For The Turnstiles

2011-12-10T07:11:00.001-08:00

Here is an essay in draft form on the role of a certain kind of poststructuralism in recent integral theory (looking specifically at appeals to Deleuze and Guattari).

Tangentially related thought: Integral Ecology is a book that clearly took some capital to produce. The Integral Life people are invested in this thing. It strikes me as a bit strange, going all-in on this particular wager: "evolution" is clearly the weakest link in the Wilberian chain, and so many of the claims in the ecology book are predicated on precisely that. How to explain this?

2011-12-08T12:54:00.001-08:00

Very busy days and nights: finishing and defending a dissertation proposal, working on fellowship applications, teaching and grading and meeting with students, preparing some new work for publication, and facing some potentially challenging and potentially rewarding opportunities.

Soon I will rest. Until then, let us all be thankful for black coffee. Or this one instead for a smoother vibe and a slower accumulation.

2011-11-16T05:24:00.000-08:00

Two more pieces up at Integral World now.

One is an informal question-and-answer section in which I attempt to address some common misunderstandings of the work I have done so far. I have to take responsibility for some of those misunderstandings, because I created them in the way I wrote those pieces. Some others, not so much. Read it here.

The second one concerns the work of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, which seems to be increasingly Wilberian in orientation (or at least affiliation). Their website certainly appears to have taken a page from Integral Life's style manual. Now, I very much appreciate the kinds of work that this Circle has set out to accomplish, as well as the congenial culture they have established. If this is criticism, it is friendly criticism.

I will have more to say later on what I mean by the word "sly" in this context. I mean it as a compliment, but I recognize that it may not be understood that way by all.

2011-11-15T11:07:00.000-08:00

Apropos of "integral politics":

Alan Nasser's "How the Oligarchy Gets Politicized" gives a useful history of the contemporary. From this, it should be clear how Wilber's comments on the politics of left and right miss the essential; Nasser points to the real movement that Wilber's narrative cannot or does not account for.

2011-11-15T05:53:00.001-08:00

While in practical terms Daniel Mroz's research is about training actors, if you read it in a slightly wider context, you see it sits at the intersection of two complex problems, that of embodiment and sociality and performance. I have just read two recent articles of his (you can find one of them here) and have come to the conclusion that he is making the kind of contribution that comparative thought can and should produce.

I very much look forward to reading Mroz' book The Dancing Word.

2011-11-15T05:18:00.001-08:00

My essay "What Is Critical Integral Theory?" is now available at Integral World. This has been in circulation in draft form for a week or more. This revision benefited greatly from feedback offered by Joe Corbett.

2011-11-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

Here is a revised draft of my comments on comparative philosophy generally, and the work of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle more specifically, now with attention to the connection between this circle and the integral scene.

I also cleaned up some language that could be understood as nasty in a way that I did not want to be understood as nasty.

2011-11-14T07:39:00.001-08:00

Maybe I touched a nerve?

2011-11-13T09:44:00.001-08:00

Here are some comments that I hope are constructive for the problematic presented by the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle.

2011-11-13T06:13:00.000-08:00

Objection! In the past, you have claimed that the form of integral theory espoused by Ken Wilber and his followers will not (because it cannot) constitute a mainstream academic discourse on its current legs. But look around: the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice is published at SUNY Press, a mainstream academic press, which also publishes a series of books on the topic. A related group, the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, publishes a journal with Ken Wilber on the advisory board and with Michael Schwartz running the show, and has a series of books coming out at Northwestern University Press, and an academic journal. It looks like the evidence is piling up against your claim, Mr. Anderson.

Response: The Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle presents a series of questions I will take up later. For now, put the scholarly production in and around Wilber's circle in context.

The current director (recently hired) of Northwestern University Press is Jane Bunker. Prior to this, she had a significant role at SUNY Press in putting the Series in Integral Theory in order. You can see this here. I do not know if SUNY Press is continuing this series now. My view on the volume Integral Theory in Action is, shall we say, skeptical. Two things to say about all this: first, someone seems willing to open the door to this discourse into academic presses. While it appears that two separate presses are accepting of this, it may be more likely that one advocate is influencing this development. Second, with the door open, there is no telling how these texts will be received. That is the real test. How well does this material hold up as scholarship? It remains to be seen.

That said, it presents a fine opportunity to make the case.

2011-11-12T06:29:00.001-08:00

In response to my repeated calls to re-imagine what integral theory is and what it can do, it has been objected that you just cannot make integral theory whatever you want of it.

True.

However, we can make of integral theory whatever we decide to make of it. We need not adhere to the relatively arbitrary decisions of one individual or cadre or corporate entity that has reserved to itself the right to make of integral theory whatever it decides (and then to trademark it, brand it, &c).

I am not interested in becoming a Urizenic dispenser of verities. Only someone who is accustomed to treating knowledge as a commodity, and knowledge-producers as singular Sage Gods of Wisdom, would assume I would want to be such a thing. That seems silly to me.

What kind of man turns himself into a vending machine?

2011-11-12T06:04:00.001-08:00

Open question for me: to what extent is William Blake a dialectical thinker? Or in what aspects of Blake's overall project can a dialectical method be identified? The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is marked by it, surely; the business of angels and devils, opposition as true friendship, "Without Contraries is No Progression." But what of the prophetic-voiced works?

This is a significant question for integral studies. Blake is a significant figure anyway, but especially in this milieu because he was among the first canonical writers to be swept into the "new paradigm." And this was done typically through a Jungian gloss, so he was psychologized into a myth-maker. Well, Blake was certainly a mythmaker, but what is the meaning of that myth if it is merely psychological, merely internal?

Compare this to Sean Kelly's comparative work between Hegel and Jung. Jung is not a dialectical thinker, so any point of contact between Jung and Hegel will have to be on a different ground from that. That contact is made largely on metaphysical or theological positions. Jung is a philosophical idealist. This is emphasized in Kelly's work, just as the idealism in Hegel is emphasized in Wilber's.

If this approach to Jung is representative of the "new paradigm" or "integral studies" take of this period, then it seems to me that what is really useful and valuable in Blake (the hints at a dialecticism, his historical significance, his political aspirations, his calls for justice and an end to all forms of enslavement) are washed out in favor of a trippy science-fiction world of Biblical references and hyperbole. A "Little lamb, God bless thee" sort of irrelevance.

And that is a significant loss. I take a different approach to Blake from this one, more in line with David Erdman's and E.P. Thompson's. In point of fact, I think Blake points to a different approach to integral theory entirely.

More on that "different approach" business here.

2011-11-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

Trying to write something that is very difficult to put to the page.

2011-11-07T05:39:00.000-08:00

This weekend I wrote a critical survey of "critical integral theory," or at least my own contribution to that, at Joe Corbett's suggestion, with an eye toward "integral critical theory." I also address some public criticisms of my longer essays and propose some new ones too.

You can read it in draft form here.

2011-11-04T05:27:00.001-07:00

Reflecting on Wilber's comment that the Buddha would be a Republican today (which still has me chuckling this morning), it occurs to me that this claim has some significant points of contact with Zizek's treatment of critical and therapeutic religious practices in The Puppet and the Dwarf.

I should qualify the following by stating up front that Zizek is not particularly well informed about Buddhist doctrine or history, and is mostly working at the level of polemic and provocation rather than reason here. That said, some of what he is saying may be of present use.

Zizek posits a Leninist Christ: one who makes a violent intervention into reality and the social order, producing the "miracle" of revolution. This is an active, critical mode. To flesh this out, he then produces (along lines established since Schopenhauer) a soft, effeminate, passive, nihilistic, and uncritical Buddhism that "goes with the flow." This is a Buddhism that renounces the critical practice of Nagarjuna and the Prajnaparamita literature: in fact, Zizek's critique of "western Buddhism" is mostly argued from a reading of Brian Victoria's analysis of Fascist Zen, called Zen at War.

This means Zizek implies a kind of continuity between the "Western Buddhism" of Kornfield, Kabat-Zinn, and Brach (think Radical Acceptance) and the enforced no-thinking meditative stance of the kamikaze pilot. If this is your understanding of Buddhism (no thought, only sitting) then it is not difficult to establish the Buddha however far to the political right you might wish.

There are good reasons to be skeptical of Zizek's claims on Christ and Buddha. The more germane question for the purposes of this blog: to what extent might Zizek's critique of "western Buddhism," as distinct from the Leninist intervention he attributes to Christ, apply to the project of Ken Wilber and his followers?

For myself, as a "westerner" who practices a traditional form of Buddhism (as distinct from "Western Buddhism"), I think my own interests align more closely to the Leninized Christ than to the psychologized passive-acceptance-of-everything Buddha Zizek describes.

2011-11-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

Apropos of the question of the relation between Buddhism and specifically radical politics, Ken Wilber has rather puckishly thrown out the position that Buddha Shakyamuni was a Republican.

And I cannot stop laughing. Not at Mr. Wilber, but with him. As comedy, this is diamonds. He could opine that shit is gold and people would buy it, and that is a riot. If you appreciate comedy in the Franz Kafka / Andy Kaufman vein. Even expensive shit, sometimes. Notice that Wilber's claim here is couched in a ShamWow! hard-sell...

Even if this is meant as a provocation toward persons like myself who practice both leftist politics and Buddhism and see no contradiction between them, which is to say even if this is a joke on my friends and me, who cares? This gesture is irresistibly, uproariously funny. Well played, Mr. Wilber.

2011-11-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

It bears repeating that all this emphasis on self, the state of development of this or that self, ones own development, and hence one's authority to speak on the topics of concern to integral studies, can lead to an overemphasis on the personal. I do not mean this in the sense of narcissism necessarily, but in a tendency to take things personally that are not, in the last analysis, personal. Conflicts ensue.

So much healthier to "play the ball, not the man."

2011-11-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

In Oakland, it is underway. This is good news for sentient life, but crummy news for holarchy.

2011-11-02T07:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-11-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

There is another side to vulnerability, though, beyond the intentional practice of making oneself vulnerable (which is, in some respects, an act of courage: of refusing to "avoid relationship"). Yes, I am wording it in this way in order to highlight some important parallels between meditative practice and the work of research. Inquiry. A sociologist I respect introduces Booth's Craft of Research as a "meditation." He may be onto something there.

My point is that people are vulnerable for a billion reasons, some of them intentional, but much more often self-inflicted or post-traumatic. People hurt, people struggle. Most of us are confused and get in our own way much more than we want to admit. This means you must account for the ethical problem of relating to people who are vulnerable with integrity, with care, with an eye on their needs.

It seems to me that the "spiritual marketplace" is structured to suck money out of vulnerable people. Think about it: if everything is working right for you, there is no need to head toward the "self-help" aisle of a bookstore. There is no need to go past that, into the "alternative spirituality" aisle unless the self-help section fails you. I am speaking from experience and from observation here; I have reason to think that this is a representative picture for the contemporary "seeker," someone who wants to live well and be happy, and knows she does not know how, and knows she needs some answers. She is vulnerable: her heart is open and it hurts.

Salespeople know how to extract money from the vulnerable; they call it "upselling." You can see where this goes: it seems wholly vile to manipulate the emotional experiences of the vulnerable, to talk them up with promises of a coming Integral Age and tear them down with the Mean Green Meme, to line your own pockets.

Better to get a regular job (Kabir made baskets) than turn a profit on the prophet motive.

2011-11-02T05:50:00.001-07:00

Back to pluralism for a moment:

You need to consider the concept of vulnerability. Brene Brown's TED talk has been going around for many moons now, and is very much worth your time, first as an object lesson in how research really gets done, when the doing is good: she goes into the world with a puzzle, a problem, and makes herself vulnerable to whatever surprises may come her way. It is not as though she has found the Magic Key to All Mythologies that she can then take into the archive and find what she wants to find. On the contrary: she has to come to terms with evidence that completely confounds her. Which is to say she gets to learn something new. If there is such a thing as pluralism in "integral methodological pluralism" (I am not convinced there is), then this kind of vulnerability in questioning must be at the center of it. Otherwise you are just watching reruns; you know the outcome already (what a surprise! Shelling and Hegel and Aurobindo agree on what they agree on!). I show my students this talk in research methods courses for just this reason.

Second, Brown's talk is funny, earnest, and soulful, which is all good. It is also critical (and it gets there through humor, which I particularly appreciated): she points out her limits as a researcher, where her evidence is warranted and where it is not, and so on. There are ways in which this is embodied research (that is the "brown" vMeme on the emerging Spiral of Consciousness).

Vulnerability is a complex concept, though. I will have more to say about it in terms of power and relationships.

2011-11-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Looks like Emily Levang's Vox Integral site is back up, and someone else is running the Integral Life Coaching thing at Integral Life.

I am interested in the flexibility of the branding by means of los interwebz: when Levang is working for Integral Life, Vox Integral as a distinct project (demarcated by a distinct web presence) disappears; when Lisa Frost takes over the coaching product line at Integral Life, then Vox Integral re-emerges on its own (and the site reappears).

The pushes and pulls of economic necessity (the need to put beans on the table) seem to determine the form and the content of the integral work. This is presented as a coming age of consciousness, but is it Spirit driving the tractor or the hustle? It seems to me that coffee is for closers and (following Illouz's analysis of emotional capitalism) if "going yellow" or whatever can make a closer of you, then...

2011-11-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

Watching the developments in Oakland with great interest: when a general strike is called, I have to think that a Rubicon has been crossed. The second intervention is underway.

My older brother is buried in Pittsburg, California; my mother was from Vallejo, but she told people she was from Napa. The east bay is like that. I hope my personal connections to and affection for the place are not clouding my judgment when I opine that Oakland represents the edge of the edge, at least here in North America.

2011-11-01T05:36:00.001-07:00

A while back I stated the intention of commenting on Raphael Foshay's essay "Tension on the Left." I think this essay deserves close attention because it challenges certain assumptions common to many approaches to integral studies, especially Wilber's, but also mine.

In this essay, I try to show what Foshay's contribution with this piece is, to put that in context, to point out a problem with Foshay's argument, and to suggest that the correction to that problem opens onto a potentially useful space for inquiry.

Find it at Integral World.

2011-10-31T10:50:00.001-07:00

Here we go again:

I am not calling Perez out because he is gay. Perez's sexuality as an aspect of his person is beside the point. I attempted to reach out to Perez in his function as a public authority on matters queer, a public function Perez claimed for himself by authoring a book with a title like Soulfully Gay. I invited Perez to consider certain discourses that are conventional to such a position for the reasons I stated at the time: because such an engagement would, in my view, make a real contribution forward to integral studies.

By analogy, one might also invite the triad of Sofia Diaz, Diane Musho Hamilton, and Willow Pearson to engage with critical feminist thought insofar as they have, publicly, proposed an "integral feminism." Not because they identify as women, but because they are working with the discourse of gender studies as authorities on the same.

It is a subtle but important distinction. I think that, generally, in integral studies things are much too personal (of and about the self). Comments about someone's positions are conflated with comments about someone's person. This is counterproductive in that it reduces discussion to name-calling (fie on thee, thou postmodernist!).

2011-10-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

Some backstory on the question of "integral methodological pluralism."

The most rigorous expression of pluralism as a theoretical project I know of is expressed by Richard McKeon. It is, in many respects, a noble and productive approach: to my mind, you have to respect a thinker who takes as a first principle the impossibility of a singular or monolithic voice of truth, and so instead embraces the dialogic, the multiple. Among it descendents is Booth's Craft of Research, which I still use in teaching and in my own practice: it emphasizes the work of identifying a problem, and working within a many-voiced milieu to engage with that problem. Inquiry from an open question, rather than from a set of presumptions about what you value.

So when I hear the words "integral methodological pluralism," this is the precedent that is evoked: a pluralism that is rigorous, dialogic, multiple, and methodically so. Without a doubt, if integral thinkers engaged with this tradition of thought, useful new lines of approach could emerge.

Ever since Integral Spirituality came out a few years ago I have been putting off a detailed analysis of "integral methodological pluralism," as it could easily turn into a lot of commentary on a relatively insignificant object. Even among the comparatively small group of people with an interest in integral studies, not so much interest is in evidence. Is it worth my time?

2011-10-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

Seven billion breathing human bodies on this Planet of Slums. I suggest you take a careful look at Mike Davis' 2004 article on this topic (or read the 2006 book of the same title): it has more useful things to say on the relation of religion, population, and environment, and on what the '"worldview" of the present age' really looks like, than anything in the Wilber canon.

2011-10-31T04:39:00.000-07:00

Objection! You have a bad habit of trashing theology, metaphysics, Spirit as anything but a personal or cultural phenomenon. What about theology as a form of knowledge, as you like to say?

Reply: What I really object to is the deployment of private theologies, private religions, into public discourses as forms of knowledge as though they are not private theologies. I think this is a form of make-believe. It is a problem that inheres in "intelligent design" and in Wilberism. It puts adherents on the defensive; if someone questions your position on something, as is healthy and constructive in public discourse (especially academic discourse), that person is necessarily questioning the tenets of your faith. Meltdowns ensue, conversation and discussion and debate crumble. It is not productive at all.

It is true that I have not always articulated this position in this way, sometimes for rhetorical purposes, sometimes in shorthand, and sometimes just out of laziness or incompetence. My comments should not be taken to mean that I think reading, say, Protestant theology following Ernst Bloch is a waste of time. That is not my position. You can learn something from critical utopian theology. It would only become problematic when you insist on presenting those speculations as though they are public science.

2011-10-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

Listen: On its present trajectory, with the load it now bears, Wilberism cannot become a mainstream-able academic discourse. This is because of the cultish way knowledge is made in integral theory at present, of course. But it also has to do with the way that words actually mean something. Words matter in the work of defining, specifying, and deploying concepts.

Wilberism is laden with words that, on one side, have little or no definite meaning: they have polemical value, but are so bent out of shape and proportion as to have conceptual value left. Spiral Dynamics as Wilber uses it is like this. "Green" is an insult. "Red" is a put-down. And that is that: in practice, whatever their content may be is elusive and not infrequently contradictory, as in Wilber's infamous comments on the Iraq War. I am convinced that "postmodern" simply means, to Wilber and his followers, whatever is perceived as an enemy or obstacle to Wilberism. You cannot bring all this to bear in an academic conversation without a lot of ultimately pointless verbal gymnastics. (In this context, "green" means X. But in that one, it means the opposite, Y. &c.)

Further, when it does get specific, Wilberism is predicated on concepts with particular theological content, for which there is no real consensus in the academy. Good luck convincing a religiously plural biology department of the conceptual value of "Spirit" in explaining the phenomena they observe and describe. It is a non-starter. Even a theology that seeks to integrate the wisdom of all or at least listen to all is itself a particular theology. If it is anyone's consensus, it is someone's consensus, not everyone's. It is surely not mine. In fact, given Wilber's affiliation with intelligent design (through Michael Behe), it is definitely a regressive "consensus" of an isolated minority, affiliated with reactionary politics.

On this point, Analogy can be made to the anthropological and historical claims of The Book of Mormon: the business on Jaredites, Mulekites, Lamanites, Nephites, and the rest. This narrative may make sense as a belief system; it offers a "bigger picture," after all, in which we all get to be right (at least partly). But these claims are complete nonsense by any measure of contemporary science. They have no purchase in contemporary anthropology or history departments except as artifacts of nineteenth-century speculative anthropology, artifacts of cultural history. I think Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality as well as Integral Ecology will be regarded as much the same, insofar as they have any place at all in contemporary academic discourse.

If you want to legitimize integral theory as academic discourse, you need another way to move forward. That is, you need to move forward from different premises, different assumptions, and different methodologies from the ones canonized in SES. Where might you find such a place to begin? You may find it productive to look to us devils and dirtbags, rather than the angels of neurosis and transcendence.

It remains to be seen if "integral methodological pluralism" can do this. A closer reading of this approach will be forthcoming from me. For now, from the scholarship that claims to work from IMP that I have seen so far, there is little reason for optimism. I would like to know: to what extent does it represent a departure from these problems, or to what extent does it merely reproduce them? I have some ideas on this, but I have yet to resolve for myself what is meant by "pluralism" in this context (e.g., can this fairly be described as "pluralism" at all, or is it an attempt to contain the multiple in the singular of the AQAL frame?).

***

Nota Bene. This does not necessitate a renunciation of a detailed and uncompromising inquiry into consciousness and traditional practices of knowing. On the contrary. Clearing away the discourse of a perennial philosophy and the imperative to synthesize, homogenize, and commodify makes for the specificity of traditional discourse in the multiple to emerge, well, rhizomically if you like. Make this your question: what is the particular contribution this text, this approach, this idea (and only this one) can make now? This is related to the imperative to do well what only you can do well, instead of reducing your own constellation to some canon of external authority (which amounts to hiding your light under a bushel of bullshit).

***

Rebuttal: It may be so that Wilberism has its limits in interfacing with the academy, that it is limiting as a methodology. But you promote a methodology called dialectical materialism, which is also limiting, is it not? Limiting in the sense of marginalizing which corners of the academy will take your work seriously?

Reply: I try to think dialectically. And I am a materialist in much the way Sebastiano Timpanaro describes the term in On Materialism. I am not a dialectical materialist in the sense of being a Soviet philosopher.

That said, the approach I advocate does introduce limits in scope, but it attempts to account for those limits, to point them out critically, instead of trying to pretend them away. Further, it is also a commitment made not to a discourse or a canon or a cult figure, but to an imperative to transformation from a situation of dependence, subordination, and struggle to one of autonomy and maturity and creativity. DiaMat as a discourse suits the purposes of an integral understanding toward a radical transformation of self and society. Hence, I think it is warranted, even if the business school (the "1%" in the language of the "occupy" movement) finds it off-putting or threatening or anachronistic.

***

Rebuttal: The reason no one in the academy takes Wilber seriously is because their consciousness has not yet reached a proper level of development. They are identified with a paradigm that is not yet Integral--

Reply: Sorry to interrupt, but if this is your attitude, I advise you to check your assumptions. Even if you are right and people working in conventional academic disciplines and who identify as, say, secular humanists or agnostics or members of whatever religious tradition that is not Wilberism are, in sum, not quite enlightened enough to understand the profound truths of the Integral Age (I do not think you are right on this point, but here I will give you the benefit of the doubt): even if it is so, this kind of attitude will not help you convince anyone of the value of your ideas. It will help others become convinced you are a looney, a crank (on the Dunning-Kruger principle). It only marginalizes integral discourse further. How does that help anyone accomplish anything?

2011-10-30T06:39:00.001-07:00

The canon on which integral theory is constructed (I am alluding to that of Wilber and his followers) mostly seems assembled, whimsically, from the immediate needs and immediate reading of one man, then backformed and reified into a coherent history.

[I want to qualify this claim by pointing out that a careful historian can identify "integral" or "redemptive" if you like the Blakean diction responses to historical transformations in many world cultures. I suggest how this can work in outline in "Such a Body." I think this is a better approach to building a canon than whatever method has been used in the Wilber world. But I digress.]

Certain ideosyncratic tendencies are repeated in Wilber's archive. This is to be expected, but these choices should also be accounted for (e.g., why is Theilhard de Chardin warranted here? Why Schelling?). These preferences include an emphasis on Dharmic religion, an eternalistic and idealistic interpretation of the same, particularly as found in Anglophone yogic philosophy post-Theosophy.

What gets left out? Some material that would have been very useful indeed to Wilber and his co-travelers in demonstrating their claims. Some obvious choices emerged from the Islamic world. Such as Islam as such. Or the Universal Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Or GI Gurdjieff and the stream of students he produced. I have cited other examples, particularly in "Such a Body."

I think Gurdjieff and his legacy and his students particularly deserve a closer look in integral circles. The relative silence on the Fourth Way can only be described as counterproductive, as a missed opportunity. Among other things, the Gurdjieff intervention proves it is possible to build a vivid culture that develops participants on several lines at once, collaboratively; it is possible to do this with a sense of humor, and a sense of elan; and that working as a materialist has real advantages in this context and does not come in opposition to or compromise of "spiritual values."

Solution: pitch the canon of "integral thinkers" that has become conventional, even on Wikipedia. Start over from scratch, and look to history for examples of useful integral work, rather than to the literary choices of the author of Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality.

2011-10-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

Caveat Emptor: I make these comments as someone trained in rhetoric, philosophy, literature, and political theory, and with something to say about violence, power, and the production of knowledge. Not as someone with any kind of expertise in the psychology of trauma, for instance.

Premise: It is quite alright, and often advisable, to decline to have sex with your guru if you do not want to have sex with your guru. Or even if you do want to. I am interested in this dynamic as a way to rethink the "Great Refusal" in the context of the Marc Gafni affair. Think through how this changes the power dynamic between the charismatic and the chela.

If you want to present yourself as a guru, you need to be a grownup. [Hypothesis: the very desire to present oneself as a guru belongs in the DSM as a sure symptom of Not-A-Grownup Personality Disorder.] Part of being a grownup is to figure out how to express your sexuality. Part of being a guru is figuring out how to manage your relationships with students. If these two conflict, then stop pretending, stop playing the sage on the stage: if they conflict, then you are not qualified even to pretend to be a guru.

If you want to join a cult, then I humbly recommend following a guru who is competent. Take your time and examine this, by criteria external to the guru's own schtick. Be an adult and read some books, really study widely, first. Think through how this changes the power dynamic between the charismatic and the chela: the situation begins to democratize when the student willingly leaves when she recognizes her teacher's foolishness as foolishness, as immaturity, as a fraud.

Before you do that, though, examine your desire to join that cult. What are you running from?

***

Yesterday I was trapped in a situation in which I could not escape the sound of Cat Stevens' "Wild World" blaring at me. I chose to listen carefully to the melody and the words, while paying attention to just what it is about this number that grates me.

I find the tune appealing. Now that I am old and arthritic, I can say without reserving the right to say I was just being ironic that I like Cat Stevens' body of work overall. But I take exception to this number. It presents itself as a noble word of advocacy, a jeremiad to a vulnerable young lass on the dangers of the public world of men. A Beware! appropriate to the Victorian era, from a man who clearly cannot let this girl go and wants to convince her to stay out of fear and intimidation.

This kind of rhetoric casts the girl as a girl and not a grown woman: "I'll always remember you as a child, girl." I like to imagine a sequel to this, a one-line refrain of "hands off creep," in which she leaves for a successful career in the scary public world of men and the voice of "Wild World" is alone, sad, and seeking someone else to bully around.

Message: advocacy is problematic when it reifies victimhood, or presupposes it in others. "Wild World" is representative of this sort of rhetoric: the knowing male voice condescends to threaten the girl, presuming she is already a victim by virtue of her... gender?

We all must endeavor to snuff out violence and violent forms of relationship. Behaving like adults in the domain of sexuality and gender is one very important aspect of this. This is why I keep saying that the Gafni business is not really about sexuality, that making this crisis about sexuality in the first instance is a fundamental mistake. It is really about problems in leadership, in authority, in legitimacy. It is also about constipated gender roles that need to be outgrown, which presume in themselves uneven relations of power. I suggest that we all make ourselves more authoritative, and seek less to external sources of authority and legitimation.

***

One of the great virtues of the work of William Blake is an unflinching examination of this dynamic. I touch on it a bit in "Sweet Science," I do not even approach the complexity of the matter that Blake's vision anticipates. I am not claiming that Blake was GGG, but instead that he was very much ahead of his time and refreshingly honest about both conjugal relationships and the lies people tell themselves about sexuality. Dig it.

2011-10-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

Returning to where I started the present intervention, I would like to close accounts (at least on a conceptual level) with Integral Theory in Action. [bracketing the question of what should be in the book but is not... how about a more detailed consideration of sexuality? history? critique?]

Behold the crux of the biscuit:

I am encouraged by a willingness to at least invite or touch on a critique of capitalist forms of consciousness and exploitation, which I noticed in the essays by Zimmerman, Mickey, and Schwartz (apologies if I missed one or another of these). This is a positive step, as are recent gestures among integral commentators in support of the Occupy movement. It is my earnest hope to see these trends strengthen into well-developed positions.

However, the book is also characterized by a total unwillingness to actually investigate capitalist social relations, even those expressed as "consumerism" or mass culture (think of Jameson's analysis of the "postmodern" or even good old Frankfurt School style analysis of the culture machine).

These look like terms in tension to me. On one side you find an earnest desire to work against consumer consciousness and unjust relations; on another side, you find an unwillingness to take a look at some of the causes of the same. How to account for this?

I think it is tied to an underlying allegiance to Ken Wilber as a figure of authority, and his books as authoritative accounts of history and causation, and his categories as authoritative too. This goes beyond the question of whether integral theory begins and ends at AQAL. It goes well beyond and actually before all that.

Some of us have noticed that Ken Wilber's form of operating is wholly neoliberal. It is consumer culture. It is consumerism. How is the figure of Ken Wilber constructed as a figure of legitimate authority and knowledge? This figure is mediated through books and other media which reify him as some kind of beyond-man who writes the most important books ever published or whatever. Wilberism is consumerism. Followers of Wilber are consumers of integral products, "commodities of conviction" as I have called them in the past. Michele Chase's contribution to Integral Theory in Action demonstrates this (if accidentally or symptomatically). In this sense, Ken Wilber is in the first instance an entrepreneur.

I like entrepreneurs (see Schweickart's book, After Capitalism). I do not throw this word around as an insult. I am using it to describe what Wilber really does here: he produces a market for things, then produces things that he can sell. It does not matter what the real use value of these things might be to his purpose of making money on them. If Spiral Dynamics sells, he gets on board with that; if some bullshit on Ayn Rand sells, then that is where he goes. Or Michael Behe. (Really, if you want a good analogy in history to what Wilber's project does, look to Ayn Rand's fashioning of herself as an authority and her approach to marketing her "philosophy" as a product line.)

Consequently, any real interrogation of consumerist forms will lead inevitably, if you look past the mystified and into the obvious, to an interrogation of Wilber's way of working. And that pulls the rug out from under the legitimacy behind the claims in most of Integral Theory in Action, in Integral Ecology, in all the rest of it. This is a necessary blindspot for Wilberians. If this Rubicon is crossed, then it is over: you have to start over from first principles.

This introduces other problems. One of them is a doctrinaire, true-faith approach to Wilber's positions. Since these positions cannot really be taken critically without undermining their legitimacy, they are taken as a body of doctrine, a theology. (If you want this discourse to be taken seriously among academics, this is not an auspicious characteristic.) This can be seen in Integral Theory in Action, which betrays an ironclad insistence on accepting Wilber's idealist historicism as "spiritual reality", which is not accounted for from any evidence external to Wilber's assumptions.

What do you get, then? A contradictory mess, stuck between two positions: on the one side an aspiration to think critically and progressively, on the other an aspiration toward advancing the True Faith. A dialectic of playfulness and piety, if you will. I suggest integral thinkers get to work sorting out where they stand on this.

2011-10-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

What to call the amalgam of experiences, spaces, discourses, and aspirations that have no place in the ascending wizardly stages of Spiral Dynamics?

I will call it brown, designating the living material substrate in and of which experience is possible, the earth, as well as the earthy and an appeal to an admittedly dirtbag do-it-yourself sensibility, a willingness to point to the fissures and to mind the gaps. If you are in the ShamWow! business, this will likely make you uncomfortable. I invite you to own your discomfort, Mr. Brown.

2011-10-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

Integralists have a lot to say about leadership, much of it sensible and potentially useful. This is good. Let us put this to work.

I would like to invite the gallery to show more intellectual leadership. Dare to think critically and creatively, dare to risk failure, in pushing new ideas. Decline to be a passive consumer of academic spectacle (are you familiar with Paulo Freire on the "banking model"?). And put your name on it, in public.

You know why I call this blog For The Turnstiles, right? You can really learn a lot that way.

2011-10-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

Of course I am serious. My position on Occupy is straightforward. It goes like this:

Occupy is a bottom-up democratic movement that shows real promise. I have been calling for radical democracy for a long time now. It may be starting here. Occupy began on sound premises: first identifying an objective contradiction (in our society risk is socialized but profit is privatized, so the class divide widens), a legitimate wrong, in our recent history, and is seeking somehow to remedy that through collaborative action. This is beautiful. For once, us Yanquis have figured out how to get pissed off about the right problem instead of dreaming up confused and paranoid bullshit to get worked up about. (You can analyze this dynamic further through the lens of the two interventions in "Such a Body" if you have time.) I, for one, am not at all satisfied with the way our superholon of global capital is organizing our freedom and managing our development, profiting from our labors and struggles.

However, endorsing Occupy is in direct contradiction to Wilber's model of development in holarchy. If you follow Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality closely, really read what the words say, you will have to regard Occupy as like the cancer in a dog: an unwanted regression, a pathological sub-holon. Like Allende's Chile. Like Iran under Mosaddegh. Like Hungary, 1956.

Those who claim to support Occupy and Wilberism (here is another) are on the horns of a dilemma, and must resolve this contradiction on their own. Make up your minds, friends: are you for authentic democracy, or for holarchy in the form of divisive social relations (hi there 1%) and the corporate rule of "transcend-and-include" consolidation?

Decide: Is Occupy a "green" or "red" aberration* from proper evolution of consciousness into an Integral Age, like cancer in a dog? Or is it, at minimum, a moment to reconsider Wilber's categories and the trajectory of his argument? Figure out where you stand, and stand there.

*Yes, I am aware that no one really buys the Spiral Dynamics categories anymore (I never did), but because they still turn up in "integral" polemic (and so long as they do), I will continue to pitch them back.

And yes, I am aware that my comments here are likely to be ignored or dismissed as "postmodern" or "green" or "incomplete" or "anti-spirituality" or whatever. I would like to remind the gallery that overconfident dismissal of a challenge has its downsides.

Sometimes you have to analyze and reject poor premises, instead of including and transcending them, even when you really really want to believe in the Great Pumpkin or some kind of compromise between left and right. That is to say, sometimes one side of those equations really is in the wrong, and more fundamentally, the conceptual frame that poses the choice is not infrequently unacceptable. Much of Wilber's corpus looks a lot like dead wood fit for the fire to my (admittedly squinty) eyes. The instance of Occupy points out but one example.

2011-10-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to Joe Perez

28 October 2011

Dear Mr. Perez,

We do not know each other well. So I hope it not too impertinent for a stranger like me to make a public demand on your time and attention. I do this in a spirit of friendship, and with an eye toward pushing the horizons of contemporary integral thought forward.

Here is the thing: It seems to me that you are in a unique position to contribute to the integral studies discourse in a productive and creative way, and not only because you already have a readership of significant numbers among those who are interested in this material. I am referring instead to your legitimacy in writing on issues of gender and sexual identity. You are able to write the queer with authority, as you did in Soulfully Gay.

That is point A.

Point B: There exists a lively, provocative, and occasionally problematic body of scholarship and reflection uneasily categorized as Queer Studies. You may be surprised to hear that there is significant and evocative overlap between your project in Soulfully Gay and the concerns of queer theorists such as Lauren Berlant, Michael Warner, and most especially Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who describes her experiences in meditation in Touching Feeling. I am also of the opinion that Juana Rodriguez's Queer Latinidad is a quietly soulful book.

I am writing you to bring points A and B into meaningful dialogue in your mind. I am asking you, Mr. Perez, to give this work a careful and critical reading, and then to write about it. The readers of the JITP would surely benefit from this. How so? In a few ways. This will take some explaining.

I bring this up with the understanding that there is nothing particularly "postmodern" about the material I am drawing your attention to. Seriously. If anything (and Berlant spells this out in Queen of America), the practices described are a reaction to, a resistance to, the postmodern condition, to cultural life under Reagan and neoliberalism. (See David Harvey's classic The Postmodern Condition, and Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, to specify my meaning. You surely know this work, Mr. Perez, but since this is also a public document, I want to foreclose public misunderstandings before they arise.)

Engaging with queer theory in detail will give you a chance to broaden the understanding of queer identities and experiences and practices in integral theory (which you are uniquely positioned to do), and along the way to tighten up the concept of the postmodern as it circulates in integral studies. That is the take-away. You can do this effectively, and this discourse will benefit when you do.

So please. Enlighten the counterpublic.

In friendship,

D.G.A.
Annandale, Virginia

2011-10-27T12:45:00.000-07:00

I am having an outstanding conversation with a sharped-tongued stranger. As a rule I am contemptuous of the anonymity of the internet: it is too easy to make an inflammatory comment on a discussion board or twitter or whatever without putting your meat-world name on it. The Jack White "Sea of Cowards" argument has real merit.

However, every now and then anonymity has its uses as a tactic or temporary ruse, an upaya. (I assume a familiarity with the distinction between strategy and tactic along the lines presented in, say The Lotus Sutra, where Upaya is presented as the tactic and Ekayana is the strategy).

In the end, though, people need to take responsibility for the things they say and the positions they take. Otherwise, you are evading reality, bullshitting yourself, smelling like a hypocrite. I once read The Dawn Horse Testament. It is a wild performance. I am certainly not a follower of Adi Da. However, I find this expression, "avoiding relationship?" to be of real use. It is imperative not to avoid relationship, not to try to evade engaging with the reality of your situation. You have to eat the pu pu platter when served to you. You have to face it and deal with it. It is no use trying to transcend the limited body; those limits express your reality, your experience. They can teach you as you undergo them. This is why I am skeptical of the language of transcendence, even in the context of dialectical materialism (which ought to know better).

Let me make this concrete. The anxiety you feel about the shape of your butt in your yoga pants? Do not evade that, at the risk of living in bad faith with yourself, in a world of make believe. Let us say, hypothetically, that you desire multiple partners, that monogamy is not for you: find a way to live with multiple sexual partners in honesty and good faith with all of them. It is possible. People do it. If you commit to monogamy, really commit to it. If you commit to celibacy (an honorable commitment!), do not hold back, really throw yourself in. What do you have to lose?

When you pile up contradictions within yourself, within your understanding of the world, you come to live in a world of shame and resentment. (This is Nietzsche's insight, and Dostoevsky's.) This is expressed in the form of lashing out at the vulnerable, in the form of hypocrisy, in the form of smug and condescending gestures. Remedy: recognize the contradiction, resolve the contradiction not through some kind of applied transcendence product you get at Barnes and Noble or Integral Life, but through a careful examination and a thoroughgoing commitment. (I call this the two interventions in "Such a Body.") A state of internal contradiction is precisely the avoidance of relations. Set your contradictions in dialectical relation with one another. Let them reach out and touch.

It helps to have a sense of humor and to be kind to yourself and others. This does not mean to indulge or enable, but to recognize objective needs and do your best to help.

And sometimes, to bring this around to the point, you need some anonymity or some role-play in order to reach out and be of service to others. Against the "sea of cowards" argument, this may well be an act of courage.

2011-10-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have not written at all about the Occupy movement until today. To do so would seem opportunistic to me. My comments here are in response to claims made by others that seem noteworthy to me. Some are problematic.

I appreciate this description of Occupy.

What if the self-organizational gift-economy way of village creation at Occupy nodes is the solution itself to how we run the world? What if Occupy is itself the new operational system of the world?

I should hope it could be, approaching something like radical democracy. The trouble with this claim is not the social and political aspiration. The problem is that, as a "new operational system," it is completely at odds with the political organization that inheres in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, where holons always develop in holarchy. Junior holons are cared for by the senior ones, who "organize their freedom." I treat this at length in "Sweet Science."

The point is that Wilber's ontology represents capitalist social relations in a mystified form. Literally as mysticism. These social relations are precisely the ones that Occupy is resisting, seeking to transform from the bottom up. Bottom-up transformation is just that which holarchy as Wilber describes it disallows. Senior holons "organize the freedom" of their juniors, who, in return, feed the development of the seniors. M-C-M becomes M-C-M'. Planet of Slums.

This is why I treat the "integral" comments of Wilber's followers with much skepticism, even if they are earnest. (I assume they are in earnest.) The trouble for this group: your earnest support of Occupy and your earnest belief in Wilberism are ultimately in contradiction, a contradiction you will eventually need to resolve in one way or another.

Look at Oakland. Look at the superholon, organizing the freedom.

Here is another way to express the "superholon."

2011-10-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

Holarchy: this is how the senior holon cares for its junior members. "organize the freedom" in Wilber's terms.

You must read this news from Oakland.

Given the understanding of development holarchy in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, you must understand there is some cognitive dissonance (to put it politely) between the popular politics of the Occupy movement and this kind of integral work.

2011-10-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

To draw some threads together:

Suppose it is true that the argument of Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality is predicated on positions taken by Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Schelling (and by extension Hegel), and Aurobindo. Also suppose that it is this argument that predicates most of the theoretical work in integral studies that follows after it.

Problems accumulate.

There are problems in the way Wilber advances his claims on Nagarjuna. Specifically, Nagarjuna's description of emptiness in no way coincided with Wilber's, where Emptiness is reified into Spirit and made to equate with the metaphysics of Meister Eckhardt. Raphael Foshay's essay "Tension on the Left" in a recent JITP addresses this in part as well, as do my essays in The Integral Review. At a minimum, this warrants a detailed and uncompromising comparative analysis of Wilber's appropriation and deployment of Nagarjuna's methodology.

There are problems in the way Wilber describes Plotinus' philosophy. Brian Hines' essay "What Wilber Gets Wrong about Plotinus" is convincing enough, to my mind, that a similar detailed and uncompromising reconsideration of Wilber's use of Plotinus in the context of the rest of his work is warranted.

There are problems with the way Wilber deploys German Idealist historicism. This is the topic of all three of my contributions to The Integral Review. My point is not that Wilber misunderstands Schelling or Hegel (he may or may not, I do not have a pony in that race). My point is that this kind of idealist historicism is untenable logically and reproduces the social relations that produced it (e.g., it is a cipher for imperial capitalism). I think this warrants a similar reconsideration of Wilberian natural history and cultural history.

Charles I. Flores' essay on Aurobindo demonstrates related problems with Wilber's appropriation and use of that writer, strong enough in my opinion to open an investigation into the validity of Wilber's Aurobindianism.

In all four cases, care must be taken to consider how these doctrines are used in the broader context of Wilber's argument. This is a genealogical analysis I am proposing: what are the consequences of disproving this or that premise? What happens to subsequent claims that, before, had followed from that premise?

This is separate from the broader question of the reason behind Wilber's arguments, which are also very suspicious to my mind and to others.

My point is that if Wilber's premises are faulty, then his broader systematic claims are definitely subject to critique as described above (and should have been since Jeff Meyerhoff's book or before).

2011-10-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Three cheers for WH, the mind behind the Integral Options Cafe, for posting this brilliant material on the intersection of Marxist political economy and ecological crisis. This is a body of scholarship I have been mining for some time now, and while I cannot say I have come to terms with it comprehensively, I can say that it has much to offer to an integral understanding of how the world works (unevenly, unfairly).

David Harvey is a scholar we all need to come to terms with.

***

A reader has commented (again, vis a vis the Gafni thing) that I have somehow sided with Perez against WH on this issue, and that I am an idiot for doing so. Incorrect: my stupidity is well-documented (just look at this nonsense), but not in this time. I have indeed read WH's comments on the Gafni affair (and cited them here), and on reflection found them to be the insights of a stable mind. Perez's commentary, by contrast, goes in a different direction.

You will also notice that I am a very late comer to this topic of conversation. Part of this is the predicament of the historian of the present. How much distance do you need before you can make sense of something? Part of it is the sick man's situation: you work when your body lets you, and when you are done, you just get along until you recover (this month has been good for me, thankfully). &c. I am interested in the causes of things, the determination of things, not so much the ins and outs of Dear Leader's ding-dong. (speaking on principles here)

The longer I have to dwell on this topic, the worse the puns will get.

2011-10-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

Judging from the contents of my in-box, emotions are running high over the Gafni business. I told you it was a crisis. And as I have been saying, the fact of the crisis is the thing.

Should this provoke a careful re-examination of the scene around Wilber? Of course. Should it provoke a careful re-examination of the ways in which authority is assumed and consumed in this discourse? Yes, obviously. Did the "earpy" thing not teach this crew anything about ShamWow?

My point of agreement with Perez is that we need to be adults in how we understand the sexualities of others. Only a careless reading of my words here would assume I am interested in dismissing criticism of the ways in which knowledge is made, marketed, and consumed in integral studies, particularly in Wilber's shop. This is not to defend dishonesty, lies, or abuse of power. It is to lay off the Puritanical rhetoric about sex and get to terms with the power relations.

My longstanding position (if it is really necessary to remind people of it) is that integral studies needs a more collaborative and less cultish and consumerist form of knowledge-production. The shitstorm surrounding Gafni (and Perez defending him) demonstrates just why this makes integral studies on the cultish-mass-consumer model so crisis-prone.

**Thank you to a stranger, likely writing under a pseudonym, for a pissy but insightful email.**

2011-10-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

Charles I. Flores' contribution to Integral Theory in Action, "Appropriation in Integral Theory: The Case of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's 'Untold' Integral View," is something unique and valuable. It opens onto a fundamental reconsideration of integral theory. Really. Flores does for Aurobindo what Brian Hines has done for Plotinus as presented in integral discourse.

Flores' essay is, among other things, a soulful appreciation of a poet I deeply admire (Aurobindo) and the people who made his work possible, most importantly the Mother (Mirra Alfassa). It is also a corrective to the vision of Aurobindo that emerges in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality (the one I take to task in "Syntheses and Surprises"), which warrants a systematic re-reading of Wilber's deployment of Aurobindo's ideas and more importantly his authority, and that in the work that follows in Wilber. This re-evaluation, in turn, may have significant consequences for how integral theory is thought and practiced. This is a matter of real significance.

There are ways in which I would put a different emphasis on things than Flores does. I think it may be more accurate to say that I would go further than Flores does in certain areas. For instance, one of the virtues of Flores' piece is his insistence on taking Aurobindo's texts as authentic testimony of yogic experience, and to let those texts speak for themselves. This is definitely warranted, and a careful study of Aurobindo is certainly not a waste of time. That said, if not taken in the context of Aurobindo's moment, this imperative to take rishi's word for it may put the critical and historical eye in check, leaving behind the devotional attitude. Devotion is important. Flores is devoted to the Integral Yoga. My point is not to dismiss devotion, but to suggest that a reading that is only devoted, if you will, gives an incomplete picture.

I encourage integral theorists to take up Flores' call to reconsider Wilber's use of Aurobindo, and his treatment of the Integral Yoga canon. I also encourage integral theorists to go further and understand this canon in terms of its history, to really get at its complete significance. How so?

To get at this, I brought up the concept of the political unconscious. I think in this instance the analogy to other well-documented visionary poets such as John Milton. Milton definitely cultivated a contemplative practice, an introspective and prayerful practice. He absorbed a Bible-saturated culture from birth, and had a deep and wide grasp on the classics (see his tract Of Education to see what he expected for an elementary education). Over time, Milton began to know things, to hear things, to see things with a spiritual eye. He literally believed that what he heard was given to him by a supernatural agent. Milton's daughters recorded what he recited to them, and gave other assistance as demanded of them; one might say that they are in an important respect co-authors of some of the most significant verse in any language.

Milton, in effect, made similar claims to Aurobindo on the source of his knowledge: Divinity. But if you read Paradise Lost with care (and you should read Paradise Lost with care if you can read English and you are still drawing breath), you will notice that there is really little novelty in the content of the text. Milton has reassembled the body of knowledge of his culture (theological debates, scientific debates, historical details, social tensions, turmoil & grief & trauma) in 300 pages of verse that will, if you make yourself vulnerable to the verse, melt your face. That is the content. The form itself is in some ways novel (the sentence structure and the tone is unmistakable, as Aurobindo notes in The Future Poetry), but the reality is that Milton is writing in a language he inherited, in a conflation of forms he inherited from Italian and English and Classical and Biblical masters: a tradition. The form and the content, then, came to Milton at hand and invisibly from the political unconscious in the particularly disciplined consciousness he cultivated.

The same can be said for the poet who, in my view, exceeded Milton in significance: William Blake. He worked with the cultural material he had available to him, the "alternative spirituality" of the time (Swedenborg) and radical politics and the rest, to express a vision that is social, political, theological, aesthetic, integral. If you know your history and have read around a bit, you can identify many of these pieces. Is it possible to even make sense of Jerusalem if you are unfamiliar with Ezekiel, Daniel, the Apocalypse?

It is a mistake to think of these writers idealistically as singular sages who produced new paradigms or whatever out of whole cloth. Cultures produce these writers. Many hands make their materials possible. This does not mean I am trying to reduce whatever spiritual value that may inhere in the visionary writings of such poets as Spenser, Milton, Blake, Melville, Yeats, or Aurobindo. On the contrary. With Peter Hershock, I locate the spiritual and the visionary in the social connections that produce the cultural visions that we, in a misleading shorthand, refer to as authors. Culture and society are both sites for awakening, one of greater interest to me than the consuming bourgeois subject at home reading a book and hungry for something else.

I think Aurobindo is a poet and historical figure of high significance. His significance is not so much that of a singular genius (he was one, but so is Ginger Baker). His significance a plural one, that of representing a wide and deep culture, actually multiple cultures (that of fin de siecle Europe, of postcolonial India...). The content and the form of Savitri came before the poet had his visions, before anything "came down." All this material crystallized in his yogically-trained mind, and were reproduced by his followers.

In this sense, Aurobindo really was a lot like Milton. He knew things from the inside. These things came to him directly; you might say he made himself vulnerable to them, which is an act of courage. But in this context, what does "inside" mean? Where do our "insides" come from? I think the content of even the most refined of consciousnesses is fundamentally cultural and embodied (which is to say, social and material).

To give an example from Savitri, I have documented that there are lines borrowed from Victorian-era translations of Plato (this in a short bit I published long ago and not very competently in the Journal of South Asian Literature). You can compare this to Shakespeare's use of sources if you like.

My point is that Savitri is meaningfully a social production. P.B. Shelley helped write it. You should read it, out loud if you can. It is a remarkable document.

Enough from me on this.

2011-10-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Joni Mitchell, when she is on her game, finds unexpected ways to knock my breath out, make me cry.

2011-10-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

After re-reading Joe Perez's provocative blog post on the Marc Gafni affair, it seems to me that my own comments on the same (which are really not about Gafni, about whom I know next to nothing, but are instead about the personality-cult problem in integral studies) are in need of another look.

It is true that I know nothing about Gafni. His behavior is irrelevant to me. I am interested in his situation only insofar as he has been constructed as some kind of authority, a better-developed person who is in access to better-developed knowledge. This construction and reproduction is of interest to me as an object of critique, because I think this sort of cultish behavior in all contexts is suspicious. It becomes obviously suspicious in cases like Gafni's or Merzel's, when the private behavior (and the concomitant public spectacle over the private behavior) contradicts the public self-fashioning.

This puts the figure of the one who Knows on "All Quadrants and All Levels" in crisis, which puts the community of those whose practices depends upon the authority of that figure in crisis. That is of interest to me, because I think there exist alternatives that are not prone to this kind of nonsense.

I do not appreciate the puritanical expectations surrounding many spiritual figures, especially in North America. Who cares who they rub skin with, and how? (I like to hope that a well-rounded person will be GGG. Well-rounded people that I prefer to hang out with aspire to this, and so do I.) Surely there are better uses for all that energy spent on finger-pointing and shrill denunciation of someone else's wing-wang.

In some respects, although we have very different understandings of the Wilber-oriented scene, Joe Perez and I are not too far apart.

2011-10-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

Part of the purpose here is rhetorical, but I think the broader point of it holds up: a bit about the unreasonable suppositions Wilber describes in the introduction to Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality.

To me the broader question this raises is whether Wilber actually follows through on what he claims to do do in his introduction. If he does, then his argument is sunk but he goes down swinging. If he does not, then he contradicts himself, but the rest of his book has a chance at coherence. Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, more to the point, begins on the horns of a dilemma. And it is a self-inflicted wound.

***

I bring this up because people seem to have rediscovered it of late, but also because of the irony: followers of Wilber have no difficult dismissing arguments that compete with Wilber's on the grounds of incoherence, but great difficulty in recognizing the fundamental incoherence of Wilber's own arguments. Two possible (but not exclusive) explanations:

*True believers function on belief, not on reason. Hence, arguments that coincide with, "resonate" with, or reify their beliefs are coherent; those that challenge their beliefs are incoherent, regardless of the internal argument or external plausibility of the same.

Or

*They do not read carefully, and hence misrecognize Wilber's arguments as reasonable and conflicting evidence as unreasonable.

There are other possibilities, but I would consider those only after ruling these two out. As a whole, I think Wilber's writings function more as a belief system than a form of knowledge (or, rather, as a belief system tasked to do the work of a form of knowledge), with ensuing difficulties.

2011-10-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I have been using the concept of the political unconscious to describe affect in ways alternative to those in greater circulation in integral studies.

It is time to specify it.

Fredric Jameson developed the concept in his book, The Political Unconscious. The analyses in this text reward multiple readings. Taken broadly, "political unconscious" refers to the body of repertoires, texts, assumptions, and so in that circulate in a particular cultural milieu. These are historically produced and historically contingent. These repertoires are mediated by social relations and the reproduction of mass culture (that's consumerism folks). But the significance of these repertoires and bits of meaning exceed mere consumerism or mere ideology (ideology understood as false consciousness). Yes, they have a role in social control, but they have a kind of utopian potential that can be unlocked, they can come to consciousness and transform consciousness, through critical and historical practice.

This is my understanding of the political unconscious, following Jameson. (I am skeptical about claims such as Wilber's assertion that Habermas is the greatest of living philosophers. However, if I had to rank the living ones, I would surely rate Jameson ahead of Habermas.)

Now, in my view, the cultural material in the political unconscious "floods in" to the gaps of thought and discursive expression under certain circumstances. One of that set of automatic expressions you have. What do you say when, on accident, you zip your genitals into your pants? That bit of text you have no control over comes from the political unconscious. The automatic filler in conversation to mark time. The sorts of things you say in order to keep conversation polite.

This gets significant when you start thinking about "spiritual" or "mystic" writers. William Blake had his own vision, to be sure, but when in the visionary mode, where did that content come from? The Jungian unconscious? From the cultural repertoires from his moment (the Bible, radical politics, English-language poetry, engraved books reproducing Italian art...), given a new context and a new use. Look at Yeats' Vision or Milton's Paradise Lost. Wholly visionary but surprisingly little novel content per se: the visionary, the deeply spiritual writer, reproduces the political unconscious in particular ways.

There is a canon of such poets in the English language that is long and deep. It begins perhaps with Piers Plowman, and continues through The Changing Light at Sandover. Among them are some of my favorite writers: Spenser, Milton, Blake, Yeats, and Aurobindo Ghose. You might even say that the genre of the prophetic voice, the spiritual "note," is historically speaking itself part of the political unconscious of the reader of English literature.

More on this to come.

2011-10-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

Must I holler?

Must I shake 'em on down?

2011-10-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

Reading Raphael Foshay's 2009 essay "Tension on the Left," from the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. It makes a significant contribution overall, and its argument must be reckoned with seriously (especially as regards the usefulness of the concept of the "post-metaphysical"). More on this later.

You can get the full text here.

2011-10-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Variations on a Theme: Theresa Silow's essay, "Embodiment, an Ascending and Descending Development" in Integral Theory in Action

Interesting claims on attention and its patterns of circulation in a body. But what is a body in an all-inclusive sense? Are all bodies experienced homogeneously (if all bodies are matter, consciousness inheres in matter, and experience is the archive of consciousness)?

Listen:

Consumer capitalism insists on a unitary, transcendent, and screwed-up (problematic, divided, contradictory, fragmented) consuming subject. The consumer has to be a mess and experience him or herself this way in order to be motivated to buy the really meaningful things that should seal the cracks, to make it whole, to give a big picture. Naturally, the spectacle of capital does everything it can to reify and intensify those fractures and problems to keep the turnstiles a-clickin'. Self-Realization: integral to the "metaphysical niceties" of the fetish of the commodity.

The body of the consuming subject is assumed to be a singular unit, a skin-bound thing on which you hang the right clothes, which presents the right kind of face to the world (not too sexy, but not not sexy either [and in search for just the right kind of orgasm]; assertive but not bitchy or pushy in negotiating personal space; definitely not fat but definitely wanting to eat and eat). This body is disciplined in certain ways, and may become a point of pride or shame for its inhabitant (as in discourses on "body image").

This singular-transcendent assumption is not the only or the best way for embodiment to be understood. The consuming body is in a double double bind: constrained from without and again from within, and split down the middle with contradictions from without that are reproduced from within with all the determinants brought to bear on it. Media gives some examples. Turn on the TV (if you must) and what do you find out about yourself? You are too fat for anyone ever to love you. You really need to eat this buttery-good anusburger. And your pussy stinks. I am evoking this in gendered language because gender is very obviously a significant factor in how this determination is activated and experienced. Girls go schizo in ways that are qualitatively different from the ways boys go about it. (Girls go to dialectical behavior therapy for borderline personality disorder; boys, especially boys of color, go to jail for acting on their conflicting emotions violently. "GI Joe in the cereal bowl!")

Push it further. What about the transformations wrought on the laboring body? Look at our hands: did they not evolve for labor, that is, did the capacity for labor not serve an evolutionary purpose? Approached differently: do you know what happens to an underage girl's body when she is exposed for long hours to the adhesives she uses to glue your sneakers together? Is a sweatshop not as legitimate a site of embodiment as the middle-class yoga class? which is another way of asking: are the bodies of brown girls in the global south not as legitimate as those of the pudgy Priuses-and-panty-lines cadre at the middle-class yoga studio? These are not meant as rhetorical questions.

Push it further yet. How about the metabolism of the body in its physical environment: its physical and chemical inseparability from the life-systems that support it. The body breathes. The body shits. (Really!) Species-being. How do you get your food? How do others? Does your body go hungry? Is this not a worthwhile consideration, especially in the context of "integral ecology" or the multivalent interaction of species and environments?

How about those social and cultural determinants that discipline the body and draw it into relations with other bodies: desiring-flows, if you like the Deleuzian lingo.

It goes on.

My point: what would a consideration of embodiment look like that was not preoccupied with the personal and subjective (the consuming subject) as the exclusive site of embodiment, but instead roped in these other contexts to give a more (ahem) integral picture?

Put differently again: a google scholar search performed a moment ago yielded 4,400,000 hits, among the first of which was Rosi Braidotti's Nomadic Subjects (worth a close reading). Do you suppose some of those may have some contribution to make to the question of embodiment, inclusive of the issues of attention and sensory flows that are attended to in this essay?

2011-10-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

Someone requested I distribute the paper I presented on Wilber at the 2010 Rhetoric Society of America conference. Here it is.

2011-10-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Regarding Michael E. Zimmerman's contribution to Integral Theory in Action, "The Final Cause of Cosmic Development": is it not remarkable that there is a contemporary academic discourse in which cosmological speculation in the vein of nineteenth-century natural philosophy still has some teeth? By that I mean: there are serious stakes for this discussion in integral studies, so how about that?

What I find interesting about Zimmerman's essay, like Michele Chase's, is less the truth-value of the claims made, but what those claims may say about contemporary integral theory and to what use those claims may be put within this discourse.

Speaking generally for a moment, I am not sure which is the bigger problem in "Wilber studies":

*The fact of Wilber's anachronistic historicism, where transformations in historical time are understood mythically as determined by the movement of Spirit through the consciousness of Great Men who produce Paradigms, either Ascending (Good!) or Descending (Bad!), which are reproduced somehow and thus change minds through a process of widening consciousness, and from which material life is created. This is an implausible theory of determination at best. It is repeated in Integral Ecology and elsewhere without warrant, but merely on Wilber's authority (which is predicated on Hegel's, or Schelling's, which authority is itself constructed by criteria Wilber invented and brought to beara priori). This, to me, is a very surprising development. How did it happen that people really believe in this, and further, reproduce this belief system as a form of public knowledge?

Or...

*the application of Wilber's historicism, where certain thinkers or canons of thought can be bureaucratically designated as Ascending or Descending and either lionized or dismissed out of hand (this policing is important, because when someone reproduces a Descending Weltanschauung, that person is actively working to prevent the dissemination of the Big Picture Product Line that will definitely and without fail save humanity if you buy yours now, according to Wilber's historicism... to put it in diction a bit less hyperbolic than that found in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality). The application part is uneven, whimsical, capricious in Wilber and his followers.

Marx and Marxism for instance: totally "Descent-affirming" in Integral Ecology, gets much the same treatment in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, but in Zimmerman's essay in Integral Theory in Action one Stanley L. Salthe is described simultaneously as a materialist influenced by dialectical materialism (that is the philosophical Marxism of the Eastern Bloc, if this needs explaining) (p. 206) and as an integral theorist (p. 203). How can this be reconciled?

Similarly for Deleuze in both volumes (again speaking generally): Deleuze is a materialist, more anti-Hegel than Marx in rejecting the dialectic, as willing to philosophize with a hammer as Nietzsche was (remembering that "destroy! destroy!" is somehow a motto of the villainous Descenders in the Wilberian mythos), as anyone can see from Anti-Oedipus. So how is Deleuze not rejected up front and out of hand as a Descender?

In passing, I would like to know more about the content of the influence of dialectical materialism on Salthe.

***

Brief note on Integral Ecology: blaming Marx (or Marx's presumed Descent-affirming worldview) for the ecological disaster that was the USSR, as Zimmerman and Esbjorn-Hargens do, is somewhat analogous to blaming John Locke for the bombing of Hiroshima. Why not look to the material and economic life of the USSR's form of state capitalism first?

***

A smart thing to do: stop worrying about whether the author of a book may have been a closet Descender or whatever, and evaluate the ideas on the merits. Dear Angels, you may be surprised what a conversation with a Devil can teach you.

2011-10-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

Thinking about Integral Theory in Action has put me back in archival mode. I took an hour recently to research just when and under what circumstances the Deleuze and Guattari trip was introduced into integral theory. I think it was around 2006.

However, careful readers of Integral Ecology by Esbjorn-Hargens and Zimmerman will surely have noticed this claim regarding the geographer Brian Eddy:

Extending the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, his research illustrates how in dealing with issues of sustainability and well-being, it is impossible to avoid both objectivity in discerning "what there is" and our subjectivity in discerning "how it might be" (p. 359)

This speaks, of course, to Deleuze's utopianism, one of the things I like about the D&G thing.

Now, this statement is a bit strange in the context of Integral Ecology. First, because "the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze" is not discussed before or after this claim anywhere in the book, as near as I can tell, so the question arises: why is this brought up, and what does it mean? What is it doing there? Second, the authors are in summary mode here, so they do not attribute this Deleuzianism to any one of Eddy's published texts; in fact, it seems to me that they must be making this connection independently of Eddy's work. And that is interesting, except it is just not clear where they want to go with it (usually when something like this is marked, it is marked on purpose, so that the argument can take it up later or a lateral connection can be developed).

There is good reason to think the Deleuze connection belongs to the authors of Integral Ecology and not to Eddy. I looked up two of Eddy's sources, a 2005 article called "Integral Geography" and a collaborative contribution to the 2006 volume Cybercartography. Neither of these mention Deleuze at all.

Now, how to explain the cameo appearance of a French eccentric in this section on maps and cartography in Integral Ecology? I figure that the authors had wanted to use Deleuze to talk about maps since he has a thing or two to say about them, but later revised it out, incidentally leaving behind a phantom limb in the process of revision. It happens.

Might be interesting to compare the Deleuze-Guattarian use of maps and mapping to that of good old Dr. Hazelton in Boomeritis, no?

2011-10-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

In Integral Theory in Action: Michael Schwartz' essay, "Frames of AQAL, Integral Critical Theory, and the Emerging Integral Arts."

I find myself intensely interested in the topics Schwartz raises, for personal reasons (I enjoy the art of Yves Klein, I am concerned with matters of cultural reception and production generally), but also for theoretical reasons. Schwartz's essay sits on a vital intersection of topics that need to be analyzed with close attention.

For one, if you want to promote an integral critical theory (an excellent idea), you need a critical integral theory before you can start. Work from first principles. This opens onto the questions of whether the integral theory Schwartz brings to bear on critical theory here is in fact critical, and how that integral theory is specified to the work of sociocultural analysis. Well? Well, Schwartz invokes Integral Methodological Pluralism (no time here to evaluate that one). He proclaims the postmetaphysical, but leaves out the vital discussions of Rorty and Habermas that predate those of Wilber on this concept, which is to say that Schwartz is willing to smuggle in Wilber's metaphysical and transcendental assumptions, "minimizing" those "as far as possible" (p. 230). I have reason to suspect that the integral premises Schwartz works from here could be more critical, or rather, that they are not rigorously critical or for that matter postmetaphysical, and by design. This is a question that deserves much closer attention than I can give it here, as is the question of how that integral theory is specified to become an integral critical theory in Schwartz's essay: is that theory in fact critical, can it account for its own premises, &c? Another job for another day.

For now:

Schwartz is trying to describe affect and subjectivity, and the role of aesthetic experience thereon for (if I read him correctly) transformational purposes. Aurobindo has a contribution to make here around the concept of aesthesis, actually (see this thing around p. 68). Aurobindo was not the first or the last to deploy this concept, but his way of explaining it is useful here and would make a contribution to this conversation. I also touch on it in the "Crying" article vis a vis Nietzsche and Deleuze & Guattari.

More later on Schwartz' understanding of affect and the prophetic or redemptive mode. For now, consider a bit of mass culture still circulating in the political unconscious with some utopian potential (I mean this to be taken in the context of Schwartz' take on the redemptive mode, following Matustik's essay). In gratitude to Donovan:

Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity

'Tis then when the hurdy-gurdy man
Comes singing songs of love

The redemptive task is cultural work, cultural production. Making concepts, singing songs. This is not subjective so much as it is relational, dialogic. And it refers us back to my comments on Roger Walsh and social virtuosity. This is one reason why cultural considerations demand more attention among integralists, even at the expense of the general preoccupation with personal and subjective inquiry.

***

As an aside: is Schwartz's paper about coming to terms in an integral way with how art (any kind of art) impacts consciousness, or with the emergence of art that is somehow, objectively, "integral"? I ask because it seems to me there is a way in which the purpose of this paper seems to slip around.

2011-10-22T05:13:00.001-07:00

Followers of Wilber have a ready-made response to criticisms like this (picking up from a theme from yesterday):

If people I describe this work to know Wilber, they usually know him as "that color-coded motivational speaker guy," or "that consultant who thinks he's enlightened." They laugh him off as an unserious thinker, or politely smile and nod while privately alluding to him and his followers as "whackadoodle." This is not a universal response, but it is a typical one. This marginalization is a serious obstacle to the legitimacy of integral theory as an academic discourse.

That response might go as follows:

Of course they scoff: they are not yet developmentally ready, not yet conscious enough, to understand the profound truths of the Spirit Wilber is bold enough to put forward, trapped as they are in a secular-humanist worldview.

I have seen this expressed in terms of Spiral Dynamics, and in terms of this or that developmental model, but to me what this kind of thinking expresses is raw arrogance: we assume a priori that our approach is better or bigger or more complete than yours, and when you have reason to find that claim laughable or simply unacceptable, then you clearly have a problem. Remember, everyone is right, but we are a little more right than you (although if you buy our Big Picture Introductory Coaching Package and Webinar Certification Program...).

My point is that integral thinkers should not be so hasty to dismiss criticisms they do not immediately understand simply because those criticisms come from people they are conditioned to mistrust. This is necessary condition for this discourse to gain any kind of legitimacy as a form of knowledge, and it is much more neighborly.

2011-10-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Might as well go to first principles. Sean Esbjorn-Hargens spends considerable time in the Introduction to Integral Theory in Action reflecting on what is or is not or what might or could be integral theory, or Integral Theory, or Wilberism. This is certainly appropriate to the task at hand, for two reasons: he has to explain what the business of the book is, and he also has to explain why and how he decided to select the lines of inquiry represented in the volume. The categories any editor crafts and the criteria by which those categories are specified serve to shape what comes after.

Consequently, the conceptual decisions Esbjorn-Hargens makes in this section can be seen as determinative and are most certainly of significance. My comments here are not meant to be exhaustive, but as is my custom, to stimulate further inquiry and discussion.

In "Of Truth and Falsehood," an essay at Integral World, I have criticized Esbjorn-Hargens for having a rather narrow view of what "counts" as integral theory or integral practice. There is reasonable disagreement over the value of that criticism; I have reason to think it holds up. In that essay, I observe that Esbjorn-Hargens insists on on a "very narrow archive" as exclusively suitable for the attention of integral theorists and researchers. This tendency toward close specialization is repeated in the "Introduction," where Esbjorn-Hargens quotes himself with Mark Forman on their intention to decouple the person of Ken Wilber and the work of integral theory (in my view a very important and laudable move):

We are fine with "Wilberian Theory" being synonymous with "Integral Theory" as long as "Wilberian Theory" is understood to mean "AQAL Theory" and not meant as "Ken's Theory." (p.9)

Unfortunately, a good idea has produced a reductive consequence. That is, in the move to distinguish the personality-cult of Ken Wilber from integralism as a mode of inquiry, Forman and Esbjorn-Hargens have (and Esbjorn-Hargens has reproduced this in Integral Theory in Action) narrowed the scope of integral inquiry down merely to AQAL. Now, AQAL is an important aspect of Wilber's work, but it is not the totality of the useful concepts one might find in Wilber's writings: not to mention excluding all the other contributions made in and around integral thought that has nothing at all to do with AQAL.

A better approach here would have been to define integral theory by what it does (a functional definition) instead of whom it follows (a cultic definition), such that anyone with a contribution to make may contribute, even Ken Wilber. Here is one attempt to do that:

The purpose of integral theory is to inform responsible practice... The purpose of practice (doing things in a purposeful way, methodically, as distinct from just doing things out of habit or compulsion) is to observe that beings are suffering unnecessarily, needlessly, and to work without compromise for the alleviation of that suffering in good faith. It helps to know what you're doing so you don't leave behind a bigger mess than the one you found in your effort to be useful. It's not personal. It's not about self-realization or personal enlightenment or freedom from commitment or relief from stress, although a certain capacity for self-directed activity is definitely implied here (increasingly as you go on, you become more capable of this). It is instead about the opposite: taking on the troubles of the totality, undergoing them, on purpose, out of respect and honor for the totality and all of animated life without exception.

There must be other and more specific functional definitions for integral theory out there.

***

Esbjorn-Hargens: "My experience is that generic uses of "integral theory" tend to be either confusing (it is not clear what its relationship is to Wilber's work), almost meaningless (it is hard to talk about an integral theory without Wilber, and once you include Wilber's approach it is so substantial that it tends to overshadow and undercut any generic usage), or inaccurate (it is not being used to represent a single or coherent theory" (12).

Let me say in passing that I love the word "coherent" too much, to the point of abuse. Surely if someone analyzed my prose, they would identify "coherent" as a verbal tic. But I digress.

A functional definition for integral theory such as the one I describe above makes progress on all three problems Esbjorn-Hargens describes above.

It need not be confusing to explain to people what integral theory is if you can explain what it does; no need to assume anyone gives a damn who Ken Wilber is (a source of confusion according to Esbjorn-Hargens, as quoted above), or what his opinion is. In my experience (since experience is the barometer and archive of this conversation), communication is clearer and more precise, and things just go better, when I avoid bringing Wilber up at all. Why? If people I describe this work to know Wilber, they usually know him as "that color-coded motivational speaker guy," or "that consultant who thinks he's enlightened." They laugh him off as an unserious thinker, or politely smile and nod while privately alluding to him and his followers as "whackadoodle." This is not a universal response, but it is a typical one. This marginalization is a serious obstacle to the legitimacy of integral theory as an academic discourse.

It need not be almost meaningless if you are capable of specifying the category, and providing some concrete examples or instances of what integral theory can do, to define integral theory without reference to Wilber. Further, the voluminousness of Wilber's oeuvre, passing well into logorrhea, simply means he has filled a lot of pages and repeatedly flexed his biceps in videos and live chats and webinars. Many and big books does not necessarily coincide with many and useful ideas. In point of fact, Esbjorn-Hargens seems to indicate this himself (in the quote with Forman): AQAL is privileged over the rest of the Wilberian production, as though... maybe... some of those books might be long because they are repetitive, and some of the ideas might (ahem) be of less value than others. Is no one reading Boomeritis?

Thirdly, it need not be inaccurate if one can put together a coherent, functional definition. Here, eggs will be broken: by that I mean that some aspects of the integral project will be foregrounded, and others left aside, when proposing a functional definition for integral theory. So be it. Let this be a topic for public debate.

***

More generally, I think Esbjorn-Hargens' comments on the identity of Wilberism and integralism (the confusion he describes on p. 12 there), along with the very production of so many books and recordings and other Wilberiana, are symptomatic of a prodigious appetite for more and more Wilberian consumer goods among Wilber's followers. If there are no imaginable alternatives, if the very attempt to think of alternatives produces only confusion, meaninglessness, or inaccuracy (pace Esbjorn-Hargens), then it is because the alternatives are not yet mature. Integral thinkers, that is, have preferred the passive consumption of Wilberian spectacle (as narrated in Boomeritis, a novel about homogenous rubes enduring PowerPoint presentations) to the creative and collaborative production of concepts that an authentic intellectual community engages in.

Whose responsibility is this confusion, meaningless, and inaccuracy that Esbjorn-Hargens diagnoses? This would be a good topic for a conference or book or something. Get me coherently?

2011-10-21T14:00:00.001-07:00

Evidently I have a lot to say about Integral Theory in Action. Chalk it up to an experiment in the practice of engaged thought.

Roger Walsh's brief foreword to the text rewards careful consideration. While I would quibble with the word choice, I find his idea that integralists should strive to become "gnostic intermediaries" to be particularly useful. By this term, he means to indicate something analogous to the Gramscian organic intellectual (look it up if you are unfamiliar with this): someone who has integrated applied theory and lived experience into ordinary consciousness in such a way as to "transmit" that knowledge through any kind of transaction or contact (p. xvi).

I do not think that states of consciousness are "transmitted" from one to another. Look at the Blue Cliff Record: nothing is transmitted, but a particular kind of learning is definitely happening. I do know in a concrete way, in Buddhist practice and in critical theory, that situations are created by people who know how to create them, situations in which particular kinds of learning can happen (and can happen in no other way). Ziporyn describes this in terms of "creative recontextualization" in Being and Ambiguity. But perhaps the best expression of this kind of pedagogy is Peter Hershock's concept of social virtuosity, which he describes at length in Liberating Intimacy. I strongly encourage the gallery to engage with these concepts in some detail; this is significant not only for Walsh's contribution to Integral Theory in Action, but also for Michael Schwartz's and Sam Mickey's.

2011-10-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, Ken Wilber's contribution to Integral Theory in Action makes at least two significant moves, both of them very much representative of the core of his project.

The first is to announce that the present volume is one sign of a coming "Integral Age" (p. 431). This is of a piece with Wilber's historicism. It is easy to dismiss it as New Age-y and therefore lightweight, and perhaps its appeal for some lies in its resonance with New Age discourses, but the consequences of this kind of thinking are in fact quite serious and must be reckoned with in earnest. As in the hyperbolic coda of Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, Wilber is setting up his own work and its followings-on as having a unique world-historical role, building a worldview that is on the cutting edge of Spirit's expression in consciousness (if this sounds like Schelling or Hegel, it should, because it is of a piece with that kind of deterministic historicism).

Some consequences of this move: if someone accepts it at face value, then that person will find fundamental criticism of Wilber's positions (such as his historicism) as retrograde, of the past, anti-progress, anti-everything-good. The Messianic register here (expressed in different ways by Michael Schwartz and Michael Zimmerman in Integral Theory in Action) is a logical consequence, a redemptive view of history. It serves to reify Wilber's position as a charismatic maker of knowledge. Remember what I was saying about charismatic leadership and the circularity of Wilber's legitimacy as a knowledge-producer?

The second point I would like to draw attention to is in the same paragraph as the first, with Wilber distinguishing the present age of "microanalysis" from the future Integral Age: "The former denies big pictures (except its own), focuses on individual narratives and meaning-making, and believes all knowledge is just a social construction, a fashion like clothes or songs. The Integral Age believes that 'everybody is right' if you have a big enough picture, and thus spends its time on elucidating and outlining those bigger, more comprehensive, systemic, and integral pictures. The Integral Age thus 'transcends and includes' the results of the age of microanalysis, having intentionally included those results in its bigger pictures" (p. 431).

Notice the Hegelian language, the emphasis on belief, and the confusion of results and method in the last phrase. I do not find "microanalysis" as Wilber paints it here very appealing, but then again I do not know anyone whose intellectual practice corresponds to the stereotype Wilber presents (not in cultural studies, not in philosophy, not in history, not in literature). That is to say, I do not know to whom this comment is addressed, or where the object of critique may be (Wilber declines to be specific here). Fine.

How about the notion that everyone is "right" if the context is big enough? I am not convinced this doctrine is particularly helpful, whether it may be right or wrong. Learning comes from dealing with your shortcomings, your mistakes, your counterproductive habits of mind, not from insisting on the rightness of your perspective and the big picture you draw around it (which is to say that this doctrine can easily become a refuge for a narcissist ego, to whom critique feels "toxic" admitting error means undermining the basis for your "belief" in an "integral age"). It must feel good to be told that you are always right, though, if you just put the right context around it. Especially useful technique if you are in the business of selling people "big pictures" and related products and seminars &c. Especially useful also if your authority as a seller of big pictures and related commodities is predicated on public conviction in the value of those "big pictures."

I think it may be more productive to take a humbler approach. Instead of insisting on the "rightness" of everything and everyone, I think it is healthier and less problematic (if less profitable for some) to emphasize a human inheritance we all share in common: we are all fallible, you and I and all the rest of us without fail. Even the great master Nagarjuna, best of dialectical thinkers, promoted silly ideas on cosmology. We are characterized more by what we do not know, by what we misunderstand, than by the very narrow sliver of knowledge we do have--and that is characterized by uncertainty and mutability as well. We try and we fail; we learn from the failure and try again. Critique and creativity, right there. Over and over again: try and fail, try and fail. It is beautiful, this life!

I mean that without a trace of sarcasm. This life of shortcomings and imperfections is a truly beautiful thing to undergo. Why try to transcend it, to escape it into some kind of abstraction? Get a mouthful of dirt. Undergo it, do not avoid it by hiding behind a "bigger picture." Because in the big picture, we are all without fail fools. Coming to terms with our foolishness is a necessary condition of any kind of wisdom and goodness (Chih-i worked this out in detail, if you care to look it up).

And you might as well have some fun with it. From Matthijs van Boxsel's Encyclopedia of Stupidity: "Stupidity is unavoidable. Make your stupidity a personal, unique stupidity. If you fail, fail at the highest possible level. If you fall, fall with elegance and a song in your heart. Be as colourfully and versatilely stupid as you can. That way you avoid blandness and rigidity, the two dangerous sides to stupidity. Make your stupidity your most redeeming quality" (p. 51). This is what I was trying to get at in the micropolitics paper on "revolutionary charisma": the real work is done not in building the bunker of a big picture, but in exposing yourself to your own reality in intentional and creative ways. Not at all coincidentally, Michael Schwartz's essay in Integral Theory in Action touches on related themes.

Van Boxsel goes further, brilliantly, and argues that stupidity cannot only be identified and addressed in the personal (the stupidity of the bourgeois subject who looks for help in the self-help section, seeking guidance from the very soul who needs help in the first place and hence going around in circles...). Stupidity is a social, cultural problematic and hence an opportunity for learning. Van Boxsel: "What culture has to subdue is not nature but the self-destructive stupidity recurring everywhere and at all times. Man must learn to recognize stupidity in its bewildering dimensions and to develop a modus vivendi, a way of coming to terms with it" (p. 105).

Which reminds me: samsara is a field of ignorance, of stupidity, of mechanically-repeated actions. (It is also a term that comes up repeatedly in Integral Theory in Action without much discussion or definition, which is disappointing because some conceptual rigor on this one would be productive.) What is the relation of samsara to awakening, pace Nagarjuna? Or Chih-i?

2011-10-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

Still in Integral Theory in Action:

Michele Chase's essay "Writing to Effect: Textual Form as Realization in an Integral Community" treats an interesting problem, the articulation of integral positions in discourse. In a sense it recalls Tom Boellstorff's ethnographic work in digital environments, such as Coming of Age in Second Life, in that the transactions described are typically mediated through digital technology and are owned or authorized by the Wilber or I-I (now Integral Life), but constitute moments in which regular participants generate great meaning and pleasure for themselves. To give a sense of what I mean, in a note on p. 143 Chase struggles to conceptualize the relation of journals such as The Integral Review which are independent of Wilber and his enterprises to "an integral community" as such. "Integral community" as constructed in the discourses Chase considers are, a priori, within the Wilber product line. In this sense, Chase's essay tells us something about how "community" works among Wilber's followers.

Because it is so closed-in and oriented around the utterances and approval of a charismatic leader, the experiences of community Chase describes resemble more than anything else an account of a happy cult member. I do not mean the cult of rhetoric and composition studies, with which I have some familiarity; I presented on Wilber at the last RSA conference in Minneapolis...

2011-10-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Returning to Sam Mickey's essay, "Rhizomatic Contributions to Integral Ecology in Deleuze and Guattari," published in the 2010 volume Integral Theory in Action:

I should say up front that the problems that must be worked through in Mickey's essay should not be laid exclusively at Mickey's door. I understand that he is a graduate student now, and consequently these lacunae and contradictions may simply reflect his inexperience. Rookie mistakes. However, I do not see an explanation for why they were not addressed during peer-review or by the editor of the volume personally, who should have some familiarity with philosophical discussions around the concept of ecology.

If you want an integral ecology that is going to be taken as a legitimate academic discourse, you need to put together a coherent argument. Toward that end:

Mickey attempts to frame a Wilberian proposal in opposition or correction to "mechanistic" and "materialistic" thinking (326), and puts Deleuze and Guattari forward as contributors to such an approach: putting Wilber's position and Deleuze-Guattari's position in dialogic relation. This is an idea with some potential, especially the "dialogic" part. However, a fundamental problem arises from the very start that Mickey seems unaware of or is unprepared to address.

Deleuze and Guattari both insist on a rigorous materialism throughout their oeuvre. Even when working in a Bergsonian-vitalist vein, even when speculating on an Absolute, D&G make concepts toward materialistic (anti-idealistic) aims, to liberate the particular from the hegemony (and homogeneity) of the "specifically European disease" of the Transcendental. Further, the mechanistic, the mechanical, and the machinic are all important concepts in the D&G patois; Mickey knows this because he cites Guattari's call for a "machinic ecology." However, both mechanism and materialism are presented not as specified concepts but as straw men in Mickey's essay. He does not define them at all, but merely dismisses them (or their "reductive" manifestations, which remain unnamed). [This is a generic Wilberian move: if a body of concepts does not appear to be spiritualized enough in a way that is familiar to you, then it must be rejected as "reductive" or "materialistic" or "anti-culture" or whatever.]

Meanwhile, the most idealistic aspects of Wilber's doctrine, the "evolution of consciousness," (a historicism derived from German Idealists such as Schelling and Hegel, and represented through Aurobindo), are presented as "quite relevant to various efforts of radical ecology," here citing Michael Zimmerman (329). This idealism is in direct contradiction to the materialism espoused in Deleuze and Guattari. This is a fundamental point of conflict.

If you put these two forms of thought in dialogic relation, Wilberism and nomadism, and do not account for this contradiction from first principles in some way, then you have not really begun your work. This is a serious problem in Mickey's essay: the contradiction between materialism and idealism is not reckoned with in a dialectical or dialogic way, or even recognized.

My solution is instead to reject Wilber's idealism, which I find ultimately untenable and productive of problems, and instead move forward on along critical lines.

Mickey's straw-man treatment of materialism leads to one more fundamental problem in his argument, which has to do with what Mickey hopes to accomplish with his integral ecology: "an integral ecology responds to ecological problems holistically, attending to the complexity and multidimensionality of ecological events, in which the natural environment is intimately intertwined with the sociocultural events and psychospiritual realities of the Kosmos" (325). Bracketing the particulars of what Mickey defines as the "psychospiritual realities of the Kosmos," claims on which are multiple and various, it should be pointed out that materialists have been doing just this since the middle of the nineteenth century, well before the concept of ecology was properly defined. How so?

Marx was concerned with the "metabolic" relation of human interaction with nature on the level of material and social interaction from the beginning. Alfred Schmidt's The Concept of Nature in Marx summarizes and explains this clearly; it might be enough to consider Marx's reflections on scarcity in Capital III, or the ecology of human fulfillment ("species-being") in the 1844 Manuscripts. In passing, one may wish to reflect on whom Das Kapital was first dedicated to, and why that may be so. Engels, in The Dialectic of Nature, goes still further.

A tradition of thought emerges from this matrix that develops these concepts in ways that would have been very useful to any integral ecology of the kind Mickey proposes. Paul Burkett's Marx and Nature (1999) develops the concept of holism and holistic relations extensively. These thinkers (including but not limited to Ted Benton, Kate Soper, James O'Connor, Timothy Luke, and John Bellamy Foster) describe with specificity and without reductionism the impact of capitalist relations on ecological relations. (Look here for a partial bibliography of relevant material.) I submit that researchers interested in promoting an integral ecology look to this material and consider it with care before rejecting it as Inferior to the Aegis of the Coming Integral Age.

2011-10-20T05:32:00.001-07:00

Some years ago I published an article called "The Crying of Humanity." It is an immature piece, but I recently redistributed it publicly in order to make a point about how ideas are reproduced (after some making some earlier comment on it here).

A kind reader has taken the time to offer me some very helpful criticism of the piece by email. This tells me that the work is being taken seriously, and for this reason, it seems appropriate that I make some comment on its shortcomings and what its contribution might be (if it makes one). Some of my comments here overlap with those of my correspondent.

The essay may have something to say about affect, subjectivity and subjectification, power, and performance that will be of use to integral thinkers. Strangely, though, for an essay on tragedy, it has nothing to say about the material practice of the theater: what people actually do when performing, how audiences (real ones, not representational ones) actually respond. This would require a wholly different kind of research and a completely different archive from that presented in the essay.

And the old thing may have something to say about Antony and Cleopatra, or it may not.

Further, something is definitely wet in the argument. I think I lean too heavily on Nietzsche and Deleuze & Guattari as authorities: it is as though citing this or that theorist is enough to demonstrate the truth of a truth claim. I make a point of bringing this up because it is precisely the kind of weak argumentation I later go on to diagnose in Wilber and his followers; it would be hypocritical not to note it in my own stuff.

"The Crying of Humanity" was thought through and put together during the worst excesses of the Bush administration, when it seemed to me that the media ecology could effectively induce whatever affective regime in people suited the immediate needs of power. That is the center of gravity of the piece: the problems of coming to an "intuitive feel" for a truth that is wholly induced, completely make-believe, and contrary to the real interests of the totality. I should have been talking about Rumsfeld, Cheney, Judith Miller, and Fox News. Even though I expressed all this rather poorly, I think this insight is one that I have carried with me since.

Everyone goes through a blue period, right?

Some useful ideas follow from this, however. Think of the notion of the political unconscious. When affect is relied on as a way to know things, what floods in? Where does that knowledge come from? Bonnitta Roy, in her provocative and very much worth your time Process Model essay, puts forward a kind of emanationism, where such comes from a spiritual origin and out through affect to consciousness. My position is that such material comes from a cultural or political unconscious, which is mediated by a regime, a material regime of meat-world social relations and power differences. I touch on this in more detail here (look especially around p. 29).

So while Milton, for instance, really and truly believes he is getting his poetry from a mystical source (a Muse who is identical to the Holy Spirit), he is expressing a particular kind of social relation, and the content of Paradise Lost reflects in its mystic truths the needs and tensions of that social formation. My point is that if you want to understand affect, you need to understand history.

This is significant for how we are to understand Aurobindo, of whom more later.

2011-10-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

The recent Marc Gafni episode, like the erstwhile Dennis Merzel (Genpo Roshi) episode, puts forward a question that is of real significance for integral theory:

Why does this personality business provoke a crisis among integralists? (a crisis and not just a problem, I mean.) The short answer may be straightforwardly Weberian: this particular community has not passed from the charismatic-leader phase to the bureaucratic-modern phase of development. There may be some merit to this line of thinking: if there is an integral community, it is largely organized around the utterances of a single figure, and even those of us who find good reason to move in different directions have to work in conversation with those who are committed to that party line.

(incidentally, where are tribal-charismatic social structures on the spiral dynamics color chart?)

I would like to offer an additional interpretation of this kind of crisis. Because integral theory really wants to be taken seriously as a legitimate form of knowledge, a legitimized academic discourse, the claimed means-to-legitimacy (the way you go about making knowledge, the way you make the authority that makes it possible to make knowledge) is something of a tender issue. And for good reason: the way Wilber legitimizes his own position as an authority through the knowledge he produces is problematic, "Urizenic" if you will accept my invocation of the Prophet Against Empire. (Here is a more straightforward, if simplistic, version.)

You can understand this problem in terms of consumer capital. If you undermine your brand-image as the guru as some kind of higher-order being simply by behaving like a jackass, then you give the lie to your own authority, then you give the lie to your own authority as a knowledge-producer. No more TED talks for Mr. Gafni. That is dumb.

But this is only a problem if your legitimacy as an authority is somehow presented as personal, as inhering in your person; and if your legitimacy is branded like a special kind of detergent or whatever.

Some contrary examples show how the master's personal shortcomings do not necessarily de-legitimize his or her contributions to knowledge in cases where this knowledge is not presented in neoliberal, consumer-capital terms. Althusser killed his wife, but his contribution to Continental thought though somewhat constipated is unquestioned and of real value, especially on the matter of "structural causality." Kojeve was definitely a megalomaniac, but he knocked a lot of nonsense out of the conversation around Hegel. Marx had hopelessly uptight ideas about gender and marriage (very much appropriate to the 19th century bourgeois), especially compared to the much-more-sensible (on this issue) Engels. So what? None of these serious personality defects disqualifies the real contributions they made.

However, Heidegger's fascism in my view presents a contrary to these contraries, because it is not so much a personal shortcoming as an intellectual and political commitment. Here you have a serious mistake that does provoke a crisis of legitimacy: it does not mean that Heidegger should not be read and reflected on, merely that it must be read with a particular kind of care (Sorge... yes, loosely using a Heideggerian term for a Heideggerian problem, for those keeping score). Contemporary Japanese Zen traditions have faced a nearly identical problem, given the revelations Brian Victoria has put out in Zen at War and since ("just sit" and "don't think" can lead you straight to fascism, which is a fine argument for the spiritual value of thinking critically). One might also put Ernst Bloch's relatively late recognition of the problems in Stalinism as well. I chalk this up to Bloch's nearly pathological optimism: he really thought it would turn out OK, and for personal and philosophical reasons, found it very difficult to make that break. He ultimately did, which in my view redeems his work; for many it is a debated point, so I mention it here.

[Succumbing to the temptation to mention Al Davis' COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE.]

Here is a way forward that does not repeat these problems, and in fact works to mitigate them.

Build a culture of learning and inquiry that values the contribution on its own terms, not only because of presumptions made about the contributor. A blind review process, if you like. Build a culture of learning that is at least dialogic, in which conceptual and practical problems are hashed out in public and with real names attached, so there is some accountability, so mistakes can be corrected and rough edges worn down. Forget the Sage on the Stage approach that made Boomeritis such a boring and pointless book (and so representative of Wilberian means-to-legitimacy). Strive instead for a Working Group model, in which ideas are actually shared and worked out in collaboration.

Beats waiting for Marc Gafni or Ken Wilber or Dennis Merzel or Andrew Cohen (or hey, remember the Coming God-Man Adi Da?) to blossom into the Kwisatz Haderach, and pretending you are among a cabal of Bene Gesserit. Is it not more inspiring to drop the pretense and just be ordinary people with what may become extraordinary and useful ideas?

2011-10-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

Listen: you need an ontology. One of the great failures of the postmodern & poststructuralist trips that somehow seemed relevant so long ago was this refusal of ontology. Think of Bruno Latour, who went after science and matter in exactly the wrong way: by demonstrating that scientific certainty is anything but certain, but is instead contingent on certain social forces, Latour made a contribution; but when this becomes absolute, you have real trouble using a legitimate scientific finding (the fossil record in contradiction to creepy creationist narratives, evidence for industrial-caused climate change in contradiction to the ideologies of capital). Why? It becomes possible for Dick Cheney to use a Latour-ish argument to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. Or for a tobacco executive to undermine the scientific consensus on lung cancer caused by smoking (see Latour's article "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?" where he makes this point himself). My point: you need an ontology if you want to claim that the results of a rape investigation are real and significant. If you want to claim that bodies matter, that species and their qualitative diversity matter, that webs of life in metabolic interaction matter, then you need to posit an ontology first. Matter, the stuff of life, must be accounted for and drawn forward as having a kind of reality (it does), a kind of coming-to-coherence (it does), a kind of qualitative and heterogeneous value (for myself, I take aesthetic value as real and exchange value as a kind of social fiction).

Once you conceptualize the concrete and the phenomenal, you are in a position to do some real work: you can describe and prescribe. You can advocate. You can care and take care, you can take responsibility for an object or the totality of objects and processes. The point is that you have to start from first principles.

Wilber, to his credit, does not hesitate to posit an ontology, and in substantial detail. I think this is one reason why some readers may have found his body of work an appealing alternative to the always-already poststructuralist scene of yore. He does this by invoking the historicism of the German Idealists (Schelling, Hegel...), refracted through Aurobindo, to produce the concept of Spirit. And all that material on holons? An ontology. This is better than nothing, because at least it offers a place to start. Readers of Ernst Bloch will readily admit that there may be some utopian sparks to be released from the Wilber scene. That said, I find much of Wilber's ontology untenable and unnecessarily problematic. Untenable because of contradictions and contra-indications in it, and the circularity of the arguments that are supposed to demonstrate it; problematic because it reproduces certain positions it should instead set out to explain and debunk.

This is why I go in another direction from first principles, and I encourage others who are working in integral studies to consider doing the same.

The micropolitics paper grew out of this attempt at first principles. Instead of working from an idealistic position (a historicism of Spirit), I instead attempted a nominalistic or materialistic proposal. This is where the concepts "coherence," "articulation," and "totality" come in; these amount to a preliminary attempt to think the Buddhist concept of dependent origination through Marxian or at least post-Hegelian categories: a co-constitutive dialectic of consciousness and conditions, subject and object, where "consciousness" is itself a product of causes and conditions, and "conditions" are as well. All this is still very provisional and in need of development, especially in terms of specifying the content of time. "Totality" is not the same as a holon, though, even though it expresses relations of subordination; as I understand it, totality is about tension and equilibrium, without the positive value one might assign a natural order. The point was to show what the situation at hand is (unsatisfactory), and to show what is to be done (transformation of the same).

At a minimum, this approach avoids reproducing capital's divisive social relations and means-to-maintenance of those relations (ideology, false consciousness), and the contradictions therein. Instead, I seek to describe the problem critically, from its origins, its emergence from and in interaction with a matrix of causes and conditions and, from that, interests. Not Spirit as a singular causal agent; such a claim is not warranted and lacks explanatory power anyway. Instead, I look to the production and reproduction of "Spirit" for one as a category filling a particular cultural space (Spirit is a relatively durable "historical a priori" in Foucault's patois). For methodological purposes (do whatever you want on your own time, believe whatever pleases you to believe), Spirit should be an object of analysis, not presumed as the subject of history.

Incidentally, this approach rectifies Wilber's persistent misunderstanding of Buddhist emptiness (shunyata) as something, as Spirit or I-I. Emptiness is not that. It is, precisely, dependent origination. Go back to Nagarjuna and see for yourself.

***

Which reminds me: Would you like to know how this approach also serves the purpose of legitimizing (or at least helping to demarginalize) integral theory as an academic discourse?

2011-10-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

I had a quick glance at Sam Mickey's contribution to Integral Theory in Action. From what I have seen, there are some points of contact between his project and mine, and some significant differences that may point to future work.

Mickey expresses a concern I definitely share with the infantilizing aspects of subjectification under consumer capital, and proposes to use particular critical tools to debunk (I would say demystify) those means-to-false-consciousness. I think this is a very productive row to hoe, and I hope to see more intensive scrutiny on this topic among integral thinkers.

However, Mickey and I depart in our understanding of Wilber-ism as a body of knowledge. I take AQAL, holons, and the rest to be epiphenomena of late capital, in point of fact an aspect of that very subjectification that infantilizes, subordinates, controls, and fragments social and personal consciousness (affect). [This is an argument common to the Frankfurt School (file under 'culture industry'), the Situationists (the Spectacle), among many others.] Wilber-ism is saturated with the commodity form in its medium and message; its doctrine reproduces in its metaphysics the violent dynamics of global capital's means of accumulation.

So to my mind it is incoherent to propose a critique or demystification of consumer consciousness on one side while upholding a mystified form of consumer consciousness on the other.

This problem could be ameliorated:

*if Mickey or anyone else could show how Wilber-ism (AQAL, Spirit and the rest) is not plausibly subject to the above-cited criticism, which is to say, to show how Wilber-ism could be warranted as a means of critiquing a capitalist social formation in its elements and its totality, more so than, say other integral approaches that come immediately to mind.

*or if you just take a different approach methodologically from the Wilberian scene.

I will return for more when I get a chance to read Mickey's essay in closer detail.

2011-10-17T07:25:00.001-07:00

"Without Contraries is No Progression"

The notion of a singular and self-taught genius churning out masterpieces of contemporary thought is nothing but salesmanship. No such thing exists in integral theory or anywhere else. People certainly read, reflect, and write on their own, but that writing always happens as part of a conversation if it is to be useful, to make a contribution. Remember the Angels and Devils in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?

No one would confuse me for a singular genius or an Angel. But in my own case, there has been a development along certain lines and productive abandonment of others in no small part thanks to the direct criticism of readers. The most impactful of these would include the editors of the Integral Review, including Jonathan Reams (a reader of great patience and gentle humor), Sara Nora Ross (probing and insightful), and Bonnie Roy (a first-rate wordsmith); Frank Visser at Integral World; Richard Carlson; Alan Kazlev; and many others. I have not always had a positive attitude about taking criticism; learning about one's shortcomings is not always comfortable. That said, I will always be grateful for the time and energy invested by these persons in this conversation. I hope they accept my gratitude.

Consequently, I feel a certain responsibility to offer some public comment, even if only occasionally and hesitatingly, on aspects of the work of integral thinkers which I may be qualified to address. These usually concern history and the philosophy of history, philosophy and the history of philosophy, political and social theory, and culture generally. I feel strongly that even a beginner, when speaking in public in earnest, should be addressed with respect (Angels and Devils): his or her ideas should be taken seriously as objects of critique and action. This way we all learn from each other, rather than imposing on one another.

2011-10-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

New work available at Integral World: a brief consideration on the present state of cultural criticism among integral thinkers, and some suggestions on ways forward. Spheres of Awareness by Lough and Herron is on the griddle there.

Meanwhile, considering a serious rhetorical mistake I made in my inexperienced youth, with lasting consequences (again, apropos of academic discourse in integral theory):

In my 2006 essay "Of Syntheses and Surprises," I went after Aurobindo's theory of time and race (evolution...) as ideology in the sense of false consciousness, of make-believe, in order to get at contemporary (at the time) integral theorists such as Ken Wilber. I saw this as warranted. I understood then and still understand now Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo, as an important and canonical figure in English-language letters. Because of the way he has been appropriated into the canon of integral theory since Wilber (or before if you count Haridas Chaudhuri)... that is, because of the way Aurobindian evolution forms so much of the conceptual underpinning of integral theory to date, I figured that if I pull the rug out from under Aurobindo, I could do the same for Wilber and the rest. This is why I included that Foucaultian stuff at the start: the Aurobindian stuff on evolution, which can be traced back in most of its substance to the German Idealists in my opinion, forms the historical a priori that is reproduced throughout Wilber et al. This kind of thinking is perfectly sensible if you are used to writing about canonical figures like Milton or Spinoza. If you want to make a fundamental critique of rationalism, all you really need to do is get at the discursive patterns established in Descartes and thar she blows.

My mistake is that Aurobindo is not a canonical figure in the same way Descartes is. Many feel him to be marginal and unfairly marginalized. Consequently, if you describe the more problematic sides of Aurobindo's contribution (his historicism) without first offering a kowtow to his brilliance as a poet, sage, and political leader, then you have basically shat on his grave. To this day I get criticisms for having an "incomplete understanding" of Aurobindo. Of course I have an incomplete understanding of Aurobindo. So do you. I suspect Aurobindo had an incomplete understanding of Aurobindo. I do not claim to have a complete understanding of Aurobindo. Who would?

Look and find this footnote on p. 68 of that article:

This critique is not intended to discourage anyone from taking up the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo as a transformative practice, if one pleases to do so—on the contrary. The workings of Shakti as Sri Aurobindo described them are hardly systematic, synthetic, or oppressive, and the task of the Integral yogin is to open up to this force for the sake of all beings without exception, or in Sri Aurobindo’s words “not for the sake of the individual but with an eye to the universal evolutionary process” (Synthesis, p. 339). To reject synthesis in favor of surprises is one imperative of this paper; it is also the significance of Aurobindo the poet’s writing practice. My use of the name Aurobindo in the main text of this paper, sans Sri, is intended to underscore the distinction between Aurobindo the critic, poet, and thinker from Sri Aurobindo the guru and spiritual technologist, a distinction not easily maintained given that Aurobindo’s poetry is shot through with Sri’s spiritual vision, like teasing Milton-the-Puritan and Milton-the-Poet apart.

I intended for this disclaimer to cover my assets back in 2006. It is on the mark conceptually but failed rhetorically, which is to say, it failed completely. I meant it, though: if you want to practice the integral yoga, go for it. If you adore Aurobindo as a national hero, do not imagine I am trying to stop you. Why should I care? Even if I did care, why would you care if I care?

Anyway, this aspect of my own immaturity and insensitivity as a thinker has really hindered my ability to express a fundamental critique of integral theory on the basis of how it has sucked Aurobindo's thought right on in to itself. This was careless and irresponsible of me. My rookie mistake: to forget how easy it is for all of us to take impersonal things personally, projecting our own issues onto the moment and thus making the situation a "toxic" one.

And yes, I have covered much of this ground before.

2011-10-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

A bit more on the very important question of plagiarism, proper academic discourse, and whatever contributions I have made to the theoretical discussion in integral studies (at the risk of seeming "self-referential"):

From the start of my intervention into integral discourse, my policy has been to share my ideas freely and publicly. I am not that "ShamWow" guy. I give it all away with the hope this material might be useful to someone, somehow. I do not make a proprietary claim to any of he concepts I have cooked up (who does that?). If people find my ideas helpful, even if as a point of departure, then all the better: the appropriate practice is to credit an author for his or her contribution, and then move on. This does not always happen.

Here is a peculiar example: Martin Beck Matustik presented Integral Critical Theory (2007) shortly after I had proposed a "critical integral theory" and in the same journal. Matustik's proposal differs from mine in that I sought to promote an integral theory that is also critical (and, along the way, does the work a critical theory ought to do), while his is the more limited task of presenting a critical theory that is also integral (with a developmental axis of a transcendental subject). Now, compare Matustik's article to the introduction of David Schweickart's After Capitalism (2002). I trust Matustik had read Schweickart's text because he (Matustik) is named as an editor of the series in which After Capitalism was published. It seems to me that Schweickart's book is a silent allusion, if you will, in Matustik's essay: not plagiarized exactly, but just not cited (especially the bits about TINA). (Schweickart's book is very much worth your time to read, by the way, as is Matustik's article.) I very much doubt my 2006 Integral Review article had any kind of positive impact at all on Matustik's thinking (2007), but he may have been motivated to write by lacunae and laxities in my article. It appears that Integral Critical Theory has since been taken up in Sean Esbjorn-Hargens' collection Integral Theory in Action, of which more later if I can track down a copy of that text. [I find it most strange and disappointing that Integral Critical Theory did not play a more significant role (any real role) in the 2009 collection of "Wilberian Integral Literary Criticism," Spheres of Awareness: a serious omission.]

For the next act, I beg my reader's indulgence as my purpose in cataloging all this stuff will become clearer later on. No more throat-clearing. Some of the ideas I think I can be credited for introducing to the integral conversation would include:

*The notion that Wilber's cosmology, ontology, and theory of time ("evolution") merely reproduce in a mystified form (holons-in-holons as Spirit) the prevailing relations of subordination and exploitation that prevail under Capital. I used to use the word "ideology" to describe this kind of bad faith or false consciousness, but I find the notion of "reproduction" or "flickering" to be more precise and less confusing (with apologies to Richard Carlson).

*The concomitant claim that a transformative theory of consciousness must seek to transform those relations, e.g., revolutionizing a fractured and global social formation int o an integral whole (radical democracy). Repudiation of conservative and reactionary politics (by definition of and for the status quo), calling for an energized "left" in integral theory. It is impossible to separate this political commitment from the rest of the concepts I have put forward here (into history and determination, away from idealism and ideology, against commodification, and so on).

*That it is sensible for integral theorists to understand the ups and downs of actually existing social transformations, intentional ones, in history. These would include the Popular Unity period in Chile and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution for democratic socialism. It seems only polite that we should not presume to tell activist movements what to believe or what bullshit "vMeme" they represent (even those darned "reds" and "greens"). Listen first instead.

*Which reminds me: is anyone taking Spiral Dynamics seriously anymore? I do not claim to have pushed SD off the integral train, even though I attempted (weakly in my opinion) to argue for doing just that in 2008. There are other factors at play there. Moving on.

*Attention to the epistemic violence (borrowing Gayatri Spivak's phrase) of appropriating and commodifying the world's spiritual and cultural heritage for privatized gain (back to capitalist relations again), with Wilber's appropriation of Aurobindo as an example. I worked this up in an essay on an instance of Esbjorn-Hargens' academic practice, ironically enough, but also earlier on this very blog (look here and here... although looking back, October of 2009 was a productive time for me conceptually, and I am happy to report that the blog posts from that time hold up nicely).

*An early emphasis on Deleuze and Guattari's "rhizomatic" practice as an alternative to idealistic or "arborescent" philosophies of nature (as in Aurobindo and his appropriators) and the ideological work those metaphysical systems of time and structure do. I have since backed away from Deleuze and Guattari in favor of a dialectical approach, but I still appreciate the fecund ecology of concepts Deleuze and Guattari produced. Also look here, and here especially for thinking on subjectification and affect. [*last link a late addition to this post*]

*And apropos of ecology, rhizomatics, historical materialism, and critical theory: you can find in my work a longstanding preoccupation with the relation between critical theory and ecology, inclusive of an engagement with ecocriticism on this blog and elsewhere. Integral thinkers have long been concerned with ecology; I have simply attempted a critical approach to the same, sometimes through a Deleuze-Guattarian (or here for a better example) but more often through a Marxian lens (go here, here, here, or here...).

*A recuperation of the concept of responsibility, specified in the concept of becoming-responsible.

*Attention to the circularity of Wilber's production of knowledge, with an eye toward doing things differently. This is part of a broader aim of making integral theory critical rather than thematic or topical, and historical rather than idealistic and metaphysical.

*An appreciation for humor, performance, fun, even pranks. Surely integral theorists have always had a sense of humor. You have to admit that the reiterative humor in Boomeritis, say, is of a qualitatively different kind than what I have promoted following Ziporyn's Being and Ambiguity.

Now that integral theory is said to have come into its own as an academic discourse (has it? or was it not so before?) with the publication of Integral Theory in Action, I look forward to finding out how these concepts may have fared in that volume. I have gathered from the table of contents (available online) that two or three of them have been taken up for consideration there, which humbles me to know, even though I have no interest in or use for the AQAL model which the volume is said to celebrate.

***

No use for AQAL? That is correct. I am a dialectical thinker, which means I am concerned with temporal relations, with processes and causal webs, with dependent origination (the actual meaning of emptiness in Buddhism, having nothing at all to do with "Spirit" or "Kosmos"), and not so much with static structures or and simplistic graphs. There are other reasons why, and I can specify the claims just made, but for now I will leave it at less grid, more grit gets the job done.

[Late edits to add links on rhizomatics & ecology, ecocriticism, & whatnot]

2011-10-15T08:39:00.001-07:00

Interested parties can easily track me down at Academia.edu, at this link.

2011-10-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

While I wait for a copy of Sean Esbjorn-Hargens' recent volume Integral Theory in Action to show up, I remember that author's response to Tomislav Markus' critique of the book Integral Ecology. Markus' critique is just that, a critique, in that it goes right to the fundamental assumptions behind Esbjorn-Hargens' arguments in Integral Ecology. I would still like to read a more substantive engagement on the specifically political and theological questions raised by Wilberian ecology, by the way: so far writers such as David Lane, Frank Visser, and I have in different ways pointed out that what Wilber does and Esbjorn-Hargens repeats is essentially a form of Intelligent Design theory: a theological position attempting to do the work of science in the public sphere in service to reactionary politics (looking at you Mr. Behe).

Esbjorn-Hargens did, at the time of his response to Markus, promise such an engagement. Here:

The last thing I want to do is disregard Markus' review completely by pointing out his failure to follow appropriate academic citation procedures. Though this fault combined with his lack of subtlety in presenting our views and the unreflective critical tone that characterizes much of his review make it a hard sell for serious engagement. Nevertheless, I still find important points in what he is saying and I will engage those at some point when I do a review of the reviews in coming months.

If Esbjorn-Hargens has followed through on this (he has not done so at Integral World or any other venue I can find), then all the better. If not, then the conversation is the less.

His response to Markus, however, is primarily concerned with plagiarism:

So authors for www.IntegralWorld.net, please be careful to avoid even naïve or “honest” plagiarism – even if it is done in service of those for whom it is plagiarized from. These kinds of situations impact the credibility of entire websites like “Integral World” and can prevent some of the valuable work being showcased here from getting a proper hearing in more academic or scientific contexts. And readers please be on the look out for such suspect scholarship and bring it to the attention of the author or Frank Visser so we as a community can minimize and avoid such embarrassing occurrences. Acts of academic negligence like this affect us all, especially those of us who want to deepen the conversation and build a reputable academic discourse around Integral Theory.

I give this sort of advice to my students regularly. It is good advice. I particularly appreciate the imperative that we need to build a "reputable academic discourse around Integral Theory," something that has also been a major concern for me (in fact a primary motivation in writing) for many years. This discourse is marginalized enough already; we do not need nonsense such as weak argumentation, sloppy categories and non sequiturs, or careless rhetoric to further compound the problem. Plagiarizing each other is the last thing integral thinkers should be doing, obviously.

And it is true that Markus should have more carefully punctuated his first review in order to avoid a misrepresentation of Esbjorn-Hargens' work as his own in what appear to be two different paragraphs. These mistakes were later amended openly and publicly.

What remains? Well, how about some kind of evidence or argument that Integral Ecology is anything other than what The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster suggests it is: a New Age rehash of right-wing creationism? The rebuttals made to Lane and Visser so far on this point have been, to be polite, unconvincing. Perhaps the author of Integral Ecology can bring some insight to this conversation.

***

Lest I forget: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster includes in it one of the most incisive and hilarious critiques of the Integral Institute you can find. I would be remiss not to remind the gallery to find it and enjoy a good laugh.

2011-10-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

Mark D. Forman and Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, in their article at the Integral World website, The Academic Emergence of Integral Theory, claim:

So for many of us academics it is hard to discover the gems of this website because they are buried in rhetoric that all too often lacks the rigor, appropriate citation, self-reflectivity, and openness that it accuses Wilber of lacking. On many occasions we have heard academic colleagues—and we resonate with their perspective—describe the material on this website as “toxic,” “emotive,” “narcissistic,” “self-referential” and so on—as we all know all these characteristics have been assigned to Wilber on this very website.

It is true that the work at Integral World is occasionally uneven or just plain strange. My own work has been criticized for its unevenness, only occasionally unfairly. Here, the authors mark a useful point in integral discourse generally (well beyond the Integral World site): much of it is unnecessarily uncritical, speculative, and confused. This presents a problem but not a crisis. That is: problems like this are opportunities for learning and leadership, for the emergence of new concepts and practices. This is the fundamental lesson of the great Chinese dialectician, Chih-i: mistakes make mastery possible, especially when people are willing to cooperate with each other critically and creatively.

In Blake's terms: "Without Contraries is No Progression." For a dialectical process to work, you need engagement, willing and conscious engagement with positions wholly alien to one's own. It will not work if you avoid critique, or any other form of relationship or interaction.

Regarding Forman and Esbjorn-Hargens' criticism of Integral World, then. Are these characterizations, “toxic,” “emotive,” “narcissistic,” “self-referential,” forms of engagement or do they function as part of a strategy of non-engagement, in short of avoidance?

Three of these descriptors describe subjective responses to situations. For instance, one might say a relationship or a workplace environment has become toxic when one no longer feels welcome or valued in it. This is an affective response. In this sense, toxicity does not inhere strictly in the text, but in one's response to it. The terms "emotive" and "narcissistic" work in more or less the same way, e.g., the author of a given piece may be emoting his or her need for a non-materialistic account of the world's origins as in intelligent design theory, rather than accounting for it by appeal to reason or evidence, or a piece may evoke strong emotions in a reader for reasons wholly independent of the author's words and consequently feel "emotive."

However, self-referentiality seems to present a more complex phenomenon. There are instances where writers use reference to their own work and that of others as a kind of shorthand; I have done this, for instance, when trying to suggest ways in which whatever local concept I may be developing fits into the context of a larger whole or can point forward to new possibilities. It sometimes works and it sometimes does not. Some readers find it irritating. The late David Foster Wallace was fond of footnotes, to the chagrin of many and the delight of many others. Is there something objectively narcissistic about Wallace's use of footnotes and self-referential techniques? A debatable point. My point is that self-referentiality can be a symptom of narcissism, but it is not necessarily that, and need not be a disqualification for taking someone's writing seriously (as though you really can count on a narcissist for a fancy prose style).

It seems more productive and less constipated to concern oneself with whether my response to a text as a reader is toxic, and not if a writer's attitude toward me is toxic. Again, William Blake points to a healthy attitude: "Opposition is True Friendship." Criticism must be made as an act of love (even this), even when it comes off as a personal affront to a narcissistic reader. I have every reason this is the spirit in which Forman and Esbjorn-Hargens made their criticism of Integral World, in a spirit of true friendship.

My point is that we must not make our own emotive reactions to the work of others into obstacles to learning and exchange, and instead attempt to work dialectically with each other.

2011-10-14T07:56:00.001-07:00

Sean Esbjorn-Hargens' collection Integral Theory in Action (SUNY Press) has been out for about a year now, and seems to have been greeted by relative silence. I have not had access to the text yet, since my university library has evidently decided not to buy it (I am waiting on approval for interlibrary loan...).

When this (or is it a related?) project was first announced, I responded with skepticism. I still think this skepticism was warranted, even though my intention at the time was to exhort the contributors to produce something new, to make a real contribution, and to make it critical.

I am increasingly curious to find out how this work has turned out. The silence surrounding the Integral Theory in Action volume has not yet put a damper on my optimism.

2011-09-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

I uploaded some material to my scribd feed. Which is to say, I now have such a thing. Find it here.

2011-04-29T07:27:00.001-07:00

Odds and Sods:

*Some considerations on what happens when a religious tradition faces its own simulacra. If "Bushindo University" can use the word, does "university" really mean anything anymore?

*Some whatnot on Wilber worth your consideration.

*Looks like Jack Layton's NDP really is taking hold in Quebec, as I had hoped would happen a few cycles back. This is progress. O Canada!

*Yes, I know Ken Wilber has been hanging out with the Rand Kwon Do "objectivist" scene for a long, long time. No one takes Ayn Rand seriously as a philosopher, but as a manufacturer of ideology (in the negative sense), her legacy demands consideration...

2011-04-15T16:17:00.001-07:00

OK, so Ken Wilber is now promoting some form of Ayn Rand objectivist stuff. Like this. And behind the curve, too, just as Glenn Beck is no longer drawing in the Competent Demographic to Faux News and is soon to be pushed to the curb.

Like obese brownshirts-for-the-elderly movement known as the Tea Party, this is just nuts. But like the Tea Party, needy people are willing to part with their money for it... but I digress.

I stand by my word: it is time for integral thinkers to move on. Mr Wilber already has.

2011-03-21T17:48:00.001-07:00

OK, so Integral Life is putting on a program called Coming Home: An Integral Christian Practicum. Ken Wilber's claim about it: "This is truly the next major step in, and the future of, Christianity." (from the promotional email)

Whatever this might be, it is of world-historic importance, given that Christianity is far and a way the most popular and influential religious tradition (and mix of institutions) on the planet. Big claim, ShamWow. (Has anyone gone to the trouble of compiling Wilber's claims of the This Is the Next Biggest Thing Ever in the History of Things! and compared those claims to lived reality? I for one would like to know his score. Better or worse than Nostradamus?)

I suspect that this practicum likely will not be a lynchpin to the history of world religion. It is unlikely to represent a popular or significant future for Christianity as a totality of faiths, practices, doctrines, institutions, or experiences. Have you read Mike Davis's Planet of Slums? Do read it, because it demonstrates that the future of Christianity lies in the appeal of Pentecostalism among the intensely impoverished.

***

Just in North America, it seems obvious to me that the Quiverfull homeschool people, the Ralph Reed family values set, and the Fry Sauce Belt are much more likely to win the numbers game than whatever new paradigm Wilber's marketing. The world is not "evolving" in the direction Wilber's ontology would like us to believe it should be going. This is not greater consciousness. It is plump babies and the State of Topeka, as in A Boy and his Dog. Until the oil runs out, the fertilizer dries up, &c.

2011-03-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

The seventeenth-century Zen master Tetsugen Doko anticipated certain habits of contemporary self-appointed masters, perhaps because he saw these habits in the nascent Japanese bourgeoisie:

Thieves don the robes of the Thus Come One [the Buddha], take on the appearance of a monk or nun, and so turn the Buddha into an object for sale and make him into the source of their livelihood. They create all sorts of [bad] karma, and say that it is all the teachings of the Buddha Dharma. Instead, they malign those monks who keep the precepts as followers of the Lesser Vehicle...

[quoted in Iron Eyes: The Life and Teachings of Obaku Zen Master Tetsugen Doko by Helen J Baroni]

One might express Tetsugen's insight in contemporary terms as follows:

Certain consciousness professionals present themselves as representing a broader, fuller, and more complete plane of knowledge and being than ordinary persons or representatives of conventional spiritual traditions. They claim to know and, for a fee teach, the authentic or real teachings of the Buddhist tradition and all other world traditions (without saying much about Islam) but without being tied down to cultural habits such as precepts. This is profitable and it is a form of theft: excavating a portion of the world's spiritual legacy, the labor of previous generations, recasting it, and marketing it as one's own work.

I bring this up again because this sort of thing is as old as the commodity form.

***

unrelated but of interest: what on earth is going on here?

2011-03-02T11:17:00.001-08:00

A worthwhile contemplation:

Great benevolent individuals have by nature a clear, fathomless intelligence and do not cloak themselves in hypocrisy. They have eradicated all self-centeredness and show no prejudice. Like the sun, the emanate rays of beneficence for sentient beings. Where they reside, what honest and dependable person would care in the least about other so-called 'wise ones' who crave attention--those with hidden agendas, like seeking only their next meal, wanting to be famous scholars, or otherwise showing off in public because they are ignorant frauds? Nobody pays any attention to them! When the sun is not visible at night, the stars shine in all their glory. But when the sun rises to the heavens and its brilliant rays illumine all tings equally, the stars will not be seen no matter how bright or numerous.

Because one really helps oneself when helping others, it is clearly important to dedicate oneself to altruism, the kind of activities the truly benevolent pursue.

from Ordinary Wisdom: Sakya Pandita's Treasury of Good Advice, p. 69.

2011-01-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

What is violence?

This is a question I would like to see integral thinkers tackle in some detail. It is not at all clear to me that there has been a precise engagement with forms of violence and their causes among integral theorists, although there have been plenty of claims thrown around about it of the right-wing and idealist Islam is a Violent Ideology type.

Walter Benjamin, following Max Weber in some respects, defined violence in terms of a monopoly: that the sovereign reserves to itself a monopoly on violence. Sergio Agamben reconfigures this in an interesting way in Homo Sacer; there, it is the violence of the law and its execution that the sovereign reserves as a monopoly, creating for itself a kind of "exception" through which and by which the law's necessarily violent origins and means are expressed. This trajectory is a useful point of departure for integral theorists insofar as it directs attention away from mindstuff, away from worldviews and consciousness, and toward material practices, institutions, and situations.

There is another angle worth exploring: that the hierarchical organization of life, of holons within holons in Wilber's lingo, taken as natural and assumed to be guided by Spirit (or expressing Spirit's development...), is itself a form of violence. Like this (from the Programme of Unidad Popular):

violence exists whenever some own luxury homes while next to them the greater part of the population lives in insanitary conditions and others do not even have a place to live; there is violence wherever food is thrown away by some, while others do not have enough to eat.

Dubai is a form of violence. Los Angeles is, in its organization and distribution of resources, a form of violence. The relationship among affluent exurbs, crumbling (or gentrifying) urban areas, and starving rural spaces that prevails in the United States? A form of violence. And so on between the global north and the global south generally.

This definition of violence, very easy to see if one looks at contemporary reality rather than nineteenth-century historicism or twentieth-century hagiography, directly abuts the very premises of Ken Wilber's integral theory. Look here for more.

2010-11-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a recent contribution I made to Frank Visser's Integral World site on the topic of Vitvan and the School of the Natural Order.

It should be of interest to students of kundalini yoga (shaktism, tantrism...), integral studies, noetic studies, Aurobindo studies, and the rest of the usual suspects.

2010-10-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

On second thought: you think maybe Ken Wilber's putting so many adverts in my inbox because he wants to sell some Christmas presents this year?

Retail is a funny business.

2010-10-25T17:16:00.000-07:00

Crises are brought on by overproduction. You find yourself in a position where you have invested your capital in getting others to produce too much shit that no one wants, when the point was to sell that shit for more capital than you invested in it.

And this seems to be the situation facing the good people at Integral Life Practice right now. They sunk their capital into producing commodities that too few people are buying (at least at the preposterous prices they have asked for). Consequently, you get a giveaway of Integral Life Practice stuff, to recover some of that capital: free coaching sessions (these are commodities too), DVDs, ugly branded laptop bags, and your chance at a lucky free ticket to Integral Life Practice Spiritual Experience Festival for the Cure next year.

My suggestion: continue not buying this shit. Instead, consider things you can do for free, or at least without having a ridiculous hard-sell hovering over your head from the Success 'N' Life Experts, business consultants, marketing guys, and the rest: check out Agni Yoga, Integral Yoga, or good old fashioned New Age practice: anything really. Even Buddhism! Take a hike in the mountains. Find the SPCA and adopt a cat. Ca va?

The crisis will pass. I hope the integral studies world learns from it and perhaps becomes more diverse in its leadership, its scope, its direction; more rigorous with itself in the sense of being more self-critical, more creative and self-reliant, more amenable to collaboration; directed not for personal or institutional profit or gain, not for personal success of any kind, but instead for the well-being of the totality of all lifeforms in perpetuity; in short, more humane.

Pax Cultura.

2010-10-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

I have, in the past, described one aspect of Aurobindo Ghose's doctrine as Providential. Here is a passage in Aurobindo's brilliant epic Savitri that shows just what I am pointing at (book one, canto four):

All that transpires on earth and all beyond
Are parts of an illimitable plan
The One keeps in his heart and knows alone.
Our outward happenings have their seed within,
And even this random Fate that imitates Chance,
This mass of unintelligible results,
Are the dumb graph of truths that work unseen:
The laws of the Unknown create the known.
The events that shape the appearance of our lives
Are a cipher of subliminal quiverings
Which rarely we sur[m]ise or vaguely feel,
Are an outcome of supressed realities
That hardly rise into material day:
They are born from the spirit's sun of hidden powers
Digging a tunnel through emergency.

[full disclosure: I amended the word "surprise" to "surmise," indicating this change with square brackets, on the assumption that the word "surprise" makes no sense in context and hence likely indicates a typographical error.]

This is, plainly, a Providential belief system. Compare it to the historicisms of nineteenth-century German idealists (Hegel, Schelling, Dilthey...) and the claims made on those idealists and Aurobindo by Ken Wilber in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality for reference. It is totally workable as a belief system. I bring it up because it is a hopeless mess when applied, as Wilber attempts to do, to scientific disciplines. Hence: materialism, of which more later.

All that said: it is fine verse, though, ain't it?

2010-10-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Some reflections on Sergei Prokofieff's 1993 book, The East in the Light of the West, a mess of a book that provokes some interesting questions with some bearing on contemporary integral culture: recalling the premise that the way forward sometimes involves a look back into relatively recent history into paths not taken and opportunities neglected.

I have claimed in the past that what we now call integral studies (concomitantly integral culture and integral theory) developed out of the cultural matrix established by the Theosophy movement. In part, this means that the terms of the conversation at present, the questions posed and the problems approached, were established in Theosophy. Hence, one might say that Helena Blavatsky's legacy is the unacknowledged elephant in the integral living room. I think it is very much worth the effort to acknowledge the elephant and engage with it. Trouble is, much of the scholarship on Theosophy is really uneven. Predictably, this is where I start talking about Prokofieff's really uneven scholarship.

Prokofieff argues (following Rudolf Steiner), that Blavatsky was pulled away from the only authentically Cosmic source of spirituality, the "Christ-impulse," by "Eastern Masters" because she was unstable and in some senses unsuitable to the task of representing the Straight Dope Dharma. There are some implausible premises behind this: if the Christ-impulse is cosmic (in the sense of a universal or an inevitability) and consequently universally compassionate, would said Christ-impulse deny itself to one who identified with a different cultural milieu from that of bourgeois Protestant Christianity or called this cosmic impulse by a different name from Christ's or (to be direct about it) simply had different brand-preferences from the Jesus crowd? If so, then you have a contradiction in the bureaucracy of the Christ-impulse: claiming to be cosmic, but really only serving the interest of those suborned to it.

For what it is worth, this description of the Christ-impulse in Prokofieff's book (I am uncertain how accurately it represents Steiner's position) differs substantially from that of Vitvan in The Christos, where the Christ-impulse is in fact cosmic, inheres in everyone, is not limited to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth made cosmic nor exclusively identified with his dispensation, and is identified most explicitly with Shakti. My point here is that the term "Christ" is deployed in many distinct ways in early New Age culture, and these differences point to significant departures in approach that should be excavated if one is to write a history of this phenomenon.

Back to Prokofieff. His claims on Helena Roerich and Nicolas Roerich as representatives of something he calls "Occult Bolshevism" in the appendix to this book are of much greater interest to me than his treatment of Blavatsky. Was Helena Roerich, founder of Agni Yoga, in fact presenting Buddhism as a form of materialism as Lenin understood it? (Think of the Lenin behind Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, truly a landmark in applied and practical philosophy if not a perfectly constructed argument against speculative metaphysics and idealism in dialectical thinking in this context and you will see the significance of this claim. This is a first-order departure from the idealism we see across the board in New Age and integral cultures.) If so, then I must immediately declare myself an Agni Yogin post-haste, as one who identifies as a Buddhist and as a materialist. I suspect, however, that Prokofieff meant this claim as a slight or a dismissal (because everyone knows materialists are necessarily anti-spirituality, that witches are flammable, that we have always been at war with Eurasia) rather than a clear-eyed and rigorous proposal.

Regardless, the provocateur in me would like to take Prokofieff at his word on this and open a question that bears closer examination by people more familiar with the Agni Yoga literature than I am: to what extent might Agni Yoga be a more materialist and hence more critical iteration of New Age or integral or noetic culture post-Theosophy than any other stream? If Prokofieff is actually right and Agni Yoga does represent a kind of "occult Bolshevism" or at least a critical materialism, then I would like to suggest that we would all do well to take up a careful study of the teachings of Master Morya. Besides, reading and reflecting is good for you.

Pax Cultura!

2010-10-14T05:41:00.001-07:00

I remain convinced that the School of the Natural Order and the teachings of Ralph deBit (who practiced and taught mostly under the name his guru gave him, Vitvan) have a great deal to offer contemporaries working in noetic studies, consciousness studies, integral studies, and the kundalini or shakti path. I have mentioned Vitvan in the past and I will be writing more substantively about this; here are some ideas I will be developing.

Vitvan, trained by the innovative master A.K. Mozumdar (himself a colorful figure) was at work on this from 1910 or so (a significant moment if you compare what Aurobindo Ghose was doing simultaneously), and the development of his teaching anticipates much of what Ken Wilber was up to: much of the best of Wilber's enterprise, and some of the more problematic bits too (on balance Vitvan's oeuvre presents fewer problems than Wilber's in terms of politics and race, and gets a bit more slack from me given that he dropped the body in 1964, whereas Wilber has had access to better science and translations).

I particularly admire Vitvan for refusing to peddle the teachings. He was neither an asskisser nor a snake-oil vendor. He maintained the integrity of the teachings from soup to nuts, and when he discovered himself to be on the wrong track, he went to great lengths to change course.

I very much admire the persistence of Vitvan's students. The School is still there, the Home Farm just keeps going after all these years. Work is getting done. Find out for yourself.

This is a stream of teaching I feel strongly that today's integral thinkers and English-speaking yogins should be more familiar with.

2010-10-13T06:24:00.000-07:00

More on the topic of practice:

I am of the opinion that Rudi (Swami Rudrananda) is an underappreciated figure in the history of North American spirituality and by extension integral studies. For starters, without Rudi you have no Adi Da, and without Adi Da, where would Ken Wilber be?

Check this and this out. Rudi was onto something.

2010-10-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the theme of practice:

This is the full text of Aurobindo Ghose's best contribution to world culture, his epic poem Savitri. If you cannot find a hard copy of this text, use the online version and read it slowly and mindfully, with great care. Then watch what happens.

2010-10-12T11:38:00.001-07:00

On the topic of practice: Consider this.

2010-10-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

Here is an online course in properly integral politics. Enjoy your studies and may beings benefit!

2010-10-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have taken some criticism in the past for not emphasizing practice much in my writings on integral theory. It is true, it is an objective fact: my comments have been overwhelmingly concerned with methodological and you might say strategic problems rather than tactical and practical ones. (It is also true that I have proposed or at least pointed toward specific modes of practice in different contexts, but even so, practice has not been my first concern in this blog, in my academic papers, or in other things I have put in public view.)

If you are looking for a practice you can use everyday without any special training, I humbly suggest you may wish to try this one: it is free of charge, it is not too difficult for a beginner nor is it too simplistic that you grow out of it. You can just keep going with it without finding the bottom of the well; it just keeps flowing and it changes everything if you give it your all.

More later on this.

2010-09-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have seen the recent letter from Robert MacNaughton,
Director of Marketing at Integral Life, which seems to ask for donations for integral educational projects. Actually...

...MacNaughton is not seeking charitable contributions (Integral Life is a business, not a charity); he is instead selling memberships in Integral Life with the implication that your membership will support educational activities. To wit:

Your participation also goes a long way in ensuring that we as an organization have the resources to better develop and deliver this content and enable as much growth in the community as we can. Members of the Integral community are not merely consumers--our culture certainly doesn't need any more vapid consumption. Integral Life members are active participants in the embodiment of a cultural transformation--spectators need not apply.

I think that question of whether or not Integral Life wants consumers remains an open one, since MacNaughton really is marketing a commodity to be consumed: access to content and activities. If you want to understand why I think this can be fairly understood as passive consumption if not precisely spectatorship in all cases, read Paulo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, particularly the section (chapter two) on the "banking model" of education. I must admit I feel a bit warm-and-fuzzy that the marketers at Integral Life are getting defensive about people like me sniping at them for behaving like conventional business-school neoliberal consumer-capitalists. "Walking on coals to improve your business acumen."

But wait, there's more:

As an added thanks for signing-up now, we'll send you a DVD and 2 CDs for free. Elegantly packaged with art contributed by an Integral Life artist, this media experience includes a month's worth of recently published membership content that you can watch on your TV or listen to in your car. A value of $24.95 that we'll ship to you at no extra cost.

Now, if you really want to make a difference in the education of ordinary people in a context of wisdom and compassion, I humbly submit that your money will be better invested in the scholarship program at the University of the West (click for more information here), which is in Rosemead, California. This is a not-for-profit, not-for-snake-oil operation, run by kind people for the greater good of all beings without exception. Check it out.

Some of you may object: "If I buy a membership in Integral Life, I get something for my money (Really Meaningful Artwork, for instance). If I donate to this scholarship fund or any other educational project, I get nothing. Why should I get something for nothing?"

I respond: That is the logic of consumerism for you, and it is the particular form of your selfishness. Generosity is a virtue; it teaches openness of heart. Clinging to shit as though it is your own, accumulating this and that and insisting that it is "mine," just tightens up the ego, is flatly selfish, and makes you look like a constipated fool. So practice generosity instead, and if you really need to get something back, take this free online class in Mahayana Buddhism. You will learn something.

2010-09-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

I remain convinced that Ken Wilber's adoption of Spiral Dynamics into his theory, which introduced the discourse of Spiral Dyanamics into the integral theory canon, was a cardinal error.

In trying to explain my position on this, I find it difficult to think of the right place to start. Boomeritis! is a disaster of a book, for instance, and Wilber's near-plagiarism of the book Spiral Dynamics (1996) in it is one obvious reason for the train-wreck piss-in-the-yard failure of that book. But it is not the only reason, of course; Wilber actually made a simplistic model even more simplistic; he made the dumb, dumber.

So there are two problems: the content of Spiral Dynamics, and the adaption or redaction of it into integral theory by writers such as Wilber. I discuss the former in the Micropolitics paper, where I basically come on out and say that Spiral Dynamics is just a copy of social forms under consumer capitalism; I discuss one instance of the latter in the Sweet Science paper, specifically Ken Wilber's very confused, diffuse, and contradictory comments on Iraq.

These are not comprehensive critiques of Spiral Dynamics and its reception by integral theorists. They are meant to point to problems for future inquiry. What I would like to suggest here is that such a comprehensive critique is in order. (Looking for a thesis topic or a research question? here you go...) Where would such an inquiry start?

First, a careful study of the 1996 book Spiral Dynamics by Beck and Cowan, and the context of its production. To whom is this thing marketed, how is this model presented, and to what purpose is this model intended to be put? Is this an internally coherent or a contradictory theory? One thing I notice when I take a look at the thing is the class and racial characteristics of the descriptors for each of the "vMemes": orange and green offering different flavors of the anxious petit bourgeois, red and purple and blue presenting rural (white), urban (black), and suburban (white) forms of poor and working-class sensibility. This is merely an observation, not a watertight claim, but perhaps one of further examination given that these categories map so tidily over the class and demographic features of North America in the 1990s. I am suggesting, in sum, that one perform a close-reading of the book and some understanding of the cultural and social context that produced it.

Then, a survey of the Spiral Dynamics discourse in and around integral theory, focusing in particular on the writings and public statements of Ken Wilber. How do the categories change, and why? To what purpose is this theory put? To what is it equated, and what might that mean for Wilber's assessment of these traditions and theories? What does Spiral Dynamics enable Wilber to accomplish that he could not otherwise--that is, what does this discourse make possible for Wilber? Put yet another way, what does the SD intervention into integral theory introduce that is new to integral theory, and how can that novelty be explained and evaluated? What has fallen away from integral theory since SD was introduced to it (emphases, concepts, concerns)? As a thought experiment, one might want to ask what a rigorous thinker such as Aurobindo Ghose would think of Spiral Dynamics. To put it in very simplistic terms, does this model make earnest participants kinder? More critical and less dependent? Or the opposite of these things?

As a caveat, I should add that one may well wish to examine other SD products or even attend SD or Integral Life events. I would not do so, because I refuse to give Integral Life my money; my own archive is limited on principle to what I can view at the library or online for free.

Finally, it may well be that I am wrong and Spiral Dynamics is the most insightful, complex, and well-written intellectual exercise since Das Kapital or The Origin of Species. Or it might be simplistic corporate-empowerment horseshit.

This is not a project I will write, so I am posting it here for others to consider and, if anyone wants to, claim for his or her own. Go for it.

2010-09-22T05:49:00.001-07:00

A quick note to express admiration for the noble deeds and intentions of the Dalit Buddhist Movement (Navayana), and the great leader B.R. Ambedkar, the ongoing efforts of yogins such as Surai Sasai, and the great body of peaceful people.

May peace prevail.

This is a world of scarcity and hardship. Let us all be kind to one another, for this is also a world of great wonder and surprises for the open and gentle-hearted.

Let us be kind.

2010-09-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

My essay "The Crying of Humanity" (full text here) is not at all my best work. My favorite thing about it is the title, which alludes to the old Donovan song "The Hurdy Gurdy Man," which itself has the setup-punchline structure I describe in some of my other essays (going back to Brook Ziporyn's brilliant exegesis of Tiantai Buddhist praxis). Anyway, the song establishes a position:

Histories of ages past;
unenlightened shadows cast;
Down through all eternity,
The crying of humanity

This is samsara, the stub-your-toe world we inhabit. Since the theme of the paper I published has to do with nobly engaging with this quality of things going wrong, it seemed appropriate. But then something changes in the song, someone intervenes:

'Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy man
Comes singing songs of love

This is a kind of punchline that transforms our understanding of the previously established world. Specifically, you get this claim, a bit silly on the face of it, that a singer of songs of love can put a dent in these entrenched patterns of suffering. One might as well ask, what else can you do but affirmatively pin your colors to the mast and come out swinging for love and kindness in a world of sorrow, despair, selfishness, and bad returns? This is one way to understand the feeling I was trying to get across, the feeling of endurance in identity with the suffering of others, in the "Crying of Humanity" paper.

I am not convinced I succeeded with it. The argument is sloppy in my opinion; I was very ill when I wrote and published it, but that does not excuse the rather obvious mistakes made with it. One of them is a mistake of omission: somewhere in the editorial process with this paper, in the exchange of drafts after peer review but before publication, a really groovy bit I had worked up comparing Rosi Braidotti's then-current essay "Posthuman, All Too Human: Towards a New Process Ontology" (find an abstract for it here) and Bonnitta Roy's seminal piece "A Process Model for Integral Theory."

The gist: I find a lot to like in Roy's piece; one major departure from it I would like to propose has to do with the matter of the "source" of forms in experience (which she lays out in terms of affect and so on). Where Roy describes this somewhat metaphysically, as in an ever-present origin, I would instead suggest that the origin of forms is a complex of causal mechanisms that one can understand historically through a theory of determination (as in dependent origination or historical materialism). This is why I keep mentioning the business of the "political unconscious" vis a vis origins: what seems to be archetypal and inherent is more plausibly understood as social and determined in my view. I do not mean to detract from Roy's achievement with the process model essay, which is a leaps-and-bounds improvement over the mainstream of integral scholarship, merely to point out one major area of difference between Roy's position and my own.

Anyway, this "Crying" essay should be seen as an early attempt on my part to work out such a theory of flows. Like the image of the prophetic Hurdy Gurdy man, it is simultaneously a bit silly but also very, very earnest. I do regret not taking greater care of the craftsmanship with this one.

2010-09-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

Returning to an earlier theme, that is, of addressing an objection to my criticisms of Ken Wilber's version of integral theory:

Why does it matter if Wilber's doctrine is a member of the biedermeier German Idealist family served Indic-style, with chappatis and chutney? It would not matter at all if it were presented as such, as one specific artifact among a great many that the postmodern culture machine has produced. Instead of taking this humble tack, though, Wilber has elected to present his theory, "universal integralism," as something Bigger. It is the archetypal bourgeois move: assume your values, your worldview, your aspirations are universal and representative of the Real and the sum total of the Good in human cultures, and not just one little bubble among many in the froth of history's pissbowl.

This is a problem not only because it is silly but more fundamentally because it belies a very basic contradiction: "integral" is not "universal" in spite of its claims to be so. There are other ways in which Wilber's claims to universality are foolish, such as his persistent and frankly sophistic insistence that emptiness as presented in Madhyamika is in any way identical to any conception of Godhead or Spirit, or that it is plausible to discuss world spiritualities in a general and normative sense without any significant engagement with Islamic traditions (I would like to know what Wilber thinks of the life and legacy of great Sufi leader Amadou Bamba) but this is the most obvious one.

2010-09-20T06:51:00.000-07:00

Problem: circularity in knowledge-production.

I suggested in the Sweet Science essay that there is a real problem with one of the ways in which Ken Wilber produces knowledge, about the position he has fashioned for himself as an authoritative voice in making truth claims. Here is a summary:

(1). Make and promote a model that describes persons who are enlightened (if only by degrees, and include some description of those degrees). Wilber has been doing this for many, many years now.

(2). Fashion a public persona for oneself that seems to conform more or less to the stages in the model. Wilber does this in a variety of contexts, one of them being his book One Taste, but also in his public appearances and writings in the role of a spiritual guide.

(3). Step (1) makes sense out of (2) and gives it credibility to sympathetic persons who may wish to believe the author of such claims may indeed be on the stages of enlightened living himself. Meanwhile, (2) gives (1) the authorization of an enlightened one (the model works to describe my case! it implies), also to sympathetic or uncritical readers.

(4). Repeated, vehement assertion of (1) and (2), coupled with vigorous and not infrequently venomous denunciation of those who care to pick at the precondition of taking (1) and (2) at face value, namely taking a critical rather than credulous stance toward them. Step (4) is intended to prevent (3) from failing (1) and (2).

(5). Profit!

Insofar as Wilber's oeuvre and public career follow this pattern of knowledge-making, there is little meaningful difference between his work and that of Joseph Smith, Jr, or Paul Twitchell, once you account for differences in historical milieu among these three men. That is: one should ask in what ways Wilber's claims to science in his method differs qualitatively from the anthropology of the Book of Mormon.

Everyone knows the Book of Mormon gives the last answer on the history of native North Americans. Seriously! "[T]here is not a single scientific argument in the world that can disagree with that, and every argument [is] in favor of it..."

2010-09-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

Another aspect of the "Sweet Science" essay that I would like to touch on has to do with its scope. It is true that I am focused rather intently on the premises function as the foundation of the edifice of conceptual material that Ken Wilber calls home. But it should also be clear from the Easter eggs I nestled away in the notes and in parentheses throughout the document that my aim is more ambitious than simply putting into question Wilber's self-promotional hype factory.

This is about integral theory broadly speaking, not just Wilberism.

You can readily see one example of this in my passing comments on Richard Tarnas's book The Passion of the Western Mind. As it happens, I have reason to suspect that Wilber's understanding of world intellectual history owes a substantial debt to Tarnas; the heritage of this theory of determination, of what causes what to happen in historical change over time, is at bottom a redacted version German idealism (Hegel, Dilthey) read through Aurobindo (who had a significant understanding of German idealism as it had been translated into English by such writers as A.C. Bradley) and the greatest of all possible polygamists Adi Da Samraj*. So I admit that by drawing Wilber in on his unquestioning faith in this doctrine, it is not difficult to pull Tarnas in too, but that is beside the point. I want to suggest that these problems of confusing metaphysical doctrine with scientific knowledge prevails in many quarters in the integral world, and we will do well to ask how it works and why and if there may be more plausible alternatives.

In passing here I might as well address a criticism of my work: one might ask why it matters if integral theory is predicated in theology or metaphysics (and further assume that it does not matter and go on to accuse me of some kind of anti-spirituality witch hunt or anti-Wilber foam-at-the-mouth). I would like to reassure my reader that I am neither an Inquisitor, nor am I rabid, nor am I anti-spirituality or anti-western, even as I recognize that addressing such bullshit claims makes them seem worth touching. My answer: it matters in this case because the theology and the metaphysics in question is presented not as theology or as metaphysics in good faith (uninteresting and non-problematic) but instead as scientific knowledge, as reason, even as "post-metaphysical." And hence in place of reasonable debate you get jihad against critique and doctrinaire identification patterns and charismatic leaders pronouncing from on high what the Truth of the Matter is. Preposterous, really. This is why it matters to insist on these distinctions, to hammer away at them until there remains nothing left to hammer at.

For the record, carrying on a critique like this is in the last analysis an act of love. On what grounds do I say this? Integral theorists are occupying a conceptual space, the intersection of subjectivity and transformative practices, that can be put to very good use (by "good use" consider my comments on becoming-responsible in the Micropolitics paper, or just read Santideva). Hence, it seems to me worthwhile to engage with integral theory and with integral theorists to accomplish the greater good. Because I care about the future of the totality of sentient beings, I make an earnest attempt to contribute how I can, which is to make some effort at steering the fleet away from this iceberg of preposterousness and proposing the possibility of charting another course. This may be disappointing to our friends who like to imagine me as some kind of constipated Inquisitor. So be it.

*I do not mean this to sound flip, but would it not be intriguing to research the historical parallels between the Adidam movement and early Mormonism as exempla of charismatic religious movements? (charismatic in the Weberian sense)

EDIT: thank you to a kind reader for catching a biographical error that has now been corrected.

2010-09-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a useful learning opportunity: an online course in Buddhism, free of cost, taught by people who know what they are talking about and have experience in the practice. If interested, sign up here.

2010-09-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

A bit more on the Sweet Science essay:

One of the consequences of refusing to take Ken Wilber's rhetorical appeals to reason and science at face value but instead analyzing some of his claims and their reasoning with care: one can see clearly that Wilberism is not at all a body of "theory," but is instead a body of doctrines, a faith presented as if it were a body of theory predicated on reasoned premises and developing from scientific inquiry. One might even say that Wilberism's appeal to science is itself an article of faith for the Wilberist belief system.

And this is consequential when the analysis moves to questions of power and knowledge. What happens when religious movements advance bogus science into public classrooms for their own ideological reasons, for instance? I am suggesting that Wilberism's way of making knowledge is no better than right-wing Protestant Christianity's attempts to promote "intelligent design" rather than scientific evolutionary theory in the U.S. (And it may be that this is why Wilber spends so much time whining about Richard Dawkins: Wilber does not have a plausible answer to Dawkins' very basic critique of theological positions. What is the use for a "postmetaphysical" theory that necessarily begins and ends in metaphysics, in the thicket of theology? This is another way of asking, What is the use for Wilber's integral theory? I do not mean these as rhetorical questions.)

Anyway, when I allude to the "creepy politics" that inhere in Wilberism, this is but one example.

***

This is the 300th post to this blog. Just a number...

2010-09-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

The "Sweet Science" essay (read it here) is hardly perfect but it makes a few important contributions.

Perhaps the most important of these has to do with the question of how things change over time: the matter of determination and contingency. I show Ken Wilber's theoretical model to be very implausible, badly reasoned, badly informed, contradictory, and necessarily tied to some very creepy politics. I then propose another way out for integral theory.

This is all foundational stuff. If my analysis is correct, then I have effectively kicked the chair out from under the rope-hanging body of Wilber's integral theory. I do not claim to have tied the knot or built the gallows or presided over the trial. I lack that kind of discipline (and yes, I intended that Foucaultian pun).

"Sweet Science" does wade into the weeds in some respects, though. I wish I had at hand a more straightforward way to explain these complex issues than to drag the reader through the epic poetry of William Blake and some generalities about the Popular Unity period of Chilean history. These two are disparate archives. That they make sense together in this context speaks to the power of what they have in common: the capitalist world order, which Wilber seems to imagine as a model for the ontological structure of the capital-K Kosmos. The Four Zoas and Popular Unity are both episodes of resistance to that order, and in my judgment, both are more "integral" than the super-hierarchies they resist. So while it may be true I do wade into the weeds in this piece, the reader is rewarded with some depth and texture.

If Integral Theory is to renew itself, this is one place to begin. This essay is by no means the final answer, but it does go some distance toward reorienting the question into something critical, something that can accomplish rigorous theoretical work and hence be taken seriously by those who do not already adhere to this or that integral doctrine or cult-practice.

("Critical" is a useful term here: I am not particularly convinced that my work prior to "Such a Body" is in fact critical. Of which more later.)

2010-09-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

A brief bibliography on critical integral theory as I have concocted it over the years...

“‘Sweet Science’: A Proposal for Integral Macropolitics.” Integral Review 6:1 (2010), 10—62. Full text here.

“‘Such a Body We Must Create’: New Theses on Integral Micropolitics.” Integral Review 4:2 (2008), 4—70. Full text here.

“The Crying of Humanity: Notes on a Disintegral Theory of Tragedy.” The Quarterly Journal of Ideology 30: 3&4 (2007), 1—47. Full text here.

“Of Syntheses and Surprises: Toward a Critical Integral Theory.” Integral Review 3 (2006), 62—81. Full text here.

I will have more to say about these in the way of evaluation.

***

I should also mention an interview published some time ago at Frank Visser's Integral World website. Not peer-reviewed, but still useful:

"A Nonviolence of Nonmetaphysics." Interview. Full text here.