Frank Visser, webmaster of www.integralworld.net, speaks out on Ken Wilber and the value of criticism. Interview by Randi Cecchine in Amsterdam April 2008.
Frank Visser on Ken Wilber

Frank Visser is the A.J. Weberman of the integral movement.

He doesn't seem to get structures/worldviews very well. He wants to collect everyone in a room and have a big worldview conflict. That, he thinks, would be more productive.

 

mm

Jesus, for the last 30 minutes I tried to post a clever postmodern "ironic" quote about Ken Wilber, but I can't. It all sounds hollow in my ears. My post included a bible quote, and I name-dropped Michel Foucault and Hegel. God, it's so hard to stop playing these classification games...it's like an addiction in itself (I think I mentioned this somewhere else). Argh.

Hey MonkMonk:

I have a couple of thoughts. I've perused the Visser site and read some of the materials and watched the UTube video.

1. Visser seems to be making the point that if you stop Wilber at any point and really dissect specific points he makes, there will be a lot of highly qualified people with credentials in that field who will disagree with Wilber.

But what he seems to be missing is that Wilber is not positing himself as a researcher who is going to the end of the earth to establish fine details. Wilber is a "integrator" who takes what is generally regarded as established and frames the map such that these different truths fit into a larger structure.

If any of the individual truths turn out to be unsupportable, that does not invalidate what Wilber is doing in classifying them into a "whole" view.

Visser would demand that we become world experts on every single grain of sand before we are entitled to say that a beach exists.

2. This larger structure Visser does not seem to get. He makes the point that Wilber is obsessed with finding how things fit into a map (quadrants) and is not willing to get into the fine details of the subject.

But this is the whole point of Integral! It is a meta-view. The integration of knowledge and experience is the whole point. This obsession with classifying is Integral.

3. The great divide as I see it is between those who have an abiding sense that there is something of high value in the mystical traditions. Integral is the result of Wilber's nagging sense that there has to be a way for Tibetan Buddhism, shadow psychology, biology, political science, and hermeneutics to all be true and not in conflict with each other.

Visser is operating from the tradition that thinking and analyzing is the summum bonum of existence.

4. Visser is disturbed by Wilber's proclivity to woo others. He is dealing with Integral as a "center of knowledge assertions" and Wilber is dealing with it as a "practice" in helping bring light to human awareness. He does not want to acknowledge the legitimacy of using skillful means to win hearts.

5. The times Wilber has really lost it, in my opinion, are when he is talking about the forest and his critics keep hammering him for calling a tree the forest, where the critics cannot see that there is a forest in the first place.

Visser needs to let go. Wilber is not doing any damage to any system of knowledge in the world. No one is reading Wilber for specific truths in science or systems theory.

The only area that Wilber really seems to play fast and loose in my opinion, at times, is in the area of UL phenomena. And this is the one area Visser is probably least competent to make assessments, inasmuch as experiencing is required for validation. And I am not competent to make validations of Wilber's assertions on UL events either, so I simply say that he seems to play fast and loose with emphasis on "seems."

 

I find it funny that he ends in a dialectical format of a game. This is were a Guru would really help. Stand on one foot a show me you can harmonize your dialectical mind. Show me you can realize and embody that the source of life is not the product of conflict. I think the days of show me you can change the states of your brain and that your awareness shows that you can abide. Seeing takes care of so much of this validation process. But what is Seeing? Seeing is impossible describe and can only happen when awareness is not burdened by the doubt of the reflective mind. I was lucky to be around a seer at the begining of my searching. He would not take what people said personnally but would ask how they are feeling in their body. They would get all aggressive with him and he would lovingly expresss to them what they were trying to do to him. At some point they would just let go and start crying do to the ineffectual nature of the dialectical conflict, but for this teacher there was none. He would see and hold his seeing till the person realized he felt them more then they were feeling themselves. So why do I bring this up? Integral Ken has not integrated the subtle body with the physical in his work and I wonder about him personally. There is a big reason he can not. You would have to SEE the relationships of the subtle to the physical. I do not think this is Ken's arena. And it is key in getting dialectical heads to see how there minds work without the recognition of the physical body and how the body feels about such thoughts. Can you see Frank Visser shoulders in the video? How do shoulders relate to the subtle body? He looks like he has a chip on his shoulders? If he thinks Ken is not open to dialog, it might be because they are not accomplished in the upper left. If Frank Visser was accomplished in UL then his statement would look silly to himself and others with such permenant traits. Frank Visser has doubt. Around and around he goes.

The first thing that struck me Innerline was Frank's colon. I had a very strong sense that he has an irritated colon and this often causes one to hang on doggedly and just keep flailing without perspective.

The darkness under the eyelids bolster this.

Each time he tries to generate a new thought, he looks down and to his right which is a classical indication of one who is finding bodily generation of irritation to bring forth a new idea.

This irritation wells up quickly and heatedly. Even his laughter is an eruption of irritation and defense.

He is a poster boy for this over-developed cognition with underdeveloped heart center that I have been calmly and with great equanimity ranting about as being the bane of American life.

He could benefit from Hara training - to re-stack his fasciae, get grounding, release his shoulders and develop depth and clarity.

It seems odd to make this points, but those who visually put themselves in the public light and media are fair topics for such comments.

Next patient please...

Hm. Maybe I was too careful in my last post. Let me try to express myself with more clarity:

Frank Vissers statement about the value of criticizing Wilber is an important one imo. He describes the integral culture as a hall of mirrors, only taking opinions into account that generally agree with the overall idea, making it all smooth and self-reflective (and self-intoxicating). Maybe it's time to look at some broken mirrors, too. We should look into the darker corners. Invite our enemies to drink wine and eat bread with us. That's what I meant with the Hegel-Foucault thing: Even if you have a perfect, all-including 'philosophy of everything' you can bet there is still something outside of the 'everything' from where the 'antithesis' will arise. Very much like Yin and Yang carrying the seeds of their opposites already inside them. What I'm trying to say is that we should be careful to believe that our journey is over already, that we already integrated it all so we can relax now and pat each other on the backs. The adventure goes on, and on, and on, there will be new obstacles, new problems, new challenges, over and over. I'm speaking from personal experience: when i was a trainee in a psychiatric clinic as a psychology student, I encountered human beings suffering from mental illnesses of various types, and everytime I thought: "Now I figured it out, I can handle insanity" then came the next crisis that knocked me off my high throne.

Concerning the high cognition, low heart issue that you mention, Schalk, yes, I agree that's a problem. I myself have trouble feeling my heart center sometimes. But, you know, at some point during one's personal growth and development, you have to let go of your emotions to push things one step further. You don't get anywhere when you just follow your emotions! You will only reinforce the structure you are at. Of course, the heart has to be reintegrated later, and that's where I find myself at the moment. I found Robert Kegan's "The evolving self" to be of great help in understanding this developmental process that seems to proceed in spirals.

with love: witz

Everyone on this thread should do themselves the favor of reading Mark Edwards's article in the recent Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (Summer 2008) on meta-theory formulation, methodology and interpretation (and as specifically applied to Integral metatheory).  I've read much of Visser's stuff, and he's not even in the same ballpark of academic rigor, historical perspective and metatheory critical discernment as Edwards.  It's a brilliant piece and is quite direct about the future metastudies program required if Integral is not to be misused or found irrelevant like all of the past metatheories of human history.

robb,

i really appreciate your lack of remoteness! i've also been looking forward to reading mark edwards' article, since sean esbjorn-hargens cited it as an example of the openness of integral theory/practice to criticism. however, the summer issue may not yet be available to us--i haven't been able to get it. until it does become available--shortly no doubt--i recommend to one and all listening to the IN dialogues from two years back between edwards and wilber, where they hammered out a way to work around their philosophical differences. i'm very much interested to see what the outcome of that accord has been.

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Bonjour Witz:

What would you say are the top 3 areas where Integral may be blind or missing out on a big anti-thesis?

 

Good evening Schalk,

... well that's a good question of yours. At first I'd like to say that 'anti-thesis' is not quite the right word for what I mean. Obviously I was fishing for words in my last post, trying to express some rather vague ideas and intuitions that I have. If I want to become a better critic of Integral, I sure will have to work on my formulation, methodology, and exactness of my statements, as robb suggests.

btw what do you mean by Integral? Ken Wilber? Does Ken Wilber = Integral? Or do you mean the Integral community, in which you, Schalk, and I are members too? I know that Ken also has his blind spots, and that's a good thing actually, because it means he is still a human being just like us (something that I doubted now and then in the past =]. The Community's blind spots are bigger IMO, and that's mostly because of structure-stage developement and cultural factors, I guess. Maybe the guru thing plays a role, too. We once had a discussion about that, remember?

Instead of listing things in a 123 manner, I'd prefer to give an example that may or may not help clarify what I mean. If Integral wants to really integrate it all, it has to go into the areas where it begins to feel uncomfortable (And that's happening already, I would say). We have to clean out the corners of the quadratur of the circle, so to speak. And what about the unmanifest, the unborn? How can you transcend and include something that is not even there yet? Something that has not been published, but is - no doubt - to be released soon? How can we deal with the unpredictable, with the future that is not yet written and that we cannot see yet? What will happen to Integral if Ken Wilber - God bless him - will not be here anymore to guide us, to tell us how to transcend and include, how to proceed with all this world out there and consciousness in here? Where will Integral go then? We will be forced to grow up, to live our lives without the protection and guidance of a well-meaning, incredibly sophisticated father. We better be prepared, because, you know, one day this will happen. And this is not me being mean to you, this is impossible to avoid, and you all know this very well. Let's not be so goddamn sure that everything will work out fine, because for all that we know, the future might look darker than we can even imagine now.

witz a.k.a the Great Doubt

in his latest ISC offering, patrick sweeney says, if i understand him correctly, we may want to be a buddha and not just a buddhist, but to be a buddha, we also need to be a buddhist.

witz, aren't you wanting to be a buddha without being a buddhist?

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Hi ralph,

to paraphrase Patrick: I'm not fundamentally interested in being a buddhist. Once I lived with a buddhist in a flat-sharing community, and we came along quite well, while at the same time we disagreed in certain areas. I'm no christian either, but I guess I DO have a lineage. I will try to say more about this later, as soon as time allows.

best, witz

Hi -

I'm glad you posted this Integralboy - I thought it was interesting
and some good and important points made.

At the very end for what 20 or 30 seconds, he did play around with the ideas of games, debate, he enjoys that, who wins, it's a man's game (I think that the interviewer woman pointed that out.) I liked how he playfully asked her something like "What do you think about it?" I
personally think that the debating, competitive game mode is useful in some ways and is also quite limited. My guess is that both Ken and he would agree with that. I think that some major slices of the US culture (and evidently some slices of European cultures) have latched onto this debate and opposing bi-partisan fighting for their sides with loyaly and often life and death fierceness to win is an human aberation. It maybe the best mode we have going at the moment in some situations, like court rooms and politics, but I feel/think of it as so limited. I insert this not just to cast doubt on this idea that Visser brought forward, but to acknowledge that even on this forum there are examples of debating tactics and some mastery of other rhetorical devices, that I feel are limited and don't even fully transcend the lower reaches of first tier human relating and consciousness.

On another hand, I doubt that of all of the normally used conversational manners of exchange that we employ daily that is Visser's only mode. Nor obviously Ken's, as he pushes forward into the explanations and books of theorizing what he is interested in.

I liked seeing Frank's vissage (ehem) and for the most part I liked and respected his physical and vocal manner of presentation in that circumstance. Of course, like us all, including Ken, he has character structure, personality style, neuroses, learned mannerisms and stategies, and fixations - and those manifest. I guess it's safe to say that  he's got some sparky mischief maker in him. I think that it is not entirely unfruitful, this stirring up, nipping at heals, sometimes clowning raspberry sounds, using means at his inner disposal to insist his doubts and criticisms. I haven't been around him much and I'm guessing it could feel relentless and tiresome to those who'd like to see his persistant 'coyote' nature disappear. As an aside, I also wonder if he'd rate himself high on his list of enneagramic tendencies a #6. My fantasy is - "Well, yaahh!" A glint and perhaps a smile. And I'd say, "Yeaahh, I get it."

I'm always curious when I see that bits of an interview have been edited out. There can be aesthetic, huristic and other reasons stated to justify this, but I nonetheless wonder what was said or shown in those moments. What if it was some embarrassing fuller, foibled humanity?

To my ears, Frank said a number of things that seemed to have some merit and worth raising. I don't think they would hurt Ken or 'Integral' to include and to some extent possible for Ken integrate them - or another way to say it, maybe learn from some of them. That's true of us all isn't it. I think that I have seen changes in myself and others in this smokin' caldron of IN. Hopefully all our changes aren't just surface and communicationally strategic alterations.


I have wondered about pretty much each of the points that Frank raised. Some of them that he mentioned in this short interview were:
- A sometimes quality of salesmanship and slogans.
- Ken's masterful integrative/meta-theorizing and persuasive fluency that can recruit believers when sometimes there are 'facts' and perspectives that are short-cutted and finessed.
- Sometimes Ken represents, because of his extensive training, studies and self-education, himself as an expert in some fields and from that makes conclusions that seem to represent the field. One of Frank's points is that often there is not a sufficient concensus to justify coming to such tidy and huristically convenient concensi. Life and science's endeavors to probe reveal huge, perhaps almost incomprehesible complexity, and premature concensus and conclusions may be detrimental in illusion-creating and putting the mind to sleep in ways. "Oh I understand this. This fits here in the scheme of things." Well sometimes it does and sometimes it has to be tapped with a small mallet to make it fit and to make us feel the aha feeling that may be fudged. I think this is an important point to bring to foreground.
- Ken sometimes defends himself with comments about other's not being qualified or not having sufficient altitude or perspective to know - so really not in a position to criticise nor to have those criticisms taken seriously. This is an interesting point, and my guess is that many of us can see both the merit of this defense and the risks and some potential dubiousness of summary dismissal. Freudians used to use a similar defense.
- Sometimes there seems to be the 'mutual admiration society', perhaps a clan-like (and other stage comraderies) self congratulations and defense - how good it feels to have that LLQ 'we space' and "we agree with each other". Aren't there risks of this and good to have it repeatedly brought to the foreground?
- The classification games where if we become somewhat masterful at that, we apparently are able to include within our cognitive boundaries vast human material. An implicit and on-going question is, does that mean that we actually have integrated it and transcended to any truly meaningful extent, such that our ability to categorize, AQALize is much more than a classification game?
- Don't some of you/us predominantly staunch integralites/Wilberites have the sense that sometimes the march of 'celebrities' and wise ones across the screen of II interviews can create risks, along with those wonderful 'we' feelings? Along with this, don't we sometimes wonder if maybe we as audience and that person as guest is being guided down familiar paths of teaching. I think that Frank's point is that there are risks to this, including indoctrination. Are there not also risks that other audiences and others who are not so staunch will dismiss this as a self-congratulatory and hubristic circus, when there be much merit to Ken's and integrals work? So there are pluses and minus to this, as with most declared positions, and to point out the minuses plenty might be a meritorious endeavor, as well. Frank also suggests that much could be gained by a conversational dialogue style [actually I misspoke this - Frank was more into debate - I guess, I think that only goes so far] that invited Ken to refine his considerations in vivo and acknowledge them. Obviously there are plenty of people interviewed who might be so behind the power curve of exploration of these topics that there might not be much fertile conversation, more teaching, and I suppose to pretend collaboration and dialogue would be disingenuous. If this were more of the format, I think that Ken and II would have fewer interviews to record and present. I guess to that we all like to see well-known and famous people and celebrities - particularly in a fresh context.

I probably missed some of his points, with my elaboration, and those might be worth mentioning.

I need to rush off to see my new 4 day old grandson for the first time and who got out of the hospital yesterday, or I'd look to edit this. Especially since I may have said some controvertial things I'd probably like to make sure that I didn't inadvertently say the opposite of what I meant - like leave out a "not", as I have in the past. Maybe later. ambo

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Ambo Suno

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Ambo Suno