[Krimel] I gotta go. But don't worry there is more... [Krimel] Do tell?
Those are some but not all of my initial problems with Wilber. I mentioned his reliance on bogeymen earlier. Flatland is perhaps the scariest of them all. Here is Wilber on Flatland: "The cure does not consist in getting rid of holarchy per se, since, even if that were possible, it would simply result in a uniform, one-dimensional flatland of no value distinctions at all (which is why those critics who toss out hierarchy in general immediately replace it with a new scale of values of their own, i.e., with their own particular hierarchy)." "Our answer, as always, is never to be found in flatland, in the world of black checkers scurrying endlessly, meaninglessly, dimly, and disappearing finally into those dark shades of the night that are ever so fundamental, ever so insignificant." "The flatland web of life. It is from this flat and faded landscape, armed with good intentions and a weakest-noodle science, that they cry out to us as our saviors, as those who would heal and make us whole, as those who have seen, and will show us now, the long-sought Promised Land." But surely Wilber knows that Flatland is a Euclidian fable written by Edwin Abbott in the mid 1880's. In it a Square describes his adventures in three dimensional space to his fellow Flatlanders. Like prophets everywhere his news is not taken well. He writes his memoirs from prison. Here is Abbott: "Of the Nature of Flatland I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows -- only hard with luminous edges -- and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things." Poor Square! By the end of the story he is writing from his prison cell his tale of spheres and solids unheeded. "Hence I am absolutely destitute of converts, and, for aught that I can see, the millennial Revelation has been made to me for nothing. Prometheus up in Spaceland was bound for bringing down fire for mortals, but I -- poor Flatland Prometheus -- lie here in prison for bringing down nothing to my countrymen. Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality." This is a tale of mathematical vision as transcendent vision. And this is what Wilber is denouncing? Maybe he was just naming his bogeyman and found "flatland" catchy. But the story Flatland calls upon its reader to think both above and below their current level of conception. Abbott also wrote a slightly longer book Sphereland in which a sphere has a visitation from the fourth dimension. Is this bogeyman ironic? Is it a misunderstanding? A misrepresentation? Or is it demonizing the enemy? Abbott's Flatland carries out a rational expansion of awareness that is at odds with Wilber's phantom Spirit. And so we get stuff like... what was it? Oh, yeah, "...this flat and faded landscape, armed with good intentions and a weakest-noodle science..." Wilber needs to vilify flatland. Abbott is not his friend. Abbott is teaches a lesson in rational transcendence while Wilber talks about learning from the spirit of trees and the interpretation of hallucination. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
