WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT: So how would you describe integral politics?

Steve McINTOSH: There’s a variety of ways to describe integral politics, but one way is that it is the political platform or agenda of those who share the values of the integral stage of consciousness. Integral politics examines how those values are applied to the political arena.

WIE: What distinguishes integral politics from the politics of left and right, and the way that we normally think—conservative versus liberal?

McINTOSH: It’s actually a blind spot in the media to have a political discourse that’s framed by that left-right paradigm. It’s a worn-out category that needs to be discarded. Integral politics transcends the politics of left and right and provides a whole host of amazing new political insights, both domestically and internationally. Among other things, it shows us more clearly how these historical stages of development are still quite active and influential in the world today.

WIE: So where would President Bush be in terms of these stages of consciousness?

McINTOSH: Like almost all prominent national politicians, Bush’s center of gravity is modernist, just like Bill Clinton’s center of gravity is modernist. So when we speak about left and right, we are mostly speaking about what is going on within modernism.

Now Bush, although a modernist, is heavily influenced by traditional consciousness. And Clinton, though also a modernist, is heavily influenced by postmodern consciousness. According to social scientist Paul Ray, about fifty percent of the U.S. population has a modernist center of gravity, so that’s where the majority of the political debate is occurring. It’s within that milieu. But traditionalism and postmodernism are both pulling on the modernist majority to capture its allegiance—traditionalism with the Republicans and postmodernism with the Democrats.

WIE: How do you think integral politics will change the political landscape?

McINTOSH: Well, as we look at this spiral of development, we see that each stage of consciousness and culture has emerged partially in the crucible of politics. What I mean is that each significant new worldview is cocreated by the politics—the politics help define the worldview and the worldview defines the politics, or the specific type of political organization that goes with it. So the political expression of the values of each emerging worldview is what draws people to the higher level of consciousness that they can see demonstrated in this higher level of politics.

Looking at history, for example, we can see this with modernism and the European Enlightenment. Its new values of equality and freedom and rule of law were brought to bear through the advent of democracy as a new transcendent form of political organization. And then with postmodernism, we can see how it championed the new ideals of civil rights, women’s rights, the rights of ethnic minorities, and, later, gay rights. We see in postmodernism the political agenda of righting the wrongs of modernism, bringing an end to colonialism, and ending the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. So the twin political agenda of human rights and peace was the showcase for the higher transcendent values of postmodernism.

So now the integral worldview, because it is a historically significant new worldview, can be expected to do something similar politically. There’s a new understanding of the internal universe, which recognizes that political progress, at least in our time, can be made most directly by raising consciousness. So when we talk about achieving any tangible, concrete political agendas, we can see that the best way to achieve those is by raising consciousness within the body politic.

WIE: In your book, you suggest that each succeeding level or stage of consciousness along the spiral of development has given rise to different types of political structures. Could you describe the different structures?

McINTOSH: Yes, we can see that in history. Each distinct stage of consciousness—tribal, warrior, traditional, modern, postmodern, and now integral—has a corresponding political form of organization that almost always goes with it. We see that the tribal stage of consciousness produces a tribe and the permanent authority of a chief. Warrior consciousness, whether we’re talking about the early Vikings in Europe or the Incas in South America, retains many of the political characteristics of the tribe, but now the tribe is based on conquest, so you have early forms of empire building. Then the traditional stage of consciousness produces a feudal kingdom; indeed, no matter what kind of traditional consciousness we are talking about, East or West, feudalism is a political system that goes with it. That’s not to say that feudalism is an ideal system by any means, but the point is that feudalism is appropriate for traditional consciousness. Then with modernism, we have democracy and the multiethnic nation-state, and this is still basically the de facto system of global politics today—a world of competing nation-states.

Then with postmodern consciousness, we have a political organization that we might characterize as a form of social democracy, which we see, for example, in Scandinavia. There the welfare state is much more developed than it is in the United States; however, that system of government works because you have relatively homogeneous populations in Scandinavian countries. There is also a high level of education and therefore a high level of human capital. You don’t have huge segments of the population that are at premodern stages. And so, in narrow circumstances, a social democracy is a really highly evolved form of political organization, but it’s only one rung on the ladder. I think that to solve the problems of places like the United States, and indeed, the world, you need a stage of organization beyond that—one that can simultaneously accommodate all of the rungs on the ladder. So what type of government is associated with the integral stage? I’m suggesting that it points to the eventual emergence of an integrally informed, integrally structured, democratic federal world government.

Integral World Government

WIE: You’ve written extensively about what this kind of integral world government might look like. Why do you feel it is so needed in the world today?

McINTOSH: Increasingly, global problems call for some kind of supranational federation to deal with them in a realistic way. We need something that can achieve the key goals of providing international cooperation on environmental regulations, democratizing the rules of the global economy, providing enforceable human rights, and eventually bringing greater peace, justice, and prosperity. Also, as the modern world becomes increasingly international in scope and economically interdependent, it cannot be adequately defended by limited treaty organizations or individual nation-states acting unilaterally. So if you’ll pardon the cliché, it is an idea whose time has come. 

So what I’m envisioning is a limited form of federal union among modern democratic nations. It could also include other nations that could have various forms of probationary status, similar to what the European Union is doing.

WIE: There is tremendous resistance to the idea of giving up national autonomy to a global governing body. Some feel it’s dangerous.

McINTOSH: Yes, many people intuitively feel that the answer is less government, not more. And I think it’s worth saying that all of these are temporary stages. I think in the distant future when consciousness has evolved much further, we’ll be able to do away with most forms of government. So this proposal is a means to an end. It’s scaffolding for further evolution, not an end state in and of itself.

Some also feel it’s dangerous because too much of the world’s population is at premodern levels of consciousness. And it’s true that even modernist consciousness is not moral enough or worldcentric enough to be able to undertake such a project and do it without corporations taking over or without creating some kind of horrific despotism in the process.

But if we look at history, if we look at the emergence of modernism and the democratic institutions that came with it, there were safeguards built into the structures of democracy. For example, look at the U.S. Constitution—there are checks and balances, separation of powers, etc. It’s a legal structure, and for a population that’s willing to be voluntarily bound by a legal structure, one that is largely modernist and above, a constitution provides for a functional democracy. Despite all of the setbacks, problems, and malfeasance that we’ve seen in American history, it’s continuing to function in at least moderately acceptable ways. So these same safeguards can be evolved to an even higher level in a world federation. And just as Enlightenment philosophy was essential in the creation of the structure of the U.S. Constitution, integral philosophy, similarly, will be essential in helping structure a world federation as one that would be informed by the knowledge of these stages of development.

Now the biggest problem facing any kind of proposed constitution for a world federation is the uneven development of consciousness and culture across the world, which means that a one-person, one-vote structure is going to be problematic if you involve the predemocratic populations of the developing world. That would give them eighty percent of the vote, which would have the tendency to redistribute wealth toward the larger populations, whose level of development is understandably more ethnocentric in scope than the worldcentric perspectives of modernists and postmodernists. And that would do a lot, I think, to destabilize the development of modern and postmodern economies, and thus cultures.

WIE: It’s hard for us in democratic countries to admit that in certain situations, one-person, one-vote can actually set things back in terms of development.

McINTOSH: Right. Well, we saw it in Nazi Germany. You can use one-person, one-vote to bring despotism. The ethnocentric, conformist consciousness of premodern populations can be easily manipulated and swayed by emotional loyalties. Jefferson was extremely clear on the prerequisites to functional democracy. He called for a degree of public virtue within a population; he felt that the society needs to have an enlightened self-interest in what is good for them and that the public must to be able to think independently.

However, the egalitarian nature of one-person, one-vote is also one of the primary moral strengths of democracy. So if we’re going to mess with the key moral underpinning of democracy, we need to be careful not to wipe out the moral superiority of democracy in the first place. We need to preserve the ideal of one-person, one-vote and acknowledge that as consciousness in the world evolves over time, and when the majority of the world is modernist and above in their consciousness, we could probably go to a world federal system that employed one-person, one-vote entirely. But currently that’s not feasible. In other words, if we acknowledge that modernism and postmodernism are worth protecting, and if we recognize that in these stages there is a natural tendency toward a significant decline in numbers, then we can also recognize that modern and postmodern populations would need some kind of insulation from the larger premodern populations in our federal structure.

WIE: The League of Nations and the United Nations were both formed in the wake of world wars. Will another such catastrophe be necessary to rally the political will for this kind of world governing structure?

McINTOSH: Clearly there will be the need for appropriate life conditions, and we can already see those on the horizon, but they don’t necessarily involve a third world war. Global warming, nuclear proliferation by rogue regimes, Islamic terrorism, genocide in Africa, global pandemics—these kinds of conditions are threat enough.

WIE: Many of those issues are likely to get much worse in the next ten to twenty years.

McINTOSH: The trajectories are unmistakable. We no longer live in a world where we can be insulated in our own nation-state. So the higher your consciousness is, the more these global problems seem urgent and real. They’re threatening and they motivate you. If you’re worried about feeding your children, then global warming over the next fifty years is not something that’s going to be at the top of your agenda. It’s up to those of us who are living in the lap of material luxury, with the benefits of free societies, to feel the pressure and to do something about these threats before it’s too late.