The Emergence of Post-Progressive Political Thought - A conversation with Steve McIntosh

It’s subtle but some of you have noticed: I’ve changed the tagline of the Daily Evolver to “A post-progressive look at politics and culture”. It used to read “Integral insights into politics and culture”, which still describes what I attempt to do in this podcast: to point out what I see as the emerging edges of human and cultural evolution, and to foster new habits of thinking for people who wish to embrace multiple worldviews.

So when my pal, neighbor and integral philosopher Steve McIntosh, used the term post-progressive in one of our evening hangouts, my integral chimes rang. Steve and I both paused to ponder. Post-progressive … is it a term? Are people using it? A quick google search showed that it describes a genre of rock music. How about politics? Yes, there was one prominent article that had the term post-progressive in its title; the author used it, however, to describe certain combative streams of leftist politics.

But how about the next stage in the evolution of political thought? While Steve and I have both happily identified as progressives for decades, we have also begun to chafe at the hardening of its orthodoxy, especially in the age of Trump, and to feel an evolutionary pull forward. We notice this is true of many other folks in the integral community and the culture at large.

If we and integral theory are correct, the post-progressive move forward will, in part, involve integrating the best of progressivism and the best of its conservative opposition. But unlike centrism, which seeks to compromise competing ideals of the status quo, post-progressivism represents a vertical move that will expand the political playing field to embrace emergent thinking and policies.

In this episode, Steve and I explore the new terrain of post-progressive political thought, as well as its “felt sense”. For more, check out Steve’s new article, Toward a Post-Progressive Progressive Political Perspective, published in Aero Magazine online. Many of the core ideas are also expressed in his new book Developmental Politics: How American Can Grow Into a Better Version of Itself – and of course in the Daily Evolver podcast archives.