Over at Thomas P.M Barnett's website is this announcement for a reading group around Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.  If you haven't picked this up, the book is finally out in stores this week, and you need to get it and read it.  It contains the best and most Integral view of global strategy and America's role in it for the next 50 years.  You will thank me later, I promise.

    If you want to follow along in the form of an online reading group... join us and have some fun with it.

    Writers love to dive into etymology as if word origins hold the sacred wisdom of the ages.  While they're usually interesting things to point to, frequently they're just a cheap device to hammer home a point that could be made with more nuance and delicacy if more work was put into it.

    Let it not be said that I have any objections to the use of a cheap device from time to time....

    I was home last night working on some ideas I have about events that could be held in the Integral world, and a thought crossed my mind as I thought about what to say to introduce one of them: Have you ever noticed that integral comes from the same root as integrity?  (For those who already have noticed this really obvious thing, well, please read on anyway...)

    The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Ed., lists the origins of the words integral and integrity as:

Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin integrālis, making up a whole, from Latin integer, complete; see integer.

Middle English integrite, from Old French, from Latin integritās, soundness, from integer, whole, complete; see tag- in Indo-European roots.

    Well, not that there should be much surprise about that, really.  But why am I pointing this out?  What's so important?  Why do I think I'm so clever that I'd better write this one down?

    The point is that once we see Integral philosophy, once we have the "aha!" moment about it, it changes us forever.  We realize that none of the previous worldviews can fully allow us to live in the way that we require, and that the world requires of us now.  Every previous worldview includes much in the way of valuable truth, but also leaves enormously important truths on the table, waiting to be discovered or rediscovered.

    And you know and I know that that's just not good enough anymore.  It's not good enough for us personally, it's not good enough for the culture we live in, and it's not good enough for the world.

    Like Ken Wilber said in this video, "...once you see it, you can't go back.  You just can't get that toothpaste back in that tube.  That's just not going to happen."

    For us, Integral is Integrity.  And Integrity comes from living an Integral life.  Nothing less will do, will it?  Our soundness comes from living so that we're making up a whole.

    Does this change how you view your personal relationship to Integral philosophy?  It changes my view, no doubt.  I've been fighting it, trying to cheat on the edges, hoping it were easier somehow.  We know that sometimes Integral is as simple as breathing in and breathing out... and sometimes it's as difficult as consciously keeping track of all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types -- in gross, subtle, and causal bodies -- personally, culturally, and globally.  And for each of us personally, it involves endless surfing of the waves of agency and communion, of choice and surrender, of involvement and awareness, every day, every moment.

    This stuff is really difficult sometimes.  But we have to do it.  You can't get that toothpaste back in that tube, can you?

    The next several years are going to show how the movement spreads and deepens among a larger population with a broader demographic.  Are you ready?  What are you going to bring to the table?  What are you going to demand of those who build this movement with you, and what are you going to demand of yourself?

    It's getting high time to decide....

    There had been word that I might be sent to Bangkok for two weeks to do some work for one of our projects (the nature of the work is irrelevant to the discussion, but it's well within my scope of responsibility).  That had actually died down, and I though I would be able to get out of going.

    I really have no interest in going to Bangkok, ever.  I mean, you're asking me to go to a city where the first thing anyone thinks of when it gets mentioned is underage hookers and STD's.  So far, when my coworkers have been talking to me about it, the only things they've said are to make sure I "wrap it up" or I'll come back with a "laundry list" of diseases.  I don't even do one-night stands... as if I'd ever hire a hooker in Asia (or anywhere else).  Seriously, why the fuck would I want to go there?  I don't even like Thai food.

    Anyway, I awoke Monday morning to check my email and immediately became nauseous to find out that indeed I did have to go there for two weeks, and by the way I have a call with the customer Tuesday night PST to go over the details.

    During that call, the customer asked that I stay for three weeks, not two, because the last similar effort of two weeks didn't feel like it was long enough.  By Thursday, my manager suggested that I take more of a leadership role around this task and a related one, and turn the trip into four weeks so I can supervise the whole thing.

    So, in the course of four days, I've gone from "dodged it, don't have to go" to "have to spend a month in Bangkok."  And what can I do?  In this economy, how can I say no?  And the revenue I bring in for my team is important right now, and for all I know landing this work could make or break the year for us.  And how would I look at the annual reviews if I didn't?  The work itself is fine -- I appreciate that my manager wants to put me in a position to demonstrate more leadership -- and the customer really is great to work with.  I know that there will be a little bit of language difficulties, but the technical skill of the customer's team is quite high.  I just really wish I could do it from Seattle.

    Right now, as long as I don't think about it, I'm fine.  When I do think about spending all of March away from home, in a country I never wanted to be in, it just makes me sick, really.  I'm just thinking I'll try to get a lot of reading done while I'm there, I guess.

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Update: February 15th, 2009

    You know what?  I'm really embarrassed by this blog post.  I'm really embarrassed that I still react this way to being put into uncomfortable situations.  Foreign travel is difficult for me, it always has been, and although I've come a long way in terms of it, it's still a big challenge for me.

    I'm also not so chickenshit that I'm going to delete this, though.  Whatever.  It is what it is, I'll leave it there.  It says far more about me and my limitations than it does about Bangkok, and if I've offended anyone I truly apologize for it.

    The final story... I'll be there for the first three weeks of March.  The customer has been awesome to work with, and I'm really looking forward to digging in to the work with them.  Two good friends of mine who know what I'm about have told me that they love Bangkok, so I'll be following their advice in terms of non-work time.  I can't avoid it, so I may as well start to get excited about it. :-)

I was a fan, but now I'm seriously a fan... check this out from SNL:

Update: NBC Universal hates YouTube (why get your content out where people could see it?) so here's a different live performance from London:

    This is something I've been thinking about for a couple of months now.  I've shared this vision with many people I know, but it's worth writing down, if only to record it for later.

    When you ask most people, "When did the postmodern wave start in America?" the answer you'd get most often is "the late 1960's".  And there's some surface truth to that.  As we see on Mad Men, the early 1960's were just the 1950's with JFK as President, and math and science in the ascendant because of Sputnik and the Cold War.  There were still enormous cultural structures that served to define everyone's role in society.  In the late 1960's, though, a generation of people managed to see through those roles (although only temporarily for most) and began to ask some fundamental questions about them.

    But I think a better answer to pinpointing the true start of the postmodern wave of consciousness (i.e. Spiral Dynamics Green) is the Beat Generation of the early 1950's.  These men and women really kicked it all off.  And yes, I completely understand that they couldn't have existed in a context without the prior work of philosophers like Heidegger, Nietzche, Camus, Sartre, etc. but their work (and the conclusions one could draw from their work) wasn't widespread in the culture at all.

    To me, the Beat Generation really started it all off, by creating an ethos and a body of art (cultural touchstones) that the people who came after them were able to read and be influenced by.

    And, really, how big was Beat culture, anyway?  I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's safe to say that the Beats, back in the early 1950's, pretty much consisted of a small group of people in each city who would get together and look at each other and finally get to say out loud to another human being, "The world is seriously fucked up, isn't it?  I mean, no one gets what's really going on.

    So, doesn't that sound an awful lot like Integral these days?  Just a few people in each city who get together to talk about their new worldview, right?

    And that's why I think that this moment, this year, is crucial in the development of Integral.

    You see, we're the Beat Generation for Integral.  Cool, man.

    We have the opportunity, right now, to actively shape the development of Integral, and to be able to offer its expanded perspective to many more people.  Or we could sit back and see what emerges from it.  But we have the opportunity to do that without being completely drug-addled the way they were in the 1950's, and to do it with a lot more confidence and clarity and purpose and humility than those intrepid explorers who hung out with Kerouac.

    I think we'll look back five years from now and ask ourselves, "Did we do the right things back then?  Did we screw some things up?  Did we do enough?"  When that comes, I want to know that I did enough... that I might have made some less-than-optimal choices on the way, but that I knew Integral well enough to make some good choices about how to organize local groups around it.  That I came up with and supported offerings that helped the community to grow through the levels if they were only ready to participate.

    The Integral wave of consciousness is going to hit very big in about ten years... and we already have a President who clearly is demonstrating some Integral levels of thinking, whether he's read Ken Wilber or not.  Are we going to take a hand in shaping that wave, or are we going to just let it emerge?  Are we willing to own that the future of the movement is quite literally in our own hands, and that we have to step up and lead within it?  Or will we sit back for other people to define that for us?

    I'm choosing more agency than communion right now, and it makes some sense in the context of the historical moment I think we're in.  What about you?

    Yes, I think I would.  I have an insatiable curiosity about the Universe, and I would love to live long enough to see worlds beyond the Solar System, watch the development of the Integral wave of consciousness, and the one after that, and the one after that.  And if I live long enough, I might see the Cubs win the World Series.  (I so wish I could put "Red Sox" in that sentence, but that ship has sailed, I'm afraid.)

    I have no illusion that an extremely long life is related to becoming happier, although one would hope that centuries of meditation would help to calm down such desires.

    Ultimately, long life means a longer time to serve the world in some capacity, and as long as I still can serve, why not be alive?  Besides, if Ray Kurzweil is correct, we might come a lot closer to this than most people think right now... and I think he's right.

    In one of those wonderful moments where the Universe provides teaching that you need to hear, because you're truly ready to hear it... last night I popped in a DVD from Integral Naked that I hadn't watched yet, and it had this clip on it.

    I'm in the midst of a lot of discussion, with a lot of different people right now, about the balance between actively engaging in terms of Integral development, and sitting back to allow for emergence.  It's just standard agency vs. communion / manifestation vs. awareness stuff.  I'm as surprised as anyone else that I'm personally feeling such urgency about engaging right now.  I think this an important moment in the world... and I'm feeling more confident about my understanding and place in terms of the Integral world.  I'm also feeling incredibly grateful for all of the people all around me who are working to push into the new territory described on this most-brilliant map called Integral.

    Just saw this poster... thought it was awesome. Wanted to share...

    Thomas P.M. Barnett's new book will be released in a couple of weeks... get yours as soon as it's out by preordering it today.

    If you want to know, for sure, what this new administration is about, and you want to start to understand the changes that are going to come in Washington, you need to watch this interview. The most hopeful thing that President Obama has done so far is to choose Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. There's no one I'd rather see working with him right now.