David and Keith take a shot at unpacking the rationale of voters, and why almost all demographics, except college-educated women and those 65+, shifted to the right.
I found the discussion helpful in perspective-taking, though I’ve always had trouble with the Integral community’s “talking heads” love of complicating things. The dialoguers conclude that the reason for the swing to the right was that people were tired of the feeling of being force-fed by the Left what values to embrace. My own angle adds the idea that people prefer open, paternalistic coercion from a transparent sociopath to paternalistic covert coercion from the Left that seems to be leading to anomy and nihilism.
A friend wondered if was often simply a case of people imagining they were voting against inflation.
With all the revelations happening. How well do you think the Integral narratives over the decades will hold up? It will be seen as infected with Boomeritis!!! Easy to label the issue. Hard to heal if Boomeritis is there. Who’s going to tell you guys. Robb certainly won’t.
Death is the universal cure for all things, including boomeritis.
Boomers ultimately will not be able to deny, deflect and diffuse death.
Gen X is a strong but numerically small demographic. We wont swing elections and our best efforts are on the “Musk” front, fighting in spheres other generations dont understand yet are highly infuential. As an example, in the psychology and sociology of the “manosphere”. Right now, the right owns the conversation in the manosphere while the left is oblivious to how important that diologue is for the present and future.
If the left wants to win the millennial vote, they absolutely have to accept they took a wrong turn with feminism in the mid 1990s and did their own deny deflect and diffuse until it reached absurd levels in the present day.
I think what we see today is men as a block, not just white men but men in general saying “enough is enough”.
Yes, the right has twisted the narrative - but the left has abdicated any semblance of a remotely reasonable narrative in spheres where men go to interact. The left cannot continue to demonize manhood and also expect to get the majority of male voters. Men tolerated it for 40 years but not when it got - frankly - stupid.
There are very few men like myself who see this, but who also see that the right isnt the answer, either. This is why i say manosphere influencers like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, etc are stuck themselves and dont know the solutions to the problems they describe.
I see the problems they describe and see they are problems, but reject the “solutions” they offer as being worse than the problems.
If the left cannot come to terms with a healthy version of manhood that is not dictated to them by feminism, there will always be the chance that men as a block will vote for an addle brained lunatic, which is what happened.
Regarding Integral Theory - this is deeper than “making meaning”. This is core identity stuff. Part of the false narrative is that primal masculinity is an option and can be denied without consequence. It isnt and cant. Primal, archaic, survival mascilinity has to be “integrated”, so to speak by “I, we, them and it”, for example. My own vocabulary is the “stern father” archetype has to be forgiven then accepted. This was not done by “we, they, it” and since it hasnt been, Teal gets really messy and overly dominated by a anti-masculine green or at best buried masculine.
From the video:
“People voted differently than you, but its not because they are ignorant assholes”
As long as Integral thinks like this, it will not be able to understand much less adress vast swaths of humanity.
Instead, recognize and accept that many people are assholes. They may even enjoy being considered an asshole. The integration is not seeing assholes as “less than”. Accept assholes in all their assholery. Many people are retarded. The solution is not to refuse to recognize it, but to not look down on them as less than onself.
There are certain industries where its perfectly ok to call someone an asshole or a retard. There is a bond between people when this interaction is between equals rather than one feeling they are superior to the other. Its a bond that people cant understand who dont want to offend but at the same time look down on the other as inferior.
This is the great conundrum that green posing as teal cant figure out
Good one Ray. I learned somewhere along the line that it was more politically correct to characterize someone as “acting like an asshole,” rather than type-casting them in concrete “assholery,” as “acting like” allows for the possibility of change… but then there does seem to be a lot politically correct (and smug about it) “assholes” about, and somehow (at the asshole level?) it feels more satisfying deep down to imagine them incapable of changing :).
But here is the point: the politically correct believe deep down that being an asshole is wrong. They judge the asshole harshly and then do a spiritual bypass so they can feel good about themselves “I judge asholes harshly as being less than myself … but i dont actually call PEOPLE assholes, only their actions.” This gives them the ability to judge while pretending they are not by using clever verbal sleight of hand.
The problem we see manifested is that the assholes feel the judgement and are not tricked by this bait and switch. This trick only works with other politically correct people. What an asshole sees in the politically correct person is a coward who feels something but is too cowardly to actually say it, and then dishonestly tries to make themselves feel even more superior. A person with conviction and courage would, in the eyes of the asshole, just say “you’re an asshole”. The asshole would then respect tbem for speaking their mind truthfully and they could then move onto being drinking buddies.
The true-blue asshole doesnt really care if he is called an asshole. He might even wear it as a badge if honor in a community of assholes.
Try it on a general contractor, for example. Any general contractor will get a big goofy smile of brotherly love if you shout at them “youre a effin asshole, you know?”
This is a fundamental inability of green (often presenting as teal) to subsume and include. Instead it excludes, ignores and judges. This is why there is a near global and universal rejection of “PC” except among academics and why academics cant make heads or tails out of what is happening since at least 2015.
Inclusion means including what the thing actually is. Inclusion does not mean changing something to what it isnt and including that instead.
What about brining forward the best of each level, in particular moral development which is strong in traditonal values. How can we clean up and bring forth something with the fine qualities of traditonal and create something new? ~ thank you for the post ~
This is David Arrell here, from this thread’s “What Were They Thinking?” discussion with Keith. I’m glad to see some robust discussions unfolding here on the IL platform in response to our conversation.
I’d be happy to take any additional questions, comments, or critiques here that you’d like to me to consider. Feel free to post anything that comes to mind.
I’ll check in when I can and share my best thoughts on it.
From the hip: I’m imagining a scenario if this or that “secular guru” (somehow images of John Vervaeke, Daniel Schmachtenberger pop up) were to sit before a bone fide “Zen Master,” the roshi would simply say, “too much thinking!” and kick them back to the zendo.
Highly intellectualized secular gurus seem to miss something (in my view) of the deeper grounding that comes from a different place than thought. Moreover, much of what Integral Life has to offer these days continues to add to, double down on that over-intellectualizing (though I lean-in a bit whenever Keith Martin-Smith makes an appearance … and BTW, Keith, glad you’re at least working on your f-bombing!).
I do appreciate your nuanced analysis of this “What were they thinking?” dialogue, as it helps in understanding the various rationale behind our choices. I’d have to go back and watch it again to see if unnamed and unconscious primal fear at all levels was mentioned as a driver of votes…
Hi Sidra, thanks for sharing your “from the hip” thoughts, I appreciate the engagement.
I’d agree with your Roshi response to almost all the current podcasting luminaries, but will point out that John Vervaeke is a long-time practitioner of Tai Chi and Qi Gong, among other embodiment practices. His 4 E Cognition framework (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, and Extended) is very explicitly not confined to the space between our ears.
To your point of how unconscious forces may inform our rationales, I would imagine that they do so in all kinds of powerful and, in at least some sense, inherently unknowable ways. In fact, the 3rd Order individual is largely driven by all kinds of unconscious allegiances to things they don’t even know, much less understand.
Finally, and this partially addresses an earlier comment about some people just being “assholes,” this conversation between Keith & I was largely a follow up to a previous one where I shared the Structure/Content Fallacy framework. The “voter choice” situation was a great opportunity to walk through that framework to show how individual (Structural) development has its own logic and can fairly easily support very different understandings of the world (Content) using the same deeper meaning-making system.
A secondary goal was to illustrate how the SCF-informed lens can support the idea that people CAN see the world very differently than we do, and in ways that are perfectly sane, rational, and morally good WITHIN the constraints of their Structural altitude and Contextual cultural content streams. The question for ourselves then becomes “how do they understand their actions in the world?”, which of course, still leaves plenty of room for all kinds of assholery to manifest in all the usual ways.
In short, the talk was a very quick walk through at a 30,000 foot view of a much more nuanced and complex topic (individual development in the context of cultural forces) using the extremely polarized election rhetoric as a starting point to invite more curiosity and consideration.
