Monday, January 30, 2017

Wilber is more irrelevant than ever

There's a buzz in kennilingus land about Wilber's new book, Trump and a Post-Truth World. I'm really surprised that people still read this crap, given the accurate and voluminous criticism of his work. Even empirical developmental researchers, whose work Wilber twists beyond recognition, challenge how Wilber has done so. So David Lane responds to Wilber's book in a four-part essay at Integral World. I've written reams with similar criticisms, but I no longer have any desire to read or respond to Wilber. No doubt according to the cult because I've regressed to, or never got past, green (and mean to boot). Part One of Lane's critique is here. An excerpt:

"Early in his e-book Wilber reveals what Professor Bennett Berger would call his 'metaphysical pathos', which is that evolution has a purpose and a direction. Wilber also indulges in a very questionable reification when he suggests that 'evolution itself has to adjust course' as if evolution was conscious of its long-term goals."


"Here Wilber even gives evolution a prime directive—what he calls “the primary purpose”—which is always to push the envelope for the next stage in the great chain of being to unfold. If, however, we don't accept Wilber's creation myth (because that is precisely what it is), then his entire Integral edifice comes crashing down, since his political argument is built piece by piece upon this rather tenuous foundation.

"And upon this scaffolding model, Wilber then tries to build his argument about our current political situation by using (as his habit) voodoo statistics and reductive color-coding in order to make sweeping generalizations so as to drive home his thesis. Yet, in doing such, he neglects (as usual) the very facts and numbers that would give one pause."

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