On a political note...

I thought I would say something briefly now that President Obama has been sworn in.

As Robb Smith over at Integral Life has said, I sincerely hope that Obama is something of an enigma in politics: an evolved person. So far in his transition, there are signs that he is. He seems to have an ability to connect with all sides of the spectrum, not by surrendering, or by completely accepting their garbage, but by including. He is able to disagree wholeheartedly with portions of the beliefs espoused by various political and social entities, yet he does not hate them, or even disdain them strongly. Instead, he stresses the commonalities and areas where the real truth seems to lie, and tries to bring those relationships forward in a spirit of "mutual interest and respect."

That's a pretty important characteristic of an Integral person, and an Integral network of societies. Every race, religion, tribe, family, individual has issues. Every one of them has portions of their belief systems and practices that are not conducive to development. However, every one of them ALSO has unique and important pieces of information that ARE essential for development. The trick is to sort out the useful from the useless.

In the world today, there are a lot of Stage 3 (Mythic) societies and people that conflict with Stage 4 (Rational) people. What we are seeing here is a world where Religion is stuck at Mythic and Science is stuck at Rational. It's a nightmare situation, because Science holds back Religion and keeps it down, preventing it from evolving to the point where tolerance develops. Conversely, Religion holds Science back by constantly keeping it on the defensive, sapping all the energy it would normally take to move itself forward.

Islamic extremism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish nationalism... all of these are examples of Mythic societies that are stuck. Multiculturalism, relativism, extreme "scientism"... these are examples of entities stuck in the Rational. The point is to move forward to Pluralistic, Integral, and stages beyond.

I hope Obama can contribute to that by helping to thread everyone together. He won't change billions of people and suddenly make them Integral-level beings. His task is hard: creating harmony between a huge spread of Stages, but I pray that he succeeds somehow, whatever success is in this case.