I find it mind-blowing how intelligent, sensitive people can have such radically different takes on things. We all have our initial, gut reactions to situations and events, and we long for validation and a sense of resonance with others. So, when I read Ken Wilber’s You’re going to be a star blog and the latest issue of Integral Institute’s Holons Newsletter, I thought to myself: “Sweet Jesus, here we go again. This is everything I hate about the direction I-I is heading. The Integral Baby is heading down the drain with all this bullshit bathwater.”
Then I find these two scathing critiques:
Integral Idols, by Frank Visser, and
Holons: The World of Wilbergral Poseurs, by Tom Armstrong.
While I haven’t always agreed with Frank’s and Tom’s views in the past, this time around they both caused my head to nod and that warm, fuzzy “My sentiments exactly” resonance to pass over me like a pleasant breeze. Validation! I guess I’m not the only one who sees this horse shit for what it is. I wonder what Julian Walker thinks? He’s a “tell it like it is” kinda guy…
Then I go over to Julian’s blog, which I think kicks ass, only to discover that he loves the new issue of Holons (Holons comes through big). How can this be, when Julian and I see eye to eye on so many other things?
My first instinct is to find fault with Julian somehow. Maybe since he’s been recently praised by Wilber and Integral Institute, he’s sipped the Kool-aid and joined the mutual back-scratching fest that raises so many red flags for me. But then I wonder if this is all just my own shadow stuff, and perhaps myself and all the other Wilber Haters are just jealous, secretly wishing we too will someday be acknowledged by the Integral in-crowd.
So, how much do our psychological idiosyncrasies color our responses and opinions? For instance, do I resonate with Sam Harris because when I was ten years old, my younger brother was left brain-damaged in an accident, leaving me angry against God? Maybe it has little to do with the merit of any particular argument about faith and reason. And yet I feel so sure of myself, so certain that I am right and everyone else who can’t see what I see is a fucking moron.
This is why I love real dialogue, why I get so excited about respectful but vigorous debate. There’s just no way to get totally clear of one’s shadow, to get beyond one’s own blind spots, without the benefit of other perspectives. This is yet another reason why I’m so rankled by the recent trends at Integral Institute. True dialogue and healthy debate cannot thrive in an insular atmosphere of high-fiving, hobnobbing, jargon-speaking, label-spewing self-promotion. I worry that Integral Institute will become an island unto itself if it continues its current marketing campaign, and the message will ultimately be lost in a bottle somewhere off the coast of Antigua.