Author: Jeff Salzman

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.

With all the attention on the war and pestilence within trailing-edge cultures around the world, it’s easy to miss what is happening on the leading edge, as developed cultures move deeper into post-modernity (green altitude). This week’s Daily Evolver Live tours a few stories that show how we are creating a more safe, peaceful, reliable, fair and sensitive world.

This week Jeff shares some evolutionary insights and encounters he had on his few weeks of hiatus. He starts with a personal story of his own development regarding communion with animals. He also examines a common sticking point for liberals, exemplified by a widely noted public argument between Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck regarding Islamic violence and Islamophobia.

In a week that has featured an appalling display of the trailing edge of consciousness development — the ISIS beheadings — Jeff starts by highlighting a new, more encouraging emergent that is arising on humanity’s leading edge. It’s called being nice. Also, a good week for the Obama Doctrine?

This week Jeff looks at a new model of autocratic modernity that is gaining traction particularly among developing countries with weak histories of democracy, such as Russia and China. With the economically and politically stumbling West no longer held up an the inevitable example, we can see the appeal — and even some of the intelligence — behind this rising brand of development without liberalism.

The two global hot spots this week are, once again, Ukraine, where Russian separatists have shot down a passenger jet from Amsterdam, killing 300 people, and Israel/Gaza, where longstanding tensions have flared into a new intifada. What do these conflicts have in common and how can integral consciousness help us understand them more deeply?

Sex evolves like everything else, so what’s next? This week Jeff looks at the amazing, creative, pervasive phenomena of sex and how it’s evolving in all four quadrants. What are the roots of our sexuality, where are we now and what is emerging? He starts with a shout out to his favorite new art form and inspiration for this week’s topic: reality TV.

In this week’s call Jeff explores the issue of cultural identity from an evolutionary point of view. He uses the examples of the World Cup and the story told about Brazil by the international media leading up to it, as well as the continuing drama in Ukraine to illuminate how, even in our globalized world, culture has a unique power to move events. His special guest is Ukrainian integralist Oleg Linetsky.

This week Jeff focuses on the situation in Iraq, where the jihadi group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham) has taken over the Sunni area of the country. Their aim is to install a medieval caliphate throughout the Middle East (“we know no borders,” they say). What does integral theory tell us about these fighters and how to deal with their threat to the country America misguidedly attempted to liberate into modernity?