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Here’s my latest podcast with Layman Pascal wherein we discuss the idea that value itself can be understood as a form of interior energy that influences consciousness and culture. As described in chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Developmental Politics, value serves as the motivating power that attracts human interest and generates political will.
Also in the podcast, at 19:50, I comment on the recent unrest surrounding the murder of George Floyd:
“I think in general that progressivism is the most evolved large-scale form of culture that has yet to appear in the timeline of human history. But like all of these worldviews, it has positives and negatives. And as it accelerates, as it gains ground culturally, and hopefully eventually politically to some degree, the pathologies of progressivism are exposed. We can begin to see the pathologies of it—the destructive nature of it, the craziness, the totalitarianism of it—more clearly than ever before. … In this mode of the dialectic, [progressivism] is very much an antithesis, you know, it’s gaining traction by its own character of protest and rejection, which is a necessary step to hopefully a larger synthesis that can better include and make peace between these major worldviews.”
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I’m excited to announce my new 9-week online course on post-progressive politics. It’s being produced in partnership with The Aligned Center: https://thealignedcenter.com/institute/becoming-part-of-the-solution/
At last we turn the page on an ugly chapter in our history. While Biden faces difficult challenges, and while his presidency will inevitably have shortcomings, I’m rooting for his success. Biden is poised to take the first steps toward the higher cultural ground our nation needs.
https://www.dailyevolver.com/2021/01/leading-leaders-to-higher-ground/ If you are interested in executive leader development or leadership in general, here's a great episode just for that! Enjoy!
My article just published in Integral Leadership Review: "Why Centrism Fails and How to Overcome Hyperpolarization"
http://integralleadershipreview.com/17747-12-21-why-centrism-fails-and-how-to-overcome-hyperpolarization/?fbclid=IwAR03NT_o57_1aK71EhK7OPy0q0rMv_-C4GtpbCmZeC9eMxHqPZujO58PzaY
This is the first episode of our new series: Post-Progressive Inquires
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What Does “Transcendence” Mean?
“Transcendence” or “the transcendent” generally refers to the people and things that are ultimately more important than yourself or your perceived self-interest. For example, that which is transcendent for you could include: Your family, humanity, your deepest convictions, the environment, God, Oneness, your country, animals, freedom, adventure, art, science, a better world, or anything you consider authentically “higher.” Your personal ideals of transcendence are grounded in the people and things that you’re dedicated to, and might even lay down your life for, if it became necessary. Your ideals of transcendence therefore help define your life’s higher purposes.
The word transcendence is used in this exercise as an umbrella term that is friendly to both spiritual and secular notions of transcendent higher purposes. In other words, you don’t have to be religious to recognize the significance of transcendent ideals. Our attraction to a greater good that lies beyond ourselves—our ceaseless striving to serve something higher and create something better—is a fundamental part of what makes us human.
The connection between your ideals of transcendence, your virtues, and your basic moral obligations—to self, to others, and to the transcendent—is illustrated by the graphic below. The specific virtues shown in this graphic are the 7 fundamental virtues, but the specific 7 virtues you choose in this exercise may differ from these classical 7.
For more on virtues and their relationship with transcendence, see the book Developmental Politics, by this exercise’s author, Steve McIntosh.
ICE is on the right path for approaching deliberate evolution, and in seeing that values hold psy (not psi) energy. In fact it is such energy which accounts for the cardinal, archetypal cores of our egos, as compared to our infinitely differentiated social indentities. However, in post-Jungian terms, more research and theory is needed for better discrimination between the energy of consensual values (eternal verities?) and the dark, dysfunctional and Self=defeating energies of their opposite dialectical aspect. That is the woefull undeveloped, often injured, undifferentiated and unsubtle energies of each ego’s shadow or each groups’group shadow. And it is exactly that aspect of Progressivism psy-dialectic, which in it’s alternately childish and tyrannical modes of expression and behavior, lead to the inefficacy of its moralistic posturing on the one hand and the far scarier and more destructive totalitarian insistence on having its way with non-progressives. It is exclusiveist, morally elitist isms of “one true belief” (E. Hoffer) that is the unhealed or undeveloped deficiency in Progressivism’s psy-makeup which needs an Rx for it to get legs with differing folks, especially true believers of more traditional faiths. (BTW, Progressivism and its excess have been around for at least 150 years here in good ole USA.) DT, 7/21/20.