"Apocalypto", "The Fountain" and increase in Mayan projection.

[Isaiah Mpski]

...by the light of the shimmiring shimmiring moon I will try to do better.
God forgive me of my shortcomings and love,guard and protect our loved ones.

No Lord Cap.If I were to show or give you irrefutiable prrof of who and why JFK was assisinated would it make any difference.No because everybody involved is already dead but you're right,I have had a hard life and alot of it had to do with toilet training.

Sow God forgive us of our sins.

[gandydancer]

Drats! My inside gossip post did not work! Well, where there's a will, there's a way...

NOTE! for those that are not interested in "gossip" ignore any further gossip posts! There is no forum rule that you must click on anything that I post.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Are you the one that CM was telling us about over on Divorce Testimony?

[gandydancer]

well it seems that is the same site I posted earlier (even though the page is not the same). no matter what I try I get the same one. I will se if I can get it to post the one I bookmarked some time ago when I have time. It is fun, it is funny, that is what I like.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

uhm gandy,

didn't you already post that link??

still on the sensimilia!

[Caprinardo Delirio]

oh, i didn't see the second pagefold here... maybe i should heed my own advice..

still, gandy, still!

it's a good site regodless, there were a paper by someone who tried to destill the cult-level of the integral institute, which was reassuring.. mostly because someone are doing it, i'm not sure i totally agreed with it. but we gotta watch those inimaginative freaks!!

[K.J]

Originally Posted by Caprinardo Delirio

k.j. i have certainly displayed anti-wilber attitudes at times... it's just easier to let off steam fast and furiously like that, instead of giving a more well-thoughtout critique, which is what i should be doing, and will probably do at one point.

in the meantime, did you read that critique grof did on him i've posted in S&S?

I certainly did read that; and an interesting bit it was (I do believe I thanked you on the thread for posting it). I find a marriage of both the Grof model and the Wilber model is quite nice.

[K.J]

Below is what looks to me to be a very interesting interview with Darren and Stuart Davis. Available to Integral Naked members (those crazy Wilber cultists).

The Fountain and The Cure for Altitude Sickness
Darren Aronofsky and Stuart Davis

In 1998 Darren Aronofsky released his first feature-length film, Pi. Shot in Super 16 Black and White, and made for a meager $60,000, the film put him on the map as an inventive director and a bankable talent (shortly after its release one writer joked "Pi = $1,000,000"). Pi was followed with his 2000 sophomore super-nova, Requiem For A Dream. The $5 million dollar Requiem—a vivid and unflinching odyssey through the bottomless depths of addiction and delusion—became a critical and popular success that dispelled any doubts of Aronofsky's gift. Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans, the film garnered the cultural currency which allowed Aronofsky to pursue an even more ambitious project: The Fountain.

Warner Brothers originally green-lit Darren's third film at a budget of $80 million, with a cast starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. After two and a half years of intimate collaboration, Pitt pulled out of the project six weeks before shooting, and the film collapsed. Aronofsky attempted to switch focus to other projects, but found himself invariably drawn back to The Fountain. Through a series of travails, he eventually rewrote the script, radically changed his production plan, and made a streamlined version of The Fountain for $30 million. Relying upon incredibly inventive filming techniques (such as micro-photography of live yeast which is transposed to macro-scale celestial nebulae on the big screen), and the addition of stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz (Darren's wife), Aronofsky's biggest creative gamble has miraculously found its way into the World after all.

The Fountain (in theaters now) has proven to be a divisive film among audiences and critics, and this is what motivated Stuart Davis to invite Aronofsky to an exclusive dialogue on Integral Naked. Like many great films with deeper, enigmatic dimensions (e.g. Mulholland Drive, The Thin Red Line, Dancer In The Dark, I Heart Huckabees, The Matrix), Stu points out that The Fountain's trans-rational features have been mistaken by some as merely irrational fodder, which is then often equated with pre-rational myth and magic, because both pre-rational and trans-rational are non-rational (one version of the “pre/trans fallacy”). This phenomenon, in which symbols from a higher developmental level, stage, or altitude of awareness are filtered through lower and more limited perspectives, induces what Stuart calls "altitude sickness." In such instances, a viewer anchored in, for example, a rational center of gravity gets interpretive vertigo when they encounter something from above or beyond their register. As Stu suggests, the subject often dismisses the U.F.O (unidentifiable freaky ontology) as extraneous non-sense.

An Integral Approach values and engages pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational dimensions, while understanding the important distinction between them. Each domain or altitude has unique epistemologies, or ways of knowing. A film like The Fountain is not just a flat, monochromatic "it" with a right or wrong interpretation waiting to be had. There are varying depths of perspective it can be viewed from, and indeed a film, or any piece of art, feels very different depending upon the altitude of the subject interpreting it. Stuart and Darren begin their conversation by exploring this riddle.

Aronofsky candidly shares his deepest reasons for pursuing such a nuanced enterprise, and the secret to keeping a clear head in the cacophony of feedback that comes with the release of any film. Stuart and Darren discuss the perennial spiritual themes running through his films, and Darren's commitment to sincerity and depth in a cultural climate too often paralyzed by irony, deconstruction, and surfaces.

Of course, just because a movie has transrational dimensions doesn't mean it will be entertaining. Depth and sincerity do not guarantee an experience of wonder. Does The Fountain deliver on its promise? One of the film's refrains is "Death is the road to awe." What is it Aronofsky is inviting us to die into, and what is it we may find ourselves in awe of? Integral Naked is thrilled to welcome this brilliant artist as he offers us an exclusive glimpse inside The Fountain…

[Mars]

Originally Posted by Caprinardo Delirio

"love is an outdated paradigm" - that's funny...

daniel, as i see it, the future/higher self both intervenes with the past/lower self to push the motive of love upward to an authentic understanding of it and to sacrifice and this and that, so that in the past/lower self gets consumed by his egoic and false/flawed desire for love and enternity, as it were (the allegory of the soldier drinking greedily from the tree of life, and becomes the involuntary sacrificial host for the new time cycle of nature, or whatever, was really really beautiful, i thought) and the symbol of true unity and love, the ring, was moved into awareness of the future/higher self, which then makes the authentic and conscious offer of sacrifice and true insight of love and death, puts on the ring, let's the ego die, and is then liberated, which thus feeds back as the present actual self of the doctor, which is the real person that this is about, and who then let's go, get's on with it after his wife is gone, stops trying to cure death and learns how to live.

Caprinardo,

Really interesting and I think insightful interpretation. The idea that the past and future stories are themselves allegorical to the story that occurs in the present jibes with my sense that the movie is ultimately a musing on grief and loss.

It's interesting - in the aftermath of seeing the movie I thought "they must be going crazy over this movie on the BOTH boards." As a longtime reader but non-poster I think I assumed that because of the content regarding the nature of time, mayan themes, consciousness, et al, that it would be greeted as enthusiastically as I responded to it. Reading the posts critical of the film has reminded me that there is an awful lot of diversity and disagreement when it comes to the various topics presented here. Of course, this is healthy and positive, but I wonder if someone like myself, who is probably more on the fringe of the community, with an almost certainly less robust breadth of knowledge can sort of, you know, see the forest for the trees?

[Caprinardo Delirio]

my problem with the wilber model is basically that it is highly highly speculative, as his attempt to order and systematize all kinds of mystical and religious insights goes. and not only speculative, i know there could be used over one hundred adjective to describe the unneccessity and fallacies of it, but i'm not going down that road yet. just saying that his idea at how humans develop, and the hierarchy he believes exists, as far levels of cognition goes, is flat out flat and full-on wrong, and i think this is obvious. his point that peak experiences are interpreted through whatever 'level' your at is very friggen obvious, but gets over emphazised to an almost ludicrous degree as far as practice as developmental abstraction goes. then there's the the integral institute and it's people and it's followers, whic, regardless of how totalizing their efforts my be, never will stop to amaze me with their cheasyness, flakeyness and what not.. i am worried about it's whole elitist cultlikeness, and some of their followers are absolutely bonkers. some are very hierarchically minded, as you'd expect, and clings to the models and metaphors somewhat much more than the left-wing groups that wilber and deida love denouncing themselves..

anyway, it's useless to start a rant like this.

i still read him, and figure he's not a bad man, and not entirely off course. metaphysically i'm still much more in agreement with his than most philosophers in the world today... well, depends how long you talk to them, and how you read them, of course.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i think the both board can stand tall on it's scepticism and non self-swaying every time a metaphysical blockbuster hits the silver screen. unlike, you know, The Institute..

will somebody who's a member friggen post the whole conversation.

somebody at an higher altitude, please... nobody will know!

k.j?

[K.J]

Originally Posted by Caprinardo Delirio

will somebody who's a member friggen post the whole conversation.

somebody at an higher altitude, please... nobody will know!

k.j?

I'm a member, but it's an audio file not an article. And I haven't yet figured out how to record them (though I know it's probably easy; I just haven't bothered taking them time).

[daniel]

My first problem with Wilber is the quality of his prose. Personally, perhaps because I come from a literary background, I believe that the attention a writer gives to their prose reveals a lot about their depth, trustworthiness, and acuity. I am now reading The Spell of the Sensuous, and here I encounter a precise, poetic writing style with which I resonate. Wilber seems much more "mass-cult" and midlevel to me, and there is a kind of speciousness to a lot of his generalizations that I find unconvincing. I have definitely gained some insights from him - for me, his integration of 1970s US schools of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis into a metaphysical framework is probably the most important thing that he offers.

It feels to me that people are stuck in the integral world - like flies attached to the spiraling flypaper of all those levels and lattices. I don't really see how this is spilling out into other arenas in a way that is truly transformative. I don't see the integral folks addressing the reality, imho, that this planet is about to die if we don't get off our asses and "will the transformation" on every level.

I haven't read Spiral Dynamics but I will at some point - perhaps I will then "get" why it is necessary to have all of this terminology, and how it is helping.

I also sense enormous ego behind this enterprise, which feels closed off in critical areas where it should be open to deeper discussion. As a friend I was discussing Wilber with today noted, despite all the focus on "spirituality", there is no allowance made in this realm for the existence of spirits, of the daimonic and psychic realms, except as psychological projections. There is something slightly humorless about the vibe - I once joked that Wilber doesn't posit a universe that I would find funny enough to inhabit.

I may be wrong - I hope so, in fact. In the chaos awaiting us just ahead, we will need all the spiritual warriors and true compatriots we can find.

[Damien]

Originally Posted by daniel

I may be wrong - I hope so, in fact. In the chaos awaiting us just ahead, we will need all the spiritual warriors and true compatriots we can find.

I thought you were "cancelling the apocalypse"? Not to say that with all that's already been lost there is a reason to go to 13 hour, however what are you feeling or seeing that has driven toward this new proclamation of disorder and entropy and away from the faith in purile solutions.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

absolutely, yes, wilber is a bad poet and a mediocre writer at his best. and this is not just me adding fuel to the fire of my already self-initiated and inflammatory accusations against the guy, i can see how it goes right through the whole story to the ground zero of my relationship with him, in the way daniel suggested that language informs your understanding, judgement and feelings. hopefully this is not the only factor that made me feel something was wrong with the wilber-vision. i find it funny how he tries to intertwine this poetic sensibility with the authoritative language of academia and science. as he tries to embody (amongst all other things in the universe) the nature-mystical sensibilities of ancient asia and let it flow into schematics and all this anal stuff, it just becomes a revelation unto itself. i think he appears honest at times, at other times you can almost trace the hard heart of his ego's categorical imperatives in the shape of his sentences.

this whole embodying thing: it seems to me that what should be a trans-dualistic process of new a epistemological episteme, shorty summarized as the "coincidentia oppositorum", and however we choose to describe or picture that "transformation" that it would be, to see the earth in peace, understanding and harmony, get's engulfed by two things: the person and the institution! it is so obviously, neurotically, pre-maturely and pre-emptivly that ken wilber and his company should try to embody and encompass all of the expressions of evolution and enlightenings that could/would/should take place. they may be able to give us some glimpses, if we're willing to pay attention long enough, yet i don't see the reason that all of this should be packaged by them first, and why they don't just direct us to the library and suggest ways of reading and seeing. i've had discussions with "integrally informed" individuals who would assure me that you have to travelling on the higher beam of insight to get the profundities of their output, and this is this reaccuring example of their post-modern sophistic trip, that, to me, renders them both as class-a cult, but also as unfortunate inhabitants of very poor and two-dimensional self-constructed incantations.

i envision a lot of recovering integralists a few years from now.

i remember an interview with the great new york-based musician raz mesinai from a few years back, where he used the term "spiritual warrior" which i liked and thought was cool, but i never could really see the circumstance in which that desciption would actually apply in a concrete manner. we will fight with our hearts and minds, we will argue and protest and sacrifice, but we will not kill. right?

at least not in the old world-war-type scenarios. i could cap some high-ranking officer, i guess...

[Dna]

Daniel:
there is no allowance made in this realm for the existence of spirits, of the daimonic and psychic realms

We all meet many people in our lives, who admit to believing in a spiritual dimension of some sort. Yet they do not take this acceptance to its logical conclusion, which is to consider the possibility of a vibrant and inhabited spiritual realm(s).

When speaking with people like this, it is always fun to get them to take their belief to its logical conclusion.

Because of this blind spot, we perhaps do not see certain illnesses as spiritual possession. I am thinking of schizophrenics. Or a troubled child who was interviewed on the radio recently, saying that he/she wasn't trying to be naughty but just felt that they were being compelled to be naughty from outside.

If there is such a world (a hair's breadth away), then we must accept that it is going to affect us in all sorts of ways.

It is our task to understand how we are influenced, so that we can take control of our destinies.

[willoweyes]

Daniel, I begged you to read the spell of the sensuous three years ago, right here in this forum. But did you deign to notice an aging puss?

Like I've said before, you need to embrace your inner corne. I mean crone.

Just think of all the time you might have saved.

anyway, sos can save your soul.

[willoweyes]

I can endure
the most perfect indifference

[Caprinardo Delirio]

what are you on about, will?

spell of the sensuous sounds like a good book, i'll put it on my christmas wish list!

[Isaiah Mpski]

Willow,you wouldn't have to ask me or Lord CM twice.
Really ya'll I'm ready to head to Tepic on a moments' notice if any of you out there have some chicken-feed 10k- but me.
We'll stick Daniels ass on a pole,mount a bird on his head,and cry in tune.
Such BS Geoge.Daniel if you have access to money now is the time to move.

[K.J]

Originally Posted by daniel

It feels to me that people are stuck in the integral world - like flies attached to the spiraling flypaper of all those levels and lattices. I don't really see how this is spilling out into other arenas in a way that is truly transformative. I don't see the integral folks addressing the reality, imho, that this planet is about to die if we don't get off our asses and "will the transformation" on every level.

As just one example, I watched the first part of a talk last night given by David Johnston about the AQAL model (Wilber's model) and green building, which is a part of the Integral Ecology series. Here is Mr. Johnston's bio from Integral Naked:

David Johnston is an environmental and community activist using a fully integral (AQAL) approach to become the first major green-building success story. A well-known expert in the field of sustainable construction, Johnston is the president of What's Working, a green building consultation firm, and serves as a green building consultant to the City of Boulder's Green Points Program (of which he was the principle author and has been a board member since 1996). He was also responsible for a pioneering use of the integral model with his work for the Alameda County Waste Management Authority in California in developing a green approach to residential construction, also a breakthrough success.

Johnston started the Boulder Green Points program in 1995, the first program of its kind, which required anyone seeking a building permit to meet at least 65 environmental standards (included on a checklist of 280). From there he worked with the Denver Metro Home Builders Association to develop their "Built Green" program for new homes, a voluntary program that has to date certified over 13,000 homes at a current rate of 4000 homes per year. It is currently the largest private sector program in the country and includes many of the largest homebuilders and manufacturers in the nation.

Johnston then moved on to the Colorado Office of Energy Conservation to develop a statewide green building program, which focused its efforts on the then-prospering ski towns of the Rocky Mountains. It had the most traction in Aspen and was subsequently subsumed under the Denver Metro HBA program at the end of the nineties, which made Denver the first city in the entire nation to implement green building in a home builder’s association. Johnston also developed green guidelines for the redevelopment of the old Stapleton Airport, where now all homes meet the HBA. In 1998 and 1999, Johnston moved on to the City of Los Angeles to develop their Sustainable Buildings program.

Learning from the successes and failures of each of these experiences, Johnston used a fully integral methodology when working with the Alameda County Waste Management Authority (a jurisdiction which includes the cities of Oakland and Berkeley) to develop their residential green building program, where he formulated an innovative approach to market transformation and defined a “integral catalyst” model to accelerate the process. Starting off with the publication of two separate sets of guidelines (one for new homes, one for remodeling) so popular they are now in their fifth print run, in 2003 the program grew into the Bay Area “Build It Green” program sponsored by manufacturers, builders, architects, re-modelers, and public agencies from the nine counties of the Bay Area region.

The organization is now an example of a horizontally and vertically integrated nonprofit, connecting as it does the vertical axis of manufacturers, distributors, and the retailers of green building products with the horizontal axis of homeowners/buyers, builders, re-modelers, architects, and realtors (all of whom have been trained in the integral model by Johnston himself). This has allowed businesses to take the burden away from public agency intervention, transforming the market in the process, and it is no surprise that this is one of the fastest growing “green built” programs in the country.

Though still in its infancy, the Build It Green program has begun to gain traction throughout the entire Bay Area and beyond, and as of this writing, Johnston’s group is in negotiation with the State of California Building Industry Association to integrate green building guidelines with the home Energy Star program to create a statewide green building program to be sponsored by the homebuilders (just like the Denver program is now state-wide in Colorado). Johnston hopes the ongoing negotiations will be adopted by late spring 2004, which would be a first for a statewide sustainable building program.

By using integral methodology, Johnston has shown both builders and homeowners alike the importance of integrating exterior social, economic, and political systems with the interior motivations and value systems of each set of stakeholders. Once people and organizations realize that they can integrate their deep values (i.e., the desire of many re-modelers to protect old growth forests) with their own businesses, Johnston’s integral approach to green building is embraced with unbridled enthusiasm (so much so that 120 groups have been certified in the course of just nine months).

Originally Posted by daniel

I haven't read Spiral Dynamics but I will at some point - perhaps I will then "get" why it is necessary to have all of this terminology, and how it is helping.

Although it is a good read, it will only go so far towards helping you understand Wilbers' integral theory since his theory is only based on Spiral Dynamics but is actually a much more useful version of that model (IMHO). I would suggest reading Sex, Ecology, Spirituality to get a solid understanding of Wilber's model (integral theory is always evolving, so even SES should be considered just a foundation; the first edition was written over 10 years ago).

Originally Posted by daniel

There is something slightly humorless about the vibe - I once joked that Wilber doesn't posit a universe that I would find funny enough to inhabit.

I would highly recommend starting off with Wilber's novel Boomeritis (presuming you're interested in learning more about his philosophies). Not only will it provide you with a good understanding of Wilbers' theories (and an understanding of how Spiral Dynamics influenced them) but I personally found it a very funny and entertaining read.


As an aside, you were in my dreams last night Daniel. We were at some kind of social gathering at what seemed to be a mutual acquaintances home. There were lots of people there and we were all just kind of mingling. I saw you a few times from across the room but was kind of nervous to walk over and say anything. Near the end of the dream you came up and shook my hand and said "hey, it's nice to see you again". And that's all I remember. I thought it was interesting. hehe.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i've read the second edition of SES. impossible to comment on, but i'm gonna read it again eventually. i seem to pick up the vibe that quite a number of people interested in wilber are starting to feel that he's rehasing a lot of old material in his newer books. what do you think about that k.j? is integral theory really evolving all that much? what's happening in your view?

[K.J]

Originally Posted by Caprinardo Delirio

i've read the second edition of SES. impossible to comment on, but i'm gonna read it again eventually. i seem to pick up the vibe that quite a number of people interested in wilber are starting to feel that he's rehasing a lot of old material in his newer books. what do you think about that k.j? is integral theory really evolving all that much? what's happening in your view?

I do feel that it's evolving. In most of his books he repeats stuff from previous works for the benefit of those who may not have read the older works.

Originally Posted by Ken Wilber

I should also say that from now on--and certainly as evidenced in the following excerpts--I am writing only for students of my work. Every book written up to this point has made the assumption that the reader had no prior knowledge of any of my material. Thus, most of my books, especially since SES, had to start with a long summary of the AQAL framework. The first third of each book would therefore repeat the same general overview (which certainly contributed to the criticism that I was repeating myself. Which, of course, I was).

Anyway, I am no longer doing so (except for the occasional, continued attempts at popular summaries or overviews, such as TOE). Henceforth, for the most part, my writing (including the following) assumes not just a passing familiarity but a working knowledge of the essentials of the AQAL matrix. Readers lacking such might first read A Brief History of Everything and then A Theory of Everything. And Boomeritis for fun, though it's not required by any means. For the same reason, I have ceased responding to critics and am devoting myself to working exclusively with individuals who understand the integral approach (and whose criticism from within is much more accurate and cogent).

Check out his page at Shambalah and read this and this and see what you think about the evolving nature of integral theory.

[gandydancer]

Here is a different view of Wilber, Beck, and Spiral Dynamics. It is my opinion that Spiral Dynamics origionally started out as a useful tool (not to me, but perhaps to some...), and Wilber bent and twisted it to fit his brand of philolophy .

IMO "Boomeritis" would be a good book to read, but not at all for the same reasons that K.J. seems to suggest. For me it would be more "Philosophers Gone Wild"...


A Critique of Wilber and Beck's SD-Integral
by
Michel Bauwens


The following material is from P/I: Pluralities/Integration no. 61: March 23, 2005:



Integralism (1): What's wrong with Wilber and Beck's SD-Integral
The following is not a critique of memetics as such, i.e. the general idea that thoughts can spread like viruses, from head to head as it were. In a peer to peer era determined by network-based knowledge transfer, such a viral point of view has merit and can disclose interesting findings. My ill-feeling has more to do with a specific school of thought: Spiral Dynamics, and less with the theory 'in general', which I believe has merit (see spiraldynamics.org for a good overview), than in the specific way it is applied by a particular branch of it. In this article, I will be groping to establish what it is precisely that makes me ill at ease, and increasingly more so: in a crux, it is that the SD-Integral movement, as represented by Ken Wilber and Don Beck, has been rapidly evolving to a political neoconservative movement that uses the scientific basis of Spiral Dynamics as a cloak. The following therefore does not apply o the branch of SD represented by Chris Cowan, who takes great pains to avoid the kind of generalizations I'm referring to.

In the most general terms, the ideas of Spiral Dynamics, have a certain merit. What it says, following the research of psychologist Clare Graves, is that individual thought patterns have a certain consistency, they are a coherent system, and that individuals can move from one system to another, from one level of complexity to another. They are if you like 'consciousness formations', particular constellations of values. If I understand it correctly, it is these underlying value system which makes an individual 'tick'. But the SD system goes further, it uses these value constellations to explain the history of civilization. The history of civilization is explained in terms of societies moving from one 'average value constellation' to another. To make it easier to understand, SD has further applied color schemes, so that people and societies can be labeled blue (divine order, fixed good and evil), orange (strategic individualism), green (egalitarianism), etc... A particularly important distinction made by SD-Integral is that between first tier thinking (where you think that your interpretation is the only valid one, and former stages are to be combated), and second tier thinking, which accepts that humanity moves through developmental stages, and that each have their relative value. The SD system, pioneered by Clare Graves but developed later by Chris Cowan and Don Beck, at some point split. Then, Don Beck and Ken Wilber at some point 'merged' their ideas and activities, with their main focus being the struggle against the "Mean Green Meme".

My gripe is what the system has become: 1) it's tendency to give rise to totalizing, possibly totalitarian, interpretations. 2) That it is used to justify 'reactionary' and neoconservative interpretations of reality; 3) That the movement is acquiring cult-like qualities. These arguments are not directed I think to the branch of the movement directed by Chris Cowan, which I believe has retained an open quality, but to the branch represented by Don Beck, and which has 'merged' with Ken Wilber's thinking, in my opinion with disastrous results. We will also conclude with an assessment, that even on SD's own terms and method, the whole idea of the Mean Green Meme, is in fact a myth without basis in reality.

Totalising/totalitarian vision: Let me take 'peer to peer' as an example. In my latest essay, I offer an interpretation of a major shift in our societies, from hierarchical pyramidal forms of organisation, and the attending mentalities, to networked, 'peer to peer' based organizational forms, and their attending mentalities. By itself, it is not so different from what you could find in SD. But a crucial difference is that I do not 'explain' peer to peer as deriving from the new value constellation (though I hold it as an open hypothesis that the different manifestations of P2P are the result of a deeper ontological and epistemological shift, but in general I do not think that monocausal explanations hold much water). I simply note, empirically, that a new form of social exchange is spreading throughout the social field, and try to explain it through a mix of factors. In the very first version of this essay, written for the post-Wilber community at the Integral World site maintained by Frank Visser, I offer a simple exercise of comparing the empirically-derived characteristics of peer to peer, with the SD scheme. Two problems immediately arise: P2P has elements of green, yellow and turquoise, almost evenly divided. This shows to me that one cannot simply force any part of reality, to conform to a totalizing vision of human evolution, a priori derived from the investigations of individual psychology.

Neoconservative vision: What is the crucial problem of society today? Does the destruction of the ecosphere, does the increasing inequality between and within nations, does the turbulence of the international order derive: 1) from the unrestrained neoliberal order which creates a world market without a global regulatory framework; 2) from a group of extremist postmodern academics on U.S. campuses. Incredibly, Don Beck and Ken Wilber choose the second option, and are echoing in their writing almost word for word the interpretations of American neoconservatives, down to their hatred of political correctness and their justifications of an 'enligthened' American empire. Don Beck justifies Putin, thinks of Bush as a 'great leader'; while Ken Wilber hails Tony Blair as the ultimate representative of integral leadership, associating himself (and hailing) with the worst contemporary spiritual abusers: first Da Free John, now Andrew Cohen. Now, there is nothing wrong by itself in being a neoconservative (that is, until you go about invading other countries on false pretenses), but it becomes manipulative when you start cloaking that particular political vision under a false scientific cloak, feeling yourself a superior being in 'consciousness'. Doesn't sound much different from the scientific justifications of a Leninist vanguard party, and we all know where that led us. An interesting study done by the SpiralDynamics.org group of Chris Cowan and his partner, actually shows an interesting finding. The group of people who most strongly react against 'green' and its values, and are most likely to devise a concept like the Mean Green Meme, are not yellow second tiers thinkers, as is often implied by Wilber and Beck, but in fact people who identify with blue and orange values. This finding is entirely consistent with the neoconservative (blue-orange) ideology, and therefore, not surprising at all. (see http://www.spiraldynamics.org/documents/MGM_hyp.pdf )

Cult-like qualities. Certainly, from my point of view as former admirer of Ken's integral theory, the encounter of Ken Wilber with Don Beck has been an unmitigated disaster. I believe that up to a certain point, Wilber's integralism had an emancipatory character. It also had implicit authoritarian elements, but they had not yet come to completely dominate his thinking. Wilber's inability to deal with critics in an open dialogue had not yet completely revealed itself. The Shambhala website was not yet publishing sycophantic positive reviews and attacking those who differ with Wilber. Wilber was a loner doing personal research, in a rather brilliant way in my opinion. He did not yet single out baby boomers as a threat to civilization. Now as to SD itself: if you participate for a while on some SD mailing lists, it becomes quickly obvious that certain members are using the colour schemes to disquality debate, see below, the second item, for an example of this. In my particular case, this is particularly funny, since at one point Ken Wilber said I was certainly thinking integrally (feeling unsure, I had asked him), while, when I start developing a critique, I have suddenly become a one-dimensional green thinker. Case closed, debate unnecessary. Colour coding has become a Stalinist technique to silence critics, to make a debate on the merits of arguments impossible. The reason of course is that those who agree with SD are 'integral, second tier' thinkers, while the poor sobs who have different arguments, are simply deluded, as-yet-undeveloped souls. People who use integralism or SD in a critical way, such as I do because I believe it has some merits, are called nothing less than regressive apostates. More generally, SD operates as a business, aggressively defends its sole use of terminology (I was witness to an threatening email exchange on this); and is marketed to business and political leaders as a means of social manipulation. Now imagine the world vision of someone using SD in that fashion: hemoves through the world as a superior being, seeing poor sobs around him, in need of enlightenment, knowing that only a tiny few have the potential to become like him. Just like Ken Wilber, who has decided a priori that the Hindu-Buddhist Advaitic non-self doctrine is the final word in spiritual evolution, this making interreligious dialogue in fact impossible, quite a few Beck supporters hold similar but more secular views about the a priori superiority of their form of being in the world. Unbelievably (at least to me), I have even encountered SD-influenced people, who maintain that the poor people in the Third World 'have a right to experience hunger and poverty', as it corresponds to their developmental level!

The un-scientific merits of the MGM (Mean Green Meme) hypothesis: To recapitulate what Wilber/Beck have been saying. The egalitarian thought system of 'green' has become pathological, because it has merged with an aggressive 'red' element, and fiercely combats the emergence of yellow-turquoise integralism. Because of this, it blocks the further positive evolution of our civilization. At the same time, they claim that yellow, because it just emerges from 'green', is vehemently opposed to the latter's limitations. An interesting study by Dr. Natasha Todorovic, see the URL above, has tested thes claims by using a battery of SD tests, to make out if the hypothesis can be borne out by using the movements own scientific method. If I understand correctly, the method is as follows: when presented with a number of 'value-laden' phrases, people will naturally select the one's that are closest to their 'colour-scheme' center of 'value gravity'. When green people are tested, the study uncovers that they do not at all have a red element, and that they do not oppose 'yellow' integral statements. This by itself invalidates the MGM hypothesis, because they are in fact no such people, no such pathology. But the study goes further: yellow-based 'integral' individuals do not oppose green value statements. This second finding makes it very strange that a movement which bills itself as consisting of 'yellow-turquoise' integral individuals are so hell-bent on combating the MGM value constellation. Where then, could such a feeling come from, is the third question that the study addresses. To uncover this, the various colour constellations are then tested as how aggressively they reject green. The result is clear: it is the blue-orange constellation which hates green values. Thus, this gives a strong indication of which consciousness constellations the leaders of the SD-Integral movement are coming from. It is their own dominant blue and orange value systems (i.e. what I call neoconservatism) that is responsible for their making a priority of denouncing MGM, and it has no relationship with their purported 'integrality'.

Integralism (2): A Reply to a SD critique: is peer to peer 'green'?
What prompted the above piece was a reminder of what kinds of thinking are now used by some in the SD-Integral community. In the course of receiving comments on my preliminary draft version of the essay, I received a number of critiques, most were friendly, some pointed out that there were some glaring mistakes, such as my early interpretation of the non-commercial nature of free software and open sources. Such criticisms are very valuable for an author. The following critique though, is an ideological production, since it precludes the author from reading with an open mind. But because this kind of disinformation is likely to spread to uninformed readers, and I don't have a chance to respond to the mailing list myself, I offer some arguments of my own. I will call the author "Robert" for convenience's sake and I thank him for the opportunity to clarify my own ideas. This is one thing a polemic is good for.

"I believe that the P2P and Human Evolution article is a typical example of Green vMemetic view. The article's basic theme originates from a consciousness that operates either at a good Green/yellow center of gravity a la SD or at Yellow cognition and Green value a la Wilber's multiple lines. Isn't it true Why does it belong to Green vMeme?

1) It rejects the evolutionary thrust of Wilber's work and its implication of hierarchy (holoarchy) because evolution means stages of being."

Bauwens reply: Notice first of all the nature of the debate. One does not use rational arguments to invalidate or validate the empirical claims or the interpretation of the essay, but one characterizes the 'stage of consciousness' of the author. This is a ad hominem attack, stating in fact that the author has a 'inferior mode of consciousness'. The funny thing in my particular case that when I agree 100% with Wilber, I was called 'integral' by Ken himself (unsure, I had asked him specifically), but as soon as one becomes a partial critic, one falls down a stage or two. This is very similar in nature to the debating style in vogue in Stalinist parties, when those who disagree are necessarily victim of 'false consciousness', and only those who follow the party line have the correct consciousness. In this case, there is a correct SD-position against which all others are compared, and found wanting.

The charge that I reject social evolution is also factually wrong, for anyone seriously reading my essay, since every 'C' section is specically devoted to placing P2P in an evolutionary scheme of succeeding social formations. Thus, I do not reject evolutionary schemes, only the assumption by Wilber, that the consciousness states of mystics (psychogenesis) is an indication of coming sociogenesis of society. To give an example, Wilber has consistently supported spiritual abusers, first Da Free John and now Andrew Cohen, even though they lead totalitarian cults, on the grounds that they are realised. So, in my view, one can still accept human evolution, but it has to be a full four-quadrant empirical description and interpretation of the past. The methodology of Wilber himself is flawed, since his orienting generalizations, his claim that his synthesis reflects a consensus in a field of research, is in most cases simply not true, as shown in detail in Jeff Meyerhoff's Bald Ambition. The conclusion is that we cannot simply trust Wilber's integrations, but that we must all effectuate our own. We are all singularities effecting particular integrations of reality, as does Wilber, as I do, as every social interpreter does, as every human being in fact does.

So in the essay, we look at an emerging form of social exchange, and give grounds for an interpretation that it may be a form that is poised not only for serious growth, but possibly a form of social dominance. At the same time, see my three scenarios, I leave room open for an eventual defeat of this social form, or for its abuse for non-emancipatory ends.

2) It tries to apply the theory of P2P, which originates from the network programming world, to other domains, such as economy and politics. It is similar to New Ager's typical habit of applying the conclusion of one domain (i.e. Quantum Physics) to another (Mysticism). (And I can say this with more confidence because I am a web programmer and know the rationale behind the rise of P2P software.)

Bauwens reply: <Again, this is not true at all. True, as far as I know, it was the filesharing technologists who were the first to name the P2P principle, even though its principles were already implicit in the design of the internet. What I do in the essay is consistent with the sociology of form, it looks at a form of social exchange, and how it pervades different social fields. For example, if we take the form of 'commodification', we can see how it is happening not only in the economic field, but in many other, for example, New Age spirituality is often 'sold' on a marketplace, or contemporary political parties often function as marketing enterprises. The method consists of discovering in empirical reality, a 'form of social exchange', i.e. one abstracts an 'ideal type', which then helps in uncovering the same phenomenom more precisely and differentiating it from others. This is for example, what allowed me to distinguish 'peer to peer' from the gift economy, different processes which are often confused. These subtilities are obviously lost on the critic. Again, the technical aspect of P2P is only one aspect, as the characteristics of that form, which I describe, are used in political organisation, spiritual search, and many other fields. The critic should really need to do some reading about how the same principles are applied by theorists and practitioners in many different fields, since he cannot read what is in the essay, I can provide an extensive bibliography. However, I do argue in the essay that technology is enabling the spread of this form, since without it, the p2p relational dynamic would be confined to small groups in physical proximity.

3) It assumes that everybody is equal. Here is a relevant quote: <quote> Again, peer to peer appears as a radical shift. In the new emergent practices of knowledge exchange, equipotency is assumed from the start. <end quote> What is equipotent is the computer, forming a node in the network. It ignores completely the levels of subjective consciousness of the users of those computers.

<It does not at all. First of all, I take great pains to distinguish equipotency from equality, and even devote a whole section to showing the difference, but this critic has seemingly missed that entirely. Equipotency is the sampe principle that applies to elections: everyone is assumed to be able to make a political choice, despite subjective differences,and there were indeed political forces, those against general suffrage, who were against it. Similary equipotency in commons-based peer production means that there is no prior condition for participation, but the expertise is immediately proven by the participation itself: either you can or you can't program, you can't play jazz or you can There is communal verification of this equipotency, which is 'non-formal', and not located in formal procedures such as diploma's etc.. See the University of Openness for a good example. I should add that the very concept of equipotency is used,and was suggested by me, by participants in free software projects: Human participants, not machines.

4) It rejects hierachies, especially those that are found in business companies (feudal authoritarian system)

Bauwens reply: >The essay does indeed maintain that in the contemporary knowledge economy, the hierarchical authoritarian nature of classic organisations, based on information scarcity, has become counter-productive. At the same time, I do recognise that this same system was unavoidable as long as such objective conditions of scarcity persisted. The reason P2P emerges and frequently bypasses such classic organisational forms is precisely their inability to adapt to complex realities requiring quick adaptation. Nowhere does the article say that such hierarchies will completely disappear, since I clearly link P2P to conditions of abundance, which are available in non-rival immaterial goods. Moreover, I also mention that P2P processes have their own hierarchies, but the difference is that they are fluid, depending on conditions, expertise, communal validation etc.. Bureaucratic authority does disappear but there are other forms of hierarchy, such as 'natural leadership'. However, there is some research to indicate that 'treating participants 'as equals', makes for more successful cooperative projects.

5) It advocates participative spirituality, thus rejecting all guru models of spirituality (quoting from Jorge Ferrer's book is one good clue) for everybody.

Bauwens reply: <Let me state that I'm very proud to cite Jorge Ferrer, who wrote a seminal book on contemporary participatory spirituality and has offered a cogent critique of the epistemological problems evident in the Wilber enterprise. The section of participative spirituality makes it clear that though I personally advocate the participative techniques, I am totally open to inter-religious dialogue and to the traditions and treasures uncovered by thousands of years of spiritual searching. It is only that P2P advocates do not believe there is one tradition with authority for the future, and also, that the relevant psycho-technologies and insights can and should be divorced from the authoritarian, sexist, patriarchal traditions they're embedded in.

6) But it already rejected the evolutionary ethos hinted by past mystics! Talk about invisible contradiction, just like the famous performative contradiction implicit in many extreme postmodern ideas.

Bauwens reply: <Since I do not reject human evolution per se, there is no performative contradiction, though I'm not even sure what the author is here hinting at. My position of mystics is that there are not an example of future social development. What they did was uncover a number of hidden potentials of the human bodymind, but their behavior and communities are not exemplary for contemporaries in any systematic way, though we may of course learn from thousands of years of human experience. Human social development will not be a result of copying the authoritarian nature of traditional religious communities, nor of the spiritual, sexual, and financial abuses of many contempary spiritual masters. And this is precisely what is implied by Wilber and his praise for Da Free John and Andrew Cohen: that the ghastly things happening in these communities, well described by former devotees, are in fact counter-examples of human emancipation, but rather forms of spiritual slavery.

Robert: I think this article is a manifesto for the creation of Green vMemetic economic system.

Bauwens reply: <If one does accept the psychological reductionism of SD, then indeed that would seem a logical conclusion. I'm not saying that SD has 'no validity' at all, but that is is not appropriate to generalize from the psychological findings of Clare Graves, a total interpretation of society, and that it is especially sad to use it to see oneself as some sort of Ubermensch who stands above the fray with a right interpretation. If on the contrary one has an open mind on peer to peer, and one is empirical, we would see that the P2P form of social exchange has in fact elements of green, yellow, and turquiose, see the table in my essay version on the Wilber site which demonstrates this. But that is not a problem for me, only for those who believe SD is the only right interpretation of the richness of human experience, and who use it in a clearly ideological fashion.

But the most important clue is how the author rejected the stages of Wilber's model, but kept the 4 quadrants. Apparently Dr. Beck has said that many people who call themselves integral use the 4 quadrants happily but consciously or subconsciously avoid focusing on the levels.

Bauwens reply: <I use the quadrants, and I use levels, as shown in the beginning, it is only that my levels are not pre-given by the SD system, but use more mainstream social scientists and philosophers such as Norbert Elias, Louis Dumont, Foucault and Deleuze, Negri,and others. SD and Wilber do not have a monopoly on holarchical interpretations.

Robert: It's fascinating to see how some people embrace Wilber's idea, and then after a while do a 180 and reject it, and keep only the parts that they like. Isn't it a clear example of narcissism in action, no?

Bauwens reply: <This one is fairly typical of some SD ideologists and their way of communicating on their list, by innuendo, name calling, using their colour-schemes to disquality debaters. From my point of view, narcissism is part of the human condition and it affects all of us. It affects me, my critic, and his thought masters. It is also irrelevant in a debate about ideas. Are my empirical facts right or wrong? Are my interpretations of these facts valid or not.? On this score, unfortunately, the critic has shown himself unable to read the text for what it actually says, and has only seen his projections, filtered by strong ideological blinders.The above argument also shows how some SD-integral people view intellectual property. In this precise case we should remind this critic of the following: ideas are not owned by anyone. Once in the public domain, we can use concepts, how we like, those of Marx, those of Wilber, those of anyone, without any obligation, except attribution. What is implied in the critic's position is that there is one right interpretation of reality, that we have to accept totally, and that it is not acceptable to be inspired by parts of what a thinker has to say. This is a very sad, totalitarian, cultic position and interpretation of Wilber's work.

Now, in an ironic ending to this polemic, I would like to permit myself to use the same weapons as my critic, i.e. to use colour coding as a weapon, instead of debating arguments. In a revealing study by the SpiralDynamics.org organisation, (see item above) another branch of the movement which does not seem to use SD in this blatant ideological manner, it is shown that the people who most strongly criticize the 'Green Meme', who are like Beck and Wilber advocates of the notion of a Mean Green Meme wrecking our civilization, are those who test 'blue' or 'blue/orange' on the ClareGraves scale. It's conclusion, "less than 7% of the people located at yellow reject Green". The data actually show that 'integrative yellow' is the position from which 'green' values are most appreciated. What does this say about the position of my critic? See http://www.spiraldynamics.org/documents/MGM_hyp.pdf


http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/SDi_critique.html

[Damien]

Mayans excited, unsure on 'Apocalypto'
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Dec 5, 3:42 PM ET
MEXICO CITY - Scenes of enslaved Maya Indians building temples for a violent, decadent culture in Mel Gibson's new film "Apocalypto" may ring true for many of today's Mayas, who earn meager wages in construction camps, building huge tourist resorts on land they once owned.

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Some Mayas are excited at the prospect of the first feature film made in their native tongue, Yucatec Maya. But others among the 800,000 surviving Mayans are worried that Gibson's hyper-violent, apocalyptic film could be just the latest misreading of their culture by outsiders.

"There has been a lot of concern among Mayan groups from Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, because we don't know what his treatment or take on this is going to be," said Amadeo Cool May of the Indian defense group "Mayaon," or "We are Maya."

"This could be an attempt to merchandize or sell the image of a culture, or its people, that often differs from what that people needs, or wants," Cool May said.

Gibson employed Mayas, most of whom live on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, in the filming of the movie, and says he wants to make the Mayan language "cool" again, and encourage young people "to speak it with pride."

The film has been screened for some U.S. Indians, who praised the use of Indian actors. The Mayas haven't seen it yet, but like Indians north of the border, they have seen others co-opt their culture, as in high-class Caribbean resorts like the Maya Coast and the Maya Riviera.

But Indians are largely absent from those beach resorts, where vacationers tour mock Mayan Villages or watch culturally inaccurate mishmashes with "Mayan Dancers" performing in feather headdresses and facepaint.

"The owners are often foreigners who buy up the land at ridiculously low prices, build tourism resorts and the Mayas in reality are often just the construction workers for the hotels or, at best, are employed as chamber maids," said Cool May.

"Apocalypto" also portrays Mayan civilization at a low moment, just before the Spaniards arrived, when declining, quarreling Mayan groups were focused more on war and human sacrifice than on the calendars and writing system of the civilization's bloody but brilliant classical period.

Outsiders' views of the Maya have long been subject to changing intellectual fashions. Until the 1950s, academics often depicted the ancient Mayas as an idyllic, peaceful culture devoted to astronomy and mathematics. Evidence has since emerged that, even at their height, the Mayas fought bloody and sometimes apocalyptic wars among themselves, lending somewhat more credence to Gibson's approach.

Warrior-kings and priests directed periodic wars among the ancient Maya aimed at capturing slaves or prisoners for labor or human sacrifice. Entire cities were destroyed by the wars, and whole forests cut down to build the temples.

The latest trendy theory is a largely Internet-based rumor that the Mayan long-count calendar predicts a global calamity on Dec. 22, 2012. Some have woven that together with prophecies from the Bible.

Mauricio Amuy, a non-Maya actor who participated in the filming of Apocalypto, says the production staff discussed the theory on the set.

"We know the Bible talks about prophecies, and that the Mayas spoke of a change of energy on Dec. 22, 2012, and it (the movie) is somewhat focused on that," Amuy said. "People should perhaps take that theory and reflect, and not do these things that are destroying humanity."

While they resisted the Spanish conquest longer than most Indians — the Mayas' last rebellion, the War of the Castes, lasted until 1901 — many were virtually enslaved until the early 1900s on plantations growing sisal, used for rope-making, or in the jungle, tapping gum trees. Discrimination and poverty are probably their greatest enemies today.

Just as Gibson's use of Aramaic in "The Passion of Christ" sparked a burst of interest in that language, some Maya are hoping "Apocalypto" will do the same for their tongue.

"I think it is a good chance to integrate the Mayan language ... for people to hear it in movies, on television, everywhere," said Hilaria Maas, a Maya who teaches the language at Yucatan's state university.

Mass, 65, recalls that children were once prohibited from speaking Maya in school. There is still little bilingual education, and many of those who speak Maya can't read it.

One sign of progress is Yucatan radio station XEPET, "The Voice of the Mayas," which began broadcasting in the Indian language in 1982. While it began with a mixed Spanish-Maya patois, it now broadcasts in 90 percent pure Maya.

The station is trying to purge words borrowed from Spanish and revive a purer form of Maya. It broadcasts all sorts of music — from rock to rap to reggae — with Mayan lyrics.

Still, the percentage of Maya speakers in Yucatan state fell from 37 percent in 2000 to 33.9 percent by 2005. Paradoxically, for a state that advertises the glories of the Mayan culture for tourists, it is having a hard time keeping the present-day Maya there; many are migrating to the United States.

"For tourists that's what sells ... what catches their attention are the archaeological sites," said Diana Canto, director of the Yucatan Institute for the Development of Maya Culture. "We are trying to sell them on the living Mayas too, so that people get to know their cultural richness."

Today's Maya are known mainly for their elaborate rhyming jokes, a cuisine based on pumpkin and achiote seeds, and loose embroidered white clothing. They're largely peaceful farmers and masons who carry their goods on ubiquitous three-wheeled bicycles over table-flat Yucatan.

Interestingly, some Mayas reach much the same conclusion as Gibson's movie, which focuses on one man's struggle to save his family as a metaphor for saving the future of a people.

"Our culture hasn't been destroyed, because the family is the base of it," says Maas. "Perhaps some material things have been destroyed, but the real basis of the culture is what a family teaches their children, and that survives, and has survived."

[gandydancer]

Cap and Daniel, I feel that you have pegged Wilber just right. I am not very good at transferring my feelings, or intuition, or whatever it might be called into my mind/thinking, and it has always been so good and so important for me to listen to or read the work of someone who can do that.

When K.J. and I earlier spoke of Wilber, the only word I could come up with was to call him "so dead". So you can see how this post from Daniel would be so good for me:

My first problem with Wilber is the quality of his prose. Personally, perhaps because I come from a literary background, I believe that the attention a writer gives to their prose reveals a lot about their depth, trustworthiness, and acuity. I am now reading The Spell of the Sensuous, and here I encounter a precise, poetic writing style with which I resonate. Wilber seems much more "mass-cult" and midlevel to me, and there is a kind of speciousness to a lot of his generalizations that I find unconvincing. I have definitely gained some insights from him - for me, his integration of 1970s US schools of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis into a metaphysical framework is probably the most important thing that he offers.

It feels to me that people are stuck in the integral world - like flies attached to the spiraling flypaper of all those levels and lattices. I don't really see how this is spilling out into other arenas in a way that is truly transformative. I don't see the integral folks addressing the reality, imho, that this planet is about to die if we don't get off our asses and "will the transformation" on every level.

I haven't read Spiral Dynamics but I will at some point - perhaps I will then "get" why it is necessary to have all of this terminology, and how it is helping.

I also sense enormous ego behind this enterprise, which feels closed off in critical areas where it should be open to deeper discussion. As a friend I was discussing Wilber with today noted, despite all the focus on "spirituality", there is no allowance made in this realm for the existence of spirits, of the daimonic and psychic realms, except as psychological projections. There is something slightly humorless about the vibe - I once joked that Wilber doesn't posit a universe that I would find funny enough to inhabit.

I may be wrong - I hope so, in fact. In the chaos awaiting us just ahead, we will need all the spiritual warriors and true compatriots we can find.
12-04-2006 04:42 PM

Well, just as Daniel compares Wilber to Abrams I would compare Wilber to Daniel. The first chapters of Daniels book, for me, read like poetry. For me no one that I have ever read so well took the message of the Masters and put it to writing so beautifully. I borrowed the book from my friend and so had to read it in a few days, but she told me that while she read the first chapters she only read a few pages at a time and "savored it like a fine wine or an exquisite desert" - in other words you wouldn't gobble your fine wine or perfect desert down either, but take littles sips and little bites. Babette's Feast?

So to compare the person that comes through to me from the "flavor" of the two writers, I get an impression of opposites with Wilber closed, cold, humorless, abstract (not connected to nature or the here and now), fearful, and of course everyone is aware of his arrogance, sarcasm, and contempt of almost everyone other than his little group of followers, and Daniel quite the opposite.

Also a comment on Wilber's Spiral Dynamics, Occam's Razor comes to mind. I just will not waste my time on that crap, way too complicated--it's like reading government bullshit that so complicates a simple issue that you don't know what the hell they are talking about, except that they are right and if you don't agree it is because you just aren't as well informed as they are. If you read Wilber's recent work you will also note that people aren't even people anymore, they are just abstract colors, the "Mean Green's" for instance--and it's a Catch 22, so that if you deny your color's attributes, well of course!, that's what you'd exactlly expect of your unenlightened color.

I'd like to say too, that I feel all this talk of Enlightenment is just pure bullshit if it means what the current batch of gurus are suppossed to have attained. What does one find? What you find is the very same thing you find with the Christian Right ministers, the Catholic priests (bishops, etc.) and the most "religious" political leaders - you find stories finally leaking out of alcoholism, child abuse, sexual abuse, and of using their position to abuse their flock/followers in general. This says to me that the physical experience of "the divine" means little as far as a resulting change of who we are. It is human beings we are, and it is human work we all need to do if we want to avoid living out our shadow self, but being blind to it.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Yeah,I think building a permanent base on the moon is wonderful start.
World pride and all that.not to mention Mother nature hurling stones at us.
With the Messiah present it could be done by 2010.
Just Bill Gates and Johnnie Appleseed alone could do it in two or three years if that is where he sees his "pyramid"


Carlos

senfd me some money for a palace for Daniel in Mexico.


John D. Son
POB 243 ,Checotah,OK 74426

[sidecross]

This is a NYT film review; obviously this should be a consideration.




December 8, 2006

MOVIE REVIEW | 'APOCALYPTO'
The Passion of the Maya

By A. O. SCOTT

“I’m going to peel off his skin and make him watch me wear it.” This grisly threat is delivered by one of the main bad guys in Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” The promised flaying never takes place, but viewers who share this director’s apparently limitless appetite for gore will not be disappointed, since not much else in the way of bodily torment has been left to the imagination. There are plenty of disembowelings, impalings, clubbings and beheadings. Hearts are torn, still beating, from slashed-open chests. A man’s face is chewed off by a jaguar. Another’s neck is pierced by darts tipped with frog venom. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the sight of hundreds of corpses haphazardly layered in an open pit: a provocative and ill-advised excursion into Holocaust imagery on this director’s part.

Violence has become the central axiom in Mr. Gibson’s practice as a filmmaker, his major theme and also his chief aesthetic interest. The brutality in “Apocalypto” is so relentless and extreme that it sometimes moves beyond horror into a kind of grotesque comedy, but to dismiss it as excessive or gratuitous would be to underestimate Mr. Gibson’s seriousness. And say what you will about him — about his problem with booze or his problem with Jews — he is a serious filmmaker.

Which is not to say that “Apocalypto” is a great film, or even that it can be taken quite as seriously as it wants to be. Mr. Gibson’s technical command has never been surer; for most of its 2-hour 18-minute running time, “Apocalypto,” written by Mr. Gibson and Farhad Safinia, is a model of narrative economy, moving nimbly forward and telling its tale with clarity and force. It is, above all, a muscular and kinetic action movie, a drama of rescue and revenge with very little organic relation to its historical setting. Yes, the dialogue is in various Mayan dialects, which will sound at least as strange to American ears as the Latin and Aramaic of “The Passion of the Christ,” but the film’s real language is Hollywood’s, and Mr. Gibson’s, native tongue.

When I first heard about this project, and later when I saw the early trailers, I halfway hoped that Mr. Gibson might turn out to be an American (or half-Australian) version of Werner Herzog, setting out into the jungle to explore the dark and tangled regions of human nature. Once you get past the costumes and the subtitles, though, the most striking thing about “Apocalypto” is how comfortably it sits within the conventions of mainstream moviemaking. It is not an obsessive opera like Mr. Herzog’s “Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” but rather a pop period epic in the manner of “Gladiator” or “Braveheart,” and as such less interested in historical or cultural authenticity than in imposing an accessible scheme on a faraway time and place.



The setting is Central America before the arrival of the Spanish, when the Maya empire, in Mr. Gibson’s version, was already in the process of collapsing from within. The basic moral conflict — as it was in “Braveheart,” directed by and starring Mr. Gibson, and in “The Patriot,” a vehicle for him directed by Roland Emmerich — is between a small group of people trying to live simple, decent, traditional lives and a larger, more powerful political entity driven by bloodlust and greed. This kind of conservative anti-imperialism runs consistently through Mr. Gibson’s work; whether the empire in question is Roman, British or Mesoamerican, and whatever its political resonance might be, it allows the viewer to root for an unambiguously virtuous underdog.

“Apocalypto” begins with a group of young men out on a hunt and lingers for a while in their happy, earthy village, a place that might double as a nostalgic vision of small-town America were it not for the loin cloths, the tattooed buttocks and the facial piercings. Blunted (Jonathan Brewer) is nagged by his mother-in-law and teased by his buddies because he hasn’t yet made his wife pregnant, but he accepts his humiliation in good humor, like the jolly fat kid on a family sitcom.

Meanwhile Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), whose father (Morris Birdyellowhead) is an admired hunter and warrior, snuggles down with his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and their young son, Turtle Run (Carlos Emilio Baez). There’s fresh tapir meat on the grill and an old-timer telling stories by the fire. Life is good.

Needless to say, this pastoral idyll cannot last. The ominous strains of James Horner’s score indicate as much. Before long the village is set upon by fearsome marauders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), who rape, burn and kill with ruthless discipline and undisguised glee. The locals resist valiantly, but the survivors are led away to an uncertain fate. Seven and Turtle Run stay behind, hidden in a hole in the ground.

Jaguar Paw’s mission will be to rescue them and also to avenge his friends and kin. First, though, he will accompany us on a Cecil B. DeMille tour of the decadent imperial capital, a place of misery, luxury and corruption, where priests and nobles try to keep famine and pestilence at bay with round-the-clock human sacrifices.

Neither Mr. Gibson’s fans nor his detractors are likely to accuse him of excessive subtlety, and the effectiveness of “Apocalypto” is inseparable from its crudity. But the blunt characterizations and the emphatic emotional cues are also evidence of the director’s skill.

Perhaps because he is aiming for an audience wary of subtitles, Mr. Gibson rarely uses dialogue as a means of exposition, and he proves himself to be an able, if not always terribly original, visual storyteller. He is not afraid of clichés — the slow-motion, head-on sprint toward the camera; the leap from the waterfall into the river below — but he executes them with a showman’s maniacal relish.

And it is, all in all, a pretty good show. There is a tendency, at least among journalists, to take Mr. Gibson as either a monster or a genius, a false choice that he frequently seems intent on encouraging. Is he a madman or a visionary? Should he be shunned or embraced? Censured or forgiven?

These are the wrong questions, but their persistence reveals the truth about this shrewd and bloody-minded filmmaker. He is an entertainer. He will be publicized, and he will be paid.

“Apocalypto” is rated R (Under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian). See the first paragraph above.

APOCALYPTO

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Mel Gibson; written (in Maya, with English subtitles) by Mr. Gibson and Farhad Safinia; director of photography, Dean Semler; edited by John Wright; music by James Horner; production designer, Tom Sanders; produced by Mr. Gibson and Bruce Davey; released by Touchstone Pictures. Running time: 138 minutes.

WITH: Rudy Youngblood (Jaguar Paw), Dalia Hernandez (Seven), Jonathan Brewer (Blunted), Raoul Trujillo (Zero Wolf), Gerardo Taracena (Middle Eye), Rodolfo Palacios (Snake Ink), Fernando Hernandez (High Priest), Maria Isidra Hoil and Aquetzali Garcia (Oracle Girls) and Abel Woolrich (Laughing Man).

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/12/0...gewanted=print

[gandydancer]

This was from Huff Post today:

Maya say Gibson movie portrays them as savages By Mica Rosenberg
Wed Dec 6, 9:14 PM ET



GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Much like his bloody epic about the death of Christ, a new Mel Gibson production about the collapse of the Mayan civilization is angering members of the culture it depicts even before it hits the screen.

The "Passion of Christ" was accused by some of being anti-Semitic -- long before Gibson's career-damaging outbursts against a Jewish policeman in Malibu this year.

Now indigenous activists in Guatemala, once home to a large part of the Mayan empire that built elaborate jungle cities in southern Mexico and northern Central America centuries ago, say his film "Apocalypto" is racist.

Gibson's representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Only trailers for "Apocalypto," which will be released on Friday, have been shown in Guatemala, but leaders say scenes of scary-looking Mayans with bone piercings and scarred faces hurling spears and sacrificing humans promote stereotypes about their culture.

"Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue," said Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation that promotes Mayan culture.

At their height, the Maya built monumental cities in the Peten region of Guatemala, but the civilization went into decline after the 8th century, some say because of overuse of natural resources.

The culture is not thought to have been as blood-thirsty as the neighboring Aztec empire, but some archeologists say human sacrifice was common in the final years before the Spanish conquest.

More than half of Guatemala's population is descended from the original Maya. They face frequent discrimination and most live in poverty with little access to education and social services.

Over 200,000 people, mostly Mayan, were killed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended a decade ago. Some rights groups say the army tried to wipe out the Maya.

Lucio Yaxon, a 23-year-old Mayan human rights activist, said Apocalypto's heart-pounding trailer was unrealistic.

"Basically the director is saying the Mayans are savages," said Yaxon, who speaks Kaqchikel, one of 22 Guatemalan Mayan languages, as well as Spanish.

But Richard Hansen, an archeologist who Gibson consulted on the making of the film, says the director took pains to ensure authenticity and historical accuracy.

The entire script is spoken in Yucatec Maya and the star is a Native American dancer named Rudy Youngblood. Gibson's use of indigenous actors has won praise from Latino and Native American groups in the United States.

"I am a little apprehensive about how the Maya themselves are going to perceive it," said Hansen, who directs an archeological project at the Mirador Basin in northern Guatemala, "but Gibson is trying to make a social statement."

[sidecross]

My aunt is an indigenous Guatemalan; I am sure she will not be attending this film.