Tuesday, September 22nd
Special guest, Michael Zimmerman!
7 – 8:30pm
$10 Boulder Integral Members
$15 Standard

Join Jeff Salzman and climate change expert, Michael Zimmerman, CU professor and author of Integral Ecology, for an integral view of the scientific, social, and economic forces that make up one of the great issues of our time.   What’s behind the polarized views of this ostensibly objective subject?   Are we really heading to eco-dystopia? … or being hoodwinked by stealth agenda of anti-modernism and world government?   Integral theory challenges the doctrinaire views of both the left and right on this issue, so if you want some fresh thinking on a battle that is going to last our lifetime, come be part of the conversation with Jeff and Michael.

Wed. April 22nd, 2009 Earth Day
Doors open 6:30pm.  Event from 7pm – 9pm
$15 (members $10)

This event is going to be an incredible opportunity to meet and learn from Michael E. Zimmerman, co-author of the recently published book on one of the planet’s most pressing and relevant topics, our ecology.  Boulder Integral is deeply privileged to have Prof. Zimmerman joining us on Earth Day.  Please come and learn from this master a rich wealth of valuable information and wisdom! Please forward this announcement to anyone you know who might care about this subject.  Hope to see you soon!

Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens and Michael E. Zimmerman

Today there is a bewildering diversity of views on ecology and the environment.  With more than two hundred distinct and valuable perspectives on the natural world–and with scientists, economists, ethicists, activists, philosophers, and others often taking completely different stances on the issues–how can we come to agreement to solve our toughest environmental problems?

In response to this pressing need, Integral Ecology unites valuable insights from multiple perspectives into a comprehensive theoretical framework–one that can be put to use right now.  The framework is based on Ken Wilber’s AQAL model, and is the result of over a decade of research exploring the myriad contemporary ecological perspectives and their respective methodologies.

Dozens of real-life applications and examples of this framework currently in use are examined, including three in-depth case studies: work with marine fisheries in Hawai’i, strategies of eco-activists to protect Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, and a study of community development in El Salvador.  In addition, eighteen personal practices of transformation are provided for you to increase your own integral ecological awareness.  Integral Ecology provides the most sophisticated application and extension of Integral Theory currently available.  As such it serves as a template for any truly integral effort.

Michael E. Zimmerman is currently Director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where is also a Professor of Philosophy, and a Professor in Environmental Studies. Before coming to Boulder, Zimmerman spent 31 years at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he was co-director of Environmental Studies for a decade. Author of about one hundred scholarly articles and book chapters, Zimmerman has also published a major anthology–Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4^th edition)–and four books: Eclipse of the Self; Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity; Contesting Earth’s Future; and most recently, Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World (co-authored with Sean Esbjorn-Hargens). In Integral Ecology, Esbjorn-Hargens and Zimmerman argue that to characterized adequately and to develop plausible solutions to environmental problems, many different points of view must be represented, including not only the natural and social sciences, but philosophy, religion, cultural norms and values, as well perspectives that belong to first-person experience, as in the case of people offering personal testimony about the consequences of environmental hazards.

Questions – nomali@boulderintegral.org or 303 541 1540