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Was just apprised of an interesting course by Dr. Bart Ehrman on the "Historical Jesus." It's based on his book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford University Press, 1999), which is itself "a provocative portrait of Jesus as an apocalyptic visionary who taught his followers to prepare for the imminent end of the world." From the opening paragraph of the first chapter:
For nearly two thousand years there have been Christians who have thought that the world was going to end in their own lifetimes. The thesis of this belief is as ancient as the Christian religion itself, that it can be traced all the way back to the beginning, to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus thought that the history of the world would come to a screeching halt, that God would intervene in the affairs of this planet, overthrow the forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment, and establish his utopian Kingdom here on earth. And this was to happen within Jesus' own generation.
I keep thinking of the old SCTV sketch, with Joe Flaherty as a preacher lecturing on the importance of humor, and relating Jesus' overturning of the tables of the moneylenders, where the Savior had supposedly winked at them and said: "Got two tens for a five?"
"Jesus had a sense of humor; do you?"
Interesting blog, from a former highly placed follower of "the greatest living Realizer," Adi Da.
Sadly, organizations which consider the truth about their activities to be an "enemy" to their goals are just called "religion," whether it's integral, Catholic, or Daist. It's always based on "lies [and delusions] in the service of truth." Not that everything in the teachings, anywhere, is a lie or a delusion (e.g., based in hallucinations or misinterpretations of simple coincidental phenomena). But enough of the core is always clearly such that to still state with certainty that "Divine truths" even exist anywhere, much less that they could be found in any given community, is indeed a mistake.
From the Wikipedia "discussion" page on Ken Wilber:
By the way, someone once tried to create a Wikipedia article about Falk's book, "Stripping the Gurus". After some research, it was deleted by the Wikipedia community (more of whom, it should be noted, are biased against Wilber, or have never heard of him, than are biased for him) on the grounds that the book was self-published on the internet and was not notable enough to merit an article. — goethean 16:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
With the exception of the Skeptical Inquirer review of Kensho's Marriage of Sense and Soul, and de Quincey's attempt at a critique of Wilber in the JCS, nearly every notable critique of Old Baldy's work has been self-published. That includes the excellent work of David Lane and Jim Andrews.
Nice removal of STG from Wikipedia, too, given the quantity of stub pages there, and the fact that, if the book really isn't "notable," it wouldn't eat up a whole lot of bandwidth or server space, would it? So, any intelligent person/editor who was thinking clearly would obviously err on the side of inclusion. Do you figure they go through every new page, and vet it for whether it's worth including; or, is it just the ones that certain "seekers of Truth" can't stand, that must be removed?
Only around one-fifth of STG is about Wilber; the rest of the book would offend anyone, not merely the daft Wilber-ites, who wanted to believe in childish fairy tales. So really, it's only agnostic and/or atheistic editors who wouldn't have a personal reason to regard the book as not being "notable," and thus to expedite its removal. D'uh.
Over three-quarters of the American population self-identifies as Christian. Conversely, when only 9% of the American people list themselves as having no religion, you are at risk of offending more than 90% of the population in speaking out against the delusions of religion and spirituality in general! Even an integral idiot should be able to see that although the majority of the Wikipedia community/editors will not have even heard of Wilber (lucky bastards, they), when around 80% of STG has nothing to do with him but still addresses religion/cults in general, and when 90% of the editors and community members are not going to in any way welcome hearing the truth about those, it's built into the system that the text won't receive anything resembling a fair hearing. D'uh.
Anyway, that deletion makes no practical difference, since (i) if you Google "Stripping the Gurus," it will bring up the book's website, which would hardly get additional traffic just from having its own page on Wikipedia, and (ii) would I really want yer average Wikipedia contributor/editor to be fuckin' around, in any way, shape, or form, with my Ph.D.-endorsed writings? Would that be likely to add anything of value to the book itself, or improve its rock-solid arguments? Taking the latter two points, especially, into account, I'm probably happier to not have a dedicated Wikipedia page for it! 'Cause as sure as Wilberian Eros evolved little green apples via Intelligent Design—or not—if a page like that existed, and weren't under my own complete control, dumb-asses like Goethean would not be able to resist the urge to "improve" it, based on their own idiotic ideas about reality. (Why do you think I have no functionality for readers to add their own "comments" to my blog postings, here? It would be utterly elementary to program, you know.)
And then there's this:
I agree with User:Nofalk's assessment of the Geoffery [sic] Falk piece. I find it inappropriate for this page. It's an essay by someone with a deeply studied ignorance of Wilber's writings. It's inaccurate to call it a critique. To dismiss something out of hand without understanding it is not a critique. It's an unsympethetic [sic] dismissal. I had the link under that topic heading before the edit war started. There are writers who believe that Wilber's influence on culture has been nothing but negative, and who eviscerate Wilber for what they percieve [sic] as fundamental theoretical errors. I can accept and even applaude [sic] those critiques, and will gladly link to them from the article and describe those critiques in the article. But Falk doesn't even make a small attempt to understand the work that he's criticizing. He's like a bumpkin looking at a Jackson Pollack [sic] saying "I don't know what art is, but that ain't it."
(Jesus, learn to fucking spell already, you integral morons.)
As usual, there's not even a hint given there as to how I've allegedly misunderstood Wilber's ideas; just the unsupportable smoke-screen assertion that I have. (I suppose they've caught the same "ipse dixit" mental illness from which kw has long suffered, in thinking that he can just declare something by integral fiat, and that will automatically make it true.) Pure bullshit, from students of the integral master of that art.
And on the same typo-filled page I'm being criticized for allegedly being "repetitive" in STG? Compared to whom, though? Ken "The Master of Redundancy" Wilber himself?!! I can only assume that Goethean, et al., are being vexed by the dozen-point summary which I included at the end of the Norman Einstein chapter in STG. If so: Whadda total fucking moron. [It's either that, or he's too dense to distinguish between needless, Wilber-esque repetition versus nuances in my writing.] It's a long chapter; it deserves a summary. You'd have to be stupid beyond the point of believability to rag on a person for simply doing the "usable" thing, there! (Personally, I suspect that Goethean is precisely that stupid, no less.)
The above block quote also brings up another thing about such integral fools: They can't even come up with their own original critiques. 'Cause, you know, the Jackson Pollock [not "Pollack"!] reference is something which he got from a Stuart Davis song, "Pearls Into the Dirt"!!
Of course, Davis' albums are all done on his own record label, i.e., are self-published just as surely as STG is, and correspondingly sell only a few thousand copies per release. (STG has had at least a comparable readership.) By parity of argument, then, why should there be a Stuart Davis page on Wikipedia? (Note: The same page is regularly maintained by ... yep, Goethean. Full marks for hypocritical inconsistency, at least.)
If these dismal, sycophantic fools could at least spell my name (or Pollock's!) correctly; but they can't even get that much right. Yet, they imagine that they're understanding subtle points of Wilber's bullshit-philosophy that I'm missing?! Yeah, right!! They wouldn't recognize a nuance if it bit them on their holonic noses. Yet, it's exactly in the nuances (of Piagetian psychology, Spiral Dynamics®, Bohmian physics, Darwinian evolution, meditation-effects research, etc.), not from a crude "orienting perspective" distance, that kw's work invariably falls apart. Anyone who's been paying attention already knows that.
It's lost on the clueless likes of Goethean, of course, but the "Norman Einstein" chapter in STG isn't really meant to address the SUV-sized holes in kw's philosophy; it's much more about the obvious shortcomings in his character, notwithstanding that those do indeed skew and (mis)inform everything in his life, including his "professional" work. (Similarly, the rest of STG is not about the philosophies propounded by Aurobindo, Da, or Cohen, etc., but rather about their respective, reportedly abusive characters. That is all stated explicitly in the Introduction to the book: "[I]t is not the validity of the theoretical ideas of each path which are, in general, of concern here. Rather, of far greater interest are the ways in which the leaders espousing those ideas have applied them in practice, frequently to the claimed detriment of their followers." D'uh. If these integral pinheads would at least read the fucking introduction; but that, too, is entirely lost on them.) The appendix in STG—which I would assume Goethean has never actually read, as it was not initially available for free, online—deals with one aspect of kw's bumbling forays into philosophy/physics; the additional Blind Eye of Spirit appendix deals with many more of them, in particular with how kw's provable misrepresentations and/or misunderstandings are present even in the core aspects of his "theories," to the point where a person would have to be a total fool, by now, to continue to take them seriously. Anyone, like Goethean, who is either too stupid, too afraid, or too lazy to properly inform himself of that full set of critiques, has no business voicing an opinion, much less enforcing his scatter-brained notions on a (Wikipedia) community.
And "Norfalk"/"Nofalk"? Geez, talk about creating a "toxic other"! Or, maybe they meant "Norfolk." "Yeah, all those damned hippie folk musicians, listenin' to that Neil Young feller. We don't need none'a that Godless commie shit down here in Virginia...."
If they can't tell the difference between painter Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) and the contemporary filmmaker Sydney Pollack—or whatever comparable similarity in names may be exacerbating their baseline of embarrassing mental confusion—even in the midst of dissing other people's "bumpkin" understandings of art (and even just when using art as an analogy), what can one say but, "Salieri"?
One wonders, truly, how it is possible for ostensibly educated, purportedly intelligent adults to be so consistently wrong. It's like the "Seinfeld" episode where George realizes that every instinct he's ever had has led him to do the opposite of what he should have done, and thus to fail ... so, logically, if he were to now just do the exact opposite of what his instincts are telling him, he'll be successful. Apply that same principle to Wilber's or Goethean's work, doing exactly the opposite of what they recommend, and you won't go far wrong. At least, you won't end up throwing your life away on the likes of Adi Da or Andrew Cohen, or buy into the ridiculous lie that parapsychological phenomena are "100% certain" to exist, etc.
So, while the "Pollock Fiasco" is a nice, attempted, facile name-dropping, in trying so hard to show off their (imagined) vast array of integral knowledge—just like their Hero—they demonstrate only that they know squat about both philosophy and art. "Better luck next time," suckers.
Ironic though, no? One casts pearls before integral swine, and then they turn around and give you an insulting "rending" about how you allegedly can't recognize their cheap, imitation "pearls of wisdom," all the while ignoring the far superior jewelry being trampled beneath their own feet. These imbeciles WILL NOT LEARN, but yet simultaneously won't stop "teaching," and are indeed "happy as a pig in shit" so long as they can be celebrated for bumbling incompetently through topics from high-school-level Darwinian evolution to Spiral Dynamics®, confident that, if they don't already "know it all," they and their incompetent leaders/followers nevertheless soon will. What a bunch of "Wilburs.")
Just like their Bald Hero, whenever idiots like Goethean open their mouths they cannot, it seems, help but embarrass themselves. And, like the true, certifiable morons they are, they then imagine that the problem is with others!
All that you actually need to know about Goethean's wonky view of reality was contained in his initial (blog) posting about me, where he concluded—in spite of my having documented/hyperlinked every damned point I made in the "Norman Einstein" chapter and on Integral Naked, concerning Wilber's misrepresentations of basic Darwinian evolution—that I could only be "an asshole who is not to be trusted on these matters whatsoever," whose "words are pretty much irrelevant to any honest inquiry on any subject." (Again, he gives not a single example of how I am allegedly untrustworthy, etc. Can you guess why?) Everything on top of that, on Wikipedia (e.g., about the NE chapter supposedly not being appropriate for linking from the KW page, there, even though it most certainly is relevant and appropriate) or elsewhere, is just transparent rationalizations to support his half-wit, self-appointed censorial prejudices.
Goethean, you are truly one of the world's great pretenders—utterly lacking both the psychological and the raw intellectual tools to ever think competently for yourself, to the point where anyone could predict that you will never make any meaningful contribution to the human body of knowledge; yet still convinced that you're seeing things with pristine clarity and insight. Humming the same tune, that is, as is broadcast by all true incompetents.
Goethean's scrambled state of mind comes through pretty clearly, too, when he says: "As someone else noted Dasein, you seem to have an axe to grind, care to share?" When even calm, reasoned dialog in support of alternative viewpoints is denigrated by self-appointed censors as arising only from one's ostensibly having "an axe to grind," you need not wonder why Wilber's Integral World is viewed by people who understand cult and in-group dynamics as being halfway to a bona fide cult.
Well, then never mind the Pollocks, here's the sex pistols (or, in Goethean's spelling-impaired case, perhaps: "pistils").
(Idea for a band name: The Promiscuous Sextet. Hey, someday they could be "notable" enough to have their own Wikipedia page! Yeah, then they'll know they've really made it big....)
I was just made aware of the following (partial) critique of Wilber's transpersonal methodology, courtesy of Nathaniel Branden, from p. 202-11 of his The Art of Living Consciously. (Note that the ex-Randian Branden, in addition to being a founding member of the Integral Institute, explicitly considers kw to be "one of the most brilliant men I know." So, he's no "adolescent hack," supposedly being merely "out to gain fame for himself at the expense of those who are his superiors [ha!!] in every way.")
[L]et us ask: Why should we believe the mystics’ claims? On what grounds? Why should we even continue the discussion?
To this inquiry, Wilber mounts an interesting answer. It is given in his book Eye to Eye, which is an attempt to justify the validity of knowledge attained through "the eye of contemplation," the mystic's alleged tool of cognition....
The Christian mystic St. Bonaventure taught that there are at least three modes of attaining knowledge—"the eye of the flesh, by which we perceive the external world of space, time, and objects; the eye of reason, by which we attain a knowledge of philosophy, logic, and the mind itself; and the eye of contemplation, by which we rise to a knowledge of transcendent realities"....
[T]he process, we are told again and again, is in principle exactly the same as that by which one becomes a qualified scientist: knowledge is confirmed or disconfirmed according to whether qualified colleagues, having gone through the same steps, do or do not arrive at the same result. Experiments that are not reproducible or that do not yield the same results cannot be claimed to have revealed authentic truths. Therefore, in his or her own domain, the mystic's assertion of knowledge is fully as reliable as the scientist's....
While this is only the bare essence of a fairly complex argument, it is sufficient to invite some basic and serious challenges. And since, please notice, every step of the argument is an appeal to reason—in that factual observations and logical inferences are offered in support of each point—the argument can be challenged on its own terms, in the court of observation and logic....
What I found especially fascinating in the justification offered above for the knowledge claims of mysticism is that at every step the appeal is to reason and observation. The entire thesis is a long exercise in attempted logical integration, full of "becauses" and "therefores." And in the end, what is the justification offered for accepting the mystics' insights? In essence, the argument is this: Since all knowledge is built on taking specific actions, making observations, grasping the meaning or implications of those observations, checking one's conclusions with the community of competently trained colleagues—and since this is the basic pattern of science and equally the basic pattern of mysticism—then mystical insights that follow the required actions, observations, and cognitive grasping and are shared and confirmed by the community of one's peers are legitimately proclaimed knowledge. In other words, it is reasonable to accept the truth of such insights. Reason is still conceded to be the final arbiter. "It is logical to accept these nonlogical, nonrational insights because...."
That I regard the argument as fallacious is not my point here. My point is that, if one argues at all, there is no escape from using and counting on the very faculty mystics profess to have evolved "beyond." And this is the ultimate dilemma of anyone who is too conscientious simply to proclaim "It's true because I feel it."
We may not always arrive at our insights by a process of reason, but reason is the means by which we ultimately verify them—by what is sometimes called "reality testing"—that is, integrating them into the rest of our knowledge and observations without contradictions. An appreciation of this truth is an essential element of what I mean by living consciously.
So what are we left with? A collection of assertions [by mystics, including Wilber himself] about the ultimate nature of existence that are riddled with contradictions, defy reason and logic, convey no intelligible meaning, invalidate our consciousness, destroy our concept of reality—and that we are meant to take seriously while being told our limited development makes it impossible for us to understand them. If one does not have an intellectual inferiority complex and is not easily intimidated, this is not impressive.
Well, Branden is quite right, there; and it's just another way in which Wilber's "brilliant" ideas don't even hang together self-consistently. Plus, kw's related, utterly naïve hope that meditative perceptions can be validated by a "community of competent, intersubjective interpreters" (full of their own obvious expectation biases) was completely shredded, in a mere two sentences, in the very same Skeptical Inquirer review which is otherwise passed around the integral world as proof that Kensho's invariably half-baked notions are being taken seriously by skeptics who generally excoriate New Age "philosophies."
"Funny," isn't it, how his supporters never quite seem to mention that disintegration. Can they really care so little about truth/reality as to quite obviously deliberately leave that essential and vital point unmentioned? Evidently so.
And me? Did some spring cleaning, and finally threw out all of my kw books. (Seriously. The wall looks much better without them.) Also, got mentioned (complimentarily) on Chris Cowan's (et al.) spiral dynamics.org:
Anyone confounded by or interested in the often-contradictory behavior of assorted wizards and gurus might consider reading Geoffrey D. Falk's blog and book, Stripping the Gurus, for a counter-point to some of the well-spun propaganda in the marketplace of ideas.
Not bad for an "adolescent hack," eh?
That's the thing, of course: The people who actually know what they're talking about in the field of consciousness/cult studies invariably recognize the value of the work I've done there—they appreciate my insights and thoroughly documented research just as much as I genuinely value theirs. (You want names? Alrighty: David Lane, Jim Andrews, John Horgan, Steven Hassan, Susan Blackmore, Len Oakes. People with real training in psychology and parapsychology, and real lifelong experience in those fields. The recognized "transmitted Zen master" Brad Warner, too, "enjoyed [STG] a lot." Sarlo [of the noted Guru Rating Service; he is actually still a loyal follower of Rajneesh but is nevertheless able to think more clearly and calmly about the subject than all but a few Wilber-ites and integral believers will ever be able to do] likewise "enjoyed making my way through it." Former New Age leader [now radical agnostic] Karla McLaren has complimented me on the book, as have Frank Visser and several others recognized in the integral community. Even the "true believer" Christian de Quincey said, of the Wilber and Bohm appendix for STG, that "I've glanced through your Wilber/Bohm paper, and like what you write.")
As anyone with even half a clue of how academic/intellectual pursuits work could tell you, the opinions of the clear leaders in any discipline mean inestimably more than does any mere community consensus among the middling members who not only have contributed nothing to the leading edge of the field, or even to cogently critiquing that edge of knowledge, but who can't even competently evaluate others' critiques of their heroes, being certain that those same heroes deserve to be treated with respect even when they have been repeatedly caught fabricating "facts" to manipulate their followers. (That "clear leader" reality comes up regularly in skeptical/scientific analyses, as anyone who has taken the time to familiarize him/herself with that perspective will already know. That's not an appeal to authority; it's just an appeal to paying proper attention to individuals who know what they're talking about.) Conversely, "Salieris" like the dimwitted FOK ("Fan of Ken") Goethean will never, even in a literal thousand years, figure it out.
If the pure-bullshit artist Wilber is really "one of the most brilliant men" you know, you definitely need to get out more, or at least get into contact with some ideas that make sense. Start with this: The utter quack Velikovsky was just as "brilliant," in fully comparable (and professionally incompetent) ways, as is kw.
In the meantime, you might err on the side of caution, and refrain from sucking other people into the set of fairy tales which you yourself (if applicable) believe. Much as you might like to "spread the good Word" about the "truth" (ha!) that you think you've discovered in your bullshit-artist guru or integral pandit, you'll have far less damage to (futilely) try to undo later if you just have enough sense to live by that principle in the interim.
P.S. As of March 13, the great, wise, and intermittently hysterical Don Beck is apparently suing his former partners in Spiral Dynamics®. (The points which have gotten D.B. in such a bunch are, to this "reporter," every bit as solid as are integral "theories" in general.) Can'tcha just feel the integral love?
In my Inbox today, from thehotkitchen@yahoo.com, to a free email account which I only use for posting in places where it's exposed to dolts, bots, and idiots (i.e. where, if it were to ever get clogged with spam or abusive nonsense, I could just abandon it):
hello there Mr. Falk
i will continue to haunt you along with the dralas;
jolly good luck
Uh-huh. What the fuck's a "drala"?
Ah, here:
The dralas are the elements of reality—water of water, fire of fire, earth of earth—anything that connects you with the elemental quality of reality, anything that reminds you of the depths of perception. There are dralas in the rocks or the trees or the mountains or a snowflake or a clod of dirt. Whatever is there, whatever you come across in your life, there are the dralas of reality.
Okay, so something like (imaginary) nature spirits/devas, or whatever. So, if I had to guess, this is some nitwit Tibetan Buddhist, far too much of a coward to give his real name, who thinks that elemental spirits (and probably leprechauns, too) are real, and who is taking that utter alcoholic fraud, Chögyam Trungpa, far too seriously. ("Trungpa told us that if we ever tried to leave the Vajrayana, we would suffer unbearable, subtle, continuous anguish, and disasters would pursue us like furies"—Butterfield, The Double Mirror. Standard cult/religious manipulation tactic: Leave the "saved" group, and you're eternal toast.)
Well, I ain't afraid a'no "dralas," Limey. 'Cause there's this little thing called "reality" which they, and similar fairy tales, from Hansel and Gretel to Adam and Eve, tend to not get along with very well.
If any such "haunting" actually worked, why not send me the implicitly threatening message via it, rather than via email? D'uh.
Who you gonna call? Not the G.B.'s.... If you have a riff with people wanna bust Break out before you get bumrushed —Will Smith, Wild, Wild West
—Will Smith, Wild, Wild West
Please, I pray of you, Limey Bastard: Don't get jiggy wit' it.
I have no idea, at this point, where I read it, but: One of Trungpa's followers wrote that he had once been in a crowded room where the "great guru" was on the verge of passing out on his (non-porcelain) "throne." This had caused the follower to begin wondering, to himself, whether Chögyam was really enlightened after all. Just as he was thinking that thought, the abusive fraud (a.k.a. guru) looked up directly at him, straight in the eye. So "obviously," even in his alcoholic stupor, Trungpa was still telepathically communicating with him and guiding his spiritual evolution, etc.
Trungpa was utterly soused a huge percentage of the time in his adult life—very likely being so self-destructive, as June Campbell notes, simply to dull the deep pain of being separated from his mother when he was just a young child, and made to enter the Buddhist monasteries. He was the center of attention in any room in which he was present; all eyes were on him. What do you figure the odds are that, at some point through those hazy decades, Trungpa would have been piss-drunk in a room full of people, and a few of them might have started to formulate the thought that he wasn't what he claimed to be? And that he would then, completely coincidentally, have looked up into one of their sets of eyes? And that the "chosen" person in question would have taken it as a "sign," worthy of being shared with the rest of the clueless lemmings?
You really can't get much closer to 100% certainty than that set of circumstances, even if it's just utter, predictable coincidence, taken as if it were profoundly meaningful. Between that and Wilber's Winds, there's a whole lotta stuff that "goes bump in the night," just via the laws of probability. People who are functionally rational have no difficulty seeing and acting on that.
I was doing laundry today, and saw that someone had put up an ad on the bulletin board in my building, for "George the Mover." And it struck me like something out of the thirteenth century:
Art Thou Movingeth? Callest Thou George the Mover For All Thine Feudal Needs (Millstones Extra)
