Ken Wilber

[K.J]

Daniel-

First, I want to just quickly say that I absolutely loved BOTH and I'm so far loving 2012 just as much (about 300 pages in right now). I've been a member of this forum for a bit, but I cannot for the life of me locate my old registration, so I just re-registered.

So, on to why I'm posting...

Obviously you're aware of Ken Wilber, because you refer to him a few times in 2012. I'm wondering though, how familiar are you with his works? The reason I ask is because you often make statements about integral theory, and of course K.W. is one of most well known integral philosophers right now.

I read an interview of you recently in Evolver and in the interview you state:

This is one aspect of Rudolf Steiner’s significance – he recognized that thinking was in itself a spiritual path, and that the invisible world of thought was part of our entry into other orders of being. I strongly recommend checking out his Philosophy of Freedom for this perspective. He also believed it was completely possible to reconcile scientific materialism and empiricism with the other levels of inner cognition required to explore “higher worlds” – and I think he is correct. From Steiner’s perspective, we actually developed our materialist and empirical form of consciousness partially as a foundational tool that would allow us to explore other realities without losing our balance, if we were willing to allow for such a possibility.

This statement had me immediately thinking about K.W's theories on integral spirituality. In fact, Ken's forthcoming book is titled Integral Spirituality.

From the publishers website:

Integral Spirituality —Ken Wilber's most cutting-edge work on religion since The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998)—answers the question: how can we validate the existence of spiritual realities—specifically, the higher levels of mystical experience claimed by the world's wisdom traditions—in the face of modern and postmodern attacks that deny those realities as unscientific or reduce them to social constructions?

Applying his highly acclaimed integral approach, Wilber formulates a theory of spirituality that honors the truths of modernity and postmodernity—including the revolutions in science and culture—while incorporating the legacy of the great religions. He shows why full enlightenment is not possible without combining the enlightenment of the East, which excels at cultivating higher states of consciousness, with the enlightenment of the West, which offers developmental and psychodynamic psychology. Each contributes key components to a more integral spirituality.

On the basis of this theoretical framework, Wilber is able to make some timely suggestions. Because the world's religions have such a tremendous influence on the worldview of the majority of the earth's population, they are in a privileged position to address some of the biggest conflicts we face. By adopting a more integral view, and thus effectively responding to modern and postmodern critiques, the great religions can act as facilitators of human development, from mythic belief to rational science to postmodern pluralism—all the way up to enlightenment, and to a global society that honors and includes all the stations of life along the way.

I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about this Daniel (and the rest of you out there!).

K.J

[David L]

No Boundary is a great book.

[drew hempel]

I totally disagree with Ken Wilber and have a detailed critique of him in my masters thesis, published online by the webmaster for Wilber's website -- hit the link on http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm

Wilber is racist and dishonest about the implications of modern and postmodern "evolution." In fact the concept of evolution was created at the same time the industrial revolution was completely raping and wiping out Nature.

There is no "evolution" for higher mammals, as documented by the top conservation biologists.

Humans are just a blink in the cycles of cosmic geology.

Spirituality is real but it's an artifact of indigenous cultures and therefore less and less common while the techno-spirituality of new brain-machine interfaces is all controlled by the top-down Freemasons who live in underground cities!!

The Apocalypse is among us.

You're DoomEd and you're Going the Wrong Way!!

[K.J]

Originally posted by drew hempel:
I totally disagree with Ken Wilber and have a detailed critique of him in my masters thesis, published online by the webmaster for Wilber's website -- hit the link on http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm

Wilber is racist and dishonest about the implications of modern and postmodern "evolution." In fact the concept of evolution was created at the same time the industrial revolution was completely raping and wiping out Nature.

There is no "evolution" for higher mammals, as documented by the top conservation biologists.

Humans are just a blink in the cycles of cosmic geology.

Spirituality is real but it's an artifact of indigenous cultures and therefore less and less common while the techno-spirituality of new brain-machine interfaces is all controlled by the top-down Freemasons who live in underground cities!!

The Apocalypse is among us.

You're DoomEd and you're Going the Wrong Way!!

Drew-

Did you post the wrong link, or am I missing something? I didn't see anything in that exegesis (?) about Ken.

I find it incredulous that someone could dismiss, in one swoop, with no stated arguments, 20 plus years of intense contemplation that is the Wilber philosophy (if you'd like to call it that).

In fact, your statement that he is a racist shows exactly how much you know about Wilber and his philosophy. I don't know him personally, but I can attest that there isn't one bit of racism found in his many, many books and essays (at least, I've yet to see it if there is). And even if he were racist, that doesn't necessarily mean one should dismiss everything he has to say.

Anyhow, to each their own.

K.J

(sidereal- I've not perused the current state of the forum enough yet to know, but I get the sneaking intuition that I'm feeding a troll...)

[ August 25, 2006, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: K.J ]

[lovemanifest]

Humans have been on Earth for a blink of an eye, perhaps, but may have been living in other parts of the cosmos for eons. It makes no difference either way.

Humans are extraordinary creatures. Our masterful design is breathtaking, and our beauty and potential are limitless.

Spirituality did not originate with indigenous human cultures. They may have been the first people on Earth to understand it, but it is not a human convention. Religion is. Saying spirituality is a human creation is the same as saying phi is a human construct. I would also argue that spiritual awareness is becoming more, not less, common these days.

I just read this in The Teachings of Don Juan this morning:
"Look at every path closely and deliberately...Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question...
Does this path have a heart?"

Om Namah Shivaya

[Caprinardo Delirio]

K.J.

i'm very split on wilber. he owes much more to joseph campbell and alan watts than he cares to admit, and rightfully so, because in so many ways he turns them on their head. and not in a clever way. anyway, i'll like to get further into the wilber discussion sometime, but i think stanislav grof's critique of him is right on the money in many respects. i posted it here on the board some time ago, i think it's in the science&shamanism (spam) section, called 'grof's critique of wilber spectrum psychology'.

dig it.

[drew hempel]

Remedial Reading Class? Dalai is CIA-Nazi. Just read http://sinisterforces.info I'm not some Maoist either so get real. Wilber was endorsed by the Dalai Lama and Wilber hangs in the same state where the Dalai Lama's personal bodyguards were trained in torture and assassination techniques by the CIA. Get real -- Wilber is promoting a CIA agenda. Here's an excerpt from my masters thesis -- all you had to do was click to my masters thesis and scan through it (that way you get the hypertext links to the references). Also just for the record I tried to contact Wilber to discuss these problems and instead his volunteer webmaster, Elias, published my masters thesis.

Because of the deeply seated linear knowledge system, even the successful grand theorist Ken Wilber falls into the trap of advocating repressive western evolution based on a deterministic brain model that does not fully process the findings of Pribram's resonance brain analysis.266 Wilber subsequently incorrectly portrays indigenous cultures as having "preoperational cognition" and being inferior-i.e. claiming that their sustainable indigenous knowledge systems are merely haphazard occurrences reflecting their lack of western technology.267

The latest scholarly discussion by anthropologists of the relation between indigenous cultures and their values toward the environment is social scientist Kay Milton's "Nature and the Environment in Indigenous and Traditional Cultures," in Spirit of the Environment.268 The anthropological research shows that within the "oneness of nature" myth accorded by the West to indigenous peoples, what is actually accurate is that traditional cultures dominate their environments with defining values of mutual respect that do not usually view nature as a separate, objectified Other. Or as she states when cultures become more intensive,

Control makes trust redundant; indeed, it removes the autonomy which is part of the essence of trust. The non-human animals, once deprived of their freedom, come to be seen as lacking the capacity to act on their own behalf; they are seen less as persons and more as objects. It is easy to perceive, in the intensive farming methods of the industrial world, an extreme form of this perspective, in which the sensibilities of non-human animals are denied for the convenience of human routines and industrial systems.269

The defining contrast to the West is the predominance of "a non-oppositional perspective [that] is consistent with an extensive pattern of economic activity which makes people familiar with every part of their environment."270
Ironically the central text of Tibetan Buddhism, a philosophy from which Wilber draws heavily, commonly called "The Book of the Dead," has its origins in the indigenous Bön culture and is literally translated as "Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate State."271 Wilber criticizes social theorists for even "eulogizing" tribal cultures, when in fact currently still existing with distinct languages, 4,000 to 5,000 of the 6,000 human cultures are indigenous, but extremely threatened by corporate state elite attacks.272 (Exxon in Chad-Cameroon, Shell in Nigeria, Freeport in Indonesia, Texaco in Ecuador, Occidental Petroleum in Colombia, Unocal-Total in Burma).273

Without "romanticizing" the infinite complexity between and within each distinct language group, there is extensive evidence of indigenous cultures commonly interacting in a proportionally reciprocal or law of Pythagoras relationship with the environment as a conscious value system.274 The outstanding examples of unbalanced indigenous development patterns that Wilber incorrectly suggests are the norm, are due to particular breaks in those cultures from extreme and unpredictable influences, for example, as we have discussed, reification of linear symbolic systems, or dramatic climate change and colonialism.

Wilber does not recognize the fact that there has been a strong backlash against indigenous research, precisely because of its psychological threat to the linear western worldview. His use of Hawaii to explain his theory of holons is an inaccurate portrayal of genocidal U.S. imperialism-he actually claims the contrary occurred.275

Certainly neither Pribram and Schmidt or the global green movement that Wilber also supports, are advocating a "regressive" return to pre-industrial society as the immediate dominant fear arises, but instead the societal model of an open multidimensional process that continually reaffirms the universal common ground of the void. From systems theory music analysis, Leonard Meyer calls this societal model "fluctuating stasis" based on "steady-state" systems theory, a prediction of the same recommendation from radical ecologist open systems theorist Fritoj Capra.276

In Noise: The Political Economy of Music Jacques Attali presents a similar societal vision-predicted by and achieved through profound music practices that challenge the hegemony of linearly repressed symbolic abstraction of the western knowledge system.277 John E. Peck documents how in fact indigenous cultures already enact concepts of sophisticated open systems theory:

Given its sensitivity to time and place, indigenous knowledge would seem to be better situated to successfully adopt and apply a nonequilibrium perspective to ecosystem management than conventional scientific thinking, particularly in settings unfamiliar to western policy makers. Ecosystemic trajectories are so contextually contingent that an observer can hardly afford to entertain a theoretical framework built upon universal "objectivity" and reductionist "rationality."

In fact, the development and implementation of such programs as intensive rotational grazing, biocultural restoration, preventative medicine, and early disaster warning-to name but a few-in western and nonwestern settings alike have relied heavily upon the indigenous knowledge of local people most directly affected.278

The great contribution of Wilber is that he also, as with sound-current nondualism, models an understanding of the absolute void as accessible in each state of information. He discusses many of the same western knowledge system errors ( but the crucial qualitative difference of modeling the void with music theory is that the long-established inaccurately linear and immoral, genocidal bias against indigenous cultures need not apply.

The music analyst John Chernoff in his important work with the Dagomba, African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms, notes that "The power and dynamic potential of the music is in the silence, and the gaps between the notes, [the absolute void] and it is into this openness that a creative participant will place his contribution, trying to open up the music further."

Chernoff realized that music serves as a conscious cultural practice to access the absolute void and obtain transformative powers in these cultures. He points out that "both [the dialectical Marcuse and Lacan] are suggestive of ways in which Western philosophical literature on alienation is addressed in the aesthetics of African music."279

4a ~ Restoring the Lost Logos (part 2)

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Table of Contents || Bibliography || Wilber Seminar || Lightmind Library

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Footnotes

214 Bateson, Angels Fear, p. 60.

215 Bateson, Angels Fear, p. 24. Bateson was drawing from "On the Discovery of Deductive Science," The St. John's Review (January, 1980): 21-31

216 Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, p. 29.

217 Robin Hartshorne, "Teaching Geometry According to Euclid," Notices of the AMS, Vol. 47, no. 4, p. 461.

218 Dominic J. O'Meara, Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 67-68.

219 Peter Gorman, Pythagoras: A Life (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 137. For the latest biography see John Strohmeier, Peter Westbrook, John Scrohmeier, Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras (CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 1999).

220 The latest analysis that assumes Pythagoras did not know about the transcendental or "irrational" only approaches the problem from arithmetic or geometry and leaves out the actual music proportional approach that Pythagoras used. Philip Hugly; Charles Sayward, "Did the Greeks discover the irrationals?" Philosophy 74 (April 1999): 169.

221 For the connection between the Taoist and Pythagorean use of initiation and the transcendental see, "A. Volkov, "Zhao Youqin and his calculation of pi," Historia Mathematic 24 (Aug. 1997): 301-331. Zhao Youqin was a Taoist Master.

222 Leibniz, the founder of calculus and binary logic, was bent on creating a "characteristica universalis" or universal method of reasoning enabling direct communication. His motivation was the complete destruction of the great thirty year religious war from which a desire for dogmatic abstract certainty or the modern paradigm arose. Leibniz though was already transcending the linear materialistic religion of technology suffering of his day, by using the I Ching as a parallel basis for his multidimensional approach, unlike Descartes. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, pp. 100-102 and Schönberger, The I Ching and the Genetic Code, pp. 59-67.

223 Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, pp. 50-56,148.

224 Steven M. Rosen, "Concept of the Infinite and the Crisis of Modern Physics," Speculations in Science and Technology 6 (1983): 413-425.

225 Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe (NY: Grove Press, 1993), p. 36. Lawlor gives logos the more specific definition of the three-termed proportion (vs. four term)."The Measure of Difference." Logos is the term Ashok Gangadean uses to describe his universal grammar of "meditative reason" that he also calls a "primal bonding force." See Ashok Gangadean, Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason (NY: Peter Lang, 1998)

226 Bateson, Angels Fear, p. 27, 117.

227 Loy, Nonduality, p. 4.

228 Berendt also gives the broader cultural context: "Chuang-tzu, the ancient Chinese sage, wrote 'What is one, is one. What is not-one, also is one.' And Erich Fromm notes: 'Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in Heraclitus' philosophy, and then again under the name of dialectics in the thought of Hegel and Marx'.... By way of contrast the thinking behind the Chinese and Japanese languages do not move in a straight line from the subject to the object with no aid of the verb. It circles around its object and envelops it until it is specified as precisely as the objects in our Western languages (which presupposes an inner predicate); in fact, specialists feel that these Asian languages are even more precise since they do not simply 'objectivate' but rather let subject and object 'become one' so that the active and the passive mode fall together...."

228 The World Is Sound, pp. 44-49.

229 Noël Burch, To The Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

230 Robert Schmidt, "Phasis and Logos," presentation at FortFest, Fall 1997, of The International Fortean Organization (INFO), MS available at 532 Washington St., Cumberland MD 21502 see his Project Hindsight at http://www.projecthindsight-tghp.com/ INFO, founded in 1965 to expand the original Fortean Society, is dedicated to disseminating and building upon the pioneering research of scientific anomalies by Charles Fort, best known today as the basis for the The X-Files television show. INFO Journal, P.O. Box 367, Arlington, VA 22210-0367. The Complete Books of Charles Fort, introduction by Damon Knight (New York : Dover Publications, 1974).

231 Lu K'uan Yü, Ch'an and Zen Teaching, pp. 46-47.

232 Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 158 See also "The birth of philosophy as a falsification of history," in Antonio Capizzo, The Cosmic Republic: Notes for a non-peripatetic history of the birth of philosophy in Greece (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1990).

233 Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, p. 238.

234 Bateson, Mind and Nature, p. 116.

235 Herbert, Quantum Reality, pp. 20-21.

236 Fritoj Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understand of Living Systems, pp. 83-84. See also Per Bak, How Nature Works: The science of self-organized criticality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) and Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the simple and the complex (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1995).

237 The biologist Kammerer also discovered this law of nature and called it the "Law of Seriality," P. Kammerer, Das Gesetz der Serie (Stuttgart: Dtsch. Verl-Anst., 1919), quoted in Watson, Supernature, p. 111. Dr. Wilhelm Reich was persecuted for his discovery of self-organizing vital energy that he called orgone.

238 Chaos theory thus models the lost multidimensional proportional knowledge system of ancient wisdom. The modern paradigm is dependent on the closed circle linearly determined ratio system for music analysis, Cartesian analysis, the incorrect supply and demand economic model, Euclidian zoning, and the linear subject-predicate (ratio) structure of western language.

239 Ibid., pp. 129-130, 135-136. Another example to describe the paradox of order out of chaos is a Pythagorean spiral-vortex, like water flowing down a drain. We know the system limits of the drain and even the principles of the flow but the water itself is constantly moving.

240 Martin Gardner, Fractal Music, Hypercards and More: Mathematical Recreations from Scientific American Magazine (NY: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1992), p. 3.

241 HJ Sun, L. Liu, AK Guo, "Iteration logistic map dynamics in the polar coordinates," Fractals-An Interdisciplinary Journal on the complex geometry of nature 6 (March 1998): 11-22.

242 György Hall, Chaos Near Resonance (NY: Springer, 1999), vii.

243 Bateson was similarly held back by the prominence of Freud's primordially repressed and Wilber also points out this limitation.

244 Slavoj Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies (New York: Verso, 1997). p. 92.

245 Ibid., p. 208.

246 Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 165.

247 Ibid., p. 192.

248 Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 237.

249 Dong and Esser, Chi Gong, p. 199.

250 Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative, pp. 122-123. Just like the derivative for Weierstrass, for Zizek, the linear symbolic limit is the never-ending goal, still repressing the transcendental consequences of analysis. The focus of Zizek's latest book The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For (NY: Verso, 2000) is an overt attack on the growing recognition of "the sacred" and is literally a full embrace of linear symbolic logic reflected by the materialistic western religion of technology.

251 Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, p. 28.

252 Lendvai, Bela Bartok, p. 24. The intervals, although found in the chords, are dependant on the chord inversions as well.

253 Jeans, Science and Music, p. 157.

254 Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, p. 29. For tritone as source of the infinite transcendental (or "irrational" [Ã2] in the modern paradigm) see "Music's Discipline of the Means: An Interview with Ernest McClain." Parabola 16 (Winter, 1991): 85.

255 On the void as the source of the dyad see O'Meara, Pythagoras Revived, pp. 67-68.

256 Although I have never seen the multidimensional spiral fifths used to demonstrate the dialectical process before, Ernst Levy did perceive the relationship when he described the cadence of the dominants of dominants of tonics (the cycle of fifths) as a "dialectical process." Levy, A Theory of Harmony, p. 98 citing Moritz Hauptman, The Nature of Harmony and Metre (London: Swan Sonnenschien, 1888). This process is what is called "nondual duality" in Dr. Steven Rosen's Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle: The evolution of a "transcultural" approach to wholeness (SUNY, 1994) and it also addresses the criticisms of materialistic monism raised against George Picht, as cited by Thomas Bargatzky. David Loy in Nonduality discusses this same approach to reality as found in Buddhism and John Milbank starts to touch on the concept while discussing postmodernism: "Hence transcendence as envisaged by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo does indeed imply dualism, and yet a kind of perpetually self-cancelling dualism. This is the nearest we can get to nondualism...." See "Problematizing the Secular: The post-postmodern agenda," in Philippa Berry and Andrew Wernick, eds., Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion (NY: Routledge, 1992), p. 42.

257 Slavoj Zizek, The Indivisible Remainder : An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters (NY: Verso, 1996), p. 104. The basis of Pythagorean principles as the foundation for mythic meaning is also analyzed by Fred Fisher, "Music and the Wheel: The Oedipus Story," Interdisciplina I/3 (Spring 1976): 38-54. As music theorist Ernest McClain states, "There seems to be, from the archaeological evidence, a considerable ubiquity of musical artifacts from the early third millennium, and, from what I read into the early mythology and its numerology, I believe all major cultures possessed the harmonic system we call Pythagorean." "Music's Discipline of the Means: An Interview with Ernest McClain," Parabola 16 (Winter, 1991): 85.

258 See "the paradox of a finite totality," in Slavoj Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a political factor (NY: Verso, 1991). See also limit or threshold of octave Gurdjieff footnote above. Although I will give further references for addressing the symptoms of political economic "externalities," again the focus of this work is modeling the formal foundation for those externalities so that they can be effectively approached considering the immense power of repression (socially, psychologically and spiritually).

259 For jouissance as phi see Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Subjectivity, (London: Verso, 1989). For Pythagorean law of growth, divine proportion as phi see Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, p. 336 and Rothstein, Emblems of Mind, p. 157. Rothstein, still based in linear thinking, captures the pathos of the modern western paradigm: "The music 'in itself' is the abstract model whose essence defies even a purely formal analysis," Emblems of Mind, p. 212.

260 Karl Pribram, Languages of the Brain: Experimental paradoxes and principles in neuropsychology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hill, Inc., 1971). See also Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991).

261 Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, p. 38. Sound-current nondualism enables a resolution to the highly problematic yet remarkable influence of Heidegger on postmodern and radical ecology theory. Rosen notes that according to Heidegger, "We are to retrace our steps, work our way back through our 2500-year-old tradition... By so returning to the primal origin of philosophy, a fresh perspective would be gained on its fundamental problems...this question [of Being] has been shrouded in obscurity or entirely misunderstood since the time of Plato and Aristotle. So Heidegger was concerned with the form of thinking, over and above its content...." Rosen, "Psi and Non-Dual Duality," in Parapsychology, Philosophy and Religious Concepts, p. 73. Loy draws the same fundamental point from Heidegger that brings us back to the Pythagorean physis analysis of George Picht: "that the Greek concepts of physis and hypkeimenon ('that which lies before') embodied some naive understanding of this 'thought,' [nondualism] later lost when they were transformed into techne and the self-conscious subjectum, respectively." And "techne or 'thinking...without result" is the "more calculative, re-presentational...the 'technical interpretatoin' of thinking: thinking, as Plato and Aristotle (but evidently not Socrates) took it to be...." Loy, Nonduality, p. 166.

262 Ibid, p. 32.

263 Haase cited by Berendt, The World Is Sound, p. 80.

264 Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 189. See also Theodor Reik, The Haunting Melody: Psychoanalytic experiences in life and music (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953).

265 Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation and the History of the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 213-215.

266 This is even after Wilber edited The Holographic Paradigm and other paradoxes: exploring the leading edge of science (Boston: Shambhala, 1982).

267 See Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality for several references on "tribal consciousness," pp. 52, 166, 571, 582. Michael Horace Barnes in his Stages of Thought: The co-evolution of religious thought and science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) provides a seemingly more "balanced" promotion of the preoperational category of analysis (Chp. 3, "Cognitive Styles in Primitive Cultures,"). Applying Piaget's preoperational category for children to cultures is advocating linear teleological brain evolution to the goal of western rationality, reinforcing the same linear western culturally genocidal assumptions as well. (again this is in contrast to Pribram's neuro-psychological research and the work of other anthropologists cited in this book, see especially Junzo Kawada's "Human Dimensions in the Sound Universe," in Redefining Nature). Drawing from the extensive analysis of this structural issue by Graham Richards, On Psychological Language and the Physiomorphic Basis of Human Nature (NY: Routledge, 1989), Mary Midgely notes: "The notion of 'primitive animisim' comes from a familiar Enlightenment myth that compares the intellectual development of the human race to that of an individual -- there are obvious reasons why people in simpler [sic.] cultures might count as more adult than highly civilized people, since they have to be much more self-reliant." Mary Midgley, Science As Salvation: A modern myth and its meaning (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 171. Even Paul D. McClean, the creator of the triune theory of linear brain evolution that is the basis of Wilber's analysis, has switched to the resonance theory of Pribram! (as cited in the first section of this book, "Sound-Current Nondualism") The real problem of tribal consciousness according to Wilber is that it is missing "a level of law and morality" to build unified societies that can deal with social conflict beyond the limited small tribes. Ward Churchill documents that Native Americans, contrary to Wilber's claim, were known for just the opposite ability. That the democratic federation of native nations was a direct inspiration for the structure of the U.S. government is also well documented. Many scholars have argued it is precisely the superior social skills of indigenous societies that differentiate them from top-down linear western institutions. See Ward Churchill, Struggle for the land: Indigenous resistance to genocide, ecocide and expropriation in contemporary North America, forward by John Trudell, preface by Winona LaDuke (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1993). See also Jerry Manders, "Our Founding Mothers and Fathers ( the Iroquois," Earth Island Journal: International Environmental News (Fall 1991): 30.

268 Kay Milton, "Nature and the Environment in Indigenous and Traditional Cultures," in David E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer, eds., Spirit of the Environment: Religion, value and environmental concern (NY: Routledge, 1998), pp. 86-100.

269 Ibid., p. 96.

270 Ibid. Milton emphasizes that even the terms indigenous and traditional are contentious, while environmental perspectives are diverse and fluctuate, and that the effects of those values are contingent to the intensity of impact. She emphasizes a "trans-cultural" approach that identifies environmental cultures. See also Kay Milton, "Ecologies: Anthropology, culture and the environment," International Social Science Journal 49 (1997) and Kay Milton, Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the role of anthropology in environmental discourse (New York: Routledge, 1996).

271 Berendt, The World Is Sound, p. 145.

272 See the Indigenous Environmental Network at http://www.alphacdc.com/ien/subject.html

273 The 4,000-5,000 of 6,000 figure and the conscious sustainable ecological practices of the world's indigenous cultures are documented by Alan Thein Durning, "Supporting Indigenous Peoples," State of the World 1993: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society (NY: W.W. Norton, 1993). See also FO Adeola, "Cross-national Environmental Injustice and Human Rights Issues: A review of evidence in the developing world," American Behavioral Scientist 43 (2000): 686-706.

274 See for example, Howard L. Harrod, The Animals Came Dancing: Native American sacred ecology and animal kinship (Tucson: University of Arizon Press, 2000); Barabara Noske, "Speciesism, anthropocentrism and non-western cultures," Anthrozoös 10 (1997): 183-190; S. Sharma, HC Rikhari, LMS Palni, "Conservation of Natural Resources Through Religion: A case study from Central Himalaya," Society and Natural Resources 12 (1999): 599-612; PH Stephenson, "Environmental Health Perspectives on the Consequences of an Ideology of Control in 'Natural' Systems," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 34 (1997): 349-367; and M. Richards, "Common Property Resource Institutions and Forest Management in Latin America," Development and Change 28 (1997): 95-117; PM Jostad, LH McAvoy, D. McDonald, "Native American land ethics: Implications for natural resource management," Society and Natural Resources 9 (1996): 565-581.

275 For a review of the backlash against indigenous research see David Watson (aka George Bradford), Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a future social ecology (NY: Autonomedia, 1996) as well as the anthropological references of anarcho-primitivist researcher John Zerzan. One example is Robert B. Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the myth of primitive harmony (New York: Free Press, 1992). Edgerton does an impressive job cataloging every extreme behavior in indigenous cultures and certainly proves the point that indigenous cultures are not lacking violence, destruction of the environment and, even on occasion, organized warfare. What is missing from his critique is not only the context for each example he cites but the relative several orders of magnitude difference in comparison with the impact of the West on indigenous societies. This lack of comparison with the qualitative difference of industrialism as well as the assumption of western rationality as universally superior can also be found in Peter Coates' otherwise informative summary of the issue in his Nature: Western attitudes since ancient times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); For the latest and most sophisticated version of this backlash see Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999). Krech starts the book off with the infamous "Keep America Beautiful" teary-eyed Indian infomercial and states that this anti-pollution ad just helped feed the incorrect environmental stereotype about indigenous cultures. He neglects to mention the campaign was actually funded by "greenwashing" corporations that were attacking and twisting the true environmental concerns of traditional indigenous cultures. Krech's book is a similar high profile trojan horse disguised as sincere concern. On the repressed history of the destructive U.S. take-over of Hawaii see Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Boston: South End Press, 1993). See also Annette M. Jaimes. The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonialization and Resistance (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992); Bruce E. Johansen. Ecocide of Native America: Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples. (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1995); Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D, "The Survival Path: Cooperation between Indigenous and Industrial Humanity" at http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/ A balanced overview can also be found in the books on the topic by anthropologist Jack Weatherford.

276 Meyer, Music, the Arts, and Ideas, p. 172. See also former World Bank senior economist Herman Daly, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997) and his earlier work, Steady-State Economics (San Francisco: Island Press, 1991). Daly works with John B. Cobb an advocate of Alfred Whitehead's Pythagorean process theology also studied by David Griffin. Herman E. Daly, John B. Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). Polkinghorne notes the Cobb process theology in Belief in God in an Age of Science, p. 55. For the evidence of Pythagoras' continued social systems influence on "organizational behavior:" James Bedfore-Roberts, "Concepts from Pythagoras," Hewleet-Packard technical report; HPL-91-22, 1991.

277 Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Theory and History of Literature, Vol 16) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

278 John E. Peck, "Nonequilibrium Perspectives and Indigenous Knowledge for Community Management of Natural Resources in Zimbabwe," (MS, Geography 920, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996). See also PS Sriraj, CJ Khisty, "Crisis Management and Planning Using Systems Methodologies," Journal of Urban Planning and Development-ASCE 125 (1999): 121-133.

279 John Chernoff, African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1979). See also Philip M. Peek, "The Sounds of Silence: Cross-world communication and the auditory arts in African societies," American Ethnologist 21 (1994): 474-494. There is a large literature base proving indigenous cultures' use and understanding of sophisticated spiritual-philosophical concepts: Frances Densmore, Chippewa Customs (St. Paul, MN: MHS Press, 1929, reprint edition, 1979); Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletins. (MHS Press, January 1910); Charles Boiles, Man, Magic and Musical Occasions (Montreal, Quebec, Canada: University of Montreal Press, 1978); Marina Roseman, Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest : Temiar Music and Medicine. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care, Vol 28. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); William K. Powers, Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota (London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Tom Brown Jr., Awakening Spirits (NY: Berkley Publishing, 1994); Alan Ereira, The Heart of the World (London: Jonathan Cape, 1990).

[gandydancer]

Thanks CD, I'd like to read that when I have time. I have read Christian D'Quincy (I think I have spelled that wrong) on Wilber also, and it was good.

I first read Wilber say '89 or '90 and it was good for me at the time, just what I needed. Must have been No Boundary. Then next I read The Atman Project and started to realize what an arrogant SOB he was. I remember that I felt that rather than talking to me he was talking to all the other philosophers that did not agree with his view and telling them how he was right and they were all wrong... But...at a certain point in one's journey he is excellent, in my opinion.

[ak]

Ken Wilber is a vapid, megalomaniacal, self-indulgent prick with delusions of grandeur. This is a person who publicly endorses criminal cult leaders such as Adi "the serial rapist" Da and Andrew "Il Duce" Cohen. He has absolutely no integrity, and makes flawed arguments soignéed in verbose polemics.

wilber's flawed metaphysics

[Caprinardo Delirio]

settle down beavis, he's just trying to help big business feel better about themselves.