![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
The Pre/Trans Fallacy
I’ve never cared for Ken Wilber’s metaphysical musings very much. But the other day, Zac brought up an interesting term that Wilber uses, which Zac then applied applied it to Charles Manson: the pre/trans fallacy. In Zac’s words:
Now the other aspect to a lot of what Manson says is the pre-trans fallacy; which in short is the tendancy to mistake a preconventional or regressive state for a postconventional or transcendental one simply because both lie outside the realm of the conventional mind. […] In Charlie’s mind anything rejected by the conventional mind is holy, simply because it falls outside the confines of the mentality that has imprisoned him.
There are some interesting points in this, but I also think there are a lot of cloaked assumptions which I’d like to try and reveal. Another website offers some thoughts on the pre/trans dilemma which make these assumptions a little more explicitly:
One of the biggest problems with spirituality is knotted up in the Pre-Trans fallacy. How do we distinguish between what is pre-rational and what is trans-rational? Both states are “irrational,” but pre-rational has to do with superstition, voodoo, magical thinking, ego-inflation, and so on, whereas trans-rational has to do with truly mystical states of consciousness.
Another source has a very interesting chart which attempts to graph the characteristics of these various states. Rather than using “pre-rational” or “trans-rational” though, they break it down into pre-personal, personal, and trans-personal. Or consult Ken Wilber himself on the subject.
I guess my main problem with this theory goes something like this. He uses the word “fallacy” when I think “question” would be more appropriate. If it was a question, we could say: Is there a meaningful or useful difference between various types of non-rational experience? Because it is a question and not an answer. Using the word “fallacy” not only suggests certainty to his theory (which I find lacking) but also sets up a roadblock saying: Don’t investigate this question; it’s a fallacy; it’s wrong; it’s dangerous. Which I think is stupid. It’s a great question. Well worthy of serious consideration.
To me, the question goes back to this idea: what’s the difference between mystical insight and insanity? Despite what Wilber says, I don’t think it’s so simple as saying merely it’s a matter or whether you embrace or reject the rational mind. Anyway, what is the rational mind anyway? Mark Pesce suggests that reason is nothing more than an after-the-fact invention to begin with:
We arrive at our decisions through emotional sensations, acting “from the gut” at all times. Our reason enters the process only after the decision has been made, and acts as the mind’s propagandist, convincing us of the utter rightness which underlies all of our actions.
Protestant reformer Martin Luther called reason a “whore” - suggesting that you can get reason to do anything you want, but that it will cost you. Charles Manson said, “My philosophy is: Don’t think. I don’t believe in the mind that you think with and scheme with. I don’t believe in words.”
The other problem I have with the concept of the pre/trans fallacy is that it encourages you to run around and put experience into boxes. You end up giving added power to rational thinking, rather than using it to dismantle itself and reverse-engineer back to it’s source. This is how you get somebody denigrating “voodoo” and “superstition” as pre-rational, while glorifying a thoroughly abstract “mysticism” as trans-rational. To me, it just starts to feel like a word-game more than anything else. It’s interesting, but I have better things to spend my time on.
Philosophy seems like it should be understood as a verb not a noun - a methodology rather than a model. The love of wisdom. Being in love is not a rational nor a static thing; it changes constantly and you have to change with it or lose it. Become too fixed on the perfect image of it, and you’ll miss the overwhelmingly bizarre complexities of the real thing which you could never account for with a million models.
- Prev: Relative & Absolute Bodhicitta
- Next: Reality as Meaning
July 2nd, 2005 at 10:01 pm
well, wilber himself admits the limitations of speech and writing. i think his principal motivation is to have semanitc map that’s ‘good enough’ to dispell a lot of the confusion and conflict in the world around us.
July 2nd, 2005 at 10:17 pm
Yeah I understand. Personally I find it more confusing.
July 2nd, 2005 at 10:46 pm
I find Wilber somewhat tiresome. Thinking about this stuff is interesting and useful for awhile, but at some point you actually have to have some tangible experience. If Wilber’s concepts help other people that’s great, but the’re not very helpful to me.
The pre/trans thing (”fallacy”) strikes me as elitist and, well, somewhat racist. Why bother trying to distinguish between “superstition” and “genuine mysticism” unless you plan on using that distinction to separate people? And it’s very clear from the examples used to describe “pre” and “trans” that this separation will occur along race and class lines.
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:44 pm
it’s tricky. unless you wanna live on a two dimensional plane, you have to be able to make qualitative distinctions in states of consciousness. and if you do, somone’s gonna call you a racist/elitist/fascist. seems like hierarchy is the big boogeyman of the modern mind.
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:54 pm
the race and class lines is exactly where wilber goes in his adaptation of beck and linscott`s forging south africa`s future into value system mosaics. wilber puts forth this analysis in his, “a theory of everything”. i firmly believe that wilber isn`t trying to seperate people, but he does swagger with his points. the pre/trans fallacy idea suggests that we are confusing causes with effects,making distinctions without differences and confusing superstition with “true” mysticism. the boy`s just being cute. he has made a franchise out of hair-splitting and, to my mind, getting away with a basic erronious assumption. that matter was around for billions of years before conciousness. how the fuck do you know ken? you`ll be saying that you can prove which came first, the chicken or the egg.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:25 am
Why? It doesn’t appear to me that you have to make those distinctions. I could just as easily make them as not make them. What does making them allow us to do, and what does it prevent?
Maybe, but I definitely think it’s a mark of the rational mind - for better or worse. Interesting that the original (rarely used) meaning of hierarchy is rule by a high priest.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:45 am
the world is full of possiblities, but we only have so much time and energy. unless we can make distinctions in the relative values of things, then how could we ever set priorities? just off the top of my head…
and while i realise that hierarchy/high priests have a much more suspect connotation these days, it certainly didn’t used to be that way. that distinction itself wouldn’t be possible without some kind of hierarchy of critical/ noncritical thinking.
July 3rd, 2005 at 2:01 am
July 3rd, 2005 at 2:02 am
oops, bungled the blockquote. second para is mine, if its not obvious.
July 3rd, 2005 at 2:17 am
I was just simplifying for the benefit of those who don’t make the postmodern/modern distinction as clearly as we might. the point remains.
July 3rd, 2005 at 2:40 am
i dont mean to be bitchy but i’d say its a distinction with a difference, considering that two major differences between 200+ yrs of modernism and late 20th c postmodernism are the perceived value of the whole idea of ‘enlightenment’ and the reality of mediated experience. but ok, let’s not split hairs.
July 3rd, 2005 at 4:25 am
Both states are “irrational,” but pre-rational has to do with superstition, voodoo, magical thinking, ego-inflation, and so on, whereas trans-rational has to do with truly mystical states of consciousness.
————–
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau!
Mock on, mock on - Tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:49 am
How do you know that a truly mystical state of consciousness differs from what a practicioner of voodo experiences? And, frankly, a lot of what passes for “mystical states” is, in my opinion, just other forms of ego-inflation. Unless you can bring it back down to help other people/beings, then it’s just narcissism.
Attention to hierarchy, especially where race and class are concerned, is not unimportant. One logical conclusion of occult practice combined with hierarchy and racism is Nazism. It may not be the only one, but many of the 20th Century advocates of spiritual/occult hierarchies flirted with National Socialism (if they weren’t outright participants).
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:01 pm
i agree about the narcissism. i just commented on the schizo/meaning post about new agey guru types like neale walsch or deepak chopra and their devotees, and i think that what i was saying there relates to this in the sense that there is a terrible amount of “spiritual narcissism” and ego masturbation that people are mistaking for transcendent experience. it’s like in the gospel of thomas when jesus says:
“if you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. when you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. for what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth — it is that which will defile you.”
to me this speaks directly to what we’re talking about.. i read it as a criticism of the spiritual narcissist. i used to take classes at this very hardcore yoga center in new york, where people like sting and madonna and david duchovny hang out, and although it was a really seductive and beautiful and euphoric environment, i eventually stopped going because it because it became apparent that a lot of the people there were, as far as i could tell, just really addicted to the floaty, glowy, holier-than-thou nag champa vibe. i saw them preaching the gita and patanjali’s yoga sutras one second, and the next they’d be storming around with their $800 handbags yapping into their cellphones.
SO my point is that i think jesus is basically saying forget about “trans-rational” states. stop worrying about when you’re going to be able to raise your kundalini — that’s not what’s important. true holiness is in humility and generosity. true holiness is caring for sick people and speaking the truth, not paying $5000 to starve yourself for 30 days at a retreat center.
i mean that’s obviously a really extreme way of putting it, but yeah.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:17 pm
laura jane, I like what you just wrote.
I do think there is a time and a place for raising kundalini, and for the “floaty, glowy” state (but the “I’m more spiritual than you” thing gets tired really fast). But I also think there is a place for righteous anger, e.g. Jesus in the temple with the money-changers.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:31 pm
thanks slomo, and yeah i agree completely. i’ve started to see the ecstasy thing as sort of a “perk”, if you will, not an objective in and of itself. it just so happens that it can also function as a very very effective trap.. like it can cause all your “progress” to come to a grinding halt and you get stuck in this limbo of touchy-feeliness.
i think people have really lost touch with the righteous anger aspect, which is so important if you ask me.. i mean if you remove that from the philosophical framework, everything kinda goes limp. interesting that the church has SO promoted the “turn the other cheek” philosophy but rarely do people connect with the need for positive action or righteous aggression.
i spent 9 years in quaker school, and while i think the friends have a really great thing going in a lot of ways, that was always my qualm with their philosophy — the pacifism is taken to such extremes that they end up disempowering themselves in some ways, which really just “enables” evil.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:39 pm
There’s a lot of baggage hidden in Wilber’s idea. First, as we’ve all noticed, it implies that the “pre” is absolutely objectively inferior — not just to the “trans” but to us. Also it suggests that we moved from the “pre” to where we are now through some kind of voluntary learning process, which is not the case. Pretty much all primitive cultures only gave way to our own culture under overwhelming force. Also, it implies that we are the bridge from the one to the other, which is not at all clear from the evidence. Also, it implies that we are rational. It seems to me that in politics and even in science humans are still choosing their positions for emotional reasons and then using rationality as a “whore” to justify themselves. Finally, to call something “pre” is to set up a myth of one-way irreversible motion. What that word is trying to do is close us off forever from certain ways of being, to reduce our options and shrink our world.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:43 pm
Unfortunately, the Christian Right is very in touch with their righteous anger. But they direct it at things that are non-issues, or at most symptoms of a larger problem. (Example: OK, fine, sexual promiscuity isn’t great, but let’s talk about the powerful economic and semantic forces that encourage and enable it, not the poor misdirected folks who get themselves into a jam.) I see some signs that a Christian Left is emerging with righteous anger, and I think their targets are more plausible.
But the mass-market New Age is hopelessly behind.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:45 pm
Ran’s critique is very succinct. I like it.
July 3rd, 2005 at 12:47 pm
Ah, that’s exactly what I was trying to articulate Ran. Thanks
July 3rd, 2005 at 1:03 pm
there’s just as much baggage hidden in the critique of it, really. Trying to qualify in what order certain states of consciousness unfold does not neccisarily automatically imply a negative value judgement . Wilber always is very clear that everyone starts at square one and works their way up as far as they can.
There is no blanket condemnation of other cultures or beliefs either. Undoubtedly there have been buddha/jesus level realisers every culture and epoch, we just know about some because of more sophisticated written transmission. what he’s talking about is where the center of gravity for a particular culture happens to be, not where every single member of it is. certain aspect of the culture such as it’s spiritual and shamanic traditions are obviously highly developed, but embedded in very basic atomistic mythological thinking.
And there is nothing there about any irreversible one way movement either. every level of unfoldment remains available as a state experience, even if as a stage you’ve moved on.
if anything wilber is even more blistering in his critique of rational, and postconventional waves of consciousness ( ie; us ) his pre trans work is a footnote to much more complex body of work.
I always find it kind of funny how people want to praise archaic and narcissistic magickal thinking, while crtiqueing the critique of it with the same kind of postmodern, transrational point of veiw that somone like wilber takes.
It’s kind of like climbing up a ladder and from the top of that ladder, kicking it down and saying that a ladder doesn’t exist.
I love your site Ran btw: nothing but love, man : )
July 3rd, 2005 at 1:09 pm
Based on what I’ve read of Wilber, I would be astonished to see this. Do you know of anywhere on the internet where I can start (I refuse to buy his books with his smiling bald head on the front)?
July 3rd, 2005 at 1:25 pm
the marrige of sense and soul is the one that deals with how the rational enlightenment gutted the spiritual traditions and turned our culture into a two dimensional flatland where only sensorymotor phenomenon were admissable
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7187/victor.html
is good introduction, but it might be somewhat out of date..
July 3rd, 2005 at 1:33 pm
this also presents a good overveiw of where wilber is at these days set in the context of the war in iraq
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/iraq.cfm
July 3rd, 2005 at 6:09 pm
it seems to me that the “pre” is all of the superstitions of africa, asia, europe etc, and the “trans” is all of the urban, dry-cleaned intellectualism that wilber et al. can devise. it seems a bit ego-attached to me.