Wednesday, November 24, 2004

More On Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen

The pro-AC/KW crowd appears to have a few core arguments:


1) Anyone who disagrees or has misgivings is afflicted by a virus of the mind called 'green meme'. This is a good example of what cult education specialists term a 'thought stopping cliché'--a bit of mind fuck that brings discussion to a screeching halt and derails a valid argument. Green meme is code for being too weak, too coddled, too middle class to appreciate being bullied, abused and jeered at, as well as any refusal to accept someone's nasty behavior as being justified/sanctified by that person's state of enlightenment or claim to be such.

2) If someone is enlightened (or claims to be), they are suddenly exempt from normal accountability and are permitted to say and do anything they please. While the enlightened one is in a state of grace, anyone who expresses misgivings in a state of sin, guilty of anger, negativity, closed mindedness, aka Green Meme Syndrome. (Sounds like a New Age take off on the Calvinist scheme in which the predestined Elect, who are in a state of grace are distinguished from the damned Green Memes.)

3) (Speculative) There appear to be a lot of people who enjoy, even thrive on high adrenaline situations and who because of a biochemical fluke, assume that stress induced adrenaline surges are spiritual breakthroughs. Being addicted to adrenaline and sheer intensity, they may even despise gentler methods, and seek out extreme teachers because they get jazzed by being confronted in person or by watching others squirm on the hot seat.

If these adrenaline junkies select non spiritual experiences, they may become extreme athletes, fire fighters or if they join the armed forces, become test pilots, Navy Seals, Recon Marines or qualify for the Green Berets. Perhaps AC (and more vicariously) KW are adrenaline junkies and their supporters share a similar psycho-biochemical profile.

All this green meme business is just school yard bullying/name calling, as is KW's love affair with rating systems for levels of spiritual attainment.

He resembles people who get off on filling display cabinets with butterflies, neatly labeled and pinned to cork board in nice, tidy rows.

Luckily, life's much bigger than any classification scheme. Thanks for mentioning the Integral Naked site!

-from a comment received on Nov 23.

(Any reader who is a member of Integral Naked and wishes to post a link there for After Hours....we thank you.

For links to Integral Naked and other relevant sites, see list on right sidebar>>>>)

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

'Philosophy as Fiction: Reflections on Ken Wilber's New "Novel" by by Surinder Deol (SD practices neuro-linguistic programming, so the 'NLP' in the article refers to this technique)

Surinder Deol gives an overview of KW's use of 'green meme' and his other color coded meme references, and reflects on Wilber's decision to impart his material by writing a fictionalized account (the 'Boomeritis' novel) instead of using his customary philosphical approach:)

(Quote) When philosophy is turned into fiction,it easily loses its ground. It is no longer philosophy.It is a jumble of words in the mouths of its characters.

'...Ken has a philosophic viewpoint; even more impor-tantly he is the creator of an integral vision that he has shaped meticulously, meshing together hundreds of East-ern and Western philosophies and psychologies.

'How can he suddenly present a major portion of that work as a piece of fiction without compromising the integrity of his entire work?

'There are consolation prizes, of course. For once, he has silenced his critics. Academics don’t like to argue with characters in works of fiction; they love living targets.

... 'So where is the boundary line between fact and fiction? If philosophy can be so easily turned into fiction,what else in life canhave enduring meaning and purpose?

(Blogger comment: a blend of complex expository writing (philosophy/ideology) and fiction writing would serve to confuse readers and throw them off balance, like watching a sports team switching back and forth between playing baseball and rugby. A state of confusion produced by this confusion of ground rules can be easily rationalized as 'This is so profound', rather than, 'This is confusing as hell'---God forbid if we dare to say we feel confused, then we confess that we are unenlightened, inferior beings, and will be banished from New Age circles with pitying glances.)

(article resumes)'Despite my best effort I could not find my comfort–zone around Boomeritis, the novel. But when I re-read the book as a work of philosophy I was on a well–trodden path; the scenery looked familiar, including the road blocks,detours, heroes and villains, everything—it’s vintage Wilber.

'Two examples:Who is stopping us to get to inte-gral awareness? The green meme.'

(Blogger comments: How about just calling it cooties--thats what we did in grade school. But we still gotta go to Ken or Andy Cohen, the big kids on the playground and beg them to give us a 'cootie shot'...)

(Article resumes) 'What immediately prevents this jump into an integral awareness? A fixation to the green meme.

And what is the major cause of fixation to the greenmeme? Boomeritis.(p.111)And what is Boomeritis? Boomeritis is that strange mixture of very high cognitive capacity (the green meme and noble pluralism) infected with rather low emotional narcissism (purple andred meme) …Boomeritis is one of the primary roadblocks to an integral embrace…(end of quote)

(Blogger comment: There's a pitfall in philosophy called 'reification'--treating an idea as though its real when you dont have evidence that it is.

Anyone found 'green meme's in human brain tissue? Does a particular part of the brain light up in a PET scan if green meme ideas are discussed in the subject's presence?'

Entry level example of re-ification is looking at a menu and eating it, saying the menu card is your dinner, when in fact the menu and the meal are two different things.

According to Surinder Deol, Ken has come up with a color code for various memes--he and Tom Ridge would understand each other perfectly.

URL of original article is

www.nlpanchorpoint.com/DeolWilber.pdf

(this is the HTML version)

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:iVvis8hbLSgJ:www.nlpanchorpoint.com/DeolWilber.pdf++%22green+meme%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Once again, we are reminded of Calvinism; we anxiously look to KW to assess whether we are in a state of grace or not...

Monday, 06 December, 2004  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am trying to understand your anger?

There are many places here where you seem to have no idea what your talking about, but your pretty damn certain of it.

Your articulation of the Green Meme, and a pathology in this stage of conciousness development shows ignorance of thier importance and provides them no merit.

The idea that this must be reduced to surface level exhibits like brain waves - else it is invalid, is rather flat

What is it that really bugs you about Wilber? Is it the hair cut?



a component of Spiral Dynamics, and a pathology that it has, called boomeritus by Ken, but no less of

an aspect of sophisticated model for evolution

spiral dynamics or the pathology of that

Tuesday, 24 May, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am trying to understand your anger?

There are many places here where you seem to have no idea what your talking about, but your pretty damn certain of it.

Your articulation of the Green Meme, and a pathology in this stage of conciousness development shows ignorance of thier importance and provides them no merit.

The idea that this must be reduced to surface level exhibits like brain waves - else it is invalid, is rather flat

What is it that really bugs you about Wilber? Is it the hair cut?

Allan

Tuesday, 24 May, 2005  
Blogger jadufy007 said...

Shocking ignorant...(if not conscious, intentional)...misreprsentation of Wilber and Cohen.

While I can understand and support critically examining teachers, especially Cohen....that doesn't mean ranting with extreme fervor is a replacement for presenting a person's views in a fair and accurate manner. For me, you revealed only your own lack of integrity.

Tuesday, 01 December, 2009  

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