This past week I watched Future By Design, a superb documentary that explores the vision of futurist Jacque Fresco. The film itself is beautiful and compelling, but it is the mind of the man it features that has me ranking it as the most important documentaries I’ve seen.

Fresco has invented countless features of a future he hopes we will choose to build, an efficient, elegant and finely crafted world in which we consciously and intelligently construct cities and societies that best facilitate the quality of life that can foster the best humanity can become. His attention to details in aesthetic, functional and cultural realms is uncanny, so much so that his models of future cities are striking in their comprehensiveness, viability and beauty. The cities he promises are inviting and grant hope that we can shape a future that fulfills our potential.

One of the insights that makes Fresco’s work so important is the recognition that we should soon be able to move beyond a world of scarcity into abundance. With more resources than we need to ensure high quality of life for everyone on the planet, our major stumbling blocks lie among our personal and cultural shortcomings that inhibit actualizing staggering good.

There may well be some shortcomings in Fresco’s designs and our own reactions to them, but at the very least he has a competency and coherency that most of the people behind the plans and visions for our cities and infrastructure lack. Piecemeal and foggy visions plague so much civic planning throughout the world and create needless problems that skillful design can remedy. In my own city there are obvious follies from the past and looming on the horizon that are discouraging, and I’m sure that is the case in most places. I see visionaries like Fresco as vital to shaping the landscape that healthy societies will thrive in for decades to come.

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In Ken Wilber‘s integral theory the concept of quadrants is central (the AQ stands for all quadrants). The quadrants represent 4 essential dimensions of every thing, including each of us. We each have an interior and an exterior (a subjective and an objective dimension) and exist both as a whole in ourselves and as a part of a greater whole (we are holons, or whole-parts). These two axes in concert give us the four quadrants, the “subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective.”.

These simple distinctions allow for a lot of clarity in understanding our world and the various ways of thinking about it. The four dimensions disclose four primary perspectives that are at play in every discipline from physics to sociology, meditation to systems theory. If we leave out any one quadrant we are thinking partially and neglecting an essential and irreducible facet of our lives.

To learn more about the four quadrants, read on at Holons‘ “What are the Four Quadrants?”

For thirty years Elfquest has been one of comics’ gems, growing as an independent comic into one of the medium’s most endearing, compelling and beautiful bodies of work. Using fantasy and science fiction elements for its framework, the series explores sexuality, love, ethnocentrism, persistant change, and a range of issues the visual style and broad medium are not often recognized for.

Creators Wendy and Richard Pini will be publishing the entire series of Elfquest online for free to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first Elfquest story. Already a healthy selection of issues are available and by the end of the year over 200 will be readable with no cost and only a web browser is needed to do it.

My own love for Elfquest goes back a long way. Throughout my high school life Elfquest was the one comic series I followed faithfully. It offered me the first and most positive portrayal of polyamoury in my youth and gave me solace as I tried to come to some sort of understanding and acceptance of my own polyamourousness. My first taste of Taoist philosophy, my broader understanding of love and sexuality and my appreciation of family and community all have foundation stones in Elfquest that I am deeply thankful for.

Delve into Digital Elfquest and be sure to start with “Fire and Flight“.

Joe Perez is a beacon in the integral movement. His writings on integral theory, Christianity, sexuality, spirituality, social issues, politics and other areas are rich offerings of an integral mind. His blog entries have been among the most exciting and sharp pieces I’ve been fortunate enough to encounter.

Last month I was finally able to sit down to read Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God, a book that is his intimate account of his discovery of integral theory, struggles with mental illness, living with AIDS, mysticism and the intersection of Christianity and homosexuality. It’s a heart-wrenching, humourous, uplifting and intellectually deft memoir.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the book for me is Joe’s reaction to his first encounters with the integral theory of Ken Wilber. Like Joe, I experienced the heady excitement of finally having a map of reality that was less fragmented and partial. Coming upon integral at the right time brought a dizzying clarity, a worldview earthquake and a demand of every ounce of humility available for Joe, myself and many others. There’s no going back up that rabbit hole and, in Joe’s words, “the world sure looks different from Wonderland.” Sharing in Joe’s experiences was a much needed reminder of just how thrilling, scary and satisfying the first tastes of integral can be and were for me.

Joe is a broad thinker, writing one day about J.R.R. Tolkien’s importance in “reimagining and reinvigorating Roman Catholic mythology into new modes of expression that are compatible with the postmodern mind, responsive to the demands of religious pluralism, and bursting with ecological sensitivity”, writing during another about the value of masturbation as a sacred act and on others about politics, homophilia, mental illness, and mysticism. He offers up beautiful glimpses at his life through many essential facets and brings it all together with seams, cracks and tremendous honesty.

You can hear Joe Perez in dialog with Ken Wilber in “Soulfully Gay: Out of the Closet, Into an Integral Embrace” and read Ken’s full forward to Soulfully Gay. Joe blogs frequently at Until.