the timboucher experience

This is part 2 in an on-going debate series between a reader named Alec and myself about the “integrational psychology” theories of author Ken Wilber. In a nutshell, Alec is pro and I am con. For part 1, go here and read this.

I will try to reply to your latest comments in chunks, Alec.

I’ve just scanned over my previous comments and I couldn’t locate where I said anything to the effect that Wilber fans are unfamiliar with these “types of questions.” You’ll have to point out where you gathered that from. I’m assuming it was just a miscommunication on my part, as I certainly didn’t intend to say anything of the sort.

The section I was responding to in your original comments (in relation to how people react to Wilber’s theories) was:

I tend to think it has something to do with the intellectual history of the individual, i.e. the types of questions they have wrestled with, and the sources of information they have been exposed to.

Okay, moving on with your second set of comments:

So, you don’t want answers? What do you want? I simply don’t understand this sentiment, and it begs the question of why we are bothering to debate in the first place.

Boy, asking me what I want is like asking me the meaning of life. If I knew that, I would totally be the master of it all, I think. Maybe what I want is to actually know what I want. I mean, I want a lot of things, I guess. I want to experience the search. It really doesn’t matter to me what the answers are. The search is what changes us, I think. The answers are like flowers. They come and go, and you can even put them in a vase and enjoy them inside your house for a few days. But they eventually wither. Unless they are plastic flowers, and then its hard to get rid of them. They get dusty. They look weird, they don’t smell good. I guess, to me, Wilber is plastic flowers masquerading as the real thing.

On what grounds can you criticize a philosopher for attempting to provide answers to the perennial questions of life, the universe, and everything? This is not just a peculiarity of Wilber’s work, but rather the raison d’etre of science and philosophy. Is it not?

I think I can and should criticize anybody for anything at any time. And so should everybody else. Nobody has the answers, and the only way we can have any fun or get anywhere is by doing this kind of back and forth. Comparing what we have and what we don’t have. I think philosophy, religion and science become problems when they announce that they have the answers, rather than they are looking for the answers. Then they become ossified. They become nets through which god slips through and we find ourselves only entrapped.

Although, upon further reflection I realize that perhaps “answers” is not the appropriate word to describe what Wilber provides. “Theories” would be more apt. Rather than being a collection of dogmatic assertions, I’ve always found Wilber’s writing to be persuasive, well-researched, and cogently presented.

Okay and that’s fine. I just don’t like his “theories”, then. They don’t ring true for me, and I don’t find them personally useful. Everybody has their own bag of tricks, I guess.

As for his tendency to intellectualize the ineffable, there is no doubt that Wilber possesses a well-developed intellect, and that he uses it. However, Wilber has always been careful to admonish his readers not to mistake the “map for the territory.” In other words, one must bear in mind that his intellectual models and metaphors are just that. Wilber uses what he terms “orienting generalizations” to communicate his ideas. So, while it might be ultimately impossible to capture the “truth” using language and conceptual models built from such, there is nevertheless merit in attempting to guide a person in the right direction with such tools. But, and Wilber consistently emphasizes this point, even these models must eventually be discarded in puruit of the “absolute.”

Two things here: one, you say he has a well-developed intellect, so why not use it. By that logic, we have atomic bombs, so why don’t we use them too? I realize that’s an overly dramatic statement. (I’ll come back to this intellect thing in a minute, cause it’s probably my biggest problem with him.) Second, you say that he even admits that you ought to discard these models at some point as you pursue the absolute. So why not just cut the middle man, and discard the models at the very start? That’s how I feel about it. Admittedly, I research, adopt and create models all the time, also. It’s inestimably hard to do anything without them. But I’m also constantly distorting, stretching, destroying and abandoning them just as quickly. In fact, that’s what I like so much about Philip K. Dick who I think is a hundred billion times more brilliant and educational than Ken Wilber could ever even shake a stick at. Dick’s real strength, for me, lies in the fact that he begins to tear down a model even before he is done building it. In the time that it takes that model to hit the ground, he has already put together three more to replace it, and then destroyed those too. And more than anything, he only uses the models as means of exploring people, and the deep emotional experience of those people as they look for understanding, only to have it crash on them over and over again, like waves on the beach.

Incidentally, the charge of over-intellectualization is almost certainly the most common one levelled at him by critics.

I can absolutely 100% see why. He’s simply dripping with excess intellectualism, for me. But it’s weird though. Cause on the other hand, I REALLY like somebody like Jung, who was superbly intellectual, and a master builder of systems. I think there was just some kind of balance with him though, which Wilber doesn’t have. Some kind of understanding which underlied all his systems building that he would throw it all away at a moment’s notice if it wasn’t working. If you read especially his autobiography, which I recommend, he relates several instances with treating patients where he more or less helps them through intuition alone: saying or doing certain things, or giving them certain symbols or stories which unlock doors for them in completely non-intellectual, impossible to explain ways. He masquerades as a scientist, but he was totally all about doing weird non-rational magic stuff. Or something. I don’t know. The point is, I think, that it’s alright to not know. To not have a “theory of everything” like Wilber rather arrogantly proclaims.

I think part of the reason I’m so interested in talking about this right now is that I’m putting together a book of my own, with some different theories and models I’ve been working on for a while. I ran into a big problem though when I started putting it all together. It became really didactic. I just felt like a prick after a while, trying to sit there and put out these theories about how X,Y, & Z work. It just seems like the wrong way to do it. I feel like if I were to plunge really drastically into that kind of territory, I would come out with results something like Ken Wilber. I mean, they might be true, they might be useful, but whatever it was I was doing, it started to feel really wrong. Really inauthentic. The reason is so far inscrutable to me, but it has something to do with what we’re talking about here. So I’ve been pulling back on the reigns, trying to turn myself around, and see what it is that I really care about, and how I can use what I care about to make something that maybe will give somebody else a connection to something they care about. It’s in the end not an intellectual pursuit. Or rather, the intellect can be a member of my work crew, but just not the foreman.

Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to bat ideas back and forth, and I’m more than willing to continue or drop it, either way.

• Truth and Flowers
• The Gnostic Seeking
• Ken Wilber & Being Taken Seriously
• Ken Wilber Critique, Part 5
• Ken Wilber Critique, Part 8