Evolving Race and Culture - A conversation with Phil Anderson and Greg Thomas

We are in a cultural moment regarding race where we can literally see and feel the movements of history. It’s making for many great conversations among integralists, and in this episode I share one I enjoyed recently with two evolutionary thinkers, Greg Thomas and Phil Anderson.

Our topics include differentiating the often-conflated concepts of race, culture and development … recognizing and harmonizing both poles of the culture war … and exploring the uniquely cosmopolitan role that Black folks play in the ever-accelerating evolution of humanity.

As always you are welcome to join the conversation by writing to me at jeff@dailyevolver.com or leaving a voice mail here.

Greg Thomas, CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project, is a writer, intellectual, and entrepreneur. Greg was instrumental in developing programs such as the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s flagship interview series, Harlem Speaks. He has written about culture, race, and democratic life in publications ranging from the Village Voice, Integral+Life, New Republic, Salon, UPTOWN, The Root, the Guardian Observer, and the New York Daily News—as jazz columnist. Greg has lectured on American cultural history and jazz at Columbia, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Hamilton College, and Harvard. His blog is Tune In To Leadership.

Phil Anderson has a background in electronics hardware design and software engineering and has spent the last few decades engaged in various Internet-related entrepreneurial activities. An epiphany that occurred in 2007 when trying to model the process of evolutionary emergence using engineering control theory concepts led Phil to the idea of Holons, Holarchies and Wilber’s Integral theory, although because of how Phil arrived at Integral thinking, he retains his own unique holonic Integral perspective. His blog is published at Integral World.