Institute for Cultural Evolution

[Balder]

Steve McIntosh, Carter Phipps, Elizabeth Debold, and Michael Zimmerman have recently launched the Institute for Cultural Evolution, aimed at influencing public policy from an "integral evolutionary" perspective.  I heard them introduce their mission a few months ago at a local event, but the presentation was fairly general and introductory.  (I may be going to an event this evening where I'll have a chance to talk to them in person; if so, I'll report back on that later this weekend.)

From their website:

The Institute for Cultural Evolution ("ICE") is a start-up nonprofit think tank organized around the goal of applying groundbreaking insights taken from Integral philosophy, developmental psychology, evolutionary theory, and the social sciences to help create significant forward movement in the evolution of the American political landscape. Our plans to produce cultural evolution will be tested through a series of focused Campaign Plans. Our first two campaigns target the issues of climate change and political gridlock. These campaigns for cultural evolution include detailed persuasion strategies and media tactics for achieving realistic, measurable goals that will represent real progress on these pressing challenges.

ICE's Political Campaign Plans, together with our Business Plan proposal and related documents are available for downloading below: 1) Introductory Cover Letter; 2) Business Plan; 3) Campaign Plan for Climate Change Amelioration; 4) Draft Campaign Plan for Reducing Political Polarization; 5) White Paper: Premises and Principles of the Evolutionary Worldview; and 6) Media Release.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Balder said in this post in response to Mackey and Whole Foods:

"Interesting; I'd heard some of these criticisms before, but perhaps not so forcefully made.  Mackey, of course, is one of the current big backers of the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE).  That may have a chilling effect ..."

Recall this post from the global capitalism thread:

Joe Corbett has an interesting Integral World response to the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE). It seems ICE blames pomo for not getting along with modernist capitalism, nor recognizing all its wonderful benefits. It those MGMs would just get over their dysfunction and integrate modernist capitalism things would work out just fine. Corbett, to his credit, berates ICE's Polyanna attitude that the corporate-industrial-military complex can be "swept aside" once pomo gets on track and we can get on with the business of selling evolutionary theory. He notes that this is incredibly naive, since it misses the power structure of that massive complex and how it limits the very possibilities of action of the underclass, lest they be out of a job and die. And all the while meanwhile ICE touts individual initiative (more like obsession) and material consumption as positive values we should "integrate" is some kind of next gen survival of the fittest. All of this is explicit in the thread criticisms above.

[Layman Pascal]

One of the difficulties here is that we tend to take people's self-claims at face value. Thus people who call themselves conservatives are readily conflated with our attempt to define the Right Wing. An integral approach must apply principles which separate healthy from unhealthy and, most importantly, intelligent group protocols from unintelligent group protocols. But this must operate from a clear (and not merely colloquial) definition of the levels and types that are involved.

To whit -- the Republican Party has not, at any time in the recent past, behaved in a conservative manner.  In fact they are big spenders with an government intervention agenda... provided it operates from their level. I am more inclined to classify them as generally ETHNOCENTRIC LIBERALS and situate them, in American politics, in opposition to the GLOBALIST CONSERVATIVES which tend to predominate in the behaviour of the Democrats. 

The tendency to view polarization and cooperation of two large groups as if they de facto signified the right & left wing of the same plane is not yet an integral approach. However, allowances must be made for bullshitting people into accepting your ideas by flattering their self-image. 

Healthy and Unhealthy, Right and Left, and Stages must be used to locate any political force prior to the deployment of a strategy.

I would hope that integral political interventions pay increasingly strong attention to the procedures by which collective intelligence is optimized in the lower right quadrant. Over attentiveness to the interiors of politicians and the shared "mood" of politics is easy, seductive and has been tried countless times. Unless the actual procedures of voting, both generally and within administrative and legislative bodies, are modified there is not a lot of room to get different results out of the political machine.