises a good thing, if they’re correct? That’s basically what Integral politics is all about, finding the truth wherever it leads.

Ah, but that was not satisfying to my friend, so I promised a longer reply. But still it’s going to be pretty short because Robinson’s article isn’t bad, really. He makes sane points about the overuse of the term “neoliberalism” and some fairly clear cut examples of ways that a couple of liberal writers (Kevin Carey of Washington Monthly and Mike Rose of UCLA) fell down in responding to bad conservative arguments. If Robinson’s presentation of these various arguments is correct, then I think he’s right to feel let down by the liberals.

But that doesn’t mean that Robinson’s thesis is correct when he criticizes the tendency of “people who are nominally ‘on the left’ to make arguments based on conservative premises.” The problem isn’t that the liberal writer is making arguments that take into consideration the conservative premises; it’s simply that they’re not *also* making arguments that re-frame the discussion in ways that are wider and more expansive than the premises offered by the target of their criticism. 

If Robinson were a good integralist, he would know better than to suggest that arguing “from the left” and “from the right” are mutually exclusive options. The argument “from the right” ideally captures the conservative’s attention, lets them know they’ve been heard, and then refutes the flaws in their argument. The argument “from the left”, added on top of what came before, then may very well fail to appeal to the conservative. But it would appeal to open-minded independents and liberals who need the wider perspective. By combining both points of view, a stronger case is made overall for a wider audience, plain and simple.

Why does something so plain and simple not occur to Robinson? Probably because like many people still caught in flatland culture wars he is operating under a sort of implicit  “intellectual scarcity” model. He seems to think that if you give an inch to the enemy they will take a mile, so you have to refuse to acknowledge the truth of what they say whether it’s valid or not. That’s not Integral, and it’s not what is going to get progressive causes through the culture wars with progress made.

I only have one more thing to say about Robinson’s article. Remember, the topic of his article wasn’t strictly about using conservative frames, it was about the term “neoliberalism”. And his main point is to introduce an odd contrast between liberalism and leftism:

I gave a similar example recently of the difference between the way a neoliberal framework looks at things versus the way a leftist does. Goldman Sachs produced a report suggesting to biotech companies that curing diseases might not actually be profitable, because people stop being customers once they are cured and no more money can be extracted from them. The liberal response to this would be an empirical argument: “Here’s why it is actually profitable to cure diseases.” The leftist response would be: “We need to have a value system that goes beyond profit maximization.”

How peculiar, indeed! I have never heard liberalism in any form, classical or contemporary, defined to virtually reduce the liberal mind to that of a parrot with no capacity for flexibility of thought or originality; nor have I ever seen the leftist mind described as a purveyor of Confucius-like wisdom regarding “value systems” (aren’t leftists usually ontological materialists who reduce value systems to epiphenomena?).

Although on the face of it Robinson’s point is not sound, it probably somehow helped him to express a glimmer of a more integrative, transpartisan impulse. He may be implicitly recognizing a growth hierarchy/holarchy (this is good! this is a notion from cultural evolutionary theory!), one with at least two levels: liberals on the bottom acting like a yo-yo to conservatives and leftists acting as the voice of mature, expansive vision. By integrating the two levels of the value hierarchy, the left can thereby integrate both conservative and progressive values, and then we can get on with the serious business of change. I’m not saying that Robinson’s growth hierarchy (if there indeed is one) is particularly well-conceived, but it’s a start.

We don’t need more polarization in our discourse with people who seek progress refusing to see the truth when it’s spoken by their political opponent. Such separation is not only political malpractice, it’s also a sort of lie against our highest nature as interconnected, indivisible people. In short, we need people who can see beyond the illusion of separation to a higher unity… and we need debaters who can perform a skillful jiu jitsu of values and policies, responding flexibly to block weak arguments while setting up a powerful strike in the direction of our best and wisest values.

Read onRead later
The Integral Spiral

Recent Posts

Recent Comments