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Summary: Reviews
Review: "Wilber...demonstrates an impressively firm grasp of science and other disciplines. His prose is accessible and often quite witty, as he exposes the inadequacies of both the authoritarian religious right and the defensive, posture-prone left. Wilber's 'integral vision' offers readers the opportunity to make valuable conncections among disparate disciplines, and- just maybe- to prepare themselves for a brave new world." -Publishers Weekly, 9/11/00"In a confusing and complex era, when nothing seems connected to anything else, Wilber, 51, has managed to pull together under one capacious umbrella a vast amount of data from ordinarily warring worldviews, contradictory developmental theories, and disparate academic disciplines. Not content to syntehsize the work of leading thinkers from more than a dozen fields, Wilber has laid out a genuinely new school of thought, creating an original formulation out of ideas that had long seemed irreconcilable. His goal has been to create an 'integral' vision, which he describes as 'finding a more comprehensive view... that makes legitimate room for art, morals, science, and religion, and doesn't merely attempt to reduce them all to one's favorite slice of the cosmic pie.'" -Tony Schwartz in Fast Company, October 2000
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Summary: This is absolutely worth reading, even for a skeptic...
Review: ...maybe especially for a skeptic, which I would consider myself. Having studied under Carl Sagan at Cornell and generally being firmly planted in the rational, I think only an approach like that of Wilbur's could get me entertaining some of the concepts I generally consider to be "out there." The reason is that he very inclusively maps a lot of belief sets and areas of science into an inclusive theory, that makes you know he heard your part of it, but points out there's more over in this other area (stage or quadrant or whatever). By being non-dismissive, he makes a more complete theory. I find myself applying the thinking in my daily life to things like evolutionary product design, organizational structure, etc. The downside for me was writing style. I found Wilbur hard to crack, and it took a month or so of time investment in reading several of his books simultaneously for me to start to get it. Before I got it, I found him complicated and tedious. After I began to understand the general framework, I started finding him a bit repetitive (more in other works than this shorter one). I think this could be a challenging read as an intro course, without either some prior Wilbur or a reasonable grounding in a range of other philosophy/psych reading. I'd recommend either reading Wilbur's History of Everything or maybe "The Essential Wilbur" with this. Nevertheless, this book is amazing, as is Wilbur, for his ability to synthesize so much information from so many fields of study into something so elegant.
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Summary: This is absolutely worth reading, even for a skeptic...
Review: ...maybe especially for a skeptic, which I would consider myself. Having studied under Carl Sagan at Cornell and generally being firmly planted in the rational, I think only an approach like that of Wilbur's could get me entertaining some of the concepts I generally consider to be "out there." The reason is that he very inclusively maps a lot of belief sets and areas of science into an inclusive theory, that makes you know he heard your part of it, but points out there's more over in this other area (stage or quadrant or whatever). By being non-dismissive, he makes a more complete theory. I find myself applying the thinking in my daily life to things like evolutionary product design, organizational structure, etc. The downside for me was writing style. I found Wilbur hard to crack, and it took a month or so of time investment in reading several of his books simultaneously for me to start to get it. Before I got it, I found him complicated and tedious. After I began to understand the general framework, I started finding him a bit repetitive (more in other works than this shorter one). I think this could be a challenging read as an intro course, without either some prior Wilbur or a reasonable grounding in a range of other philosophy/psych reading. I'd recommend either reading Wilbur's History of Everything or maybe "The Essential Wilbur" with this. Nevertheless, this book is amazing, as is Wilbur, for his ability to synthesize so much information from so many fields of study into something so elegant.
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Summary: Deeply insightful
Review: A deeply insightful philosopher in spiritual psychology, Ken has assembled an overview of how the latest physics theory of everything, M-theory, can be woven into an even bigger theory of everything. Ken's vision of an integrated universe proposes unity not only of mind, body and soul, but also to the fields of psychology, biology, history, economics and physics.
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Summary: Well worth a read
Review: Although the essence of Wilber's theory is most comprehensively explained in "Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality", this book contains many of his newer theoretical developments as well as more practical applications using his theory. It is very interesting that he relates some of our current social/political/environmental problems to the recent culture of baby boomers. Regardless with whether you agree with it or not it, this book is very thought provoking and well worth a read. If you like books that try to explain everything using one theory, I also recommend "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato. It is amazingly written so that it is full of wisdom, intellectually stimulating and easy to understand!
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Summary: Sometimes a bare outline
Review: As Ken Wilber's oeuvre has expanded, each new book becomes less a work unto itself and instead tends to illuminate one or another aspect of Wilber's broad worldview. Even with that in mind, this book fails to live up to either the "vision" described in the subtitle or Wilber's usual standard. Although the discussion on Beck and Cowan's Spiral Dynamics greatly enhances the four-quadrant holarchy (and greatly improves on Beck and Cowan's original), the section on politics only skims the surface of the possibilities and the section on business illuminates nothing, merely namedropping business writers who may, perhaps, someday give us a little integral vision. This is a shame because the spiral dynamics/holarchy discussion is his his most clear and concise presentation of it. If you havent read Wilber before, skim the early chapters in your bookstore and then pick up "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality" or "A Theory of Everything" to get a real glimpse of the rest.
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Summary: Great intro to Wilber and great read for thinking folks
Review: At first I, like the reader immediately below, was offput by the slight size of this book on such an ambitious topic, but then realized, while reading the book, that the goal of the book is to introduce, not to fully cover the topic. And it succeeds admirably. The book reflects Wilber's strength: to summarize and integrate. Extremely well written and fascinating on every page, Wilber somehow makes his rather complex model of reality and development appear simple and clear. He then goes on to cover numerous potential applications of this model to the issues of the world. This book's goal is to safely introduce a radical idea and stir the imagination of possibilities, not to nail down every point. This book was written in hope of involving people and engaging thought and debate, and hence its small size, accessiblility, and relatively easy read (think Communist Manifesto). It is friendlier and lighter than his previous works, because its goal is to reach as many people as possible, and do as much good as possible - its not a publishing scheme as the author below speculates. That said, this is yet another genious work by an intellectual and spiritual genius, and should be read by anyone who aspires to either of these disciplines. Don't be put off by its off-putting title or New-Agey cover, it is excellent. Enjoy.
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Summary: Old Wine In Another New Bottle.
Review: Common Ken! You keep morphing the same stuff into new book covers every 6 months or so. This time you added a (very) little on business and politics but the rest is basically another repeat of a previous repeat of another repeat of the same previous stuff. It's good stuff but please just refer everyone to the original texts. It seems like your new books are becoming like Microsoft operating system upgrades and your becoming too much like money oriented Microsoft. Awake-up!
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Summary: more of the same from Wilber
Review: For those who don't know (it seems likely based on these reviews that many don't), this is the same Ken Wilber who, not so long ago, was zealously promoting the works of the meglomaniacal cult leader Da Free John, a man who makes the usual claims for his type: to be the greatest avatar of all time, in possession of miraculous powers, and so on. Many of Wilber's ideas, here, and in Brief History of Everything and all of his later works, are lifted directly from "Master" Da, right down to the terminology, but he hardly stops there: he simultaneously manages to believe in literal Hindu-style reincarnation, Freudianism, Zen Buddhism, behavioursim, and any number of other things, dodging their inherent contradictions by taking only what he wants of each.His vaunted system is little more than a lot of decoration disguising a stitching-together of Freud and Piaget with Da and Aurobindo; correspondences to what he here and in later works calls "other quadrants" are always suggested but never specified. Similarly, his supposedly "inclusive" model simply ignores vast areas of the world religious traditions that contradict his theory, such as all of Western esotericism and the nearly universal idea that the proper number of levels of consciousness (his primary theme) is seven. That the seams in this crazy quilt are seemingly invisible to so many is due in part to the overspecialized (mis)education we are provided with; most of Wilber's readers probably aren't familiar enough with the vast territories he covers to realize that he subtly distorts all he touches to shoehorn it into his model. He comes across here and elsewhere as a self-assured filing cabinet stuffed full of data; but he never provides us with a single testable hypothesis, only a belief system consisting of a vague doctrine of inevitable progress. It is this in particular that makes his system so appealing to the academics, corporate CEOs and limosine new-agers that endorse it; it reinforces all their most cherished illusions. This is not to say that his books are without merit; his observations are spot-on when he isn't defending his precious system, and he builds a sort of holistic verbal bridge to places the intellectually or spiritually lazy will find new, but for those serious about transformation it is a bridge to nowhere.
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Summary: A Theory of Less Than Everything
Review: For years I have been among those hailing Ken Wilber as the most original and comprehensive philosopher of our time. In book after book, this genius thinker has, with lucid and prolific creativity, familiarized us with the complex but unified universe of astonsihing terror and beauty we call consciousness--both human and Divine. In his monumental book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, for example, he was able to show how consciousness, or Spirit, manifests Itself through the unfolding, never-ending evolutionary forms we term creation,life, culture, ecology, spirituality, society--the whole shebang of reality. More importantly, he brilliantly pointed out some of the radical implications a spiritual worldview may have when integrated into the dusty soil of reality. And, maybe best of all, he managed to do this with unparallelled logic and depth of scholarship, yet without loosing a sense of lightness--or humor--of being. In Marriage of sense and Soul, a popularized version of his integral thesis of the interrelationship of body, mind and soul--of all things material and spiritual--he also managed to be both profoundly sublime and simple at the same time. Moreover, he accomplished this without reading like another pop-guru a la Deepak Chopra or Marianne Williamson. It is thus with great disappointment that his latest book, A Theory of Everything, is not living up to its cover's promise--an integral vision for business, politics, science and spirituality. Because, in this book, we no longer meet the erudite Wilber we have become accustomed to. Indeed, this book's premise is far more challenging (and important!) than his previous ones. Yet, it looks as if marketing interests, rather than deeper, integral interests, so to speak--as often is the case with popular writers these days-- lies behind the publication of this book. With a shallow, lukewarm section on business that is a mere one and a half pages long, and another, on politics, which is only a few pages longer, one gets the distinct feeling that Wilber has become a victim of the one-dimensional consumer culture he so fiercely has rallied against. He has succumbed to the lowest common denominator by promoting simplistic, half-cooked ideas in the name of spiritual transformation and philosophical authenticity and originality. In other words, he has--unwillingly or willingly-- become another promulgator of flatland ideas (his term), otherwise known as the New Age. This book tells us little about how an integral business person or politician might operate, even less about the deeper, philosophical map he or she needs in expressing spiritual values in today's fierce political and economic reality. Nor does he paint a constructive, integral vision of how business might look like in a society based on spiritual values. When Wilber attempts to do this, he simply offers a short laundry list of people who are trying to "ïntegralize" corporate life, or he briefly explains how a liberal vs. a conservative worldview differ or complement each other. The deeper questions about an integral political platform or agenda are left unanswered, and so are questions about what kind of an economy we need to harmonize the human spirit, the workplace, or the environment. I know that Wilber is up to the task, but in this book, he has failed to answer some basic questions about the societal implications of a spiritual worldview, or, in effect, A Theory of Everything. Questions such as: Which aspects of capitalism are compatible with A Theory of Everything? Which aspects of socialism? Are new economic ideas--such as those of Sarkar, Korten, Schumacher, and others--more compatible with an integral worldview than classical capitalist and socialist ideas? Will the new, integral economy favor decentralization and cooperative enterprises? What is the integral visions answer to the growing inequity in the corporate world and in society in general? Since capitalism is based on the egoistic pursuit of self-interest, can it ever favor integral business practices? Which aspect of the socially responsible business movement would be part of an integral business agenda, and which would not? All that said, this book may be interesting to someone who has never read Wilber before. Indeed, the sections on science and spirituality are, for the most part, well written and comprehensive. Just remember, as Wilber writes in the introduction: "...use [my]ideas...as simple suggestions; see if you can improve on them." Indeed, many of them are simple. Too simple. Thus, improve on them we must.
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