Steve McIntosh - The Integralist View

This is the first in our series of interviews with integral thinker Steve McIntosh. Steve McIntosh has been a lawyer and an investment banker, is an inventor and entrepreneur, and is, we think, one of today's most engaged and inspired “integralists.” Author of Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution, McIntosh is a voluble proponent and passionate explorer of the cutting-edge theories and methods pioneered by the luminaries of integral philosophy, such as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Clare Graves, and Ken Wilber, to name a few. In this conversation with EnlightenNext, McIntosh speaks about his personal history and the formative, intuitive, and spiritual experiences that led him to enthusiastically embrace an integral view of human culture, consciousness, and the evolution of the universe. This interview is the first in a series about the fundamentals of integral philosophy and its real-time—as well as future-leaning—applications for the development of human life and of consciousness itself.

BIO

Steve McIntosh is an activist working to apply cutting-edge philosophy to bring about positive social progress. His primary focus centers around researching, writing, and speaking on the topic of the integral philosophy of evolution. Steve is author of the book Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. Additionally, as part of his philosophical activism, in 2004 Steve founded the Project for Integral World Federation, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural evolution.

In addition to his philosophical work, Steve is also a lawyer and the founder and president of Now & Zen, Inc. Now & Zen is a profitable consumer products marketing and manufacturing company creating popular "natural lifestyle products" (each designed by Steve), such as its best selling product, The Zen Alarm Clock®. Founded in Boulder, Colorado in 1995, Now & Zen's mission is to create a national brand of products that make a real difference in people's lives and bring beauty to their environment.

Prior to founding Now & Zen, Steve was Director of Corporate Development and General Counsel of Celestial Seasonings tea company. He has also worked as an investment banker with Morgan Grenfell Capital Financing, and as a corporate lawyer with Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro in San Francisco. Steve is an honors graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and the University of Southern California Business School.