“… every once in a while it gets so bad you just have to blow off steam, because it really hurts, ya know? And like I said, every decade or so, I blow.”
-- Ken Wilber in KenWilberBlog, ‘The Wanger’ post*, 6/8/06
A storm of commentary swirled in the Integral section of the Buddhoblogosphere after Ken Wilber posted a bitter, raunchy 5,000-word post in his blog on 6/8, intended, it seemed, to bring pain to his enemies. The essay, which B'du has dubbed 'The Wanger' post*, seems to be, in the main, a rather non-substantive denunciation of Frank Vissar’s May 2006 essay at the website Integral World, “Talking Back to Wilber,” that chides The Ken for not responding to the many critical essays that have amassed of Wilber’s theories at Integral World. Vissar concludes his essay, “I am looking forward to a future with many integral journals and conferences, where integral concepts are openly discussed – both as to their strengths but even more so as to their weaknesses, both online and in the offline world. That's the only way it can mature beyond the limitations it currently has. Without it, integral might very well end up as an ideology.”
In his blog post, Wilber identified with Wyatt Earp – because, Earp was, in Wilber’s estimation, like him in being the leading figure in his field and in having gun-slingers out there filling his ass with lead. [Actually, Earp was a courageous and sometimes ethics-challenged lawman and businessman whose ass stayed remarkably unmarred. See wikipedia listing. But, be that as it may.]
Wilber uses course language several times, at one point telling a critic, “simply suck my dick.” He also says that anyone who disagrees with his course phrase is necessarily a backward green memester. {He softens this later, writing “I’m not saying that anybody [who finds this post repulsive] is green; just that anybody who is green [will find it repulsive].}
Integral bloggers’ reactions to W’s post were mixed, with many either alienated by Wilber’s post or disappointed with it. Others, wondered if it is a test or, in B'du reporter's case, a mean-green satire of some sort. And a third segment, Wilber sycophants, delighted in its freshness, humor and joy-filled decadence. Of course, members in this third segment might be in on the hoax, if there is one. But, in any case, the bloggers’ reactions proved that Derrida lives! Deconstructing Wilber’s post somewhat became all the rage.
A question B’du reporter has: If Wilber did join the Dark Side of the Force, what would we expect to see from him in terms of a blog post? Wouldn’t we expect a first act to be an attempt to blow up Integral World with its snakepit of detractors, much as Darth Vadar blew up a world that resisted his powers? And doesn’t ‘the Wanger post’* seem to attempt to do precisely this!
But in his post “Integral Wild West,” Dashh is surely onto something, if all his references make sense. [I say this because it is hard to trust anyone when hoax possibilities are with us.] Dashh writes,
The more I think about it the more I wonder if it just another attempt at an SD [Spiral Dynamics] integral Voight-Kampff Test ala Blade Runner ala the essay written to gauge responses of David Deida's Ken Wilber is a Fraud essay years back. If you are 'blue' you reacted this way...if you are 'orange' this is the typical response...I'm sure it is only a matter of days before the posts at integral blogs and maybe even Wilber's start to analyse and frame everyone's responses in terms of SD.
Happily, B'du reporter is expecting that, in accord with Wilber 6.0, this here post will show that this reporter is in the clear meme which is third tier, rising above yellow, coral, teal, indigo and muave.
One reason to think that Wilber is pulling a hoax or spoofing something or poking his readers is that W recently posted a review of V for Vendetta, backdating it to March. It is perhaps the case that Wilber and Annie McQuade are taking the roles of V and Natalie Portman's character in a terrorist act of blowing up parliament [Integral World]. But if Wilber and McQuade are goofing on people or are testing people, it surely might say something uncomely about them and where their spiritual heads are at, under the masque.
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* I am calling KW’s instantly famous post “The Wanger Post” since wanger means the male member, someone who jerks off and/or anger AND wanger begins with a W [for Wilber and Wyatt] and ends in a-n-g-e-r. Also, Wanger is the name of the composer of “The Ride of the Valkyries” to someone who has dyslexia. Somewhat like Wilber – to a few folk, maybe – Wagner is someone whose work you can love, but you kind of want to ignore the person behind it.
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