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Heru
Joined: 08 25 04
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Location: The Misty Pacific Northwest
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 Posted: 10/19/06, 12:02 pm Post subject: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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An excerpt from Twilight of the Clockwork God: Conversations on Science & Spirituality (1999) which some might find interesting:
| Quote: | JE: In your book Coming Into Being you compare the work of Jean Gebser with Ken Wilber. Can you discuss the differences that you see in the approaches of both of these men to the evolution of consciousness?
WIT: Oh, it's almost classic cultured European versus Midwestern American hick. You know, I think people like Terence McKenna and Ken just grew up in Eastern Colorado and Nebraska in such culturally deprived areas that they get captured by a kind of abstract construction of what they imagine the big European thinker is, or the psychedelic hero in the case of McKenna. And Wilber, as I say in Coming Into Being, is just very abstract but Gebser is an artist. He has an incredible insight, for example, into the role of adjectives in Rilke, and what it means when you use language in a particular way to create an imaginative landscape that's more processive and less prospective of composed object nailed down into perspectival space. So there's an amazing senstivity to art and poetry and painting and the richness of European culture. But when I was teaching temporarily at the California Institute of Integral Studies, all the students didn't like Gebser because they can't remember a painting of Cezanne; they don't read Rilke. They're just into drugs and taking Extasy and going to Raves, and looking for some kind of psychotherapy technique. And so Wilber is their hero because he just gives them all these maps and charts, this Michelin guide. He's a control freak. There's no sense of humor, there's no sense of art, it's all just sterile and masculine in a very dry and abstract way.
I didn't want to be an egomaniac and say, well, my culture history is better than Wilber's. I didn't want to go into that. So I went out of my way to use Ken Wilber's Up From Eden as a textsbook, and had everybody read it in my Lindisfarne symposium at the cathedral. But when I did that, and went out of my way to give equal time and to really be open to Wilber, and read the book, and underlined it, I just thought, God, the difference between this and The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light--they cover exactly the same turf--is the difference between a textbook and a work of art!
And then I went back because I wanted to be fair, because I knew Treya Wilber and was corresponding with her when she was going through her crisis. She was also a friend of my wife's, and I had cancer, and so Treya and I were talking a lot about cancer. I've never met Ken face to face, but I knew Treya before she married Ken, and I wanted to go out of my way to be fair to Ken. So I got the new book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and I thought, God, this is ridiculous! Three-thousand pages that are going to explain everything. You know, this kind of German nineteenth century scholarship, that's over. I don't have the time to read 3000 pages! Then when he kept using this little slogan that his literary agent, John White, put on all his books: "the Einstein of the consciousness movement," I was revolted by the vulgarity of it. And then when he went beyond that to go and put his picture on the front of the book and say, "A Brief History of Everything!" Ken Wilber explains the entire universe to you, everything you wanted to know about everything. And I thought, this is just inflation; this is an ego that's just suffering from a hernia. |
The interviewer, John David Ebert, comments in the end-notes:
| Quote: | It occurs to me that Ken Wilber and William Irwin Thompson are modern incarnations of an archetypal dichotomy of intellectual temperament. Aristotle and Plato are perhaps the earliest manifestation in Western culture, but it has continued right down the line in such pairs as Newton and Leibniz, Kant and Goethe, Hegel and Schopenhauer. The Wilber type is the Systematist for whom the world is capable of reduction to a single clear architecture. There is one set of truths, eternal and unchanging, which the Systematist, whether he is Kant or Hegel, Newton or Aristotle, believes he has been uniquely privileged to discover. Everything is assigned to its niche, like the saints and apostles in a Gothic cathedral, and one system contains all the necessary answers for any question that should arise.
For Wilber, consequently, there is only one theory that is articulated over and over again in each of his books, all of which repeat the same schemas and diagrams endlessly. His work can be neatly divided in two halves, for Sex, Ecology, Spirituality marks the birth of his new Final Theory, in the light of which his earlier works are to be taken as precursors. Everything since that book contains a carbon copy of the same four-fold diagram of quadrants, as though consciousness can be mapped as neatly as the trajectory of a parabola on a Cartesian grid.
For the Thompson-Schopenhauer-Goethe-Leibniz-Plato type, the world is in flux and its truths are changing along with it. The ideas of these thinkers are never finished, always subject to revision, and constantly undergoing transformation as new truths are tested, or new theories acquired. The world is a state of perpetual Becoming and no system or body of knowledge can ever hope to be complete, capturing all that there is to know at last. No scholar has ever succeeded, for example, in capturing the fine nuances of Plato's ideas as they evolve through the course of his dialogues. Nothing but actually reading them through chronologically can replicate the experience of watching his thought ripen to its full maturity. Plato, like Nietzsche, was not afraid of contradicting himself, for the two were alike in their manner of constantly trying out new ideas on themselves to see what the resulting points of view would look like.
Something of this dichotomy is embodied, also, by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. For the former, working in the medium of stone meant the production of complete masterpieces. Michelangelo almost always finished what he started--until later years, that is--and consequently we possess only a handful of unfinished works. The Sistine Chapel constitutes a veritable System of the Christian cosmos, complete in every respect from Genesis to Apocalypse. For Leonardo, on the other hand, the world was ever changing and so were his views. Rarely did he finish what he began. Each painting is a sort of test of an entirely provisional theory. His notebooks are unsystematic and no one has ever really managed to capture their full complexity in a synopsis.
Thompson, likewise, must be read in his entirety, every book, in order to grasp the substance of his vision, which is always changing. He is unsystematic, but always innovative, incorporating fresh insights with each new volume. Every book is a unique experience. For him, consequently, Wilber personifies that which Thompson most dreads: the Final Theory Engraved in Stone. |
Some brief comments of my own to follow. First, those who know me probably can see why I've been more drawn to Thompson of late--especially from how Ebert characterizes it in the last sentence, for I too have a "dread" Of the Final Theory Engraved in Stone 
But it should be mentioned that while I generally agree with Thompson and Ebert, I think Wilber does at least give lip-service to the kind of dynamic approach that Thompson advocates and embodies. Wilber says that his theories are changing and open to revision, although what he actually does is a bit different. He seems to be the classic example of giving lip-service, but then not (totally) following through.
It is interesting to note how with his more recent "post-metaphysical approach," Wilber is moving towards a more dynamic-processual approach, yet still through systematizing. There is a sense that he believes that he is discovering something new, when it may be that he is merely coming around to where people like Thompson have been for some time, yet through his own systematic approach. Actually, it isn't unlike how the new physicists "re-discovered" spirituality, yet only really begin to approach what mystics have been exploring for millenia. The problem being, as Wilber himself says, that they approach the mystical through a materialistic lens, and in so doing "materialize" (reduce/flatland) it, ego-ize it, co-opting it into their own language.
Perhaps then it may be that Wilber's criticism of these new physicists is, to some degree at least, a kind of shadow projection.
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Quotes of the Day (or, Only on the Ken Wilber Forum):
"I am a fan of quality gibberish..." ~Theos
"do you see my rumi quote as passive-aggressive?" ~ Sunya |
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EarToEar
Joined: 08 26 04
Posts: 1981
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| Posted: 10/19/06, 1:38 pm Post subject: no sense of humor |
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in Ken, eh?!
Rudhyar cites Aquarians as uniquely needing/lacking:
a sense of humor!
[each sunsign has such a lacuna-blindspot, in
Astrological Insights into the Spiritual Life,
and Spirit may provide the lack] |
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Justin Sane
Joined: 08 25 06
Posts: 1263
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| Posted: 10/19/06, 2:50 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Wilber personifies the Final Theory Engraved in Stone? What a joke! Thompson is on the right track, imo. Ebert sounds a little starstruck.
"Dear dead idlewilds, rot not in variform guises..."~Anthony Burgess |
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Heru
Joined: 08 25 04
Posts: 1568
Location: The Misty Pacific Northwest
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| Posted: 10/19/06, 4:10 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Starstruck? I'm not so sure. He sounded rather critical of Wilber (or are you saying he's starstruck towards Thompson?)--I don't think he's saying Wilber's theory is the final theory, but that Wilber sees it as final. At least subconsciously. In other words, both are exploring integral/dynamic/processual philosophy, but Wilber's approach is more "crystalizing," Thompson's more fluid.
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Quotes of the Day (or, Only on the Ken Wilber Forum):
"I am a fan of quality gibberish..." ~Theos
"do you see my rumi quote as passive-aggressive?" ~ Sunya |
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Justin Sane
Joined: 08 25 06
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| Posted: 10/20/06, 7:54 am Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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| I do think that Wilber is the "Einstein of the consciousness movement"- in a sense. Einstein tried to formulate a theory of everything and failed. And I think both have tried to do this for the same reason. The reason being that they both believed that they were smart enough to do it. In both cases, this is false. They have that in common. |
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Susan
Joined: 09 03 04
Posts: 735
Location: Shambhala
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| Posted: 10/20/06, 9:37 am Post subject: Thank you.... |
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This thread of yours is a grate opening....
Googling "Jean Gebser" ....
| Quote: | | It would seem, then, that we are dealing with a kind of historical description of a linearly unfolding schema, but this would be a grave misinterpretation of his thesis and it does injustice to his approach. At first blush it would appear that Gebser is approaching his subject as we would expect any historian to proceed, but it must be emphasized that Gebser's approach is quite deductive. We are presented at the very beginning with the model; later we are taken step-by-step through the 'evidence' which he believes supports the claim. Consequently, we find a number of historical, archaeological, and philological arguments presented that are not necessarily in keeping with generally agreed-upon theories in these disciplines. At times, these appear quite creative but this is most often a result of reading Gebser in a strictly intellectual and analytical manner. This is not to say that he should be approached uncritically, for he should be, yet the text itself is not a logical argumentation as one would expect to find, let us say, in a philosophical treatise. In accordance with his own model, he attempts to make of his book an example of the type of thinking one would encounter in the Integral structure of consciousness. It is not reasoned in a linear manner; in fact, the book would probably have been better suited to a hypertextual presentation. It would be some years, however, before this form of document would be developed so we are forced to deal with a non-traditional approach to a broader than usual subject that has been forced into a well-known and familiar medium: the book. Failure to recognize this idiosyncrasy can cause the reader untold difficulties from the beginning. |
A partial from the following URL...
http://www.gaiamind.org/Gebser.html
And that URL a partial from the following URL
http://www.gaiamind.org/
Wow and aWe.....
 [/url]
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Chogyam Trungpa |
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MarkDavid
Joined: 10 23 04
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| Posted: 10/21/06, 12:24 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Hi Heru.
This guy Thompson sounds like a pretentious word with very little appreciation of typological differences. He should read the Enneagram a bit.
Not that Wilber isn't also quite capable (as we know) of arrogant words (i.e., Wyatt Earpy), but I find the irony quite striking. My arrogance is better than yours!
Mark |
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Heru
Joined: 08 25 04
Posts: 1568
Location: The Misty Pacific Northwest
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| Posted: 10/21/06, 5:19 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Sounds like you're making the same general observation as Ebert, albeit in a more aggressive manner  Of course I think Thompson is being a bit harsh, but I somewhat commiserate, preferring a more artistic to scientific approach.
That said, my only concern with writing this off to typological differences is that it is all too easy to equate just about any difference to typology, ala "different strokes for different folks." So on one hand we can say that Wilber's approach is more analytical and Thompson's more aesthetic (or Socratean vs. Platonic, etc.), but there is also the matter of where one approach is more inclusive, flexible, dynamic, etc. And, more importantly, how one approach can illuminate and add to the other.
Not to mention looking at it as a dialectic: what is the synthesis?
_________________
Quotes of the Day (or, Only on the Ken Wilber Forum):
"I am a fan of quality gibberish..." ~Theos
"do you see my rumi quote as passive-aggressive?" ~ Sunya |
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neo
Joined: 08 24 04
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| Posted: 10/22/06, 10:06 am Post subject: I am probably arrogant |
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" ....abstract construction of what they imagine the big European thinker is, or the psychedelic hero in the case of McKenna. And Wilber, as I say in "Coming Into Being, is just very abstract but Gebser is an artist. He has an incredible insight, for example, into the role of adjectives in Rilke, and what it means when you use language in a particular way to create an imaginative landscape that's more processive and less prospective of composed object nailed down into perspectival space. So there's an amazing senstivity to art and poetry and painting and the richness of European culture. But when I was teaching temporarily at the California Institute of Integral Studies, all the students didn't like Gebser because they can't remember a painting of Cezanne; they don't read Rilke. They're just into drugs and taking Extasy and going to Raves, and looking for some kind of psychotherapy technique. And so Wilber is their hero because he just gives them all these maps and charts, this Michelin guide. He's a control freak. There's no sense of humor, there's no sense of art, it's all just sterile and masculine in a very dry and abstract way...... "
Being a euro myself, I happen to agree with him of that, I´ve been several times in the US and I´ve always been struck by the kind of general lack of refined culture. No need of being PC here. 
And Gebser knew for example Adorno and Thomas Mann - the precursers of the postmodern movement actually. These dudes spent WWII in Santa Monica, escaping Nazism. In their diaries, they complained all the time about the "cowboys" around them.
Well Allan Bloom, that overtensed conservative, was right on that point.
kidding btw.
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MarkDavid
Joined: 10 23 04
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| Posted: 10/23/06, 11:24 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Hi Heru.
I agree you can't just wash everything away with typological differences, but your guy isn't really in the area code of being in danger of that. He's playing the other pole and being dismissive (jealous?).
I'm sure if you like his work it has a lot to offer, but how does that tact improve things?
Yours,
Mark |
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Susan
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JayaHanuman
Joined: 03 02 06
Posts: 691
Location: Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram
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| Posted: 10/24/06, 10:32 am Post subject: Re: Thank you, Mark my words..... |
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Indeed Susan, I find it surprising that William Irwin Thompson has not really made it onto this board before. His work, while not as massive (pagewise) as Wilber is certainly far more insightful and nuanced. For anyone who wants an overview of his ideas, I would recommend Coming Into Being which in many ways summarizes some of his best and latest work of ten years ago. more recently there have been other essays and smaller books. But yes, it is correct to say that he is more artist and poet than Wilber is. Thompson long ago saw through the fallacy that scientific metaphor induces as a sort of dreary literalism in reading or viewing art. This is why he is far more nuanced than Wilber ever will be or could have hope of being. It all turns on language.
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Heru
Joined: 08 25 04
Posts: 1568
Location: The Misty Pacific Northwest
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| Posted: 10/24/06, 12:02 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Mark, I find it important to look at things in many different ways, in this context looking at Wilber from Thompson's perspective. It doesn't make his perspective absolute, but what does it tell us? Sure, we can speculate about Thompson--and perhaps he was jealous--but that seems secondary (and, perhaps, sidestepping the content of what Thompson is saying).
Thompson and Wilber are an interesting contrast, and I think Ebert has it about right, although I also tend to agree with Jaya Hanuman that Thompson's approach is more "nuanced." But this is also part of Wilber's typology as a mapper, as analytic, as scientific-literal: that sort of thing tends to brush over nuance.
I've found reading Thompson to be very enriching, especially after years of Wilber being my Number One Guy--and largely because of how Thompson characterizes their differences. They do cover some of the same territory, but whereas Wilber does so as a scientist, Thompson does as an artist; and in that sense, I am personally more akin to Thompson and found a certain degree of validation through his approach.
But there is something beyond horizontal typologies and the "different strokes for different folks" mentality that I am pointing to. I do think that Thompson more fully embodies the feeling of integral consciousness, whereas Wilber seems to be stretching the rational-empirical into territory that it cannot really tread, placing a template over a landscape that is more akin to vision-myth than vision-logic in that "myth" allows for a more dynamic, symbolic, and multi-faceted approach than "logic," which tends to be monological and literal.
(It should be obvious that I'm not using myth in the Wilberian sense).
On the other hand, as with most contrasting approaches, it may be that the most powerful embodiment is a union, and that is what is of primary interest to me.
_________________
Quotes of the Day (or, Only on the Ken Wilber Forum):
"I am a fan of quality gibberish..." ~Theos
"do you see my rumi quote as passive-aggressive?" ~ Sunya |
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Jana
Joined: 08 25 04
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Location: Nirvana Mastery level 1
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| Posted: 10/24/06, 12:50 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Do we have to blow up the planet before we get over our either or linear thinking, and realize the head without the heart is freecking insane.
Thing is each of us tends to polarize in a particular quadrant, call it specialization if you will. When someone explores a "type" to its n'dth degree that doesn't mean that we have to follow and become equally polarized. It is more a case of us needing to be appeciative of the work that person has done along that particular line, and to draw their goodies into our fold and thus deepen the other quadrants in us. Instead of reacting to specialization as tho we were going to fall off a rocking boat and into the abyss forever.
Perhaps we could get some language going around the appreciation for polar specialization. In case no one noticed Ken is a male, of course he is going to do a masculine thing. Feminine men just make me want to shake them by the shoulders and scream wake up in their face.
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Enlightenment is a reflection of the unlimited abundance and potential of creation, not a greedy abstinence from the Good, the True, the Beautiful and the Pleasurable. |
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JayaHanuman
Joined: 03 02 06
Posts: 691
Location: Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram
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| Posted: 10/24/06, 1:43 pm Post subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser |
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Here's a very interesting recent interview with William Irwin Thompson.
http://www.wildriverreview.com/wnt2006-spotlight_thompson.html
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