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Ken's saying that "we've replaced repression with regression" is the most succinct case I've heard yet in favor of the Conveyor Belt.

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'takes all kinds.

I heard Ken say "we've replaced repression with regression" and I swear I immediately knew that this phrase would be repeated over and over by his many toadies. I bet he produces such phrases for exactly that purpose. What a clever man he is. And yes, I can't wait to read the "Terrorist Trilogy".

Blessings,

Hey Witz:

I have a lot of respect for someone who masters a second language and then has the guts to practice it. Many Americans are mortitified about actually trying to use a foreign language.

That said, we should always bear in mind that when someone is using what is not a native language to them, they might use terms that have grossly unintended consequences.

So just to zero in here: in English, to call someone a "toady" is to say:

* the person is a sycophantic follower who has no mind of his own and who lacks the integrity to determine for himself what is right and wrong or good and bad.

* it also suggests the person is willing to say or do things out of sheer obedience without regard for their own dignity.

I doubt you meant this.

If you did mean it, then basically you are trying to pick a fight. To walk into an Integral bar and call people Wilber toadies, is like walking into a country bar and calling everyone a redneck. Or worse.

I am assuming you meant people who are kind of pre-disposed to act like a Wilber fan club.

Was machen Sie?

the scenario ken outlines from his upcoming triology novel .. the many faces of terrorism .. where green leadership brings in a one person one vote world wide democracy

and an ethnocentric power is voted in who then proceeds to kill thirty percent of the population .. etc . . .

leads one to question whether to avoid this from happening .. could .. with skillful means .. a second tier leadership .. language to first tier in a way that brings them into power ??

 

Thank you, Schalk, I try to write my best english. I'm unsure from time to time whether I get the adverbs right, or the prepositions, and for some words I still rely on my dictionary.

Yes, I see now that the word 'toady' can be misunderstood. My intention was not to insult somebody. I apologize if I hurt someone's feelings. And yes, I looked the word up in my 1997 'Langenscheidt' Deutsch - English dictionary and it translates to 'Speichellecker'. When I look at your definition of the word, I would say 'Speichellecker' is someone who is 'pre-disposed to act like someone's fanclub', as you so nicely put it. The former, stronger definition that you suggest would translate to another word which I can't tell you here in public, because children might read these words, too.

So you see: I clearly meant the weaker meaning of the word, since in the german language (interesting enough) we have another word for the stronger one.

I hope this helps to clear the misunderstanding.

best to you,

witz

Sehr gut. Danke!

you're sweet schalk to be concerned about witz offending jikishin .. but not to worry .. was it robb smith who said second tier doesn't get offended ??

something tells me jikishin understood the spirit with which witz's comment was made

 

wikipedia has an apparently good article on the flynn effect, which corroborates what wilber was saying, i.e. the 3 points per decade rise in IQ for most of the last century, peaking in the 90s, and then a slight decline. of the various possible explanations, i like this part the best:

Still another theory is that the general environment is today much more complex and stimulating. One of the most striking 20th-century changes in the human intellectual environment has come from the increase in exposure to many types of visual media. From pictures on the wall to movies to television to video games to computers, each successive generation has been exposed to far richer optical displays than the one before and may have become more adept at visual analysis. This would explain why tests like the Raven's have shown the greatest increases, since they depend on such analysis. This explanation may imply that IQ tests do not necessarily measure a general intelligence factor, especially not Raven's as often argued, but instead may measure different forms of intelligence that are developed by different experiences. An increase only in particular form(s) of intelligence would explain why the Flynn effect has not caused a "cultural renaissance too great to be overlooked."[1]
Related to this, James Flynn's current explanation (Flynn 2007) is that environmental changes arising from modernization - such as more intellectually demanding work, greater use of technology and smaller families - have meant that people are far more used to manipulating abstract concepts such as hypotheses and categories than a century ago. Substantial portions of IQ tests deal with these abilities. He gives as an example the question 'What do a dog and a rabbit have in common?' - a modern respondent might say they are both mammals (an abstract answer), whereas someone a century ago might say that you catch rabbits with dogs (a concrete answer).

from an aqal perspective, isn't this just evidence that evolution, motivated by eros, has been moving forward, at least on some fronts and at least until recently where there are signs that, thanatos at work, it might be regressing?

i've just started reading SES for the fourth time. why? well, i've been wanting to read 'overview', but i can't seem to get started on it, and i'm understanding SES much better than the 3rd time, which was much better than the 2nd, which was much better than the 1st, sans endnotes. p.48 includes an interesting observation that might give some insight into the trilogy:

...all sciences are fundamentally reconstructive sciences. That is, we never know, and never can know, exactly what any holon will do tomorrow (we might know broad outlines and probabilities, based on past observations, but self-transcendent emergence always means, to some degree: surprise!). We have to wait and see, and from that, after the fact, we reconstruct a knowledge system.

witz, my english to deutsch dictionary says that toady means kriecher. i can easily sympathize with you, the irony being that we americans typically don't even bother to attempt to speak another's language, even when we're in their country.

wilber, incidentally, seems to be especially interested in german idealism. he's suggested--i don't remember his words--that there's going to be some kind of renaissance of interest in this incredible movement of a couple hundred years ago.

i've been getting ready, buying up works of the german idealists, preferrably in german, at least until the damn dollar went down the toilet and it became too expensive. some of them i don't think are even available in english, e.g. schelling's late works on mythologie and offenbarung (revelation). suhrkamp had a wonderful 5 or 6 volume, paperback selection of schelling, which was available just a few years ago for $70 + shipping, but then soared in price and then vanished, at least from the internet.

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hi ralph .. do u think that one of the causes of the flynn effect may be a culture that doesn't want to hurt the students' feelings ?

as in :  good job johnny ! (even when johnny's attempt was piss poor) so why should johnny put forth any effort when he is getting pats on the back without it

and interesting point about visual media and optical displays ! perhaps we need to update and make current the i.q. tests to better match today's world

btw: did u say u actually have "overview" ? has it been released ?

Ralph,

thank you for your kind words. I'm glad Schalk helped me solve the problems my thoughtless initial post might have created. I guess my 'John Wayne' sub-personality is running around too loosely sometimes. This thread will help remember him that, while the Sheriff may have been shot, there's still the deputy around to watch over law and order :-P

So Wilber says there's gonna be a renaissance of the idealists? That's interesting. I once attended a meeting of the 'Schelling Society' here at my university and it was very interesting, but I didn't understand everything because Schelling (like the other idealists, too) wrote for academic circles and is far from the beginner-friendly attitude of a Ken Wilber.

Yes, suhrkamp has published some wonderful books about religion, philosophy, science and spirituality. I myself own a collection of suhrkamp paperbacks and I learned a lot from them. When Wilber is right and the interest in Schelling and the like will increase in the future, I'm pretty sure the Schelling collection you mention will be re-issued and the remaining works will be translated in english as well.

witz

I remember the same prediction Ralph, and it struck me as right on.

Why is this?

The world we live in right now has been dominated by scientific victories. We have been persuaded that the world is out there and can be known through measurement by anyone who brings a tape measure. Today and tomorrow. It is a static, given world. A monument world filled with stone and marble.

This is just a fact about the reigning philosophy.

Post-modernism has been pointing out for years that this given world is simply not out there. We have not listened. Our lives work perfectly well in a "given world" that is "out there" and "knowable" by anyone who comes along in 5 minutes.

But the world is getting to know itself much better every day, with Internet. And we are starting to wonder, we are starting to get a very uneasy feeling, that we are not all seeing the same thing. And yet, there is something out there that we are all seeing that is the same.

We are starting to sense that the nature of the characteristics we "find" in objects "out there" is very much defined by our own subjective organs of perception. And yet, there seems to be something about the basic form of the things we see out there that is not generated by our minds. It is there without us creating it.

I too have a sense that this Kantian orientation that reminds us that we look at things "through" time and space and pre-disposed filters unique to us and our kin is seeping back into the world.

What is good about this?

One of the injunctions in Mahayana Mind Training is to regard everything we perceive as a dream. This asks us to try touching what we perceive with a lighter hand, looking at its qualities of floating or changing, and maintaining an awareness that we are dreaming the dream.

This injunction to treat "the world" as a dream is supported by Kant in essence.

I think the Buddhist morphogenetic fields are uncovering the German Idealists for all of us.

 

hi fairyfaye!

i'm slow in replying because my condo complex has lost internet service, evidently because of a thunder storm last weekend, and no one seems to be around to get it back up!--i'm at the library now.

yeah, kids have alot different environment from the one we had, and in alot of ways it's much better, i think, but there are some aspects that are really troubling, not just to you and me but, it's assuring to know, our mentor as well.

i was being facetious about my progress with 'overview'.  i doubt there are many integralites more primed to read it than i have been for more than a year now.  situations are continually arising where i realize if i just had that book, i could understand them much better.

i guess we have to realize this is a pattern with our revered friend.  remember all the things he promised in SES he would have much more to say about in vol. 2?   which later was renamed vol. 3? my own wild guess is that he's reworking this and many other promised works to take into account all the feedback he's been getting, and there's no real end to it, because he also continues to have new ideas that demand a new approach to books he's writing, if not altogether new books to write.

 

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witz,

i've done the same sort of thing.  on the other side of the coin,  i've also behaved in ways that might prompt this reaction from others, been, perhaps, overly enthusiastic about ken wilber.  joe perez did a nice job of getting me to see myself in this light just recently, from which i realized i can be very stubborn about this.

as obama would say, schelling really rocks, and wilberhas done a good job of getting me to see that.

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hi ralph .. is the internet back at your home yet ?

was at the beach yesterday ... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm .. and then watched the canada day fireworks in the city at night

u are so right about the kids .. some things are worse but some things are better .. that's the way it goes with everything, isn't it ? the disaster and the dignity . . .

about ken's books .. i recall him saying that once he tried to do an update to 'no boundary' and as he got into it .. he realized he would be rewriting the whole book so he decided to leave it as is

anyways the time will come i'm sure when we will be reading and discussing 'overview'