Rating: Summary: Great book - those who gave it low ratings, didn't get it Review: It's true that this is different than his other books and that most of the ideas are not new. But he presents it in a new way through fictional characters in an ironic and comedic fashion. I find that his ideas are so deep & comprehensive that even reading about the same basic theories in a new light helps to give me insights into myself and our society. Another reviewer who claims the KW is in a 'hypicritical capitalism phase' obviously doesn't get the fundamental point of 'transcend and integrate'. KW does indeed criticize extreme capitalism, but he is in no way against capitalism. He understands the great benefits of capitalism and it's role in getting us to where we are today. But he also sees that it's not the complete answer, and our society's extreme reliance on it is a cause of many of our current problems.If you read this book with an open mind, it can help you to understand both your individual and our collective evolutionary process. Not to mention you'd probably enjoy the experience.
Rating: Summary: Interesting Ideas, Bad Writing Review: Ken Wilber has a lot to say. More importantly, much of it is worth hearing. But with Boomeritis he's once again demonstrated that his talents lie more in theorizing and synthesizing than in translating and popularizing. If Wilber's ideas are ever to reach a wider audience (which I believe they should) he'll need to become much more accessible to the intelligent general reader or find a collaborator who can do this for him. Those interested in exploring Wilber's ideas would do much better to skip Boomeritis and get a copy of A Brief History of Everything.
Rating: Summary: Horrible cut & paste from earlier books Review: Ken Wilber is an interesting thinker. He has written much on an eastern sort of spirituality that would appeal to heady people, but he is no novelist. Even as a postmodern book it fails to entertain; stick with his textbooks. Read Theory of Everything for an overview of his work. If you want to be entertained, read Robert Anton Wilson.
Rating: Summary: wilber has finally flipped Review: Ken Wilber's career started with such promise. His first book, the Spectrum of Consciousness, had him praising Alan Watts and Krishnamurti, a couple of guys who "got it"--the road to enlightenment is not through any kind of dense intellectual system nor through dedication to any of this yoga or meditative nonsense. But even in the early days the cracks were starting to appear--every third sentence, it seemed, was a quotation of some "authority", a hint of things to come. Wilber rapidly deteriorated into a topheavy, overly mental type who does nothing but manipulate words and concepts, the furthest thing from mysticism. And finally, with Boomeritis, he is revealed as just another academic philosopher, the kind who spends his time defending some little intellectual territory he has staked out for himself. (This book, by the way, is not a novel at all; Wilber lacks the skill or creativity to do that kind of writing.) Boomeritis is just an excuse to launch vainglorious attacks on everyone and everything Wilber doesn't like or understand. He's looking more and more like Nietszche did in his final days--self absorbed to the point of being delusional...
Rating: Summary: the next generation yuppies Review: Ok, here it goes. Everybodies favorite theoretical syncretist has done it again. Another tome! If you are a diehard Wilberian you'll eat it up. Lots of theoretical speculations with lots of transpersonal wording. If you are new to Wilber check out The Marriage of Sense and Soul, or The Brief History of Everything. In this work Wilber throws so much new concepts, labels, categories,etc. He makes Foucault read like Cliff Notes. In short this is not a book you read but study. Earth calling Ken. Now to the observations. - The characters are as others said carboard cutouts. They basically serve to voice Ken's thoughts. Otherwise they are terrible, in real life nobody sane would talk like this as you'd drive people away be sheer boorishness or get pummeled. Nor is there a coherent narrative of any sort. The characters are props and no real plot. It reads like a rush job. - The Boomers have written about at length by others. All Ken is doing is mapping out their flaws to his theoretical system. For all their flaws the Boomers are easy pickings. They are the end product of society driven by consumerism and materialism. Although they seek out spiritual paths they end up corrupting them because they refuse adopt themselves to it. So they turn it a anemic joke. Look at Buddhism in the U.S. or what they did to Yoga or Sufism. Also they become prey to every fake guru around like Osho or Adi Da who fleece them like sheep since they never developed any ability discern the real ones from the fakes. Heck most of Ken's friends fit the boomer/newagers profile if you read One Taste. He could have written from first hand experience. Bland, biege, self-absorbed and hypocritical defines this class well. Get Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites, or Affluenza if you want understand Boomers and what drives them. Or Erich Fromms The Sane Society for an overview. - Will it set you free? Nope. Ken ought to know better than that, none of his works will help in that. This is something you do on you own. Otherwise you fall into the same trap the New Agers always fall into. Reading = personal transformation. - Ken seems to have gotten progressive more complicated in his writings. Works like The Atman Project, A Brief History of Everything, and Marriage of Sense and Soul. Were succinct and did not really require to read his other books to understand. At heart Ken is a syncretist and theoretician not a mystic in any way. But more along the lines of Lord Whitehead than a Rumi. Eckhart, or Milrepa. As such he's lover of ideas and thoughts. His works are growing more complex, detailed and repetitive. Hence becomming useless to spiritual seekers and only fit for map makers and intellectuals lost in thoughts. Rating: -3 stars for lack of narrative, too many psychobabble words and writing about a topic done much better by other authors. +2 stars for content
Rating: Summary: Not my cup of tea Review: OK, I have to make a confession right away: I have not been able to finish this book. For quite a few weeks, it stalled my reading altogether. Unable to go further in this book, I felt guilty about picking up something else. I've finally gotten over it. Wilber is very earnest, but reading lengthy discourses on various levels of enlightenment, sprinkled with disjunct (and often prurient) bits of fiction just doesn't do it for me. Mr. Wilber, the world doesn't so easily divide into categories as your very determined characters want it to. Each page has a sort of "a-ha" moment on it, but I don't ever feel as though I'm learning anything profound or useful, and I certainly don't feel liberated as the subtitle implies. Maybe somebody will read this and tell me how I'm supposed to approach it, and then I'll get it. For now, I'm one of the unenlightened.
Rating: Summary: Mystics and Republicans, One and the same? Review: Poor Ken Wilber's right brain can't keep up with his left - not very integral, I'm afraid. An avid Wilber reader (and apologist), I found this book very disappointing. No plot, no character development. It all seems to elude Wilber, who at heart is a scientist (bringing his material values to the spiritual inquiry), a finder of patterns. I would have liked to have seen the original, nonfiction version of this book. In this book more than any other, Wilber's right wing politics shine through. After all, the Wilber's version of mysticism is just Hobbes-with-a-heart. That is to say, we need conservative (read: repressive, but repressive in some very good ways, according to Wilber) social institutions to compensate for our lack of spiritual development. Except when it comes to the environment, in which case we just have to wait until the populace "grows up" and becomes more ecologically aware, which may be never. So, 99% of the world's population can keep throwing their McDonald's wrappers out the car window while those few sensitive souls, Wilber included, just nod their heads in complete disbelief, and silence. And those poor Enron guys (did I say Enron, I meant Exxon - I'm confused), they're just stuck at the orange meme - best to just sit back and watch and hope they'll grow up before they and their orange meme brethren destroy the planet. How can Wilber remain so calm? Must be all that meditating.
Rating: Summary: Just Do It!!! Review: Read this book and watch your own reactions. Instead of critiquing the author, do something different and learn about yourself each time you have a negative reaction. If you do this every time this happens throughout the book, by the end of the book, you will have learned so much about yourself. Throughly enjoyed the book, as all other Ken Wilber books, even though this is a serious departure in format from others. Do yourself a favor and read this book with an open mind, the mind you had when you were a child, fresh and unpolluted by a world which has all sorts of agendas, when it purely belonged to you and nobody but you. If you no longer have access to that fresh mind, well, Wilber is trying to help you access it through this book so here is your chance - read it and watch your reactions and undo your knots. It's well worth the journey. If nothing else, the wittiness throughout and the laugh-outloud X-rated scenes can't fail you.
Rating: Summary: standing on the shoulders of boomers Review: Some Very important literary things to remember: 1. In post modern novels the characters are often flat. 2. Post modern novels have a strange twist of self-reflexivity. I kept asking, Are these professors a bunch of boomers with another brilliant idea to save the world? The novel creates space for this question and many more hard-liner self criticisms. 3. A post modern novel cannot be poorly written. This book is almost all dialogs. Descriptions, colors and environments are assumption of the reader - this could be considered interactivity. Does the reader create the reality of the book? Does the reader have legitimate interpretations of the diced up choppy dialog. Sometimes the novel is talking at you and sometimes it invites you only as a witness; in any case it seems to stress a spectrum of legitimacy the reader can have of the novel or any observable objective information- this protects the novel against interpretations by deconstructionist (or boomers themselves). The novel means what is means and is written in a style that best communicates the meaning. 4. Mythical themes are always interlaced in post modern works. Wilber seems to be suggesting that Harvard and MIT are contemporary mythical ideas - the panicle of academia. 5. This novel will hopefully bring non-gag-factor hope to Xs, Ys, and Boomers. And it suggests Xers are standing on the shoulders of boomers reaching for the yellow sun.
Rating: Summary: Get This Book Review: The reader gets two benefits from reading this book. One the real Ken Wilber is better known by the reader and two it is packed with timely criticisms concerning the baby boomer generation and postmodernity. While it is written in novel form, and at a surface level appears to be life 101 with some college kids, at a deeper level, one that is usually neglected, this work is pure gold. Gold that can be used right now in one's life as they confront the world. Wilber is probably the most authentic philosopher practicing and pays homage to no one or thing except what he understands to be true. Not many writers do this with honestly and none with the originality of Wilber.
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