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Online Exercises
Are You A Developmentalist?
Take the Test
Take a 2-minute test of your political developmentalism, and see your “transcendence and inclusion score.”
This simple test asks you to select your level of agreement or disagreement with twelve political statements. The test results will indicate your inclusivity score, your transcendence score, and the overall extent of your developmental perspective.
Worldview Questionnaire
What is your worldview? Take this 7-minute test and find out which “values frame” describes you best.
By answering these 17 questions you may learn more about your own worldview, as well as about the worldviews of others.
Character Development Exercise
Become a better person through this brief exercise in character development—create your personal portrait of the good.
Answer 10 questions to create a personalized chart of what matters most to you. This chart—your Portrait of the Good—will be sent to your email address as a pdf file.
Community Comment
“I am grateful for the post-progressive way of thinking. It was totally new to me, and now that I have been exposed to it, I think it is the way forward. It is the future. If there is a way out of this terrible culture war, I think it will be something along these lines. I love the idea of taking the best of the different worldviews and bringing them together into a more inclusive post-progressive worldview. This is a brilliant approach, and I am going to try to share it with as many people who are willing to listen to me as possible.”
– Lucas Chasin
Community Comment
“Progressivism doesn’t work without a foundation of modernism and traditionalism. Post-Progressivism allows modernists and traditionalists to feel significant, to feel needed, and to have a foundational seat at the table. The reason I don’t identify as a progressive, even though I am a vegan, spiritual, conscious, burning man guy, is because I feel its rejection of these previous worldviews …”
– Thomas Waterman
We need more whimsey to keep our certainty in check. “Concepts create idols; only wonder grasps anything.” --St Gregory of Nyssa.
Nietzsche's Zarathustra is truly the prophet of this historical moment. We are called to be "free spirits" - not fashy, brawny, uberbros, but playful and light, lovers of diversity and evolutionary dynamism. That is the real meaning of the transvaluation of values.
I love the question of belonging because its roots reach deep to our need to love and be loved. It makes me wonder about ‘being’ and ‘longing’ as two separate developmental tracks. How do they challenge and/or support each other in your life?
What's the last time you had the concrete feeling of "I belong here" or "this is where I belong"?
What was it about that moment that made you feel that way?
Why Model Citizens Have A Responsibility To Become Influencers, by @garysheng
Why Model Citizens Have A Responsibility To Become Influencers
Societal progress is bottlenecked not by a demand for change (tens of millions of Americans are fed up with the ...
open.substack.com
What is Cultural intelligence?
It’s the ability to recognize the mutual interdependence of America’s three major worldviews. It sees how the values and enduring accomplishments of all three of these distinct value frames form a kind of symbiotic cultural ecosystem.
Sociocultural evolution—our collective development—is simultaneously physical and objective, psychological and subjective, and collective and intersubjective. It is the ongoing coevolution of “It, I, and We.”
Here is our second AI avatar video on “Understanding Worldviews." It provides a basic introduction to cultural worldviews in less than two minutes. Please check it out on the Institute for Cultural Evolution’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJ7klDtHvY
Here is our first attempt at an Artificial Intelligence avatar video, titled: “Taking Responsibility for AI”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nij_WWDXHQ
Has progressive postmodernism emerged as a historically significant new worldview comparable to modernity and traditionalism? Social psychologists and political scientists can’t seem to see it clearly. If social science existed in 1790, would it have detected the Enlightenment?
Are some cultures better than others?
All human cultures deserve respect—people have a right to be who they are. But if we want to make the world a better place, we must be willing to acknowledge that some forms of culture promote human flourishing better than others.
The distinct experiences of the intrinsic values of goodness, truth and beauty each convey their own assuring “message of love.” The message of beauty’s pleasure is “feel loved.” Truth’s light and power tells us to “grow.” And the message of goodness’ moral force is “love others”
> This is a recipe on how to transcend suffering. It is a discipline that we, both black and white, rich and poor, republican and democrat, liberal and conservative, millennial and gen z, ignore at our peril.
What do you think, Greg Thomas?
The Problem with Overfitting to the Data in DEI: How Jazz Can Help Us See More Clearly
chloevaldary.substack.com
In the world of data science, overfitting to the data is a well-known pitfall in which patterns in a specific sample are generalized to the entire population. Unfortunately, this flaw also occurs in t...You may have seen Jonathan Haidt's recent work on teen mental health and its relationship to political affiliation. In this piece, Musa al-Gharbi takes the analysis a bit farther, all of which is quite thought provoking.
How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives - American Affairs Journal
americanaffairsjournal.org
In a recent essay for Social Science & Medicine–Mental Health, epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and coauthors identified a significant gap in depressive attitudes between liberal and conservative t...
twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1636263851028017152?s=46&t=ynPF68ZioZDlMvIdxMYk-w
I think this is some elegant simplicity. I wonder whether this diagram could help anti-woke folk make some distinctions that seem to elude theme—and some wolk folks have a moment of clarity and self-reflection
twitter.com
“@mattyglesias “Woke” / “wokeness” / “wokeism” is vague and loaded with baggage, so I used the term “Social Justice Fundamentalism” in my book and defined it precisely. When defined ...I think the categories of Social Justice Fundamentalism and Liberal Social Justice offer both a helpful distinction and an oversimplification or semi-false dichotomy. To Yglesias’s quote, “At the same time there is a school of left-of-liberal thought on identity issues that has stubbornly refused to give itself a name “ , I would say that maybe those left of liberalism have only refused to accept a singular name. Because I can think of a whole list of names like democratic socialist, leftist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anarchist, environmentalist, abolitionist and so on. While many of these left wing subgroups share some values, they don’t share all values, and they often argue about their differences. My hope is that a collection of big coalitions can emerge around tangible shared goals that are effective enough, focused enough, emotionally intelligent enough, inclusive enough and aspirational enough that people from across the liberal-progressive-leftist spectrum can collaborate without feeling like they are giving up or betraying the values, identities and goals that are more specific to their sub-groups.
Damn, that is so good.
I would like to see "Western Liberalism" as the distinction versus Liberalism, since there are very compelling arguments that wokeism is fundamentally challenging the upsides and advances of Western thought. I can see liberal social justice as an evolution of those Western fundamentals.
I'm having my usual response, which sounds something like: "I see where this is going and like it, and also, I like all of it" (except the fundamentalist bits). More accurately, big fan of liberal social justice but think intersectionality, at least as I understand it, plays a role in the achievement of liberal social justice in practice. I'd consider adding an arrow, dotted line or something like that between critical and liberal and maybe choosing nicer colors for the left hand column so we're not unconsciously bastardizing critical theory, which does matter. Useful to see the flow, but think these are still worth integrating and not splitting.
This is really well done, but too complicated for most to follow, it is much easier to label "woke" and "wokeism" as a problem since BOTH Liberal Social Justice and Social Justice Fundamentalism politically have come from the left, and the current movement of fanaticism from the right is to label everything on the left with one broad stroke and as an existential threat to those on the right. Demonization of all of the left is the approach, and "woke" (and green, and sustainable, etc.) is a term that has been successfully weaponized. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/16/republicans-2024-dark-apocalyptic/
Adding this here (posted on this earlier) to demonstrate the detrimental effects of "wokeism" on mental health. As I keep going on and on about (haha), the problem many of us see is not about social justice, inclusion--all that *good* stuff. It's about how all this is being approached in some quarters: the *damage* that is being done. jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls
From one of the links in one of the links in the Twitter thread posted above :-D. This essay is excellent, I think: freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means?r=1emko&utm_campaign=post&utm_med...
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When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.
I recently discovered that Jeff Salzman has reworked his "Quick Intro to Integral Theory." It's a helpful link to share with people who are unfamiliar with integral and developmental politics, and now it's even better!
Quick Intro to Integral Theory - The Daily Evolver
www.dailyevolver.com
Quick Intro to Integral Theory Hi, I’m Jeff Salzman and I’m here to help bring forth the next stage of human history. You can find me on The Daily Evolver podcast and follow me on Twitter (@DailyE...Thank you for posting this!!
Thanks, I hadn’t realized this , either. Shared
A fair and clear summary.
Some of you know that my personal area of concern is the effect of social media. Some recent articles on the topic.
School systems sue social media companies for unprecedented toll on student mental health
wapo.st
The legal action started in January, with a suit by Seattle Public Schools, and picked up momentum in recent weeks as school districts in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida have followed...I always love Jonathan Haidt's--a social psychologist for those who may not be familiar with Haidt--work on cultural developments. jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls
An article by a psychologist/psychotherapist on "An Excess of Woke Thinking May Harm Mental Health or Relationships". (I know many of us are ready to move on from the "Woke" label. I am tired of it, too. Please just go with it. I mean, don't get stuck on the term. "Woke".) I have posted this in the past, but thought it's worth re-posting. valerietarico.com/2021/12/15/an-excess-of-woke-thinking-may-harm-mental-health-or-relationships/
I caught a recent episode of The Stoa where Nadia Asparouhova presented her ideas about mapping digital worlds. It's an interesting topic in itself, but I was particularly drawn to her "map" of climate tribes described in detail here. Not only is it a useful key to understanding the current climate field, it's personally helping me look "at instead of through" my own lens on this issue.
Mapping out the tribes of climate
nadia.xyz
Climate is a gravity well for talent, but why don’t other, equally impactful topics attract talent in the same way? Why isn’t everyone dropping everything to work on homelessness, or global povert...This is really good.
The tootsie pop metaphor is really interesting! And if I’m reading it right, seems to be presenting a deeper look into how these tribes overlap and share commonalities? At first glance, I found it strange to see the tribes isolated into such narrow and particular focuses, but I don’t work in a climate specific field, so maybe that’s why. But, it seems to me that there is an important and necessary area of attention represented in each tribe.
“I hope we remember that we are all human beings, caught up in deeply entrenched social patterns and practices. We are all trying to make sense of a world we did not create. We are all recipients of cultural trainings that we did not choose and generally are not well prepared to critique or to resist. And we all struggle to learn new ways of seeing the world. With mindfulness as a support, we remember how we, too, were once in the position of not knowing what we now know. We work on being humble as we engage others, aided by the awareness that we also still have our own learning and growing to do. We become aware that, even as we do what we can to make the world a better place, we, too, will make mistakes sometimes. We work on creating safer spaces for getting it wrong so that we may get it wrong less frequently elsewhere. And we work to build the will to repair, to reconcile, and to keep coming back to one another in hopes of building resilient relationships and robust community together. As difficult as it can be, we work on bringing empathy and compassion to missteps that arise. We work on caring for ourselves and one another as we reveal aspects of ourselves that we are embarrassed to see. As we do this, one conversation at a time, we are building the trust necessary to be vulnerable together, to share what we see with one another, and to listen long enough for the truth to be revealed—all in the service of deepening our own learning and transformation.”
— The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness by Rhonda V. Magee
I couldn't make yesterday's zoom meeting with Jeff Salzman. Is there a recording I can see/listen to? Thanks!
I don't think it was recorded, Lori. But I know he's doing a "fireside chat" next Wednesday for Integral Life members: integrallife.com/event/fireside-chat-on-politics-and-culture-with-jeff-salzman-2/
Sorry u missed. It was vibrant. We don’t record these. “Safe spaces” for the integrally informed/inclined/interested. Jeff has a podcast the daily Evolver where u can hear a lot of his wisdom
Was this a Developmental Alliance meeting? Never got the memo, very sorry I missed it!
“We need movements that can hold complexity so that we can learn how to reach for one another, even when reaching for one another makes us uncomfortable. We need movements inside of which millions of people can grow and learn, movements where people can come as they are, as long as they are willing to be transformed in the service of our full and complete liberation. We need people who’ve never graduated from college. People who come from fundamentalist religious backgrounds. We need people who think that corporate approaches to solving problems are the only way to change the world. We need people who believe that charity will make the world a better place. We need people who think all these ways, because without being part of a movement that offers them the opportunity to see differently and do differently, they will continue to see the world the way that they do. Without being engaged somehow in a movement for change, where would they get exposure to a different way of seeing the world?”
— The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart by Alicia Garza
Community Comment
“I really appreciated the use of gay marriage as an example of win-win-win policy solutions because it shows how people with different approaches to political issues can still align on values. In speaking to my friends about using this value integration technique I realized that it can be helpful to use value as a verb, rather than a noun. When you look at value as a verb, as in ‘what do we all value?’, it really does become possible for traditionalists, modernists, and progressives to value a lot of the same things.”
– Scott Kirby