Dear friends,

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is a tragic and cowardly act of political violence that attempts to undermine the functioning of democracy at its heart, which is the peaceful transfer of power bestowed by the legitimacy of popular will.

Sadly, it is also the latest in a cascading sequence of predictable events as we continue to live through The Great Release, that large-scale breakdown in the United States’ power system that I first described in 2017, and since which has seen growing and acute political fractures in the US and around the world.

How did we get here?

Just hours before yesterday’s events, Josh Leonard and I discussed that exact question in great detail in “How America Got Here: A 50 Year Journey to Polarization” for IAM: The Institute of Applied Metatheory.

Based on a tweet thread I published a few months ago examining the wholesale transformation of American socioculture, we look at the deep structures—in the form of actual events, policies and decisions between 1970 and 2024—that radically shifted America from one form of system “regime” and associated equilibrium, that of relative national coherence in the early 1970s, into a new, radically- and qualitatively-different regime and equilibrium of extreme polarized decoherence of 2024.

Let me say this more directly: our current sociopolitical equilibrium is one of fracture, polarization and discord, so the very form and function of the system itself now is such that it will strongly resist moving away from producing more fracture, polarization and discord. Extreme events like January 6’s attempted insurrection, or the attempted assassination of a political leader, are both product and cause of the system naturally-generating the chaos it uses to reproduce itself.

The critical question is how did we generate a system whose equilibrium is extreme polarization? If we’re ever going to make choices that begin to shift our society toward the system reorganization that The Great Release predicts will be necessary, then we have to be able to see the mistakes, deformations, and integral violations that were committed on the way to getting here.

While I highly encourage you to watch our discussion to understand a fuller, more integral story of how we arrived here, I want to remind us that all division begins in the mind and can be ended by the heart.

Political differences are real, but they are nothing in the face of our infinite capacity for expanding our minds and hearts to accommodate new and different realities, lived realities our neighbors desperately want to show us, have us listen to, and have us affirm as real and valid. To reject this principle is to cauterize oneself from the full lifeworld, and what is a polarized society if not two groups who have retreated fully into their preferred barren demirealities?

But there’s another way. Cultivating an integral mind and heart is a path that takes us out of this hollow wasteland, and may indeed be the only one that can. We need integral leaders who can model the language, values, behavior and citizenship that the 21st century demands. Each of us can make that commitment, and renew it every day in the face of the widening gyre ahead.

Warm loving regards,
Robb Smith
Founder & CEO, Integral Life and the Institute of Applied Metatheory

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:05 Understanding the Socio-Cultural Shift
19:41 Economic Shifts
29:06 Media Fragmentation
37:28 Political Revolutions
40:57 The Role of Integral Leaders
41:27 The Repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Financial Crisis
44:11 China’s Entry into the World Trade Organization and Outsourcing
48:44 The Rise of Social Media and Identity-Fueled Tribalism
51:47 Donald Trump and the Erosion of Truth
57:52 The Importance of Integrative Leadership
01:04:06 Building a Healthier and More Resilient Society