|
Editorial Review Book Description
In this tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. From the emergence of mind, he traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of growth and development. He particularly focuses on modernity and postmodernity: what they mean; how they impact gender issues, psychotherapy, ecological concerns, and various liberation movements; and how the modern and postmodern world conceive of Spirit. This second edition features forty pages of new material, new diagrams, and extensively revised notes. ... Read more Customer Reviews (27) 
Great backup theory for Conservative Thinkers!
This isn't an "easy read," in the sense of a book you take along to the beach. Wilber takes a scholarly approach to laying out an argument, filled with "-isms" and "-ists," and many references to historic thinkers, philosophers, academics, and so forth.
Even so, if you exert the effort to shift mental gears into material at an adult reading level, it's a great book. Wilber has a particularly dry sense of humor, which shows through from time to time as he rips apart modern liberalism.
The book isn't at all a political treatise; it's rather an overview of how evolution works and why it works that way. It examines human history and how we, as human beings, have arrived at today's stress-filled, anxiety-ridden, near nervous breakdown.
Throughout the book, the central themes are "holons" and Wilber's four quadrants. Holons are a term for everything in existence acting both as a whole unto itself, and a part of something else. In his 20 tenets (explained at the start of the book), Wilber explains the dynamics at work between holons---how everything works together in existence.
The quadrants are a way to visually express the two main sides of everything. The one, Righthand side is the external--appearances, observable data, the objective "it" language. The other, Lefthand side is the internal--meaning, interpretive data, the subjective "I" and "we" language.
Wilber shows how mankind has evolved through three basic domains of reality: the physiosphere (atomic and molecular, physical interaction), biosphere (biochemical life), and noosphere (the mind and mental processing). He demonstrates most of humanity's philosophies and religions, along with how each one helped or hindered the progression toward more complexity and significance.
Although the book looks formidable, it really has only about 500 pages of core content. The remaining pages are Notes. In the main content, though, Wilber makes a devastating argument against modern-day "eco-feminism" and "whole-Earth" environmentalists. Any conservative who's fed up with the exclusive "religion" of environmentalism, radical feminism, and multiculturalism, will find this book tremendously refreshing!
On the other hand, Wilber takes an objective and fair approach to the overly intellecuatlized objectivity of modern day intellectual elitism. This balanced analysis of both the good and the bad is extremely helpful for anyone who really does want an overview of philosophic and theological history.
Finally, you'll likely find an excellent companion book in "Dumbing Down our Kids..." by Charles Sykes. Reading how the American educational system is destroying our children, then reading Wilber's analysis of historic philosophic trends, the two books come together with a massive "Ah Hah!" moment. Wilber has completely explained how the educational system has collapsed into the miserable anti-educational circus it's become.
Again: not such an easy book to "get into" right away, but if you take the time, it's well worth reading!
Personally I found this brilliant beyond words - but I'll try
We all love it when a book comes along that shatters our world apart, in the best sense, and provides meaning a coherence where there was only confusion and a lack of ability to articulate our experience of the world.
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, by Ken Wilber, is such a book for me. More than any book I have ever read this book has changed my life profoundly, and certainly for the better.
There's no doubt that this is an intimidating read, over 800 pages and a fair portion of them are technical endnotes. However, even without the endnotes, I have to disagree with the editorial reviewers, that the contents of the book are confusing. Far from frustrated, I was in fact delighted at the extraordinary amount of synthesis in this work, and while he has been criticised for his use of sweeping overgeneralisation (although he explicitly states that his approach uses broad orienting generalisations), no one has come out with a better set of generalisations and metatheoria to replace the ones he outlines here, and in subsequent books.
Wilber begins by looking at the state of the world in terms of the physical sciences, which somehow see the world as both winding up and down and how we can believably put together a theory (or metatheory - a theory of theories) that embraces the main orienting generalisations from the main areas of human enquiry AS WELL AS, and this is the important part, putting it into an evolutionary, developmental context that explicitly takes account of higher states of consciousness than just rational (Western, rational, reasonable mind that is the basis of Western society, mostly), into the transrational and the genuinely mystical or spiritual stages. If the second part of that sentence just put you off the book, well so be it, but the main reason for my love of this book is that it quietly tries to best explain how genuine spirituality (higher spiritual states and stages) can be logically, or we may so translogically, incorporated into what we know of the world through science and the various other knowledge disciplines - the humanities, systems theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics etc. That is, that spirit transcends and includes atoms, molecules, cells, theories, concepts, systems, institutions, dogma, religious traditions, etc, etc.
In the process he conceives of what he calls the four quadrants (the inner and outer perspective of the individual and collective) and outlines in some detail the nature of the basic unit of the universe as being a holon (a whole which is also part of a larger whole), which have become a major part of the increasingly popular and widely-used Integral model, aka AQAL (All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines, All States, All Types).
Along the way - hence the book title - he looks at how this new conception of reality would influence our approach to gender/feminism and ecology and in both cases, I think, his insights are extraordinary and both of these have seriously refocussed my whole view of the world.
For those of you who are interested in genuine transcendental spirituality in whatever form, you may just find this book an excellent antidote to the serious anti-intellectualism that is rife in spiritual circles, and may even find that these ideas form a kind of reorienting contextual framework in which a healthy spirituality can exist alongside every other thing in the kosmos.
Highly recommended
There is no question that Ken Wilber is a brilliant person who, although it is "his" vision, has a great vision for humanity.His intentions for the most part are very sincere and his ability to integrate such vast amounts of literature is unsurpassed.Most readers will agree that this is Wilber's most comprehensive work to date.If you have ample knowledge in the field of philosophy, spirituality, psychology, sociology, biology, physics etc, this book is certainly worth reading and the ideas put forth in this book are well worth contemplating.The only thing I didn't like too much about this book is that his writing is too one-sided.There is a place for these kinds of people who push for change with strong and convincing arguments.They serve as catalysts for social change in history.However, he seems so caught up in convincing the readers of his worldview that it actually takes away from his story.When people are truly confident in their views they usually are not so motivated to convince others to agree with them.The fact that other people may disagree or may not understand is also understandable to them.Despite this, I believe this book is a one of the best attempts to integrate many topics into one framework.Another absolutely fabulous book that does this on a small scale mostly in the field of psychology is Toru Sato's "Ever-Transcending Spirit".In contrast to "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality" it is actually readable for almost anyone without any expert background knowledge. In some ways, it goes beyond Wilber in that Wilber separates the four quadrants and Sato tries to integrate the four quadrants by using everyday experiences that relate to these quadrants and explaining how they go together.It is also an excellent book so I'd highly recommend it too!If you want to understand Wilber though, I found this to be the most satisfying.
Good ideas but buried in the past and ignores biology
'Anything that can be said can be said clearly`Ludwig Wittgenstein
`Heaven andEarth are inhumane--they view the myriadcreatures as straw dogs`TaoTe Ching
It is both amazing and fitting thatthis huge, jargon-laden(this book really needs a glossary!), heavily academicworkhas become a best seller in the world of the educated. One has to bededicated to learn the jargon and then plow through 551 pages of text and238 pages of notes. Meanwhile, we are told time andagain that this is just anoutline of what is to come!Â
This book and most of its sources arepsychology texts,though most of the authors did not realize it. It is abouthuman behaviorand reasoning-about why we think and act the way we do and howwe might change in the future. But (like all such discussionuntilrecently) none of the explanations are really explanationsand so they gave noinsight into human behavior. Nobody discusses themental mechanismsinvolved. It is like describing how a car worksby discussing the steering wheeland metal and paint and the wheelswithout any knowledge of the engine or drivetrain. In fact, likemost older 'explanations` of behavior, the texts quotedhereand the comments by Wilber are often more interesting for whatkinds ofthings they accept (and omit!) as explanations, andthe kind of reasoning theyuse, than for the actual content.Â
Aswith all reasoning and explaining onenow wants to know whichof the brains inference engines are activated toproduce the results. It is the relevance filters which determine what sortsofthings we can accept as appropriate data for each engine and theirautomaticand unconscious operation and interaction that determines what we can produceas an answer.Â
Cognitive and evolutionarypsychology are still notevolved enough to provide full explanationsbut an interesting start has beenmade. Boyer's `ReligionExplained` is a good place to see what a modernscientific explanation of human behavior looks like (though it completelymisses enlightenment!). Pinker's `How the mind Works` is a good generalsurveyand his `The Blank Slate` (see my reviews) by far the best discussionofthe heredity-environment issue in human behavior. They do notexplain all ofintelligence or thinking but summarize what isknown. See several of therecent texts (ie, 2004 onwards)  with evolutionary psychology in the title orthe web for furtherinfo.
We now recognize that the bases for art,music,math, philosophy, psychology, sociology, language and religion arefoundin the automatic functioning of templates or inferenceengines. This is why wecan expect similarities and puzzlesand inconsistencies or incompleteness andoften, dead ends. Thebrain has no general intelligence but numerousspecialized modules,each of which works on certain aspects of some problem andtheresults are then added, resulting in the feelings which lead tobehavior. Wilber, like everyone, can only generate or recognizeexplanations that areconsistent with the operations of his owninference engines, which were evolvedto deal with such thingsas resource accumulation, coalitions in small groups,social exchangesand the evaluation of the intentions of other persons. It isamazingthey can produce philosophy and science, and not surprising thatfiguring out how they work together to produce consciousness orchoice orspirituality is way beyond reach.
Wilber is a bookworm and he hasspent decades analyzing classic and modern texts. He is extremely bright, hasclearly had hisown awakening,and also knows the minutiae of Eastern religionas well asanyone.  I doubt there are more than a handful in the worldwhocould write this book. However, this is a classic case ofbeing too smart foryour own good and his fascination withintellectual history and his ability toread, analyze and writeabout hundreds of difficult books has bogged him down inthe past.
Though he severely criticizes the excesses of thethreemovements, this is a deconstructive and New Age Mysticaland postmoderninterpretation of religion, philosophy and thebehavioral sciences from avery liberal,spiritual point ofview--ie, without the worst of decon, pm and NAM jargon, rabid egalitarianismand antiscientific antiintellectualism.  As Boyer points out(p20), when fear and poverty give way to securityand wealth,the results of the inference engines change and you find religionchanging from appeasement rituals for the powerful gods ina hostile universeto self empowerment and control in a benevolentone (ie, New Age Mysticism).
He analyzes in somedetail the various world views ofphilosophy, psychology,sociology and religion, exposing their fatalreductionisticflaws with (mostly) care and brilliance, but most of the sourceshe analyzes are of questionable relevance today. They use terminology andconcepts that were already outdated when he was researching andwriting 15years ago. One has to slog thru endless pages of jargon -laden discussion of Habermas, Kant, Emerson, Jung et.al. to get to the pearls. He immerseshimself in Freudand the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams (eg, p92),though most now regard these as merely quaint artifacts of intellectualhistory.
 If one is up on philosophy and cognitiveandevolutionary psychology, most of this is archaic. Like nearlyeveryone(scholars and public alike--eg, see my review of Dennett'sFreedom Evolves),he does not understand that the basics of religion and ethics-- in fact all human behavior, are programmed into our genes.  A revolution inunderstanding ourselveswas taking place while he was writing these booksand itlargely passed him by.
If one has a good current education, itisdoubly painful to read this book (and most writing on human behavior). Painfulbecause it's so tortured and confusing and then againwhen you realized howsimple it is with modern psychology andphilosophy. The terminology and ideasare horrifically confusedand dated (but less so in Wilber's own analysis thanin hissources). We now think in terms of cognitive templates which evolvedabout 100,000 years ago (in most cases several hundredsof millions of yearsearlier in their original forms).  They operateautomatically, are notaccessible to consciousness and thereis abundant evidence that they severelylimit the behaviorial options for individuals and for society. His newpreface notes(p XV11)one such study, but the book needs a totalrewriting
Thereis an enormous resistance to accepting ourselves as partof natureand in particular, any gene based explanations of behavior. Likeallour thinking, these feelings are due to the operation of thecognitivetemplates, so perhaps it is the conflict between biologicalexplanations and ourautomatic intuitive psychology or socialmind systems that is responsible. Thesegenetic systems have probablyoperated for hundreds of thousands of years andthe new data fromscience is telling us the results of their operations (ourfeelingsabout what to do)are wrong. There is much interesting work to bedoneexplaining social, economic and political behavior from thisnew viewpoint.
Some jargon you will need is on pg X ofthe new preface where you findthat the constantly used vision-logicis postformal cognition or network-logicor integral-aperspectival(all points of view are equal and must be considered).He alsostates the postmodern manifesto here:all views equal, dependentonlimitless contexts, and merely interpretations. As he notesin great detail,this puts one on the slippery slope leading tomuch irrational and incoherentrant and there are very basic flawsin it. Nevertheless it virtually took overUS and European universitiesfor several decades and is far from dead. Youwill also needhis definition of eros from p528.
You get a terrificsamplingof bad writing, confused and outdated ideas and obsolete jargon.On p52there is a quote from Jakobson which can be replaced by`the inference enginesfor psychology and language develop aswe mature'; and paragraphs fromJantsch(p58) which say that evolutionis evolution and cells are cells and (p71)the environment changesas organisms evolve. There is a quote from Foucault toopen BookTwo (p327) which, translated from deconstructese, says `knowledgehelps to understand the world`. There is a long quote(p60-61) fromRupert Sheldrake which, when it is intelligibleat all, says things thattranslate as 'proteins are proteins'and 'cells are cells'. There are numerouslinguistic disastersfrom Habermas(eg, if you have time to waste, try figuringoutthe quotes on p77 or 150), but some are actually translatable, suchas thoseon p153-4, which say that people have morals so societyhas laws and languageevolved so society evolved. And lots ofthis from Wilber himself, as on p109where he spends most of thepage to say most mutations and recombinations failand the surviviorsare compatible with their evirons.
In spite of hisacquaintancewith Searle's work, he is often confused about consciousness. Hesays (p117-8) that we can regard whatever we want as conscious,but clearly,once we leave the realm of animals that have eyesand a brain and walk around,it becomes a joke. Likewise he ison very thin ice when discussing our interiorand the need tointerpret the minds of others. This is very far off the mark ifone knows some Searle, Wittgenstein and cognitive psychology.Likwise with the`explanations' of Wolf on p742 which are wrongfor the same reasons that'explanations' of consciousness arewrong. It must be true that mind and spiritare based in physics(at least there is no intelligible alternative) but wedon'tknow how to conceptualize this or even how to recognize such a concept.Many suspect we will never understand this, nor any of the fundamentals of the universe (eg, see my reviews of Kaku andDennett).
Hisnotes (p129) that cultural studies have madelittle headway but neither he norhis sources understand thatthey lacked any framework to do so--usually becausethey embracedthe sterile idea of the blank slate. They want to be factual,evenscientific, but they constantly veer off into fantasy. Hedelineates the integration of art, science and  moralityas the great task ofpostmodernism and he and others go toimmense lengths to make connections andorganize it all intoa coherent plan for thinking and living. However, Iwonderif it's really sensible or even possible. Life is not a gameof chess.Even in the limited realm of art or morality itis not at all clear thatthere is anything other than thatthese are parts of human experience whichdraws them together. Onecan put paintings and sculpture and clothing andbuildingsand stick figures in an art book but is this really gettingusanywhere? Please see my review of Hofstadter's `Godel, Escher,Bach' for muchmore on this. Boyer shows in detail how religionis due to a complex of brainsystems that serve many differentfunctions which evolved long before there wasanything like religion.
The brain has numerous templates that take indata, organizeit and relate it realtime to other data, but they each serveaspecific purpose and those purposes are not ART, MORALITY,RELIGION, andSCIENCE.Â
Cognitive psychology shows thatwe have many modules workingsimultaneously to produce any behaviorand that we relate to people in manyways for many reasons. One basic function is coalitional intuition. This gives usfeelings that guide our entrance into groups and our interactionswith other groups. We automatically and immediately overestimate thequalitiesof those in our group even if it's composed of randomly chosen total strangerswe met five minutes before. Likewise,we immediately underestimate the goodqualities of thosein other groups. This and many other automatisms guide andcommonlyrule individual behavior, groups, nations and the world, but hardlyanyone had a real understanding of this until quite recently. So, it is notsurprising that almost all of his sources fromPlato to Kant to Habermashave been wandering around inthe dark and that Wilber is frantically runningfrom one tothe other with a flashlight trying to help them find theirwayout of the woods. Â
He notes (p199) that theonly serious globalsocial movement to date was Marxism but thinks its fatal flaw wasreductionism.  It seems far more cogentto note that, like virtually all of modern society (and mostof his sources and to a significant extent this book), itdenied (or ignored or failed to understand) human nature and basicbiology. Nobody seems to notice that most social institutionsand ideals, (including equality and democracy)have this sameflaw. Debate on human nature,the environment and the future isendless,but reality is an acid that will eatthrough all fantasy. To paraphrase Lincoln, you can fool some of the peopleallof the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't foolmother nature anytime.
He details intellectual history(philosophy, psychology, religion, ecology, feminism, sociology,etc) and  showswhere nearly everyone went too far in thedirection of Ascent(to the spirit orreligious life only) or Descent(to science,materialism, reductionismor Flatland).  He trys to show how to heal the rifts by combining sense andsoul(spiritual and material life,science and religion, internal andexternal, individual and social).  Everything is related to everything else(holons in holarchies--ie, things in nestedhierarchies--see p26,135 for hisdefinition).
The Ageof Enlightenment denied the the spirit, theindividualand the interior life but developed art, morals and science andledto democracy, feminism, equality and ecology. This reductionismcompressed the intellect and the spirit into the Flatlandof science,rationality and materialism. He sees the lossof the spiritual point of viewwith the Age of Enlightenmentas the major factor responsible for the malaise of moderntimes, but `true spirituality` or `advanced religion`--myterms--(ie.,the quest for enlightenment), as opposed to `primitive religion`(everything else-see Boyer) was always rare. It is advanced religionhesees as the panacea, but it is primitive religion that themassesunderstand, and it too has only materialistic goals(money,power and all elseserving to replicate genes).
He understands that Jesus was a mysticin the same sense as Buddha andmany others, and that what was to become theCatholic church largelydestroyed his mystical aspects(personal searchfor enlightenment)in favor of primitive religion, priests, tithes and astructure seemingly modeled on the Roman army ( p363). But, for the early Christian church,as for most religion, the cognitive templateswere servants ofthe genes and enlightenment was not on themenu.   Jesus was not a Christian, hehad no bible (that we know of) and he did not believe in a god any more thandid Buddha. We have Christianity without the real intelligence of Jesus andthis, as he explains in detail, is one cause of the West's extended stay inFlatland. I am not a Christian nor even a theist butit is one of the saddest things in history that the enlightenedmaster who was to serve as the modelof spirituality forthe West had his vision of personal enlightenment destroyedand distorted by his own followers (but of course they are not reallyHIS followers).Â
Though he has read some ofJohn Searle's superbphilosophy,and has passing references to researchin cognitive psychology, it is amazing that he could do 20 years research in philosophy without studying Wittgenstein, religion without reading Osho and psychology without Buss, Tooby, Cosmideset al. Muchof cognitive and evolutionary psychology wasonly published in journals at thetime he was writing and Wilberhas almost no references to journals. But ,Wittgenstein is the most famous philosopher of modern times and Osho themost famous  spiritual teacher.  It is remarkable thatalthough he spendsmuch time in his books discussing theintellectual aspects of therapy(Freud, Beck, Maslow etc)and clearly understands that the spiritual path isthe ultimate therapy, he totally ignores Osho, who had the most advanced therapeutic community in history functioning worldwide for the last 30years. Osho never wrote a thick book containing a theory of human behavior,though his 200 books and many DVD's explain it as beautifullyand clearly as hasever been done.
Though he tries hardto heal the world, Wilber spendstoo much time in the airyrealms of intellectual debate. As apostmodernist, andholist new age mystic, he wants to unite art, morality and science,but science gets the short straw. As in some of his other books(eg, A Brief History of Everything-see my review), by far theworst mistakeshe makes(along with nearly all his sources and most of the planet) areignoring and misunderstanding basic biology.  This is apparent thoughout thebook. He starts chapter7 with a quote from Aurobindo, who had the samefailing. Theyhave no grasp of the fact that the eugenic effects of evolutionare driven by natural selection and when society became firmlyestablished,this ceased and it's been totally dysgenic ever since. Genetic engineers havebeen at work and they have released ona helpless world the most horrifically destructive mutantimaginable. Society is the engineer and we are that mutant. If one gets the big picture, preoccupation with the possibledestructiveeffects of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)-- otherthan ourselves-- issimply stupid and is perhaps a result of the operation of thecontagion templates discussed by Boyer.That is, the potential destructiveeffect of all the GMOs we willever make is unlikely to approach what humanshave already donethemselves.
He says (p 508, p519)that Darwin doesnot explain evolution,supposedly well known before him, and accuses him of`massiveobscurantism'(he should be saying this about most of his sources!) .The truth is that nothing in human behaviour or the worldor the universemakes sense except in the light of evolution and noperson did more to makethis clear than Darwin. The work beforehim was little more than idlespeculation and did not even approacha serious scientific treatment. This iswhy it had NO EFFECT onscience or society. Of course Darwin did not knowgenetics norplate tectonics,and modern Neodarwinism adds many refinements, but it shows a total misunderstanding of science and history tosaythat this invalidates or diminishes his contributions.  Wilberis clearlysliding sideways into the Creationist camp and onecan only speculate as towhich of his inference engines producethis. He shows in many places that he hasa poor grasp of genetics andevolution. Eg., on p561--as Dawkins has sopatiently explained,the unit of evolution is the gene, and none of the otherthingsWilber mentions work as a genetic unit. Though he lists `The SelfishGene` in his bibliography, it's clear he has not understoodit, and it's 30years old.  Dawkins has written half a dozensuperb works since and there arehundreds of others.
Wilberseems to have an allergy to good biologybooks--most of thosehe quotes are very old and others are classics ofconfusion. He wastes a page (p51) on the idea (mostly due to Gould andEldredge)of punctuated evolution, which is likely of no interest. Gouldlovedto make a big fuss about his `discoveries` and his energygot him alot ofairtime, but when all was said and done, he hadnothing new to say and draggedmillions into his own confusions(as Dawkins,Conway Morris and many others havenoted). Yes, evolutionis sometimes faster but so what? Sometimes it rains alittle,sometimes a lot. If you zoom in, in time or space, you alwayssee moredetail, and if you zoom out it starts to look the same.Gould was alsoresponsible for the `spandrels of San Marcos` debacleand, with his Marxistcolleagues Lewontin and Rose, for endlessinsipid attacks on `deterministbiology`, including the scandalousverbal and physical assaults on E.O Wilson(who, unlike themselves,made numerous major contributions to biology). Modernresearch(eg,see Pinker and Boyer) makes it clear that Wilson was right on themoney.
 It is quite careless to say (p775) that thereis no singlepregiven world. Perhaps he only means we oughtto be multicultural,egalitarianetc., but if there really werenone,then how can we live and communicate? Thisis the uglinessof postmodernism creeping in. A large dose of Wittgensteinand cognitive psychology is an appropriate cure. Neither Wilbernor Derrida norFoucault ( nor most people)understand thatthere MUST be a single point of view or life would be impossible. This single point of view, resident in ourgenes, is integralto how we think and behave and largely dictates the vagariesofphilosophy, politics and religion. The cognitive templatesthat underlie language, thought and our perception of realitylogically must be the sameand the evidence for this is overwhelming. Even the smallest changes, a few  genes gone wrong, and youhave autism, imbecility orschizophrenia.
The brute fact thatWilber (and most of the world) largelyignores, is that thereare 6 billion sets of selfish genes carryingout their programs to destroy the earth. They are an acid that will eatthroughany intellectual conclusions, egalitarian fanatasies and spiritualrebirths. Selfishness, dishonesty, tribalism and shortsightedness arenot dueto accidents of intellectual or spiritual history.  He says that the lack ofspirit is destroying the earth,and though there is this aspect to things,it is much moreto the point to say that it is selfish genes thatare responsible. Likewise, he says `Biology is no longer Destiny`, but it isan easily defensible point of view that the reverse is farmore likely.  The attempt to understand history in termsof ideas ignores biology anddenies human nature. Selfish genesalways live in Flatland and less than 1000 people in all of human history have escaped the tyranny of the monkey mind into enlightenment.
Most of chapter 6 on myth andmagic isoutdated, confused or just wrong. To give just a fewexamples, we now understandthat most of a child's psychologicaland social development is built in and doesnot have to be learned(eg, pg 233-4). The child does not have to deconstructanything--theinferences engines do it all (p260). Joseph Campbell is quotedextensivelyand he too was clueless about how we develop and how to explainthedifferences and similarities in cultures (p245-50). Eg, Campbellsays mythologycan only lay claim to childhood, but a look aroundthe world shows how falsethis is and a reading of Boyer tellswhy. His discussion of thinking about thenonfactual on pg 279to 80 is now referred to as running the inference enginesin decoupledmode. To his contorted comments in the middle of pg 560 (andfinally....)I want to say `explanation ends with the templates! . P580-4 and591-3 are so full of dubious and plain wrong statements I don'teven want tobegin but suggest that Wilber and the reader startwith Searle's `The Mystery ofConsciousness`. Time and againit is clear he shares the lack of a scientificviewpoint withmost of his sources. What info or procedures can solve thequestionsof consciousness or of any social science and philosophical theories?How do you recognize an answer when you see it? He and they goon for pages andwhole books without ever having any idea(eg,see my review of Dennett's FreedomEvolves).
On p702-bottom- he talks about the fulcrum drivingdevelopment but ifone understand templates (and I mean here and elsewhere theentirecorpus of cognitive and evolutionary psychology) then one eitherneeds torewrite this or eliminate it. Ditto for most of pgs 770-77.The tortured proseon pg 771-2 is only saying that the templatesare probed by drugs or other inputbut not changed and that nobodyknows (in a way they can clearly convey) whatthese are. The backgroundor intersubjective worldspace is the templates andthey developvery early in children and then stay fixed for life. The deliberatedestruction of Jesus` mysticism has created a powerful bias againsthigherconsciousness in the West. Though he does not understandor discussenlightenment, Boyer gives the basis for understandinghow and why thishappened.
Wilber embraces a simple utilitarianism(greatest good forgreatest number)--ie, the greatest depth for hegreatest span(p334). This basic principle of much philosophy,religion and economicshas serious problems and is probablyunworkable. Which people should we make happy and how happyand when (ie, now or in the future)? On what basis do wedistributeresources now and how much do we save for the future population,andwho decides and how to enforce this? He calls upon our Basic Moral Intuition(ie, the operation of our templates, as we now know), but ourBMI is not really to help others but to help ourselves, andthe few thousand (or let's bevery optomistic and say few million) who are spritually advanced do not runthe worldand never will. The BMI-- eg, social exchange, coalitional intuitions,intuitive psychology, etc, evolved to serve our own interests(not those of thegroup--if, like Wilber, you think this way pleaseread some of Dawkin's books)and in any case is hopelessly atsea in the modern world with it's advancededucation, instantcommunications, firearms, mood altering drugs, clothes andcosmetics,a huge and mobile population and vanishing resources.
Â
Instead of the intellectual or spiritual approach Wilber takes tohistory, otherstake ecological,genetic or technogical approaches(eg,Diamonds 'Guns, Germs and Steel' or Pinkers 'The Blank Slate'). Inthelong run, it appears that only biology really mattersand we see daily howoverpopulation is overwhelming all attemptsto civilize the masses.  Thedemocracy and equality which Wilbervalues so highly are means created byselfish genes to facilitate their destruction of the planet. In spite ofthe hope that a new age is dawningand we will see the biological and psychicevolution ofa new human, the fact is that we are the most degenerate speciesthere ever was and the planet is nearing collapse. The billions ofyears ofeugenics (natural selection) that thrust life up out of the slime and gave us the amazing ability to write and read books like this is now over.  Thereis no longer selection forthe healthier and more intelligent and in fact theyproducea smaller percentage of the children every year. Nature doesnottolerate physical and mental aberrations but society encourages them. Ourphysical and mental peak was probably CroMagnon manor maybe even Neanderthals(who had larger brains-yes I knowthey seem not to have been our ancestors)about 100,000 yearsago.  It seems plausible that only genetic engineering and an enlightened oligarchy can save us.
He thinks (eg,p12 etc.) that itis our fractured world view(ie, denial ofthe spirit) that is responsible forour ecological catastrophesand preoccupation with material goods but this is another exampleof the denial of human nature. Nobody views heartconditions or Alzheimerdisease as due to a fractured world view, but few seemto have any problem thinking you can change the fundamentals of behaviorjust by education or psychological manipulation. Modern sciencerefutes thisview  conclusively (see Pinker, Boyer etc). Theintuitive psychology templatestell us that we can manipulatethe behavior of others, but these templates were evolved hundredsof thousands of years ago, and they often fail to give correct results in modern contexts. Nearly every parent thinks theycanprofoundly influence the adult character (patience, honesty,irritability,depression, persistence, compulsiveness etc.)of their children in spite ofclear evidence to the contrary(eg,Pinker).
Wilberdefends Piaget, but like himhe shows many places that he does not understandthat the childdoes not have to learn the important things--they are built inandit only has to grow up. There seems to be no evidence that anyof ourtemplates change with time. The things that we learn aremostly trivial incomparison(ie, even a computer can learn them!).
His sources are mostlylost in confusion and jargon but he is brilliant and if one bothers to readhis explanationsand translate Wilberspeak into English, it usually makessense. On pg 545- 7 he explains holonic ecology. Here is a translation.Allorganisms have value in themselves and are related to allothers in theecosystem and we must wake up spiritually. Thereis a web of life(ie, Gaia orecosystem) and all have intrinsicvalue but higher organisms have more value,which requires a spiritualpoint of view. Neither the spiritual or scientificapproach worksalone(ie, dualism is bad). Translated, it loses most ofit's appeal but it is not fair to deny the poetry and majestyof his vision.But this does not excuse him from writing clearly.Opacity is a nearly universal characteristic of the bookshe treats here.  However, when Katz wrotea book denigratingmysticism Wilber took the time to do a `Searleian` analysistoshow how incoherence has passed for scholarship (p629-31). Unfortunately,hedoes not continue this throughout the book and uses the jargon-ladenincoherence of Habermas and others to explain other vague orincoherent texts. Â
Inthe USA, fundamentalist Christians andthe Republican party arenow the most powerful  single forcefor planetary destruction. They are against population control and for  environmentaldevastation in order to maximize the number and resource useof their genes.  This was a rational strategy when it wasfixed in thegenes but it is suicidal now. The spiritualrebirth he talks about is not thatof born again Christians.Â
His view is that it is thepoor and ignorant who arethe major environmental problem and that this issomehow dueto our Flatland approach, so if we just wake up, get spritual and help them out this will solve it. However, the rich destroyas much as 20times more than the poor per capita and the thirdworld will only pass thefirst in C02 production about 2025. Everyone is part of the problem and ifone does the math (vanishingresources divided by increasing population) it'sclearthat a  drastic reduction in population is necessary. Likeso many, hesuggests living lightly on the earth, but tolive (and above all, toreproduce), is to do harm and ifreproduction remains a right then it's hardto see anyhope for the future. As is politically correct, heemphasizes rightsand says little about responsibilities.   It is a reasonableview that if society is to accept anyone as human, they must takeresponsibilityfor the world and this must take precedenceover their personal needs. It isunlikely that any governmentwill implement this, and equally unlikely thatthe world willcontinue to be a place any civilized person will wish to livein
For all who have undertaken the search...
If you have come of age and decided that no one tradition can claim a monopoly on absolute truth, you will find yourself in a real conundrum.You will be faced with thousands of years of unfolding history, philosophy, science, and knowledge.You will be faced with billions of years of unfolding existence.Thanks to this book, you will not have to face it alone.
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is a true masterpiece of unification, synthesis, and brilliance written by America's most enlightened philosopher.Ken Wilber wrote his first major work at the age of 23 and has since written nearly 20 books addressing the pressing issues of the body, spirit, and mind.This book stands as a masterwork, laying out in detail a development framework for understanding the unfolding evolution of life, society, human development, and spirituality.Wilber's Brief History of Everything covers much of the same territory in less detail, but in a more accessible format.
Those who refuse to close their minds to the wisdom of the traditions and the science of the world, but would hope to have a framework to comprehend without deriding others will find in this book something truly remarkable.
Who is right Freud or the Buddah?Who is right science or religion?Wilber's work allows the reader to respect and regard the work of all those in the history of mankind who chose not to live unexamined lives.
I would recommend Wilber's "A Brief History of Everything" as an introduction.If you find something wonderful there, take up the challend of "Sex Ecology Spirituality".Wilber's work is a gift to mankind.
... Read more |
