Engage & Participate
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
OUR YARD SIGN: In This House We Believe • Everyone has a piece of the truth • Left and Right are interdependent • Opposing values can be integrated • Culture and consciousness co-evolve • People grow by expanding what they value • America will grow into a better version of… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1639454430469976064
OUR YARD SIGN: In This House We Believe • Everyone has a piece of the truth • Left and Right are interdependent • Opposing values can be integrated • Culture and consciousness co-evolve • People grow by expanding what they value • America will grow into a better version of… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1639454430469976064
1. How can you claim that the developmental perspective is “higher” or “more evolved?"
How does owning and sharing your story fit into integral philosophy and developmental politics?
This is why a well told story that is shared transcends the ego and includes it--me and we. And why digital storytelling is so powerful (https://www.storycenter.org) and the “I am from” poetry of @City_Lore : https://citylore.org/grassroots-poetry/all-the-voices-our-political-family-trees/ https://twitter.com/braverangels/status/1637959980514000900
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
Perhaps now Institute for Cultural Evolution will reconsider its uncritical support for nuclear power as a "climate solution" given the latest leak of radioactive water from a nuke plant into groundwater?
The leak happened at this Xcel reactor in November, but the nuke industry and "regulatory" agencies didn't tell the public until last week because they said it hadn't seeped into the groundwater. Now, they're admitting the water HAS been contaminating groundwater.
It's one thing to be in favor of nuclear power and owning these inevitable disasters. Quite another to pretend they're not happening and never address them. Not only is that not Integral or Post-modern, it's not Modern to ignore the evidence-based reality of this dangerous, expensive, and energy-intensive technology.
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Xcel Energy To Temporarily Shutdown Nuclear Plant After New Leakage
patch.com
New water from the original tritium leak was discovered to be reaching the groundwater on Wednesday, the utility company said.- Likes: 9
- Shares: 0
- Comments: 1
Oh dear so sorry to hear. Thanks for posting. Many people I respect are supporting. This is important. Thanks Josh
“The less sophisticated one is, the less capable one is of distinguishing between people or objects and the conduct of these people or objects. Most people, in order to improve themselves, are forced to prepare for the road toward goodness by establishing a worldview based on a hatred of evil. This hatred of evil is unable to differentiate between the actual evil and the people who do evil–but after all, “the Torah was not given to angels” (Kiddushin 54a, Sotah 33a, Me’ilah 14b, etc.). Even though this is destructive, since by hating the possessor of evil one hates the good within him too, the general character of man is such that this is the way it must be. However, the ideal trait of powerful souls is the ability to clarify and distinguish. Their hatred of evil is “clean,” directed only at the evil object itself. Because it is properly directed, this negative feeling brings them to the positive feeling of the love of good, and thus the light of kindness shines in the glory of their wisdom.”
— The Spiritual Revolution of Rav Kook by Ari Ze'ev Schwartz
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I love Rav Kook. Thanks David
I think hatred of evil is counterproductive. Rather I aspire to accept reality as it is. Where judgment and condemnation clouds vision, acceptance lets me see the opportunity inherent in evil and address it effectively with compassion.
“In the spirit of man, in his will, in his intellect and in all his appearances, the overall essence of goodness and evil are absorbed, which is revealed in the whole of existence, and there is no describing how great is the action of man on the polishing of existence and its enhancement. Certainly no limited intellect will be able to estimate the depth of this vision in its comprehensiveness, and all the more so to describe its details, and even more so to manage the order of life that penetrates all the frameworks of good and evil, which is straightened and directed to demolish the whole building of evil, and to enhance the building of good, in the (higher) soul of man, in his will, in his inner essence, in his particular and collective aspiration, and not only this but also to spread influence from his spirit to the spirit of the world, upon the real aspiration and its forces, to the point of overturning the inner inclination within the depths of evil to the heights of goodness, from the aspiration of demolition, destruction, darkening and debasing, to the aspiration of building, uprightness, illumination and exaltation.” — One Section from Rav Kook’s Orot Hakodesh: The Depth of Goodness and the Depth of Evil: Bilingual Edition by Rav Kook a.co/a7lRjDK
I thought this was a really good essay to help anyone--especially liberals who are sympathetic to Progressive "Woke"--who has been feeling kind of confused when it comes to "Woke". There's a reason you are. You/we have been being gaslighted for years now. Not a hateful analysis, simply cutting through with great clarity and discernment.
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Of Course You Know What "Woke" Means
freddiedeboer.substack.com
I'd rather use any other term at this point, but can we get real please?I empathize with the intent of being “woke” but the people I know who claim to be “woke” are not people whose reasoning represents anything I would choose to be associated with.
> 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?
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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...Chloe Valdary is such a beautiful soul...
I'm generally a fan, and there's a lot to like here. But I'm a little perplexed by this statement: "To perceive a person as an academic problem to be solved is not merely a technical error in one’s perception. It is fundamentally evil." Overfitting the data, sure. Misguided, counterproductive, partial, yes. Narcissistic, maybe. But calling it evil seems to add to polarization rather than transcending it.
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. ... See MoreSee Less

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...I imagine this analysis (of mental health metrics being measurably higher for conservative/right vs liberal/left) extends to "gender dysphoria". (Its apparently a cultural contagion now hitting young female adolescents particularly). In particular, that the stresses of the biological maturation process ( puberty ) would be more likely catastrophized by those leaning left and cashing in on the higher status victimization gains in the hierarchy of left wing intersectionality ; but in this case the oppressor is biological nature itself (and not some ruling class/race/system). I've been reading some articles about it on the PITT substack: pitt.substack.com/p/headline-when-a-quarter-of-the-class
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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.Always feel so resonant when I hear integral wisdom. Like I’ve heard some of it all my life. Thanks for another wise piece from Rav kook
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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.God's judgement means nothing. Peer judgement means nearly nothing. You be the judge and be satisfied. Quit recycling outdated aphorisms.
A great conversation on race, ethnicity and culture with many integral notes, especially from Chloé Valdary who mentions John Vervaeke! The conversation is much more wide-ranging than the title would imply.
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Yeah - I totally loved this one.
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
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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.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