Indra Adnan (Part 2) – Reimagining Power, Politics, and Possibilities: An Alternative Vision

Socio-psychotherapist and political consultant Indra Adnan brings forth a compelling, fresh, and powerfully practical alternative vision for our politics and our world, based on bringing people and communities together in relationship to effect real planetary transformation. Indra states that the solutions to our problems exist; we just need to be able to access them, and it is at the cosmo-local community agency networks (CANs) level that we can develop responses to current crises like climate and social justice most effectively. Indra discusses how the internet has dissolved the line between the private and the public space, especially for women and the underprivileged, and asks us to imagine what the public space would look like if all our voices were heard. Rather than focusing on our disconnectedness, Indra suggests we focus on the miracle of our connectedness in this moment and drop the dividing lines that keep us stuck in disadvantageous, unempowered lives. In this conversation, the possibilities of putting Indra’s alternative vision into effect are palpable—this is a remarkable reimagining of how things could be, where political agency works from the bottom up to effect systemic transformation for the benefit of all. Recorded May 18, 2022.

“Let’s drop the boundaries that we have created for ourselves! Let’s drop the things that divide us from others.”

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Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2

• Women going into politics have been obliged to be better men than men (01:15)
• Indra most inspired by social workers’ (mostly women) intuitive understanding of people’s real needs and how they unreservedly give themselves to the task of problem solving (02:35)
• The Big Society (community focused) program in British politics (04:10)
• What is soft power? The power of narrative or storytelling to generate attraction and therefore relationship, as in the power of the American dream to attract relationship from all over the world (05:58)
• What is the story we’re telling about our reality? (10:60)
• The ladder nature of Integral stages of development may be trapping us in old language about what development looks like (11:40)
• When the women in the London Integral circle walked away, and the need to apply the Integral model rather than simply study it and talk about it (12:12)
• The radical equality of everyone and formative agency: different agencies need to be held in a fluid state rather than in ladder format (16:57)
• Does Integral need to evolve to serve a wider landscape? (19:47)
• What is the design of the public space that could honor the full human being, where all the different voices would be heard? (24:22)
• The axis of a new politics: back to the I, the we, the world; at the heart of the vision is a new way of looking at who we are (26:34)
• The internet, the fractal emergence of a new vision holding our creative potential and political agency, and  the soft power of how we tell the story (29:52)
• What gives Indra hope? The miracle of connectedness in this moment (32:37)
• The power of paying attention to the interaction in this particular moment: that is the life changing, world changing energy that we are looking for and that we need (36:15)

Resources & References – Part 2

• Indra Adnan and Pat Kane, Re-imagining Social Work
• British politician David Cameron, author of For the Record*, and political agency in the Big Society program
• Joseph Nye, Head of Kennedy School of Government, advisor to Bill Clinton, Understanding Soft Power
• Robert Kegan, The Discerning Heart: The Developmental Psychology of Robert Kegan*
• Ken Wilber’s stages of development
• Terry Patten, A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries*
• Integral European Conference
• Integral leaders Diane Hamilton, Terry Patten, Steve McIntosh 
• Indra Adnan, The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Age*
• Indra Adnan, founder of The Alternative Global, a socio-political platform serving systemic transformation

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Indra Adnan is founder and co-initiator of The Alternative Global, a socio-political platform serving systemic transformation. AltGlobal publishes a Daily Alternative news blog, develops cosmo-local agency networks (CANs) and connects planetary regeneration projects. Indra is concurrently a socio-psychotherapist, writer, and consultant on soft power. Clients have included the Danish and Brazilian governments, World Economic Forum, and NATO. Her book The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Age was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2021.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell