Botching the Watchmen; or: Nobody's Perfect

Ken Wilber, A.K.A. Kenny Superpowers

In my last blog I quoted Uncle Leo on the topic of "Masonry." Masons are, according to Strauss, according to his role model Gotthold Lessing, the men in charge of shaping the world. They know things that ordinary people either cannot or shouldn't know. Drawing from Plato, Strauss explains that these men, being True Philosophers are morally superior to the hoi poloi.

Ideas like this are good fodder for Illuminati Watch Blogs, or for those who want to complain about the fate of the world but do nothing about it. But it really isn't that fascinating to anyone who approaches moral, cultural, or spiritual evolution with a reasonable and scientific head.

Ken Wilber, seen above in some dope Hydro-enlightenment frames, was headed for a career in Biochemistry, but turned to theories on consciousness and spirituality when science could not answer his questions. He has since become one of the most prolific contemporary philosophers in numerous fields, especially spirituality and the history of religion, mostly as an autodidact. He is respected very little by mainstream academia.

First I'm gonna praise Wilber and quote him at length from a Salon.com interview from 2005. Then I'm going to quote some criticism of him from a former adherent and close friend who became very concerned over the cultishness and elitism that began to surround Kenny Superpowers' "Integral Institute," and its cousin Spiral Dynamics.

Sixpak Chopra

I rip on Uncle Leo a lot, and have held up Wilber as some sort of icon of philosophical and spiritual egalitarianism. I want to make it clear though that I do not think Strauss is categorically wrong, and in fact he is tapping into something very powerful and crucial (which happens to be the exact same thing everyone taps into), and certainly his exposure to Heideggerian Existentialism and Aristotelian Metaphysics aided this. Yet people like Wilber, who is considered by many of his fans (some of them are big names like Bill Clinton and Deepak Chopra) a living "Great-author," do make such concerted efforts to think clearly about these things and are IMO healthier sources of answers to these questions. They see that some people, to an extraordinary degree, have intuitive comprehension of large scale systems. Wilber does not, however, give into "magical" concepts like Divine Right or Nobility that give these people the "Right to Rule." As William James put it:

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Thinking is assuredly universal, though some think more clearly than others. The illusion of Nobility or exclusive "blessedness" are either necessary illusions, or merely the product of priveledge trying to perpetuate itself. But my praise for Wilber's straightforwardness, where Strauss is self-empoweringly obscure, does not give Wilber a total pass as an all around great guy. I'll start by quoting him from the Salon article to expand on this:

Interviewer (Steve Paulson):
There’s an assumption that master contemplatives, people who can reach exalted states of enlightenment, are wonderful human beings, that goodness radiates from them. Do you think that’s true?

Wilber:
Nothing’s ever quite that simple. There are different kinds of intelligence, and they develop at different rates. If your moral development reaches up into the trans-personal levels, then you tend to be St. Teresa. But some, like Picasso, have their cognitive development very high but their moral development is in the bloody basement. We think someone is enlightened in every aspect of their lives, but that’s rarely the case.

Never enuf.

Wilber makes it clear that in his opinion there is no categorical state of "Full Enlightenment," though following his own methods of viewing growth down various lines through different quadrants, one sees that each of these lines does have seemingly discrete stages. Here is his analysis of these stages of development in reference to the progression of religious institutions. The question arises when he is asked about the disrespect that convention scientific rationalism has for his "trans-personal" worldview.

Paulson:
Why has the scientific worldview dismissed this trans-personal dimension? For most intellectuals around the world, the secular scientific paradigm has triumphed.

What color is "The Republic"?

Wilber:
It’s understandable. Historically, if you look at these broad stages, the magical era tended to be 50,000 years ago, the mythic era emerged around 5,000 B.C., and the rational era — secular humanism — emerged in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.

Kenny Super-powers' Integral Theory obviously seems to owe a lot to Hegel's Phenomenology which promotes the awareness of stages of spiritual progression, talking at once about individual psychic development and cultural development. Integral Theory attempts to be much more grounded in empiricism than Hegel ever sought to be. I.T. also has its roots more genuinely it seems in Indian Nondualistic Vedantism which has, according to Swami Vivekananda, always integrated every belief system and saw them as mutually compatible when understood to fit into a non-judgmental hierarchy.

A page from Wilber's colorful "Integral Vision"

There indeed seems to be support of Strauss' claim that there is a difference between the morality of the "beginner" and the "Philosopher." In Wilber's "Integral Vision" he cites Kohlberg's "Stages of Moral Development" as his empirical evidence of moral evolution in a single human consciousness. What is different from Strauss is that Kohlberg considers there not to be not two, but three or possibly even four stages of moral progress, each stage divided into two sub-categories. Kolhberg's evolving moralities are also not in conflict with each other, the "higher morality" engulfs the lower and does not contradict it.  Strauss also diverges when he claims that only with exposure to the works of Plato is anyone capable of this attaining this enlightenment, of perhaps "Master Morality" as Nietzsche would put it:

The difference between the beginner and the philosopher (for the perfectly trained student of Plato is no one else but the genuine philosopher) is a difference not of degree but of kind. From Exoteric Teaching

Kolhberg's stages occur naturally, abstract of any formal belief system, under a non tabla rasa understanding of human psychological development. After the publishing of Ed Wilson's "On Human Nature", the seminal work on Sociobiology, any tabla rasa theory on human nature should be labelled as completely retarded, yet it is always a temporarily profitable idea to those who would think they can control the minds of others. Heidegger seems to be headed down this path in his Introduction To Metaphysics when he tells us that the Philosopher makes the thinking of certain things into possibilities. Wilber has a different vision on how the more spiritually progressed interact with those who "haven't lived as many lives" as the Samsara formulation puts it non-judgementally.

Wilber:
You can’t prove a higher stage to someone who’s not at it. If you go to somebody at the mythic stage and try to prove to them something from the rational, scientific stage, it won’t work. You go to a fundamentalist who doesn’t believe in evolution, who believes the earth was created in six days, and you say, “What about the fossil record”? “Oh yes, the fossil record; God created that on the fifth day.” You can’t use any of the evidence from a higher stage and prove it to a lower stage. So someone who’s at the rational stage has a very hard time seeing these trans-rational, trans-personal stages. The rational scientist looks at all the pre-rational stuff as nonsense — fairies and ghosts and goblins — and lumps it together with the trans-rational stuff and says, “That’s nonrational. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Wilber's formulation puts it that Philosophers have merely been men who are further advanced down the grid than others, in certain respects at least. Remembering his qualification that there are different lines that one can progress down, there is no reason to assume this person has a "complete" understanding from which to decide "The Good" for a people group. Refer to the diagram I made a few blogs back:

The kids I work with may be Crips, but at least they ain't
emotional cripples.

My small development in the Emotional Stability field clearly shows that my moral decision making is bound to be skewed, despite the fact that I've read "The Republic," "The Nicomachean Ethics," and... I dunno, "Fight Club."

The whole thing I'm trying to demonstrate here is what I'll call a

"Yes, but... qualification."

Is America ready for true spiritual integration?

Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Strauss are presenting a broad horizon of human potential. Their works have perhaps accelerated human consciousness by leaps and bounds. They were minds far, far ahead of their times. I haven't read this piece by Strauss on Lucretius but I'm fairly sure it is going to reveal the presence of a modern rationalist mind in a time when he had no business being such. I'm assuming that between the lines in Strauss we can infer that this necessitates one of two things:

1) An omniscient abstract consciousness that humans can "tap into" with proper "culturing"; or

2) The ability of men to completely dissociate from the culture and political morality in which they were raised, and from this "empty space" they can objectively philosophize.

Wilber and other's attempts to "integrate" all philosophies is perhaps saying: "YES, they are doing one of those two things, or perhaps both, BUT they are not exclusive in this ability." What is different about Heidegger and Strauss from someone like Wilber is that the first two men link this ability to access "Nothingness" with an education directly linked to Greek metaphysics, or at least by being "cultured" by privileged to the exclusion of others. Wilber, on the other hand, comes from a perspective which has actually investigated the possible methods of experiencing this "Nothingness," and they seem to be infinite. So infinite that his book "Integral Vision" recommends a complete trust in ones intuitive ability to understand these things. This simple comment completely nullifies the idea of Masonry.

Now for healthy ragging on Wilber. If you remember my first post on him, I showed you this picture:

And said "I think he might be the worst." Well it doesn't seem like he is the worst but he does appear to be human. This guy's critique of Wilber does smack a bit of spurned lovery, and part of his complaint is Wilber's impoliteness in emails. But Wilber's general narcissism has been mentioned in other places, including to him in the Salon.com article.

Paulson:

You have many admirers. You also have critics. One objection is that you are too full of yourself. The science writer John Horgan, in his book “Rational Mysticism,” said the vibe he got from you was, “I’m enlightened. You’re not.” How do you respond to this charge of arrogance, the sense that you’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe and no one else has?

Wilber:

A lot of people see me as much more humble. I continue to change because I’m open to new ideas and I’m very open to criticism. Basically, I’ve taken the answers that have been given by the great sages, saints and philosophers and have worked them into this integral framework. If that vibe comes across as arrogant, then John would get that feeling. Of course, he was trying to do the same thing, so I would have brushed up against his own egoistic projections. But some people do agree with him and feel that my support for this integral framework comes across as arrogant.

Michael Bauwens, setting the record straight
on Kenny Superpowers.

The critique of Wilber by Michael Bauwens, editor of the New Age magazine "Wave," speaks of his increasing esotericism and cultishness when money became involved in his activities:

The specter of money, before it would go up in smoke due to the internet crash, attracted a lot of people to the Wilber camp, people who, in my own personal experience, had been deriding him, and vice versa (I received emails from both camps). The free flow of information, hitherto a characteristic of the movement, started to become very restricted. I believe the reason is that he started attracting a lot of for-profit consultants, who have proprietary views about knowledge.

And what strikes the real death-blow, in my opinion, for thinking Wilber is the new Buddha is his endorsement of Neoconservativism! I know that's not exactly an argument, but come on people!

For Wilber, who for me in this respect has not overcome a really provincial aspect of his thinking, an integral political synthesis goes no further than American liberalism (already on the right of the political spectrum to European eyes) and conservatism (akin to our extreme right in Europe), and he announced that Tony Blair was the most integral leader around, this of course at the time of the wise decision of invading Iraq.  

Oh ironies of ironies! Uncle Leo and Kenny Superpowers come full circle once money and political aspirations get involved. This makes it seem that it is not breadth of spiritual investigation that gives one clarity of purpose. I guess that me saying that Neoconservatism is inherently lacking in clarity of purpose, and I am saying that -- it is bullshit. I try to hold up Integral Theory as proof of that, but the creator of Integral Theory aligned with it... so that makes things messy. Is he behaving hypocritically in this political alignment? We should stare this abyss in the face and ask it ourselves, do we have the right to impose our values on other people because we are "more enlightened?" This seems wrong if for no other reason that it violates the Prime Directive from Star Trek

Logic and Passion properly partnered.

"As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation."