Ken Wilber on Jordan Peterson

[Eddie]

Ken Wilber spends some time here deconstructing JP and talking about how Postmodernism is going off the rails.  I think he gets it, and explains it very well. This is a worthwhile interview for anyone who really wants to understand where we are today as a human society, evolving, with some progress and some regression.

This is not for those of you with a strong ideological point of view. Don't waste your time.

You need an open mind and a genuine desire to look at the very big picture, to get anything out of this.

I'm not a Ken Wilbur devotee. Although I've heard of him and read about him, I've never read his voluminous body of work or hung out with his crowd.

Just like JP impressed me immediately with some of his insights (although he certainly doesn't get everything right), Wilber impresses me in the same way. Truth, when I see and hear it, is something I can recognize. I've come to realize that not everyone is capable of doing that. I no longer feel the need to prove I'm right to people who are hung up on their own world view.

So this is being put up as an fyi, not as something I have any intention of defending, debating, or explaining. If it speaks to you, good. If not, just don't watch it



<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDjCnFvz11A&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/bDjCnFvz11A&fs=1</a>

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[K-Dog]

Relax, think second tier! 

I got more than half an hour in.  I'd finish but I have only one life.

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[Eddie]

The first half is better than the last half anyway.

Not sure I drink the kool-aid on the whole second tier thing, but I admire the enormity of his mission....to make a coherent whole out of so many different things. The guy has read a lot more than most people, and he has a pretty good map laid out.  I like the Spiral Dynamics explanation. It makes good sense to me.

The map is never the territory.....but that doesn't mean a good map is useless.

He gets self-realization too...spiritual enlightenment.........whatever you wanna call it. What he has to say about that rings completely true to me.

On this one skip to 12:30 or so.

If you can hang in, listen to what he says about how some people experience a transcendental (my word, not his) state during sleep.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/auKqzbhXZGM&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/auKqzbhXZGM&fs=1</a>

I got this little epiphany that I'll share...not sure if it will resonate with anybody.

In the Old Testament Bible there is a verse that I remember from my early indoctrination. It's from the book of Joel, one of those prophesies that apocalyptic Christians like to quote, but I think almost everyone completely misunderstands. it....

"Young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams."

When I was young man I saw visions.....aided by psychedelics, which enabled me to hack a mystical experience or two....accidentally, more or less. I don't live my daily life in a transcendental state, but I've carried the memory of those experiences  though my entire life, and it is an important part of who I am.

Now I'm an old man.....getting closer anyway.......and on good nights I experience exactly what I think Wilber is talking about.

In order for it to happen....I need to be able to breathe my way into it......falling asleep to me now is (on good nights) a form of breath work. That quiets my mind and helps me let go of the monkey brain. I fall into a special kind of sleep.

It doesn't work so well if I'm high, I don't think. And more than a tiny bit of alcohol makes it impossible.

Anyway.....my dream life has now become very important to me. I can tell when I wake up in the morning by the quality of the dreams I've had.....whether my sleep has done what it should do...which is to heal me from the slow death of a thousand cuts......that my daily life deals out to me.

I believe the kind of work  I do is harder for a conscious individual than it is for someone who is not introspective or psychological minded. I deal with other people's bad karma every day...and I need to have a way to keep it from causing me damage. Conscious (lucid) dreaming is capable of doing that.

Cue the alien ships.......   

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