When I began the Five Steps to Recovery series I had in mind several specific topics, three of which subsequently appeared. As time went by, however, I felt that Covid-19 had already taken us into new territory, which implied that my original concept for the series no longer seemed appropriate. Part four was going to address the question of what ‘story’ was arguably operating in the background that would help explain what was going on. Indeed, I addressed this very issue in a FuturePod interview on ‘skewed narratives’ late last year. You can find that episode here: https://www.futurepod.org/podcast/ep-113

At the same time, I’d also been working with Luke van der Laan and colleagues at the University of Southern Queensland on Deleting Dystopia, a book that seeks to understand why the IT revolution became such a disaster and what can be done about it. Once published, it was appropriate to say so in what became the most recent FI News. All well and good, you might say, until the Ukraine crisis blew up in our faces and re-kindled many of the fears and nightmares that we’d hoped lay well behind us. Very unfortunately, that’s clearly not the case…

I decided to re-present a paper I wrote a decade ago for the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice which was later revised as chapter 15 of To See With Fresh Eyes: Integral Futures and the Global Emergency. It addresses some of the background issues that have fed into the global crisis and helped bring us to this point. You can find the paper here.Building on this, my wife, Laurie, came across an article by Robb Smith on the Integral+Life website. I can’t reproduce it here due to copyright restrictions, but I can share the link. Point being that anyone who wants a positive in-depth Integral analysis of what is happening right now in Ukraine can find it right here. Here’s a brief quote that really caught my attention:

 Every structure of evolution has within it a set of contradictions that eventually become the fuel for solving the very problems it creates.

You can find Robb’s article here: https://integrallife.com/russia-is-catalyzing-the-transformation-age/