To my friend who thinks Integral Politics is fantasy and privileged… Okay, got it. You think integral politics is privileged and fantasy. Let’s say, hypothetically that you had a green politics. Doesn’t mean that that’s your center of gravity (COG), just that your politics are green. You’ve got plenty of company! Even in integral groups the political center is green or lower. The forum administrator of Integral Global said a while ago that the COG of that forum was probably “green with an ‘open to experience’ personality type”. And green is hostile to higher levels, no doubt about it, and shuns them from its awareness whenever possible, sometimes by actual shunning (e.g., blocking on Facebook).

So one thing this means is that if you have judgements about “integral politics”, be sure they’re based on an actual, truly “integral politics” and not stuff you’ve heard about in fb forums. You might want to re-read the classic texts and a Wilber video or two (there’s a good one where he says that IP is almost impossible right now and no one is really doing it…). Read the position papers of Steve McIntosh’s organization. Read Simpol by John Bunzl. Terry Patten’s book too. There are a few others I could add… That’s real Integral Politics, not the pseudo-integral stuff you see in social media.

IP isn’t a fantasy, but it’s not for everyone. It’s aspirational. It’s basically a light form of “causal politics” — meaning finding your Self in everyone and everything, and in building bridges of compassion and connection and peacemaking and generating creative solutions. Not because of some practical pose you’re taking, but because THAT’S WHO YOU ARE. You are the left and the right and the center. You are the North and the South, the Red and the Blue. No anarchists or disestablishmentarianismists though (just kidding). As the Atman (Self), you have no choice but to be an agent of whatever is called for most in the moment, given your particular self’s unique perspective and situation. Occasionally this means taking a revolutionary or extreme pose, if that’s the only way to protect the health of the Spiral as a whole… but it never has to mean mean-spirited partisan sniping and complaints and whining and resentment-wallowing like one sees in so many social media posts these days.

In a truly causal state, there’s no one left to resent! Not Trump. Not Berniebros. Not even Debbie Wasserman Shultz. It’s all you!

And is IP privileged? It better be! In the true sense of the word “privilege”, which is that it knows its place and how to make the best use of its unique gifts and qualities. Privilege means owning your personal power, wherever that might be. In our culture these days, the power is in Amber and Orange and a little bit of Green, but Teal+ has little political power. So in that sense, I would even say that IP isn’t privileged enough!

Green’s attack on “privilege” is a false idol; it gets greens drunk on the high of self-righteous resentment and then once they get empowered themselves they are attacked and brought down by folks with even greater anger and resentments. I don’t think you realize how the green language of “privilege” is generating such extreme backlash against postmodernism out there in the real world. It’s a flawed model for activism and not suitable beyond use as training wheels for something more serious and nuanced. Sadly many people use it because of peer pressure to do so and the dopamine high that comes from having their peers hold them up in high regard as woke. That gets lost as one gets post-woke.

IP needs to welcome people from *all* stations into its fold who are committed to our shared ideals which include egalitarianism because all have a place, and that’s how it’s always happened in America in the past and what’s most likely to happen in the future (unless we are to live through an anarchic dystopia). IP needs to work towards a post-scarcity politics and in the meantime there are likely to be some bumps in the road.

I just wish that more people who have a green politics would realize that IP plays a valuable role already and could be much more powerful in the future, if more postmodernists evolved into a higher stage of maturity. So long as people are strictly identified with their gross and subtle self, and not the causal self, they will battle each other in a politics of winners and losers. It’s only by shifting their state towards early causal, at least, that they are drawn out of what they knew to be true before into a higher truth, and then they will have no choice but to change their political tune. As Gandhi put it, they will “be the change”, and it will be effortless.

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