Meet the First Integral President

When My Ego thinks of Barack Obama, My Ego does not think of the first black president.

Barack Obama is the first integral president in history. Integral, in short, is a model of living that seeks to integrate the positive (while facing the negative) elements of all stages and levels of consciousness, that unfold in all human beings, across all cultures and societies.

Less inclusive stages of consciousness are myopic in perspective, seeing all of reality as being of one, and only one "real" reality. For instance, from the traditional perspective (using the graph from the all stages and level link above), you either believe in the God I believe in, or you don't know the Truth. There is one and only one interpretation, either with it, or against it. From the modernist/rationalist perspective, if it can't be proven with logic, science, and math, then it certainly isn't real. From the post-modern consciousness, all is equal, nothing is better or higher than anything else, and believing otherwise is a mere illusion.

Surely My Ego is over-generalizing here, as if there were a choice in this limited, short-attension span format.

Now, the Integral consciousness differs from those stages that precede it specifically in that it's ever-present objective is to balance the simultaneous truths at all levels of the spiral of conscious development. Rather than requiring all humans to operate at this and only this level, the goal is now to foster the health and positive sides of each level, regardless of how limited in awareness.

Yesterday morning, February 5, 2009, President Obama gave what could be the most defining speech in history that was a thorough, awe-inspiring creed of the Integral perspective, given on the topic of faith--really, Integral spirituality and faith. My Ego's words pale in comparison, so without further ado, watch the entire speech to see what the Integral consciousness manifest sounds like. Enjoy... ~mIe

WTF is a DANCE PARTY.

Make them Famous

On the 2008 campaign trail, we saw John McCain, in regards to spenders of pork projects, resuscitate Ronald Regan's call to "make them famous" for their unnecessary spending. While My Ego is not opposed to calling out those who cause harm, My Ego believes now is certainly the time for famous making, yet of a different variety.

My Ego finds no fault with the idea of celebrity in and of itself--the challenge is to redefine celebrities as those who challenge our dying ways of being the most, those who's intellect is as sharp as their Armani suits, and those who lift us to be our better selves, and not let us fall into the shadows. Celebrity isn't the problem; who we look at as celebrity and how we use their influence is.

Imagine a world where our leading scientists were lauded as rock stars; where historians were idolized on TMZ, where philosophers were no longer seen as dusty old men, rather the keepers of expanding and encompassing value systems that are being debated by text-messaging teenagers.

Imagine TED talks being held as a part of Bonnaroo, where Eaves Behar jammed on the 100$ laptop with Wilco, and Jeff Han VJ'd for NIN with his touch screen technology. Think of William McDonough dating Jennifer Aniston, and Malcome Gladwell surrounded by a swarm of press following him everywhere he went.

Some say My Ego is just a dreamer...

~mIe

Gamechanger Alert :: YouTube HD

YouTube now offeres the ability to load and play HD resolution video. This is a quite a game changer, and the biggest issue with YouTube has been the utterly lack-luster render quality of their video. The high quality was an underwhelming step, but the HD vid looks just amazing.

The first video My Ego watched in YouTube HD was a stunning stop motion commercial for Brussel's-based Electrabel. My Ego isn't a huge fan of promoting commercials, but simply can't help it on this one...

My Ego really misses RESFEST...


~mIe

Where is the Meta-Media Channel?

My Ego is enjoying some coffee and cereal, with a tangerine soon to come. CNN buzzes in the background, as seems to be the normal morning routine now that My Ego has cable--for better or worse.

A particular story caught My Ego's eye, the concept of which seems to be a recurring theme across the news networks. This theme: covering the media's a/effects on our culture. In this case, the "media" is covering the effects of the media's influence on the Obama girls.

If My Ego had many millions of dollars, My Ego would most certainly launch the Meta-Media channel, which, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, would cover the effects the media has on the media in covering the media's effects on culture. It would be something of a constant Daily Show, but without the humor--at least not purposeful humor.

The vision is a real-time "media literacy" channel that takes each worthy story, and shows how each relevant major and indie media outlet filters the story, and focuses on the difference between them.

~mIe

It

is a bar of soap.

Why the "I" in pIece?

A few fellow Egos have asked My Ego what the capital "I" is to represent in the pIece Now post. My Ego tries to not reveal such hidden meanings, allow readers to grapple with the meaning of meanings. While the interpretations that each reader may project onto My Ego's intended meaning also hold true, My Ego certainly can explain My Ego's Ego.

In all the shards of glass, I is (t)here. I, friends, is you is I. No matter your political slant, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, love of hate or Rick Warren--the broken glass at our feet is a mess we are all responsible for. To place blame at this point would be to fundamentally misinterpret time's ever-present unfolding, Now.

There is no other way to create the Integral stained glass mosaic without first seeing I in every pIece, taking responsibility for each, and finding the most effective and efficient means of gluing them together.

I is in every pIece.*

*Please don't confuse I with My Ego. They [are/not] the same.

pIece Now

The Glass House of America has been shattered. My Ego will not waste words on the building of the glass house, or how it became broken. The undeniable fact is that the house has been shattered to pieces, which now lay in smoldering, colored piles across the country, as glass dust particles spread throughout the world via the winds of cyclic change.

The shards now cutting our bare feed leave us with two distinct options: keep walking on them until we bleed to death, or find ways to take the pieces; big and small, colorful and black and white, with every nuance of opacity, and glue them back together into a stained-glass mosaic structure of beIng like nothing before.

While many will fearfully run around yelling to the heavens with a fist full of glass, throwing shards at those with different types and colors of glass trying to get one last cut into the Other, there will be those of us collecting the pieces for imminent use. The key to our new Now is in developing many new types of glue with which to build the new stained glass mosaic. Some of the glue will dry hard as a rock, while some will be porous and allow light and subtle substance to shine through. We'll focus on the glue, and we'll find the right glue for the right glass.

There will still, and always, be those throwing the shards at each other, but their fists will eventually grow too bloody to have any real effect. Meanwhile, when the mosaic first starts to come together, we'll be too close to it for it to make any sense. We'll see only colors and pieces, and of course the glue. Yet, as we continue to pIece the artwork together, we'll slowly step away from the window, and we'll begin to see Shapes. Forms. Characters. Narratives. Stories. Forms based on reciprocity. Characters who's motives transcend to the greater good, while including our selves in doing so. Narratives that prove the values of both/and over the division of either/or. Stories that include other's narratives, different culture's characters, yet... the same Universal Forms.

Let us not forget that this is indeed still a window-Being; a substantive surface that allows light to pass through it in both directions. There will always be a window between isIng and the Light, yet it's up to those putting the pieces back together to shape a new window to refract the Light so shed as far and wide as possible.

We are the leaders of the Integral generation. We are those willing to tell a new story by pIecing the old ones together in our inclusive, ever-evolving image.

It's time, frienemies, to pIece Now.

~mIe

Naive Irony

8 years ago, a new century arrived with an ever-increasing set of dichotomies, further dividing our country into the polarized camps that seem to come so easily to us. Meanwhile, the small but rising group of Integrators danced between the two, looking for any ground of mutual respect with which to grow a new system of values based on reciprocal development.

In the new millennium, My Ego has lost count of the number of times My Ego has been accused of being "naive" in the face of said polarity. Soon after the attacks of 9/11, My Ego repeatedly called for a new energy economy based on independence from foreign oil and creation of a new energy economy based on sustainable principles. Using the "energy" gained from 9/11 to our advantage, there was never a better time to come together and re-purpose that energy into... new energy.

My Ego even began developing the foundation for the business My Ego runs to this day, with the mission statement "Developing Sustainability Through Creativity." My Ego based this decision on a predicted rise in "green" marketing and an infusion of capital into the green movement. My Ego can't keep track of the number of times My Ego was accused of being young and naive, laughed at for being overly idealistic and that one day, My Ego would "understand how things really are." Naive, indeed.

Looking back, it seems a cliche argument, yet My Ego fought hard against the Iraq war from day one. Let's be clear: My Ego was not "anti-war", in fact My Ego argued at the time for the proliferation of strategic dis-integration of fundamentalist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, through military and information warfare. My Ego called out the utter lack of respectable rationale for the Iraq invasion, the lack of any real evidence for invading outside of adding fuel to the flames of the Military Industrial Complex... surely, My Ego was the naive, unseasoned judge of international politics.

The list could go on and on, but let's skip to the grand finale of this thesis.

The greatest of My Ego's naive insight of them all... support of our president elect, Barack Obama. The day after the DNC convention in 2004, My Ego sent an email out to friends and family, and will never forget bringing to work the same message: the man who gave the keynote address would be the next president of the United States. The redicule and laughter received can not be understated; for four years My Ego stood hard and fast against this claim. No way a black man could ever be president against the vitriol of Palin's America, none the less the primary against the Clinton machine.

And now, the crux of the post, and the twisted questions that stands before My Ego. Despite the actual outcomes of the examples given, the fact My Ego still supports the president elect further proves My Ego's naivite, so the argument goes.

Thus, despite the fact that My Ego has been vindicated as spot-on for many of the most fundamental issues of the new millenium, despite that My Ego has proven to the nay-sayers that the impossible is possible, that hope can prevail over fear, that inclusion can win over diviseness, My Ego is still accused of being naieve. "You'll see," say the self-fulfilling prophetic ignoramists.

What exactly will it take to be respected as a human being making focused, calculated and honest decisions that seek to include the finer points of both sides of the argument, without detracting from commonality of either? Will that day ever come?

Time, in it's enduring ever-presence, will tell...