Blog — October, 2005

Stupid, stupid Red Sox president and owners, screwing Theo Epstein around.

So I guess we Sox fans will now be waiting another 86 years for the next World Series win.

It's still not quite as bad as the incompetent ownership and über-management of the L.A. Dodgers. But it's close enough.

Okay, this is oogie: Hufu.

[W]hen it turns out that expressing reservations about the Potter phenomenon can buy you a death threat, it's worth asking: Is this degree of protective devotion some form of mass hysteria, or a hopeful development in otherwise unreaderly times? (David Kipen; more)

Well, I really think it's inestimably more likely that the defensiveness on the part of Potter-readers toward anyone who disses their hero (author J. K. Rowling) arises from a combination of:

• The need to belong to a (socially) "saved" group, and be "special" in that membership. When you criticize the hero/founder/author of the group, or his/her best work, you jeopardize the group's very existence. You thus also put at risk the "social salvation" of its members, in their having finally found a place where they fit in
  
  
• Cognitive dissonance on the part of the same people, who have publicly committed to a certain point of view, and then found the validity of that commitment threatened. So, they unconsciously twist that around in their minds until, in order for them to be right, any fault-finding others must be completely wrong. That is, critics of their perspective must be a collection of "dorks," "idiots," "schmucks" and (in the case of denigrators of Ken Wilber's integral community) "untrustworthy assholes"—being thus reviled, ironically, in direct proportion to the validity of their criticisms

Exactly the same dynamics, based on thoroughly/experimentally established principles of social psychology, apply in cliques and cults, of course: They're universal principles of human behavior, which have no lower or upper age limit. (Ironic that Kipen quotes from The Manchurian Candidate and its focus on brainwashing, while missing these basic points as to how human psychology actually works.)

Myth No. 3: All critics are frustrated writers. It might be more accurate to say that all writers are frustrated writers. Frustration goes with the territory, whether you write criticism, novels or graffiti.

Well, yes. But the point is that anyone who can actually do the work, as opposed to simply finding fault with others' best efforts, would never be content to merely function as a critic, when he could rather be creating worthwhile art. There's no critic (I'm certain) who wouldn't like to be able to create (e.g.) literature or music at a professional level; it's just that they've tried ... and failed. And it's perfectly possible for their subsequent critical evaluations of other real writers' and musicians' work to be unconsciously skewed by envy, while still being able to enjoy "some parts of the book and not others." (That Kipen seems to think it would be an "all or nothing" affair in his own case is rather astonishing. Even Salieri's envy of Mozart didn't mean that he couldn't find any value in the latter's music. Yes, I know it was just a movie.)

Myself, I've never actually read any of J. K. Rowling's books, nor do I have any plans to. And with regard to my own criticisms of Ken Wilber's ideas, for example: Yes, I can do the work.

I also haven't read the full Potter review which gave rise to the "death threats" against Kipen. If it's as superficial and uninsightful as his above defenses, however, it's just as likely that he's in the wrong as that the problem is with Rowling and her writing abilities.

Then again, in reading over Robert Carroll's application of cognitive dissonance to "pseudoscience" versus "faith-based irrationality," he's hardly on the beam there either, in his parroting of simplistic ideas as to why people join cults:

Nobody would join a cult if the pitch were: "Follow me. Drink this poisoned-but-flavored water and commit suicide."

Really? All you have to append to that statement is what would typically be implied anyway: "... by drinking the Kool-Aid and committing suicide, you'll gain eternal salvation." Given that promise, people would be lining up to join.

Significantly, Jim Jones claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. That fact is vitally relevant.

No one would believe Jones' claim unless they had been "brainwashed," etc.? Sure.... And no one would believe that Jesus was the sole Savior of humankind (a proposition even less likely to be true than was Jones' claimed reincarnation) unless ... unless what? They, too, had been brainwashed or subtly coerced? What causes the conversion to any religion? Whatever it is, it's obviously present to a huge degree in our daily lives, not merely in recognized "cults" where the members end up drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. (Whatever the psychological details may be, isn't it almost self-evident that people join cults for comparable reasons to why they join cliques? And that they can't easily exit the former any more easily than they can leave the latter, again for fully comparable reasons, in suffering the punishment of "social damnation"? The intensity may differ, but surely the core psychological dynamics are the same. Both situations, after all, are in large part simply variations on "follow the leader.")

Further, anyone who would simply think about how people regularly join abusive communities, knowing full well what goes on in them but believing that the (alleged) abuse is for their own good, would not continue to imagine that no one would ever walk into such a situation if they just knew what they were getting themselves into from the beginning. They walk in anyway, because the promised (psychological and salvational) rewards outweigh (they think) the risks. That's the equation for all social-group membership, isn't it? Short of physical restraint, no one would ever remain in a group if they weren't getting something out of it, after all.

Carroll knows very well of Yogananda's "scientific," prove-it-for-yourself emphasis, from his own brief participation in the SRF cult (on "Sunday mornings" at least, so from a relatively safe distance), decades ago. He thus already has all of the data he needs, from his own experiences, to know that the line he's trying to draw between "pseudoscience" and "faith-based irrationality" is hazy at best. He also has a copy of the PDF of my STG, which he does not appear to have read with any attention. So if he still doesn't get how basic social psychological principles are overwhelmingly relevant when people join cults, and instead just quotes from the accepted authorities in the cult-studies field without understanding why their presentations are so inadequate, there's no admirable reason or excuse for that.

More, from Carroll:

It should also be remembered that in most cases people have not arrived at their irrational beliefs overnight. They have come to them over a period of time with gradually escalated commitments.

True, but such a red herring: That escalation of (public) commitment is a feature of every group you might ever want to join, including every romantic relationship. In none of those were all of the negatives or irrationalities ever explained to you up-front, for you to make a fully "informed" decision. So rephrase it this way: Would you still want to be a member of the skeptical community if you knew, going in, that the #1-voted skeptic of the twentieth century has provably fabricated information on numerous occasions just to get you to go along with him and to discredit the "believers" with whom he so vehemently disagrees? (Exhibits A—from Carroll's own skepdic website—B and C.) "Surely not!" you say?

Most people would still happily join. 'Cause the social benefits outweigh the risks, right? (Note: Carroll "would not miss" Randi's annual Amazing Meeting. For my own part, I live a relatively full and rich life without it. One thing is certain: If Carroll or Randi had caught any "believer" red-handed, provably fabricating such important information as in the exhibits above, it wouldn't just be buried in a "footnote," to only be discovered by chance. It'd be fuckin' Front Page News. As it should; but "sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.")

I am certainly skeptical of any and all paranormal claims by now, and have found much good and competent debunking of those on skeptical websites (including Carroll's and Randi's) and in their books. But to be a member in good standing of that community? No thank you. Not with respected leaders like that. 'Cause as soon as you're in, you start unconsciously deferring to the recognized authorities, attaching far more weight to their collective wisdom and veracity than they could ever deserve. See under "Milgram, Stanley, obedience experiments of." (Not to mention that even professional physicists behave just as viciously toward their own ostracized "heretics" [e.g., David Bohm] as does the average cult, explicitly freezing them out for no greater sin than having questioned the accepted doctrine, and having come up with better solutions than the "gurus" there are willing to entertain:

[R]eactions to the dissidents, Bohm in particular, had been almost maniacal in the past, to the point that it was considered impolite by many even to mention the name of this Nobel-caliber physicist in such a connection....

Anyway, these are Carroll's own regurgitated (from others) ideas on cults:

Three ideas seem essential to the concept of a cult. One is thinking in terms of us versus them with total alienation from "them." The second is the intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to recruit and hold members. The third is the charismatic cult leader.

Yikes.

1. You'll find the "us vs. them" mentality more in the skeptical community (i.e., "rational, skeptical 'us'" vs. the toxic "believers"—"them"!) than practically anywhere else. You'll also find it, to varying degrees, in any group of people with a common interest or set of beliefs which allows them to feel "special" or (socially, psychologically, or spiritually) "saved." You'll indeed often find it in full-blown cults too, where the split can be near-total ... but still needn't be. (It isn't in Yogananda's SRF, for example; but that still doesn't make it easy for the monks there to leave, when walking away equates to an admission of spiritual failure)

2. The Roman Catholic Church has isolation in their monasteries, self-criticism and humiliation in their confessionals, indoctrinated fear of what will happen to their members if they should leave, paranoia that other groups are out to get them, control of information via their indices of prohibited books, and auto-hypnosis in their monotonous, chanted liturgies—all of which elements are listed by Carroll (via Kevin Crawley) as being "subtle indoctrination techniques." They also certainly began with a charismatic leader, and have a firm boundary line between the saved members inside the group and the damned masses outside. (Anyone who grew up in the Catholic Church, as Carroll did [he mentions "Masses, hymns, and sermons" in his past], already knows all that, for Christ's sake. And if you doubt the strength of the boundary between "us and them" in any "safe, traditional Christian church," and the necessity to remain on the right side of that line, consider the Inquisition and the witch hunts. Both were explicit products, not simply of some nebulous "mass hysteria," but of exactly the same established traditional religions which even the vast majority of cult-studies professionals will readily encourage you to join.) Good Lord, you don't suppose...? (As far as SRF goes, what kept me in that fairy tale-believing cult for a decade had nothing whatsoever to do with "subtle indoctrination techniques.") It was actually close to a year ago that a lifelong atheist I happened to get to chatting with put the idea to me that the Catholic Church was "the biggest cult around." I hadn't looked at it like that previously, but the more research I did, and the more I thought about what cults are, the more it became clear to me that he was absolutely right. That's the thing about cult studies: very often, people who haven't "learned" too much of the inadequate theory that Carroll parrots (he really doesn't add any of his own insight to it; it's all just regurgitated from other "expert" sources) see things much more clearly, via simple common sense, than do the trained "experts." 'Cause, more often than not, those same "objective experts" grew up in a "chosen group," left that to join a full-blown cult, and then returned to their childhood source of salvation. So, they now have little choice but to twist their theories and definitions to make the traditional groups "safe," even in the face of their histories of witch hunts and the like. (Yes, I had posted this point quite differently, before. I was in something of a rush, and should have thought about it overnight first)

3. One can be held in sway every bit as much by an infallible ideology or theology, even one that is thousands of years old, as by a "charismatic leader"; the whole "charismatic leader" focus is just another red-as-communist-China herring—a correlation, not a causation. (Okay, Yogananda, on a good day at least, was charismatic; but so is Donald Trump)

(The tortures and damnations of both the Catholic/Protestant witch hunts and the Inquisition make even something as toxic as Scientology look relatively innocuous by comparison. Were such behaviors to occur in any "nontraditional" environment, they would be recognized for the cultish actions which they are. As, for that matter, would the death threats received by the courageous Dixie Chicks a couple of years ago, from "brainwashed" citizens of that "greatest, saved nation," whose leaders cannot be deeply questioned without the questioners being damned as "un-American," particularly in times of the country's periodic God-sanctioned wars against external evils.)

So, if you know that the most respected leaders of a community will fabricate information to manipulate you, overlook their peers' blatant dishonesties, and present themselves as experts after having read all of half a dozen books on a subject (e.g., of cults, as above), and you still want to be a part of that society ... well, good luck to you. (Also take serious note of Martin Gardner's false portrayal of Krishnamurti in Skeptical Inquirer. The fact that his superficial and dishonest hatchet job made it into that magazine shows you just how thoroughly the ideas there are vetted. If that article was sent out for peer review at all, whoever did the review obviously lacked the knowledge-base to competently judge the paper's validity.)

And, as with all such communities: If the leaders are so provably foolish and unreliable, what must the dregs be like? Well, the "dregs" in that case are skeptics in Australia, soaked in sheep-dip and railing against the vegetarian diet for allegedly leading to nutritional deficiencies, which they "don't want their children" to be exposed to.

As a vegetarian for nearly twenty years by now, I protest.

Incidentally, the book by Conway and Siegelman listed in the "further reading" section of Carroll's "cult" page has not been taken seriously within cult studies for many years; and Walter Martin's books are all done from a frightened, Bible-thumping Christian perspective, where anything non-Christian is inherently "bad." (Yes, I have read Martin's The New Age Cult, and at least one chapter from Kingdom of the Cults. If I had found his one-sided books to be the least bit useful as cult-references, I would have included them in my own bibliography, for STG, which covers just about every other relevant book known to humankind—though missing a few on Jonestown. Like the amazon.com write-up for Kingdom says: "This comprehensive new edition equips readers from every walk of life to use biblical truth to counter the efforts of cults to masquerade as mainstream Christians." That's going to be an unbiased, much less insightful, source of information, worthy of recommendation? Personally, I'd be embarrassed to list the book as a resource at all, much less as being among the "top ten" which I had read! And on one of the definitive skeptical sites, too. Shite.) Lifton and Langone's books are generally insightful and reliable, as are Steven Hassan's. (I have personally corresponded with Mr. Hassan; he has actually read large parts of STG—though the manuscript at that point contained only the first hints of the Gurus and Prisoners chapter. He further suggested only a few minor corrections when I spoke directly with him on the phone about it in the summer of 2004.)

Carroll's "knowledgeable" treatment of that whole subject, by contrast, is not merely inadequate, it's downright Wilber-esque. And ironically, he's rejected kw's philosophizing on the basis of only the first chapter in A Brief History of Everything. Granted, it would have been generous of him to read further after encountering Wilber's "half-truths and lies" (Carroll's phrase) on the subject of evolution, there. But still, being properly informed about what you're publicly supporting or rejecting never hurts.

Caving to the leaders of any dictatorship is worth at least a "Boo," after all; even if the year that I worked for that community-owned organic food store in Winnipeg, in the late '90s—I was quite the "complete drop-out," y'know—taught me everything I need to know about how there is no such thing as an employer (or product supplier) with impeccable integrity in this world.

Not Microyahooglesoft, not nobody.

This is Ken Wilber speaking:

I think everybody should love me, and when someone doesn't, I get nervous. So, as a child, I overcompensated like crazy. Class president, valedictorian, even captain of the football team. A frantic dance for acceptance, an attempt to have everybody love me. (Grace and Grit, page 238)

But Tony Schwartz tells us on p. 331 of What Really Matters that Wilber "...captained the football team in junior high school."

Junior high school! I'd presumed that it was high school varsity, but now I learn it was in junior high school. Was it even the varsity team, the junior varsity team, or was he once captain of a team during PE?

I, too, had assumed that Kaptain Kwadrant's legendary gridiron exploits had been enacted at a post-pubescent level.

For my own part, I once almost beat Wayne Gretzky in a shootout, but then his mommy made him go inside, 'cause his supper was getting cold, and he had to do his homework.

(Note to self: Look up where The Great One grew up, see if story makes sense.)

And then there was that time when the young kw so nearly won the Nebraska State Spelling Bee:

Teacher: Spell "chrysanthemum."

Kenny: K-H-R....

If you're feeling a little American today ... or if you simply want to have your cake and eat it too: The Wave Your Flag Cake.

Or, with Halloween coming up, how about this?!!

Subject: Sunrise, Sunset

October 15, 2005

Sunset in Toronto today, off'a my balcony:

---

From Ken Wilber's (2001) CD, Speaking Of Everything:

KW: U.C. Irvine had been given, I don't know, a $500,000 dollar grant or something to do another series of psychic research. So Roger [Walsh] was calling people saying, you know, what they really want to do is come up with the experiment that will just prove once and for all that psychic events happen. And they were trying to sort of have a little informal discussion about what should that experiment be. New ways to bend spoons, or make dice show up the right number of times. And I said basically that I think that was a misuse of money. Because the real problem is that we have meta-analysis on psychic phenomena....

E.com [i.e., Jordan Gruber, of enlightenment.com]: Yeah, Dean Radin's book. It's fabulous.

KW: That's right. It puts it beyond dispute, and every statistician agrees. [Nuh-uh!!!] So I said take your $500,000 and buy a fucking PR firm.

E.com: Right.

KW: Because you people just have bad press. Another experiment is not going to change. It's already one hundred percent certain.

What a load of utter garbage! What an untrustworthy bastard! What a fucking dishonest moron. How can Wilber bullshit through his teeth like that, and still keep a straight face?

Here's the proper conclusion following a statistical refutation of Radin's attempted analysis by Ray Hyman and J. McCrone, from The Skeptic's Dictionary. It refers to exactly the same book which kw stupidly regards as being unassailable; took me literally five seconds of Internet research (skepdic.com -> search for "Radin" -> presto! first result) to find it:

Based on the results of these experiments, Radin claims that "researchers have produced persuasive, consistent, replicated evidence that mental intention is associated with the behavior of ... physical systems" (Radin 1997: 144). That sounds like a hasty conclusion to me. He also claims that "the experimental results are not likely due to chance, selective reporting, poor experimental design, only a few individuals, or only a few experimenters" (Radin 1997: 144). He's probably right except for the bit about it being unlikely that the experimental results are due to chance.

And note how, at that same skepdic link, all of the papers quoted to refute Radin's 1987 meta-analysis claims were published prior to Dean's own (1997) book. The idea that "informed skeptics" agree with his conclusions is thus complete bullshit, to put it mildly.

(Radin's work is surely a significant part of the "evidence" which kw thinks reductionistic views of reality cannot account for, and which he laughably believes supports the transpersonal aspects of his integral theory. Truly pathetic.)

Where, then, did Wilber get the confidently presented but brutally untenable idea that Radin's (1997) work was actually valid, much less inarguably so? Why, from text in Radin's own book, of course, as quoted on the enlightenment.com website:

"Informed opinion even among skeptics, shows that virtually all the past skeptical arguments against psi have dissolved in the face of overwhelming positive evidence," and "informed skeptics today agree that chance is no longer a viable explanation for the result obtained in psi experiments."

Note how the already indefensible "informed skeptics today agree" from Radin becomes the even worse "every statistician agrees" when processed through kw's Swiss-cheese whiz-brain. (Presumably Radin was referring there to ostensible "skeptics" like the dupes at Skeptical Investigations, including Larry Dossey, Rupert Sheldrake, Gary Schwartz, Brian Josephson ... and Radin himself. "Informed" skeptic is a relative term; as is "competent.")

So, maybe the star of "Leave It To Wilber" has actually read the book in question ... or maybe he's just quoting blurb-like statements again as if they were ironclad "scientific" proof. Either way, his claims are utterly bogus.

I already knew about Wilber's idiotic endorsement of the QLink pendant. But this is a new integral low.

Wilber ignores the details which he doesn't want to see, yes. He also fabricates "data" out of thin air to suit his addled "theories." But on top of both of those, he is simply and inherently not psychologically competent to judge anything that might touch reality enough to be testable.

Here's how one cogent reader of James Randi's column suggested competently testing the QLink thingamabob which Wilber is so convinced (merely from his own imaginings) has real effects:

First, a volunteer not communicating with the tester takes ten QLink devices and ten dummy devices, which are identical, but have been disabled. The volunteer makes a list of numbers from 1 to 20 and randomly numbers the devices, keeping track of which is which. Now, someone else chooses any 10 of these 20 units and takes them to our friend Herbert. His job is to separate the good ones from the phonies. If what he claims is true, he should be able to use a subject (or ten separate ones) and determine, without fail, which are which. With ten units, he has a one-in-1024 probability of getting them all right by chance. And I'll bet a case of premium tofu that he can't do it!

On the other hand, Wilber's standards of "proof" for the QLink go this way:

[T]he amount of scientific evidence on [the QLink] so far is small, but very, very promising. You've seen some of it on TV, and stuff.

Oy fuckin' vey. What is this, Truth By Infomercial? (Actually, since Tony "Walk On Fire" Robbins idiotically endorses the same product....)

Just how snuggly-wuggly is Wilber in bed with the makers of these new "technologies"? As he himself notes in Excerpt G from the forthcoming installment of his Kosmos trilogy (a "trilogy in one part," so far):

Any good model open up lines of further research, and the integral or AQAL model is no exception. I have been developing many of these research agendas in conjunction with Bob Richards, co-founder of Clarus, Inc. [maker of the QLink] and a vice president of Integral Institute. We would be glad to discuss these issues with interested parties.

You'll also find Richards' name in the Integral Business section of the founding members of the Integral Institute, as the "head of the Integral Business branch." (He's also on the Advisory Board for the Chopra Foundation, headed by Deepak Chopra.)

Wilber explicitly doesn't want money to be wasted on doing any more psi-related experiments, as it's already been "proved" that such psychic powers exist (except that, no, it hasn't; not even close). My God—one hardly knows whether to laugh, or cry.

So take your "$500,000," Kensho, and buy a fucking brain. And some fucking integrity, you reprehensible bullshit artist. How do you even sleep at night? And how can the lemmings in your integral community keep swallowing your provable deceptions? How can 95%+ of them so desperately need to hear those blatant, inexcusable deceits?

If it weren't for weak people like that who can't face reality, Kensho, no one would even know your name ... except in the sense that they know Velikovsky's name: as a laughingstock. And note the professional opinions of that man and his work, quoted at skepdic.com:

The less one knows about science, the more plausible Velikovsky's scenario appears.... —Leroy Ellenberger

I would not trust any alleged citation by Velikovsky without checking the original printed sources. —Michael Friedlander

Remind you of anyone, Ken? Hint: Have you looked in the mirror lately? And do you recognize those characteristics as being hallmarks of quack (integral) philosophy, just as surely as they are signs of quack science?

If it looks like an integral duck....

The less one knows about spirituality, psychology, philosophy, and parapsychology, the more plausible Wilber's integral scenario appears. I would not trust any alleged citation by Wilber without checking the original printed sources.

Be honest, Kenny: That 160 IQ you supposedly tested at was from a quiz in a Cracker Jack box, wasn't it?

Of course, there are people in the world with real 160+ IQs. People such as Mama Cass Elliot, of the Mamas and the Papas:

Cass was always smart; in high school she had an IQ of more than 165.

—Michelle Phillips, California Dreamin', p. 56.

I was at Duke University to be a doctor, immediately knew I didn't want to do that, and in effect just quit going to classes entirely, and got straight C's which was unheard of because I was an A-student and valedictorian and all that kind of, you know, I was the perfect All-American kid until I completely dropped out. And so then I'm reading Krishnamurti and doing Zen and drinking beer and partying and it was absolutely ridiculous. But out of that, I realized like very quickly I had to sort of get into this interior growth and not just exterior....

The period from around 18 to around 22 I think was some of the worst time in my life, because I was dropping out. And this is very, for a conventional kid, it was very hard. So I left Duke, I wasn't going to be a doctor, and so on. I immediately went back to college because I really didn't want to fight in Vietnam.

At Wikipedia, "drop out" means:

• "[T]o initiate cultural changes ... by removing themselves from the existing society"
  
  
• "A voluntary detachment from involuntary commitments like school, the military, and corporate employment" —Timothy Leary

His Integral Highness, however, defines his dropping out as:

• cutting classes at Duke
  
  
• getting C's at a top university instead of A's in a suburban high school
  
  
• "reading Krishnamurti and doing Zen"
  
  
• "drinking beer and partying"

What a joke! This wasn't dropping out, it was merely being a frisky, rebellious, defiant, disobediant, inquisitive, fun-loving teenager. Did he quit college and hitchhike across America? Commit to a revolutionary cell? Join a back-to-nature commune? Become a street musician? Work in a hole-in-the-wall literary bookstore ... bicycle shop ... natural foods co-op ... free clinic? No! He just ignored his studies, played, then transferred from a top-rated to a middling university, and he now represents himself as a bold, adventuresome, daring, nonconformist radical of the '60s who "completely dropped out." (Wilber also claimed to have "dropped out" in his lengthy autobiographical article "Odyssey: A Personal Inquiry into Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology" that appeared in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 1982: "So basically I completely dropped out." Evidently, then, kw has been laboring under his "dropped out" delusion for decades.)

These claims of "I was completely dropped out" and "I was dropping out" are just more of his grandiose, confabulated, self-serving, self-generated legend. It's a recurring theme in too much of his work—his epistemology is ipse dixit (Latin for "he himself said"); i.e., mere say-so. KW says it, so it must be true. His loyal, loving lemmings lap up his pronouncements about psychology, philosophy, and spirituality not because they're well-supported by logic or the verifiable facts of reality, but merely because KW has asserted them. "Everybody! Back to the trough! He's about to speak!"

And so it goes, for the ipse dickhead who is the "Einstein of consciousness research."

He's a rebel and he'll never ever be any good
He's a rebel 'cause he never ever does what he should

For that matter, who titles his quasi-autobiography the "Odyssey"? Who is this guy, the "Homer of consciousness studies"?

Ho-mer....

Even pop star Sting was a Marxist in his youth, though—a real rebel:

I read all the books. I went out on forays against the National Front when they had a candidate at South Shields in a General Election in '74. I used to drive the bus for the college Socialist Society. In fact when I was on the demo[nstration] outside Durham jail against the force-feeding of the Price sisters (convicted IRA terrorists who went on hunger strike) I actually got my first front page! I was on the cover of Red Weekly, looking very much the Trotskyite with a beard and placards all round me: "Stop force feeding! Political status now!"

—in Phil Sutcliffe and Hugh Fielder's
The Police: L'Historia Bandido, p. 33

He's become quite the lotus-eater in his older years, however, even to the point of owning a yoga studio in Manhattan.

Me, I'll take some of that interior growth on the rocks ... hold the Zen.

From Frank Visser's Ken Wilber: Thought As Passion (p. 20-2):

[KW:] "I went to Duke University and on the day I walked into the campus, I sat down in my dorm, in my room, and knew that I didn't want to have anything to do with it any more. I did not want to study any more of that conventional knowledge. I had already done tons of that, and it wasn't answering my questions. So basically I completely dropped out."

That was in 1968, the era of the hippies and flower power....

His first year at college was essentially a lost year. He returned to Nebraska, where his parents were currently stationed, and got a double bachelor's degree, one in chemistry and one in biology.... "The next two years were spent, almost literally, in solitary reading and research, eight to ten hours a day."

With less ambiguity, however, Tony Schwartz's What Really Matters says that "Wilber quit Duke after his sophomore [i.e., second] year and returned to Nebraska," and gives "fall of 1967" as Wilber's first semester at Duke. (Of course, the same book has Wilber majoring in "chemistry and physics" rather than Visser's [p. 22] chem and biology. My kingdom for a straight answer....)

I would guess that the timeline went like this: Wilber began his first year of pre-med at Duke in 1967, was increasingly cutting classes by early 1968 and got "straight C's" for two full years, subsequently grossly exaggerating his "drop-out" nature during that time. Then, he transferred the credits from those two years to the University of Nebraska, and just needed two more years (residency requirement) there to have earned the appropriate credits for his double-major bachelor's degree in biochemistry.

Being in pre-med at Duke, he will presumably have focused mostly on biology and chemistry courses anyway for those two years, so if he took essentially nothing but bio and chem courses for the next two undergraduate years at Nebraska, it could probably all fit. The post-grad work would reasonably be after those "next two years" of his junior and senior levels at Nebraska. (He wrote the initial draft for The Spectrum of Consciousness over a three-month period in "the winter of 1973.")

The self-appointed custodians of the Ken Wilber wikipedia page and integral shrine—including the ass-licking Goethean—for their own part, misread and propagated the "1968" in Visser's book as referring to the start of Wilber's enrollment, rather than his unofficial "dropping out" from applying himself enough to get A's rather than C's. They, of all people, should have long ago read Schwartz's book, to get their elementary facts straight! And they think I'm the one who's an "untrustworthy asshole"?! Get a simple matriculation date right; then go trashing other people who can actually do competent research!

Interestingly, Wilber enrolled at the University of Nebraska (presumably in 1969) in part "in order to get a deferment from the draft." Geez, he could've just come up to Canada if he didn't want to fight: We had a lot of draft dodgers up here, back in the day!

And kw going home to his conservative parents with "long hair" (Visser, p. 20)? Who would'a thought it?! But then again, how long was it really, Ken? Hair grows around half an inch per month, so from September to April in your first year would have been around four inches. (And if you went home at Khristmas, they had a preview, right?) My, my, mum and dad must have been shocked. Shocked, I tell you! As Elmer Fudd would say, "Ouw son's become quite da fuwwy wadical."

Brutally ironic that he's turned into such a neo-conservative since then; but that's what cutting your hair short will do to you, isn't it?

KW claims that, when he started at Duke, he already knew that he didn't want to "study any more of that conventional knowledge" because he had "already done tons of that, and it wasn't answering" his questions. But, he had only completed high school up to that point! What kind of a piss-proud eighteen-year-old fool rejects "conventional knowledge" because it hasn't given him the answers to his questions at a high-school level?! (He hadn't even read any Alan Watts by that point, for Khrist's sake.) Not that there are any ultimate answers in conventional or unconventional knowledge, regardless; but no one knows that on his very first day on a university campus!

Reading about kw's high-school valedictory speech, though, got me thinking back to my own graduation.

I had the top marks, of course, and could certainly have done the valediction if I had wanted to. But to end one's high-school days with such a politically correct statement, kowtowing to every teacher you've ever had, and spewing b.s. about what a great experience it had been? Yuck! So I happily left that "honor" to the ultra-competitive guy who used to be the best student there before I transferred in, back in grade seven. (That was the same son-of-a-minister who used to make the students in the grade below him crawl through mud, just 'cause he enjoyed the power trip.)

However, in that small-town but academically best-in-division school, previous years' graduating classes had evolved the tradition of not merely praising but also roasting the teachers. So, by my graduation year, there was an official valediction given in the grad ceremonies at the local church (complete with an interminable hellfire-and-graduation sermon by the guest speaker). There was also, however, a separate comedic roast done after the grad meal, in the decorated gymnasium.

Guess who wrote and performed that?

Heh-heh-heh.

(For our English teacher, Mrs. Pierce, who had been going on excitedly all year about two joyful events: "It is no longer Miss Krahn who terrorizes us in our dreams, for there has been a recent addition to her life. What was his name? 'Poochie'? Is he housetrained yet?")

"Well, alright," I hear you say. "But what about Bob Young? Is he housetrained yet?"

The Bob Young whom kw mentions in the Kosmic Konsciousness talks (CD 7, Track 8), in The Spectrum of Consciousness (p. 197 of the twentieth-anniversary TPH edition; p. 238 of Shambhala's Collected Works, Vol. 1), and in Schwartz's What Really Matters was not merely a "mentor" for Wilber. Rather, he was a practicing psychiatrist, with whom kw undertook therapy to deal with his absent father, overprotective s/mother, and consequent feelings of being "very angry, at everything and everyone."

Schwartz, however, has Young being (in Schwartz's words, not necessarily Wilber's) merely an "eclectically trained, intellectually wide-ranging psychologist."

The difference between a psychiatrist and a "mere" psychologist (no offense) is of course that the former also has a medical degree, allowing him to prescribe psychotropic drugs for control of his patients' mental difficulties. Because of that greater degree of training, if you're looking for help with your psychological state from any given perspective (Freudian, Jungian, transpersonal, etc.), you will much more easily find an appropriate psychologist than a psychiatrist.

Referring to psychiatrists as psychologists, while not completely wrong, belittles the significant additional training which the former have—as Wilber well knows, from his own aborted pre-med enrollment. Among people for whom formal education is such a measure of worth, it could hardly be good manners to do so, particularly when it comes to one's respected "mentor."

I am willing to believe that there were solid reasons for Wilber choosing a psychiatrist over a mere psychologist for his therapy sessions, which reasons presumably didn't involve him needing to be on prescription psychotropic drugs even during his "successful" university years. I'm also willing to assume that the misrepresentation of Young's level of education in What Really Matters was Schwartz's screw-up, rather than an accurate paraphrasing of the dialogue (notwithstanding that kw nevertheless explicitly endorsed the same book). Still no excuse for it; but hey, as Gordon Lightfoot would say, "Baby, it's alright."

Still, one cannot help but wonder: Will Jack Nicholson be willing to shave off the few remaining bits of hair on his head to play a distinguished but increasingly unraveled Ken in the forthcoming "One Flew Over The Wilber's Nest"?

'Cause with or without that "rubber meditation room," anyone who thinks that Wilber has ever been an emotionally well-balanced person, even going back to the start of his professional career in the late '70s, needs to read my appendix in STG on his inexcusable (and completely unprovoked, and extremely nasty) misrepresentations of David Bohm's ideas. No one with an IQ of 160, as Wilber claims to possess, could possibly be as stupid as kw is in practice, without there being overwhelming psychological issues underlying it all. (Contrary to Reynolds' claim, Wilber's 160 IQ is not "off the scale." Marilyn vos Savant has tested at 228, and even she is still on the scale. Kensho ain't even close to hitting the boiling point on that thermometer ... as it were.) True, he's never been able to pay attention to detail in any of the fields to which he's directed his bumbling inattention; and that attribute alone could take the work of a keen raw intelligence and make it look like it was the product of a literal moron. But you still don't test at a 99th-percentile level for intelligence without being able to pay attention to details when it suits you—in taking IQ tests, for example.

So, as Paul Simon (150 IQ) and Art Garfunkel (untested, probably just as well) would have had it, Wilber sees the details that he wants to see, "and disregards the rest." And, to give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of honesty, he plays that mind-game with himself without even realizing that he's doing it.

Of course, were it not for the generous benefit of that doubt, the man would inarguably be one of the biggest bald-faced liars on the face of the planet; and even with it, he's provably one of the worst misrepresentors ... and not at all randomly fucking up in that, either, but rather always doing it in the direction that will best suit his own half-baked, otherwise-unsupportable schmintegral notions.

The cuckoo's-nest of personal and "professional" nonsense which qualifies as Wilber's Integral World, y'know, is no match for an eagle's eye.

Recently discovered some very interesting info on the occult meaning of Jimmy Page's "Zoso" symbol, re: the cover of Zeppelin IV.

Interviewer: One other question about practice. What about praying, Ken? Do you think that prayer is by necessity a horizontal activity and not a vertical activity? Or could there be vertical forms of prayer?

KW: I think there are vertical forms, sure. And, well, most of the prayerful traditions are monotheistic or have a theistic dimension; generally, prayer is oriented towards a person, a higher person, but a person is a certain sense. And those traditions themselves make a difference between contemplative prayer and petitionary prayer. And petitionary prayer is, "I want the new car, I want the job, I want the...." What was the Janis Joplin, "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz"? That's petitionary prayer big time. Nothing wrong with it, it's just petitionary prayer—it's "Here's my ego, give me something."

Contemplative prayer is, it can still be prayer, but it's much more the opening, contemplative, meditative types of prayer. Prayer of the Heart, one of the most famous. But it's just an opening, in that sense, and it still starts out, and it's okay to start out, petitionary which is often you go to, it could be Mary, or Jesus, or any of the figures that you're working with, it could be [unintelligible] for that matter, and you're petitioning: "Please have mercy on me a sinner," or "Please open my heart," or "Please let me have more love." But the way you hold it, and the way you open yourself, it's a vast surrendering to this current of love and bliss and awareness that at first appears Other, but is soon enough appears as your own Self, your own deepest being, your own awareness and consciousness.

And that's exactly what the really deepest parts of contemplative prayer do. And you can find in St. John of the Cross, and St. Theresa, and Hildegard, and Eckhart, you can find a complete path right up those seven levels to ever-present, all-inclusive awareness. Very, very profound paths. It's just they've tended to be paths that didn't get quite the emphasis that they got in the East for various reasons. They're certainly present in those traditions. And Father Thomas Keating and others are of course revitalizing, actively revitalized the contemplative aspects of our Western traditions.

Interviewer: So it's possible that prayer could move you up two levels in a similar way as meditation?

KW: Yes, I believe, I absolutely believe that. I believe that we're going to find is that the original research on that meditation moving two stages was done by Skip Alexander with people who are doing Transcendental Meditation®, and Transcendental Meditation done correctly is a very powerful form of meditation, and for what it does, I recommend it.

It has one advantage in that it's such a lineage practice, so to speak, there's a morphogenic field around it, if you will, it's so well developed, that when people take up that practice, it has almost immediate effects. Other practices are harder to get into, they're more sort of difficult. Zen is very difficult to do right; you have to practice it really for months, or even years, to really get into it. But TM®, really within the first couple of sessions, you're really kind of getting the hang of it. And because of that, it's an ideal type of meditation for research, because there's a similarity in people that practice it. There's not that much variation, so you can actually learn something by looking at people who do it. And people who do it for a very long time get into some of these very profound states, including 24-hour-a-day subtle constant consciousness that we talked about. And they're the people who show this alpha-delta pattern when they sleep, suggestive of being awake through all great states.

It's my belief, and I think that Skip Alexander and the others who have looked at this would agree, that what is happening in that meditation, the thing that is generic about it, that would be the same in any kind of meditation, including contemplative prayer, is just what we've been talking about—you strengthen the Witness. You're looking at contents of the mind as an object and therefore you're free of them. You are resting as the subject or the Witness, and as that continues, that's what helps you move up the stages, because you [are] disidentifying with those as well, and therefore you're moving through them more quickly.

And contemplative prayer, to the extent it does turn into contemplation, it moves out of its initial petitionary stance, and becomes open and contemplative the way Father Thomas teaches it, for example. It's just that, you're in this open, receptive, detached state, and it's a state of witnessing, and to use the feminine side, it's a state of loving. In this sense, everything that arises is loved equally, and that's a different kind of practice. Mostly, love means "I love this, I don't like that." And also awareness usually means "I'm aware of this, I'm not aware of that." So these higher states are "I have ever-present awareness that is aware of everything that is arising," there's simply that every-present awareness. And that higher love is "I love everything that's arising. I have an equal touch and regard of everything that's arising." That's what happens with the higher reaches of contemplative prayer, and I think, although the research hasn't been done on this, I'm absolutely convinced they would show the same stage movement as the other types of meditation.

Would "contemplative prayer ... show the same stage movement as the other types of meditation"? I'll bet it would, keeping in mind that:

• The "research on meditation moving two stages" doesn't actually exist, but is rather just the product of Wilber incompetently conflating a number of different studies by Alexander, none of which were done with anything resembling proper protocols in the first place

• As far as doing TM "correctly": Former accredited teachers of TM have been among its most vociferous critics. And, studies on TM which have been competently performed have shown no difference between the (relaxation) effects of TM versus a control. (The comparable properly controlled studies for purported stage-growth have, one safely assumes, not been done; if they had been, and had turned out the way that kw wants them to, he would be shouting that confirmation from the integral rooftops. Rather, Alexander's work is the "best evidence" in favor of kw's half-baked notions. And that "best evidence" has already been wholly discredited)

• The simultaneous existence of alpha and delta rhythms in the brain, even if that has been measured exactly as Wilber presents it (and knowing him and his penchant for exaggeration and pure fabrication, that's a huge "if") presents no parapsychological or transpersonal claim or proof. Rather, it can just as well be simply an untapped ability of the "purely physical" brain, with or without interior feelings having an ontological reality on top of that. Same thing for Witnessing consciousness in general: resting in That, with the internal feeling that one has "no boundaries," doesn't even remotely mean that one really is infinite in consciousness. (Comparably, subjective feelings of astral traveling do not mean that one really is doing that—i.e., doing it to the point of, say, being able to read a five-figure number off of a designated wall, which is how these things are easily and competently tested, and invariably found to not be what their imaginative proponents claim)

• Zen is many times more a "lineage practice" than is TM: Fifteen hundred years of lineage and practice, versus a few decades for any widespread practice of TM. (Obviously mantra yoga in general is much older. But it's Wilber who is focusing specifically on TM, here, and touting the benefits of its "lineage") And how is counting or watching one's breaths in zazen more difficult to learn to do, and make progress with, than is internally chanting a mantra?

• Where are the properly controlled studies which show that long-term meditators are the ones who exhibit the "alpha-delta pattern"? My guess is: Nowhere. I'd fully expect that suspicious claim to turn out to be based on anecdotal testimony at best (including Wilber's own portable-EEG observations regarding His Integral Self), and pure fabrication at worst: pulling it straight out of his ass, and then presenting it as polished, fragrant, golden truth

So yes, prayer is surely just as effective as meditation; probably even a better option, as it doesn't have the range of psychotic side-effects which meditation tends to have. Lot of good that'll do you either way. So be "absolutely convinced" of the value of prayer vs. meditation, if you wish; whatever.

Like the Good Book says, "Cast ye not your pearls before Wilber, lest he trample them under his integral, morphogenic feet, and turn again, and nastily attempt to rend you with pigshit arguments from authority and ignorance."

Anyway, give Janis Joplin credit for one thing: She knew about "horizontal activities." At least in terms of sleeping with Leonard Cohen, which affair is what his Chelsea Hotel #2 is about.

Oh Ken, won't you give me an integral break
You're so full of bullshit and stupid mistakes
Bald, bumbling, dishonest, and barely awake
Oh Ken, won't you give me an integral break

Amen.

Well, considering that I truly do consider Jesus to be as overrated (and likely mythical/imaginary) as the rest of the frauds presenting themselves as sages, in the East just as surely as everywhere else: no, I am not a "CHRISTIAN FANATIC." (Did the chapter in STG on the cruel, sodomizing Roman Catholic Church not give that away, or what?)

"Great saints" don't exist: Gandhi was a hot-tempered valium addict, Mother Teresa was just a Catholic fool with good PR who deliberately left others to suffer so that she could feel that she was doing "God's work" in that ass-backwards theology, etc.

This UPPER-CASED DOPE should get together with the idiot who thinks that my STG chapter on Vivekananda is actually praising him. They could have some totally useless conversations together, wasting each other's time rather than pissing away mine.

Beyond that, yada, yada, yada, Om-Mana-Padme-yada, yada, yada....

Need to cheer up after all that? I know I do. Perhaps this (from Heather Mallick's Pearls In Vinegar) will help:

Speaking of Dudley Moore, I read in a biography that he thought the following story was hilarious, and it was. A friend's mother had seen a stage production of "The Sound of Music" in which the Mother Superior was played by a woman with a heavy German accent. And in that scene when Maria pours out her troubles to her, the Mother asks her "What is it you can't face?" which came out as "Vat is it, you cuntface?" I don't know what this says about me that I think this is the funniest thing I've ever heard, but what does it say about S. that several times, in the depths of despair, I have read a letter or taken a phone call and, utterly shattered, said, "Oh my god, I can't face it." And S., no matter how bad the news is, is always there to say innocently, "What is it, you cuntface?" They should put it on my tombstone. I'd love to have an epitaph where no one gets the joke. It would be the story of my life.

Take that ... CUNTFACE! :)

"Integral Party Animals"? Good Lord.

This must be where all the fifty-somethings sit around miming masturbation to pictures of Ramana Maharshi, pathetically asking college-age women for blow jobs, and playing "Pin the Tail on the Wilber."

Note that one of the raffle prizes is an "astrological reading on tape by 30-year professional astrologer, Elle Simon, valued at $100."

It doesn't get much more "integral" than that, does it? Room for every pre-rational superstition.

Other prizes include a wad of "Shift Happens" (i.e., Spiral Dynamics®, geddit? nyuk, nyuk, nyuk) bumper stickers.

"Integral Stooges."

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