The Integral Stage

John Bunzl joins Layman to take a deeper look into Simpol, following his Integral Stage presentation for the Eutopia series.  What was the origin of the Simpol idea?  How does it relate to evolutionary process?  How can it serve worldcentric and healthy nationalist interests simultaneously?  How does it manifest in all four quadrants?  How can it serve global health and flourishing, without triggering concerns about the over-reach or oppressive dynamics of a 'one world government'?   Bunzl is a global political activist and businessman. In 2000, he founded the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) campaign, a way for citizens to use their votes to drive politicians towards global cooperation. It has supporters in over 100 countries and enjoys the support of a growing number of Members of Parliament around the world. He has authored or co-authored a number of books including The Simpol Solution, Monetary Reform – Making it Happen!, People-centred Global Governance – Making it Happen!, and Global Domestic Politics. He has published numerous articles on global governance in the Journal of Integral Theory & Practice. He has lectured widely, including to The Schumacher Society, The World Trade Organisation, The Lucis Trust, and various universities.    The Simpol Website:  https://www.simpol.org/ Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!  https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

For episode 15 of LOVE THE SYSTEM, Layman is joined by Welf von Hören to talk about his work co-founding the company, and launching the app, Potential, which aims to transform users' phones to help them unlock better choices.  Together they explore the potential for technology to help individuals strengthen agency, set and keep intentions, outgame the attention economy, and interface with AI to make omni-win decisions.  How can social media, wisely used, help individuals and communities develop and transform?  What is the role of profiling, and how can already-pervasive data collection be refined and improved, and turned towards individuals' and communities' health and benefit?  For Integral, GameB, and Metamodern communities, what is the right relationship to money, and how can these communities be empowered to really impact the world?   Welf von Hören is the co-Founder and CEO of Potential company, which produces an app to transform users' phones to help them unlock better choices.  He is an applied philosopher, product designer, and software engineer.  He studied at CODE University of Applied Sciences, trained with Human Systems, and co-hosts Humane Tech Berlin.  Personal website https://welf.co/  Potential app https://potential.app/  Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

Layman is joined by Krishna Gauci, a spiritual teacher and a disciple of HWL Poonja, to discuss the traditional and contemporary value of satsang; his experience and understanding of the nature and dynamics of spiritual transmission; the qualities needed in students and teachers to amplify and most benefit from satsang or other 'transmissive' contexts and encounters; healthy, unhealthy, and difficult student-teacher relationships; and much more.   Krishna Gauci was born in Monterey, California, and was raised in New York City. Thirty-four years ago, he moved to the Pacific Northwest. He presently lives in Portland with his wife, Vivian. While pursuing his spiritual endeavors, he has worked as an auto assembly line worker, a New York City taxi cab driver, a cabinetmaker, and a bus driver. Krishna has a background in the practice of Buddhist Meditation and has been a devotee of the Spiritual Master HWL Poonja (Papaji) since 1993. He has been a part of (what is now) the Trillium Awakening Community since 1998, and is a founding member of the Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle and the Institute of Awakened Mutuality. He has been holding Satsang since 2000.   Krishna Satsang website http://www.krishnasatsang.com/  Trillium Awakening website https://trilliumawakening.org/  Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

Layman is joined by Charlotte Cecil and Sophie Allen, the founders of Thrivespring, an organization dedicated to fostering community resilience and disaster preparedness.  Layman introduces his new Ontario Depth Adaptation (ODA) project, and then discusses with Charlotte and Sophie the genesis and mission of their Thrivespring project, and the practical,  political, and psychological dynamics of preparedness for an uncertain future and the likelihood of systemic disruption or collapse.   Charlotte Cecil studied emergency management at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. She has been a volunteer responder with various response and recovery groups, and worked for many years as a security consultant in the UK. Following a life-threatening incident in her early 20s, she became interested in emergency preparedness and security, which evolved into a passion for community resilience. She strongly believes that communities which engage in inclusive resilience-building help create safer, healthier and more cohesive societies.   Sophie Allen studied Climate Change, Development and Policy at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and Environmental Hazards and Disaster Management at Kingston University, London. Her professional experience includes disaster risk reduction and response, sustainable development and volunteer management. Having been involved in a wide range of community projects, Sophie is continually inspired by what people can achieve when they work together toward a common goal.   Thrivespring website https://thrivespring.com/  Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman & Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality.  For this inaugural episode, we feel into some of the commonalities and differences between Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality and Integral Transformative Practice, and John's "religion that is not a religion" and his work around developing an ecology of practices suitable for addressing the meaning crisis.  We touch on a number of related themes:  the creative deployment of mythic or literary figures, from Cthulhu and zombies, to the Centaur, the Minotaur, and the khora;  the importance of wrestling with existential and epistemological limit conditions, and the role of ambiguity in higher forms of rationality; the relation of non-theism to classical theism and atheism; the history of integrative practices, and the 'traps' in conventional practice that can thwart balanced development; and much more.  J ohn Vervaeke is a professor of psychology at Toronto University and creator of the popular YouTube series "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis."   "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" Playlist:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...  Voices with Vervaeke: Metamodern Wisdom about Religion with Layman Pascal: https://youtu.be/bPy6W-c5_9Y  Vervaeke and Hall Begin to Design the Religion That is Not a Religion: https://youtu.be/nl48eFZGRq8  Please like, subscribe, and consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

In this episode of new Education Systems, Layman Pascal talks to Jim Rutt about potential pathways to Game B models of education.  Jim Rutt is the former CEO of Network Solutions. The New York Times once referred to him as “the Internet’s bad boy” due to his reputation for creative mischief. He sold Network Solutions at the peak of the Dot Com boom and then went into scientific research. Jim has been affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute since 2002, serving as Chairman from 2009 thru 2012.  Currently he runs the Jim Rutt Show podcast, and is the gun-totin' godfather of the Game B movement.  Links and Resources   Jim Rutt Show Podcast https://www.jimruttshow.com/  What is Game B video https://youtu.be/HL5bcgpprxY  The Story of Game B video https://youtu.be/Glgcl9AVWbA

Creston Davis, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and Chancellor of GCAS College Dublin. He discusses the innovative, blockchain-modeled education system designed to alleviate student debt and enhance faculty well-being. The conversation highlights the need for decentralized, cooperative educational structures and the importance of promoting critical thought. Davis contrasts knowledge and wisdom, emphasizing the role of mindfulness and community in cultivating true learning, while also touching on the challenges faced in today's academic landscape.

Layman is joined by Rich Tafel, a conservative, gay, integrally informed and mystically inclined Swedenborgian pastor and Washington political operative, to talk about communitarian conservatism, the pragmatic dimensions of post-postmodern political change, the spiritual dimension of the American zeitgeist, the opportunities for a hybrid of healthy progressive and conservative values that just might be able to grow beyond the deadlock of polarized and stagnant modernity, and much more.   Rich Tafel is a transformative leader in the areas of faith, politics and social impact. As the Managing Director of Raffa Social Capital Advisors he matches impact investors to vetted social ventures. Partnering with investors his team provides back office support, public policy and strategic coaching to social ventures. Rich is also the Director of the American Project a new Democracy Fund supported effort to bring together leading thinkers to imagine new solutions to America’s broken political system. The project is housed at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Tafel is also pastor of Church of the Holy City in Washington DC, where he is launching a spiritual entrepreneur hub. Tafel is the founder of Log Cabin Republicans. Before moving to Washington DC, Tafel was Adolescent Health Director for the State of MA and served as Assistant Minister at Harvard’s Chapel.   Professional website https://www.richtafel.us/  Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

In the early 2000s, Ken Wilber began to publish excerpts from his long-awaited follow-up to Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, tentatively titled "Kosmic Karma and Creativity" or "Sex, Karma, Creativity."  In it he was no longer writing, as he said, for the general public; he was writing for serious students of his vision.  That version of a promised second volume of the Kosmos Trilogy never appeared, however, and the excerpts (A, B, C, D, and G) have remained our only tantalizing glimpse of what promised to be a postmetaphysical tour de force.    In their new Integral Stage series, Reading the Kosmos Trilogy Excerpts, Bruce and Layman will take a deep dive into these five thought-provoking and in many ways revolutionary documents, not only to give them some overdue attention and engagement, but to highlight them also for their prescience and relevance to many of the issues and challenges we confront in the third decade of the 21st Century.   We start with Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge, which discusses an emerging integrative tipping point in the culture across multiple fields; a reading of the relational and causal dynamics of the four quadrants through the lenses of Whitehead's prehensive unification and Sheldrake's morphic resonance; revolutionary integral pluralism and an AQAL reframing of Marx; the dialectic of facts and interpretations; and the promise of integral methodological pluralism for promoting transdisciplinarity and deepening holistic vision and practice.   A: AN INTEGRAL AGE AT THE LEADING EDGE Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge (kenwilber.com) Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage

For episode 10 of the LOVE THE SYSTEM series, Layman is joined by Dr. Marc Gafni, the co-founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom and the author of multiple books and essays on integrative spirituality and spiritual activism.  Marc presents his vision of what a planetary politics could and should be, and together they explore the question of AI and the enormous challenges manipulative algorithms pose not only to informed voting, but to sensemaking in general; the emergence of techno-feudalism; the problems with voting protocols rooted in rivalrous dynamics, and the possibilities for liquid democracy or a synergistic democracy; the viability and role of nation states in a globally interconnected and interdependent society; the dynamics of intimacy, and the importance of shared first principles and a shared story; and much more.   Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books.  He is the co-founder of The Center for Integral Wisdom, and a rabbinic lineage holder in Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah.  He self-describes as a “citizen” of both Integral World Spirituality and classical Hebrew practice.  He has been an editor of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice on issues of Integral spirituality and a faculty member of J.F.K. University.  In 2014, Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, with John Mackey and Kate Maloney whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Evolutionary Love.   Professional Website https://www.marcgafni.com/  The Center for Integral Wisdom https://centerforintegralwisdom.org/ Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage