jürgen fauth’s muckworld

One Taste, a kind of journal, was probably a strange way to approach the work of Ken Wilber, prolific integral philosopher. Instead of one of his door-stop size dissections of religion, culture, spirituality, and science, One Taste offers a scattershot sampling of Wilber’s ideas (or the ideas of Wilber-4, the fourth phase of his development, which has recently been subsumed by Wilber-5, from what I understand.)

There are more fresh insights here per page than I remember seeing in a good long while. Wilber’s approach is very methodical. Everything comes in lists, numbered quadrants, levels, lines, waves, and he likes to capitalize his Concepts–such as One Taste, the awareness of non-dual spiritual reality he posits behind the Gross Realm of the physical. His project, as far as I can tell, is to integrate most of the world’s knowledge into one functioning system. “Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time,” and therefore every discipline has something to contribute: transpersonal psychology, quantum physics, Gaia theory, Buddhism, magic, sociology, and so forth. By stepping back far enough from each of these disciplines, he abstracts an essence, which is heavily influenced by what Huxley calls “the Perennial Philosophy,” the theory of the Great Nest of Being in which ascending levels of realization and awareness enclose each other, from the Physical to the Rational and beyond.

The aesthetic and political implications of his work are as interesting as the spiritual self-realization. From what he posits as the “pre/trans fallacy” (a confusion of pre-rational impulses with post-rational growth), he mounts a strong attack on extreme Postmodernism and the way in which Liberalism undermines itself by “embracing diversity” without fostering the growth of a world-centric view. He also has very little love for garden-variety New Age philosophy, which he considers merely regressive.

I’m probably not doing a good job of explaining or even summarizing any of this; it’s a complex system that’s doing a fine job of teasing out some of the more dumbfounding contradictions of the usual dualities we’ve come to live with (liberal-conservative, religion-science, body-mind, etc.), and in One Taste, it’s revealed in little glimpses, interspersed with private bits about the weather in Boulder, conferences he’s invited to, and his love affair with a grad student. It’s highly recommended reading, although there might be better places to start. I’m looking into The Eye of Spirit and A Brief History of Everything next, and save Sex, Ecology, Spirituality for some other time.

Wilber at Wikipedia
Wilber links on del.icio.us
Wilber on the Iraq War

An anthology of Gandhi’s writings, patched together with short biographical sketches. Takes a little getting into simply because many of the quotes are drawn together from all over the place and often you’re [not sure] that … you’re reading [inside or] outside the … square brackets²³, but what the man has to say is revelatory. We all have this idea of Gandhi; mine is mainly derived form the Attenborough movie (which hit me at a very impressionable age.) To hear him explain himself is a real eye-opener.

In the future, whenever I hear anybody bitch about humanity’s supposed inherent evil, Gandhi will come to mind. Whenever we retaliate and answer terror with terror, Gandhi will come to mind…. He really was one of the preeminent thinkers of the 20th Century, and whenever we repeat mistake after mistake, it’s going to be crucial to remember that we already figured this out. It’s like MLK said: “If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable …. We may ignore him at our own risk.” And non-violence has made great strides since Gandhi (MLK, East Germany, Russia), but those stories aren’t told quite as frequently as that of the supposed “Greatest Generation.” It’s like the man says: “History is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. [Non-Violence], being natural, is not noted in history.”

What’s stunning to me is the strength and courage it took. I can think of nobody more principled than Gandhi, and it’s almost frightening: in order to transform the world, he knew it was essential to transform himself, and his lifelong search for Truth would always begin with himself. What’s easy to overlook is that to him, non-violence was the most powerful tool for change–not the choice of the weak, but the weapon of the most courageous. There’s lots of food for thought here, about what it means to live under an oppressive and illegal government, about freedom, will, power, love, optimism. There are also almost prophetic insights into the future of Pakistan and Palestine, industrialism and urban life. I wish I’d marked this book up so I could pull out some quotes for you, but this is a library book.

Perhaps I’ll buy my own and read it again.

Howard Sounes 2001 biography of Bob Dylan is kind of shitty. The factual information is interesting enough (I hadn’t followed Dylan’s secret marriages and backstage habits), and I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes of recording sessions, but whenever Sounes attempts to interpret a song lyric or a particular Dylan quote, he reveals the worst kind of lame pop psychology and shallow thinking. His biases show, and they’re not very appealing. Worst of all, he speculates what “Bob” might have felt at this or that point of his life, and his insights are usually embarrassing cliches. I’d dig up some fun examples, but I can’t be arsed. There must be better straight-up biographies of Dylan; this was just the one the librarian handed me when she couldn’t find the one I’d ordered. Oh well.

864 of Bogdanovich interviews with classic Hollywood directors. Been reading this off and on for months, and today the Queens Public Library reclaimed it from me, half finished. I got through Fritz Lang, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Allan Dwan and most of Alfred Hitchcock. Great stories and lots of practical, no-frills insight once you’re past the me! me! me! Bogdanovich introductions. I’ll have to put this back on the queue immediately to read the rest.

The first part of Bob Dylan’s autobiography is pure greatness. Fearless, witty, grandiose, coy, grumpy, hilarous, Bob keeps assembling his own legend but hell, it still feels like he’s mumbling right into your ear. Fantastic anecdotes, great aphorisms, odd insights, quirky character sketches, nutso metaphors, and some shit for which they’d beat you out of writing class with a stick. He’s a mythological character, and this book works hard to sell the idea that he is one of the Great American Heroes, connecting him with everybody he namedrops–Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Rimbaud, Kerouac, Whitman, F Scott Fitzgerald, and scores of others.

What could be more American than self-improvement? This book by a California consultant by the dull name of Dave Allen presents a trendy system for keeping your head clear while taking care of stuff. The principles are deceptively simple: keep lists for everything, do anything that takes less than 2 minutes right away, and instead of just writing down “to do” lists, take the few seconds it takes to decide on the “next action” for every item. What I’ve seen & applied so far seems very promising.

The web is full of Getting-Things-Done sites: there’s Dave Allen’s site and blog, the 43 Folders blog with a good intro, OfficeZealot, an overview of web resources, a summary, and an advanced workflow diagram.