The flurry of exchanges around spiritual and cognitive authoritarianism at the Integral Institute after the ‘Wilber insults his critics episode’, continues. Here are a few recent links for those interested.
Why is it historically important? Because this moment symbolically presents the dead of Wilber theory as an intellectual project, and the birth of a new cult that will function as a dedicated in-group, but will, like Da Free John and Andrew Cohen, no longer matter as a trend in world culture.
For those of us who were still emotionally clinging to our past attachment, this show of the not-so-pretty true colours, has been liberatory. We now know that nothing emancipatory can and will come from those quarters. It’s time to move on.
But for the historical record, here’s the online record of how the blogosphere reacted to the event.
- The recent Ken Wilber incident is wonderfully explained and interpreted by Matthew Dalmann, here ; and in a later wrap-up here, both are must reads; Geoffrey Falk, generally more fierce in tone, is here; he explains how Wilber criticisms are censored from Wikipedia by a few self-appointed guardians.
- After we wrote our own editorial on Wilberism becoming a cult, it was picked up in the blogosphere, here
- Here’s a good analysis of Wilber’s follow-up on his rant, which analyzes the authoritarian cognitive strategies in detail, and another one by Victoria Lansford (who has the most stunning jewelry designs I have seen in a long time).
- From outside the blogosphere: 1) the three cognitive strategies used by Wilber to end critical discourse. This is part of the mother of all dialogue sites on Wilber theory, by Frank Visser, where you’ll find Frank’s original defense against the first and second Wilber rants.
- The older ‘setting the record straight’ of Matthew Dallman, good overview of what is wrong with the Integral Institute, mostly analyzed as a marketing project.
June 16th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Here’s an expanded version of the whole unfolding blogosphere process by Alan Kazlev, at http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/Wilbers_rant.html
Alan Kazlev’s own view is here at
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/decline_and_fall_of_Wilber.html
June 16th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Alan, thanks for the great post you made. Good to have a compiled list of the discussion so far. And yet again it reminds me of why i like the bloggosphere so much:)
james
June 17th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
[...] Aside from cranking up the amount of discussion about Ken’s work, his Wyatt Earp post and the ones that followed have causes some bloggers and readers to look inward, including me. However, Wilber’s post also resulted in plenty of critical discussions and posts, including mine, have focused more attention on Wilber’s critics. After reading these critical blogs, I have more of a desire to have some of the critics on Frank Visser’s site to brought into the Integral circle. I still don’t think there’s much merit in the criticism, but by excluding these folks from the official discussion, Ken and I-I are creating more bad P.R. and dissent than it’s worth. [...]
June 18th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Just to make sure that people reading this post know what is in the famous Ken Wilber rant, which appeared at
http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/46
Here’s a selection of Ken Wilber’s vocabulary on his critics, by Geoffrey Falk at http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/June2006.asp#9
“sorry-ass, first-tier, lame-brain case of arrested development, a two-bit, no-fit, nobody-quoting, self-promoting, gas-floating, over-bloating, no deposit, lame composite, really lost it, never had it, wanna bees, felled at the knees, first-tier fleas, flick ‘em off his back and never look back:�
I am not going to keep responding to the lunatics, nuts, fakes, and frauds.
[P]erhaps I should mention that I am at the center of the vanguard of the greatest social transformation in the history of humankind … using [my] Zen sword of prajna to cut off the heads of critics so staggeringly little that [I have] to slow down about 10-fold just to see them.
you don’t like us, you hate us, you hate I-I, you hate wilber, you hate this and you hate that—we heard you loud and clear. And we saw you. And now we know each other, don’t we?
… f..ck the crazy critic.
[D]oes telling a group of mental masturbators that they’re off the mark actually legitimize them in a way? If their intent is simply (!) to fantasize, they are unlikely to have the decency to be embarrassed at being caught once again with their pants down around their knees.
lunatic and cacophonous … so deranged as to be laughable … suck my d.ck … level of scholarship is so mediocre … worthless … you morons … lame criticism … painfully sluggish critics, dragging their bloated bellies across the ground at a snail’s pace of gray dreariness, can frankly just eat my dust and bite my ass … nonsensical … neither true nor false but empty … criticism so deranged you just stare at it wide-eyed and dumbfounded … criticism so absolutely loopy you just stare in disbelief for minutes, pie-eyed, slack-jawed, say whaaaaaat? … numb-nut young Turks and no-nut old Turks, many of whom have studied [my] work for up to 3 full hours….
Where you from, son? What the f..ck you been thinking? You hitting that weed again man, doing them drugs overtime?�
June 20th, 2006 at 5:05 am
Alan Kazlev just added this to his wilber watch pages; it gives info by scholars showing how Wilber misrepresents Plotinus, Emerson, etc…
http://tinyurl.com/qrawv (Frew points out how Wilber deliberately misrepresents Plotinus)
http://tinyurl.com/okcqc (Wilber reply)
http://tinyurl.com/prgpy (Frew counter-reply)
http://tinyurl.com/r592j (diZerega critiquing Wilber on Emerson()
June 21st, 2006 at 11:18 am
From Paul Salamone:
I just discovered an audio dialogue between Ken and Sean Hargens from a weekly I-I theory call regarding Meyerhoff’s 6 main criticisms buried on Ken’s site you may not be aware of. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but it might clarify some of Ken’s positions. Link:
http://www.integralnaked.org/media/kw/meyerhoff.mp3
-Paul
ps
The link was found in the “Response to Recent Critics” pdf here: http://www.kenwilber.com/professional/writings/index.html
June 25th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Frank Visser mentions the Jim Chamberlain has listened to the tape mentioned just above, and the latter adds that it basically covers only ‘evolution’.
To know more, read this commentary on Wilber and Evolution,
at http://www.integralworld.net/index.html?chamberlain2.html
July 4th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
[...] But in his latest editorial reflecting on the spin-offs of the Wilber rant, Frank Visser has made the momentous decision of opening up his site to the totality of integral traditions. This is therefore an open invitation to send your essays to Frank. [...]