Guard Your Mind Like the Precious Resource It Is

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence.  Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

Something I’ve been working on personally is becoming more in control of my emotions and, more importantly, trying not  to immediately respond when something makes me angry. In order to do this, I’ve found it necessary to be conscious of the anger itself. Specifically, I’ve noticed that when we get angry we tend to move into a state of mind that is obsessively focused on the source of this anger. We dwell on how we were wronged over and over in our minds like an uncontrollable movie, which then makes us even more angry. In an attempt to stop the movie and momentarily feel better about the situation, we tend to lash out. It feels good for a second, but it almost never gets you anywhere.

Anger and fear are two emotions that serve important evolutionary purposes and certainly have their place, but I’ve found neither to be productive when it comes to solutions to serious problems, or to establishing better relationships with those you care about. When one is angry or fearful the instinctual response is to do whatever might make you feel better in the moment. Allowing oneself to react from a state of fear or anger will almost always lead to poor decision making, unless you are actually in a situation that requires such a response.

I discussed this concept in May’s post, Do Ends Justify the Means?

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Why Increased Consciousness is the Only Path Forward

Today’s post will be the fifth and final article this week exploring how a human consciousness development model known as Spiral Dynamics can help us understand the increasingly insane world around us, as well as chart a path forward. To fully grasp the concepts in today’s piece, you should read the prior four articles. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I wouldn’t have dedicated my entire first week back from a break to this stuff if I didn’t think it was of the utmost importance.

Lost in the Political Wilderness

What is Spiral Dynamics and Why Have I Become So Interested in It?

How a Breakdown in Liberal Ideology Created Trump – Part 1

How a Breakdown in Liberal Ideology Created Trump – Part 2

We’ve all heard variations of the famous quote by Joseph de Maistre that: “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” I’ve spent the last decade or so rejecting this. After all, it’s hard for someone who has dedicated his life to flushing out the severe societal problems we face to accept that this is our destiny.

Fortunately, the framework of Spiral Dynamics has helped me see the truth in this observation, at least when it comes to America, where we have far more avenues for liberty than more autocratic nations. According to Ken Wilber in his recent e-book, Trump and a Post-Truth World: An Evolutionary Self-Correction, America’s descent into a parasitic, unhealthy, increasingly authoritarian society is a function of traffic jam in the evolution of consciousness that occurred due to the total failure of green level thinking to develop many of the initially positive realizations that sprung up in the 1960’s. As Wilber explains:

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