For The Turnstiles

I am describing a dynamic of exploitation that inheres in class society (a smaller and "superior" segment assumes to itself the right to make the rules for the whole and appropriates the value produced by the much larger "junior" segment), in the kinds of pedagogies Ken Wilber habitually affiliates himself with (Frank Jones or Adi Da, Andrew Cohen, and now Marc Gafni...[or Cohen and Gafni in dialogue in JITP 6:1]), and in the very model of holarchy that Wilber describes in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality.

That is: Wilber's business model of preying on the perceived needs of the vulnerable is reproduced in his metaphysics and in the pedagogies he approves. When I describe Integral Life as a cult, I mean it in this colloquial sense, as well as in the more specific sense Max Weber describes as "charismatic."

This is no way to teach, no way to make knowledge, and certainly no way to legitimize a discourse for academic purposes or any other purpose. This is why I am increasingly convinced that a rigorous pluralism of the kind Richard McKeon put forward is infinitely preferable to the Wilberian version.

Of course, many of Wilber's followers grasp this on one level or another, which is how you get contradictions like this, contradictions like that: an earnest identification with progressive movements, even revolutionary ones, held against an earnest identification with a religious doctrine (Wilberism) that carries with it a reactionary politics.

The status of JITP as an academic outlet for this sort of material is ancillary but significant insofar as it seeks to legitimize this discourse as knowledge and not as snake-oil. It was only very recently that Gafni was announcing his work as "a new chapter in integral theory," in the journal Ken Wilber oversees as Editor-in-Chief and Sean Esbjorn-Hargens runs as executive editor. Crisis.