Welcome to the What NOW Conference Media Page. Clearly we are in new territory as we try to personally and culturally navigate the current reality show. As Ken has said, it is the perfect time for the Integral Life community to come together over New Years to explore what are our responses are to all that is arising.
Here you can find a sampling of some of the themes and ideas we will be exploring at the What Now conference this coming New Year in beautiful Colorado. We are going to go very personal in our inquiry. What is attracting your attention, how is your work and practice a response to what’s arising in you and what shifts are you noticing as a result of your Integral perspective.
Some of these themes are very big wicked problems and it is important to address them, but we also want to become aware of how they impact us personally. Our extraordinary presenters will lead us in practice and exercise designed to really dive deeply into these cultural currents.
We will be adding more content to this page as we progress towards the conference, so keep checking back for the latest from our What NOW presenters. Enjoy!
Ken Wilber
The election of Donald Trump is an evolutionary self-correction that has been decades in the making, a backlash against the failure of the leading edge of consciousness–postmodernism and pluralism–to acknowledge the lie underlying the progress they’ve pursued: it’s not equal, it’s not consistent and it doesn’t make room for everyone. But a new integral force is emerging that can move beyond the narcissism and nihilism of political correctness to offer genuine leadership and a move towards a developmental-based wisdom of greater wholeness.
Jeff Salzman
Jeff Salzman takes a look at how integralists can understand and relate to the fight over pre-modern, modern and postmodern conceptions of truth, and how a new integration of the three can help us build a more authentically inclusive world.
Robb Smith
Populism is on the rise. Too many people feel left out of the march of prosperity and more people than ever believe that the future will not see their kids better off than they are today. The rich get richer while the middle class remains stagnant. There is a growing and robust backlash to political correctness and immigration. And artificial intelligence threatens to make the coming jobs war even worse than previously anticipated…
John Montgomery and Robb Smith
In a world where corporations often act like psychopaths and seem steered by barely more than greed and avarice, is it possible to transcend their sociopathic pursuit of profit and bring more care and consciousness to our economic system? Listen as corporate lawyer and conscious business leader John Montgomery explains how we arrived at the corporate oligarchy in which we now find ourselves, and how we might be able to steer ourselves toward a more sane and sustainable future.
Robb Smith
Rising populism and the election of President Trump are symptoms of massive irresilience that has been building in the U.S.-led world state since 1945, and may reflect the end of the fourth cycle of economic hegemony of the past 800 years. The Great Recession of 2008 was just a tremor. As we wind toward the coming global breakdown–a great release that is beginning to force innovation, turmoil and threat of regression across every aspect of our lives–we desperately need leaders with the whole-systems, integrative thinking who can guide us to a deliberately-developmental world.
Ginny Whitelaw
Ginny Whitelaw offers some valuable advice on how presence, resilience, and centeredness can help us illuminate a better path forward in the midst of the “post-truth” collapse.
John Bunzl
In an age of global crisis, why does the idea of global governance remain a such a taboo topic? Here John Bunzl posits a civic line of development, suggesting only those possessing a worldcentric level of civic awareness can fully comprehend global problems and the need for binding global governance.
Gail Hochachka, Paul Van Schaik, and Ken Wilber
How might the integral framework help facilitate healthy growth and sustainabilty in developing societies around the planet? Gail Hochachka and Paul van Schaik talk to Ken Wilber about how Integral Without Borders is actively working to meet people’s struggles and challenges head-on and help them to gain more perspective and better adapt to their present circumstances. Gail, Paul, and Ken also discuss the earth-shaking election of Donald Trump, the social trends that carried him into the Presidency, and how his election might impact the further unfolding of integral consciousness around the world.
Jeff Salzman
Steve Bannon is Donald Trump’s favorite philosopher. Trump sometimes jokes that he doesn’t know “whether Bannon is alt-right or alt-left,” but either way Bannon has given voice to the visceral impulse of populist nationalism that Donald Trump has expressed for decades. So what does Bannon actually believe? Listen to find out!
Jim Garrison and Ken Wilber
Jim Garrison and Ken Wilber offer a post-election report on the rise of Donald Trump and the implications for the future, as well as the many failures among the liberal leading edge that contributed to Trump’s election.
Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber explains why the path of “waking up” (spiritual awakening) needs to be complemented by the path of “growing up” (psychological maturity) in order to renew and replenish our understanding of enlightenment in the 21st century.
Amir Ahmad Nasr
Amir tells his own story of coming to a more integral Islam, finding new ways to embrace and express this rich spiritual lineage while helping to carve a new path beyond the fundamentalist extremism so often associated with Islam in today’s world. This piece is heavily adapted from Amir’s book, My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind–and Doubt Freed My Soul.
Gail Hochachka
Last week, Trump stated his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement regarding climate change. Trump announced that the USA will withdraw based on the sense that it will negatively affect US jobs. To explore this, I turn to Integral Theory, which is a comprehensive transdisciplinary theory developed by contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber and applied by others across several professional fields. We can draw upon these ideas regarding the dynamics of social groups to make sense of Trump’s exit from the Paris agreement.
Michael Zimmerman
These days, discourse about intelligent robots—thinking machines—is as widespread as discourse about zombies. Both have been the subjects of recent bestsellers, which are the basis of two forthcoming films. Popular culture’s depiction of humankind under attack by either the undead or by the never alive (autonomous machines) suggests widespread anxiety about and fascination with technical developments that may generate a future out of human control (as if the future ever were under our control!)
Corey deVos
It seems clear is that we are seeing a general pattern of accelerated returns in at least four irreducible dimensions of our lives. It is a “singularity in all four quadrants” — Post-Humanism, Post-Scarcity, Post-Irony, and Post-Metaphysics. Let’s take a brief look at each of these dimensions.
