2014 has been described as a turbulent year in the media, but there isn’t really a turbulent-free option, is there? Is there anything about turbulence that is good? Also, Jeff answers a listener’s question about the moral nature of red: when is violence healthy and when is it pathological?
EXCERPT 1 THE LESSON THAT IS, AT FIRST, TROUBLING, THEN REALLY QUITE RELAXING
“This is the existential human dilemma: none of us knows for sure whether we’re going to live through the night. There’s no turbulence-free option. I promised I would do an integral view of 2015 so here it is: 2015 is going to be turbulent. Stuff’s going to happen, that’s life on earth. The question is then, ‘How turbulent? In what ways turbulent? Is there anything about turbulence that we can see is actually good?’ With that lens brought into the situation, it turns out that 2014 is certainly a candidate, if not a shoo-in, for being the best year that humanity has ever lived through.”
EXCERPT 2 THE MORAL NATURE OF RED: WHEN IS VIOLENCE HEALTHY AND WHEN IS IT PATHOLOGICAL?
“We would describe something as being healthy if the person or organism is operating mostly at the leading edge of their capacity. For the vast majority of human history, wiping out the enemy is what healthy societies did. The healthy tribe, the healthy leader, in indigenous red cultures is the one who provided the most calories, safety, warmth and security for his tribe. At red consciousness you would feel toward any competing tribe the same way that people in modern consciousness feel toward an Ebola virus. You just kill them as fast as you can and good riddance.”
FULL PODCAST BELOW INCLUDES BOTH EXCERPTS PLUS FURTHER COMMENTARY ON:
- The Taliban massacre of the Pakistani military’s children
- The U.S. Senate Torture Report
- Terri O-Fallen’s insight into ISIS and Al Qaeda
- Seth Rogan and James Franco Interview Kim Jong Un
- On living in a Golden Age: let’s be grateful and heartened
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Daily Evolver | Episode 108 | Goodbye Turbulence, Hello Turbulence!
FULL PODCAST
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Transcript is what I’ve been waiting for- thank you and thank you and thank you!
Like most folks, one of my very favorite past-times at the turn-of-a-new-year is to spend a few days all wrapped up in Year-End Reviews highlighting a whole spectrum of interests. By Far I had the most fun with this podcast, the optimistic overview afforded by the integral-perspective makes for a very informative & pleasant presentation.
So Thank You Jeff (&Brett)
& To All Integralists
Here’s to “Careening Forward” in-an-ever-evolving-cataclysmic-creative-universe
Jeff,
Regarding your comments about Frank Visser (last weeks interview). Maybe I don’t know Frank’s work as well as you do but I would describe Frank differently than you did. I think of Frank as a proponent of integral and a defender of many elements of Ken Wilber’s vision.
QUOTE: Frank Visser who is one of the chief critics of integral theory and of the integral community in general … UNQUOTE
Ok, I’m with you so far.
QUOTE:
I’m one of the big proponents and a defender of integral, so we’re natural enemies in the wild UNQUOTE
Hum. I see you both, in your own ways, as proponents of integral. I seems to me that you two have a lot in common. I’m thinking that Frank, in his way, is also a defender of integral.
Thank you for pointing this out, Wilson. I agree! It’s a beautiful and integral perspective and I felt expanded by it.
How are you recording votes for the “optimistic/pessimistic” question?
Jeff: “We humans have a fear and negativity bias built into our psyches, and we also know that conservatives have more of a fear response than liberals. We know it empirically in terms of galvanic skin tests.”
I am ‘afraid’ Jeff got this one wrong. At least I can’t find I can’t find any such study in the psychological literature. A paper published in 2014 surveyed the literature and I examined those studies. The papers using galvanic skin response did not report fear. Neither did a related paper using fMRI imaging. One review of studies suggested that some researchers make overly critical and value laden interpretation of the evidence.
For links to the papers using galvanic skin response to measure reaction see references 9, 10, and 11 in link to papers in:
“Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology” 2014
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245707/
In this study fMRI imaging showed conservatives had a relatively greater reaction to pictures of mutilated bodies in certain parts of their brains. The study found little differences between the political left and right in the response to other negative images.
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A paper that did use galvanic skin response is:
“The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: connecting physiology and cognition to preferences”, 2012
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3260844/
The measured response were to photographs calculated to get a reaction. There were 3 photos that were expected to get a negative reaction. The photos were described as pictures of:
* a large spider on the face of a frightened person,
* a dazed individual with a bloody face,
* an open wound with maggots in it
With both the fMRI study (the 2014 paper) and the galvanic skin response study (the 2012 paper) one might very well ask what was up with the people on the political left. Where is their heart? Don’t they have compassion?
On the other hand some of this research also shows that those on the left are more attracted to external stimulation, novelty and to feel good; they would be prone to change just for sake of change regardless of risk.
I write this to illustrate that this kind empirical result is wide open to various and contradictory interpretations. A multiple perspective / integral view would see that many such interpretations are best understood as subjective judgments subject to self-confirmation bias.
The way we treat knowledge about the differences between men and women (or between dog and cat lovers!) is a good model for how we hold these differences between the left and right.
Quotes from the 2012 paper
* Research focusing directly on the physiological and especially cognitive differences of individuals with specific ideological leanings is still in its infancy.
* Previous research on the broader bases of political ideology is often interpreted as suggesting that locations on the right of the political spectrum are a deviation from the norm (or even a pathology) in need of explanation.
* Our core finding … suggests a different and perhaps less value-charged interpretation of those holding right-of-centre political orientations. It appears individuals on the political right are not so much ‘fearful’ and ‘vulnerable’ as attuned and attentive to the aversive in life. … Rather than using colourful adjectives, perhaps, the proper approach is simply to state that the aversive in life appears to be more physiologically and cognitively tangible to some people and they tend to gravitate to the political right.
* Seen from this perspective and given the compelling evolutionary logic for organisms to be particularly sensitive to aversive stimuli, it may be that those on the political left are more out of step with adaptive behaviours. The question becomes why those on the left display so little aversion bias either in their physiology or, to a lesser extent, in their patterns of attention despite the acknowledged adaptive value of an aversion bias.