Trump and a Post-Truth World

The world is in turmoil. As populist waves roil the Brexit-bound UK, along with Europe, Turkey, Russia, Asia—and most visibly, the US with the election of Donald Trump—nationalist and extremist political forces threaten the progress made over many decades. How did we get here? And how, with so much antagonism, cynicism, and discord, can we mend the ruptures in our societies?

In this provocative work, philosopher Ken Wilber explains why there is cause for hope. He lays much of the blame on a failure at the progressive, leading edge of society. This leading edge is characterized by the desire to be as just and inclusive as possible, and to it we owe the thrust toward women’s rights, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and more. This is all evolutionarily healthy; what is unhealthy is a creeping postmodernism that is elitist, “politically correct,” and that looks down on “deplorables.” Combine this with the techno-economic demise of many traditional ways of making a living, and you get an explosive mixture. As Wilber says, for some Trump voters: “Everywhere you are told that you are fully equal and deserve immediate and complete empowerment, yet everywhere are denied the means to actually achieve it. You suffocate, you suffer, and you get very, very mad.”

It is only when members of society’s leading edge can heal themselves that a new, Integral evolutionary force can emerge to move us beyond the social and political turmoil of our current time to offer genuine leadership toward greater wholeness.