The following was prompted by a question that has bothered me for some time. How can a President of the United States who, by mainstream accounts, is a decent, uncorrupt, God-fearing, devoted family man, and all-around good guy, embrace and execute atrocious policies in both domestic and foreign domains while apparently oblivious to the hypocrisy and double standards involved? Here is my attempt at an answer using the Integral framework of multiple intelligences.
An Integral psychograph of Joe Biden:*
⦁ Cognitive: Orange level 5, formal operational, (Piaget)
⦁ Worldview: Amber/Orange level 4.5, Mythic/rational, (Spiral Dynamics, Jean Gebser)
⦁ Faith: Amber level 4, Conventional (Fowler)
⦁ Moral: Amber/Orange level 4.5, Law and Order/social contract (Kohlberg, see pg. 3)
⦁ Ego-identity: Amber level 4, Diplomat (Cook-Greuter)
Biden’s overall center of gravity at 4 - 4.5 helps to explain what appear to people at higher levels to be grossly immoral ideas and decisions (complicity with genocide, proxy war, interventionism, brutal anti-immigrant policies). At the Amber level, the individual is closely identified with his religious/national/ethnic group. In Biden’s case, that’s Roman Catholicism, patriotic American, Democratic Party, and white privilege. The basic polarity is us vs. them. This explains Biden’s inability to take the Palestinian point of view (or Russian or Chinese), his willingness to send the US military to any location on earth to reinforce American global dominance, refusal to negotiate important issues with nations deemed official enemies, and to bomb any group or country that won’t do as it’s told (Syria, Yemen).
Personality assessment
The foregoing lines up pretty well with this personality assessment of Biden.
In my opinion, the assessment of Biden as a “conciliatory extravert” provides a partial key to understanding his hypocrisy, double standards, hawkish foreign policy, increasingly conservative and brutal immigration policy, and discriminatory refugee policy (racism?). Extraverts are not strong on critical introspection that might propel them to the next higher level of development in the last 4 lines listed above. Biden’s thinking is almost entirely taken up with partisan political considerations on domestic issues and dominated by the “Washington Consensus” (see Wikipedia) and American hegemonic interventionism in foreign policy.
Conciliators are not inclined to challenge prevailing norms or ideologies in any significant way (contrast Ralph Nader, Cornel West, et al.); their primary concern is to fit in. Working across the aisle, compromise, and incremental change are among Biden’s political strategies. This explains how he could stand with Mitch McConnell yesterday as MM announced his exit from the position of Senate minority leader. That’s the same corrupt “friend of mine” who made it his mission over the last 15 years to prevent an Obama second term, to block every Democratic initiative that he could get away with including Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and packing the Supreme Court with ultra-conservative justices.
The country needs bold progressive leaders at levels 5 and above. Sadly, in the upcoming election, no such person will be on the ballot for president.