This is an addendum to the last post I made on “Transcend and Include”. I was inspired by a recent podcast on Jeff Salzman’s Daily Evolver podcast about How To Vote Integral.
When you consider it, how a person trying to make an Integral decision would decide how to vote really addresses the the whole issue about valuing and recognizing the positives in each level. There are few Integral, Second Tier politicians out there, and it’s not certain how much success they might have if elected at this point in time. (Take Obama for example, who was pretty close to having an Integral outlook, but who became hogtied by his reality.) It is also true, as I tried to outline in the previous article, that each level has something valuable to contribute to society and government and, as Jeff points out in his podcast, success often depends on using input from multiple levels.
So, choosing your vote requires filtering the positives and negatives of each level. It is not only the ideology that is right or wrong, but also the way it is discerned. I really like that word as it is a word like judge or discriminate, but has no connotations. Discern. How do you do that.
Jeff’s podcast gives several ideas, at one point saying that perhaps you should chose wisdom over ideology. I agree with that, but I don’t find it very helpful guidance. One thing that I was surprised that he didn’t say was that perhaps Horizontal development and integrity are just as important as Vertical development. Vertical development is the hierarchy of Traditional vs. Modern vs. Post-Modern, or the Red / Amber / Orange /Green continuum that Integral and Spiral Dynamics uses to describe social evolution. But we’ve seen that there are negative traits in each of these, so that’s not enough when making a political decision. Horizontal development is growth within a particular stage. It is often seen as “integrity”.
That Horizontal development can be addressed using many facets and factors. It can be that all Lines of development, such as intellectual, emotional, physical, social, etc., have undergone equal Vertical evolution. Someone can be post-modern at a cognitive line, but traditional or even pre-traditional at an emotional and social stage. (In many cases that would be called a sociopath.) Someone with even development and balance across different kinds of “intelligence” is more likely to have the wisdom that Jeff is talking about.
Another aspect of Integral theory is respect of internal realities vs external ones vs social ones. These are the four quadrants. Certainly, a person who regards and takes into account factors from each of these quadrants is more likely to be a successful politician. And one has to remember that it doesn’t matter what vertical level a person may be at, they can still access each one of these levels and utilize them. A person with a traditional world view can access their own personal inner reality and values, can appreciate the objectivity of the external world and reality, and can consider social and systemic consequences. A traditional person who relates to the world more in this way is going to be a more successful and wise politician than one who does not. In fact they might be a better politician than someone at a “higher” stage who does not have this balance.
Another important aspect of Horizontal development is Shadow Work. Shadows are the denied and submerged parts of our own mind that can act to sabotage our daily activities. No matter how enlightened and wise we may think ourselves, if Shadows are not confronted they can ruin everything. Sometimes entire cultures have Shadows in that there are deep ethnic or cultural injuries that have just never been confronted and absorbed into the main stream. They then fester as cultural hang-ups. Certainly a leader or politician who has dealt with their personal hang-ups or Shadows is likely to be more in touch with the positives than someone who has demons or skeletons, no matter what stage they are at.
Personally, I think that Horizontal development is essential to successful Vertical development, and should be a major part of any Integral mentoring or coaching program. The ones I’ve witnessed recognize this and use it. Insufficient Horizontal development leads to fixations, i.e. getting stuck in certain aspects of development which then can lead to integrity problems. Politicians seem to have a lot of those.
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