Boomeritis by Ken Wilber

Eric Lilius elilius at halhinet.on.ca
Fri Jun 14 09:22:26 PDT 2002


I just received this taste of a novel written by Ken Wilber.

(Summary from the book jacket: )

Ken Wilber’s latest book is a daring departure from his previous writings – a
highly original work of fiction that combines brilliant scholarship with
tongue-in-cheek storytelling to present the integral approach to human
development that he expounded in more conventional terms in his recent A Theory
of Everything.

The story of a naïve young grad student in computer science and his quest for
meaning in a fragmented world provides the setting in which Wilber contrasts the
alienated “flatland” of scientific materialism with the integral vision, which
embraces body, mind, soul, and spirit in both self and culture, and nature. The
book especially targets one of the most stubborn obstacles in realizing the
integral vision: a disease of egocentrism and narcissism that Wilber calls
“boomeritis” because it seems to plague the baby-boomer generation most of all.

Through a series of sparkling seminar-lectures skillfully interwoven with the
hero’s misadventures in the realms of sex, drugs, and popular culture, all of
the major tenets of extreme postmodernism are criticized – and exemplified –
including the author’s having a bad case of boomeritis himself. Parody,
intellectual slapstick, and a mind-twisting surprise ending unite to produce a
highly entertaining summary of the work of cutting-edge theorists in human
development from around the world.

The Introduction:

Omega_Doom @ FutureWorld.org

I am the bastard child of two deeply confused parents, one of whom I am ashamed
of, the other of whom is ashamed of me. None of us are on speaking terms, for
which we are all grateful. (These things bother you, every now and then. ) My
parents are intimately conjoined in their displeasure with the present; both
want to replace it – quickly – with a set of arrangements more suited to their
inclinations. One wants to tear down; the other, to build up. You might think
they were made for each other, would go together hand in hand, a marriage made
in transformational heaven. Years after the divorce, none of us is so sure.

One of them breathes the fire of revolutionary insurrection, and wants to tear
down the oppressive forces of a cruel and careless yesterday, digging beneath
the veneer of civilized madness to find, it is devoutly hoped, an original human
goodness long buried by the brutalities of a modern world rubbed raw by
viciousness. One of them dreamily gazes in the other direction, standing on
tiptoes and straining to see the foggy face of the future, to a coming world
transformation – I’m told it will be perhaps the greatest in all of history –
and begins to swoon with bliss of beautiful things about to unfold before us;
she is a gentle person and sees the world that way. But I am cursed with an eye
from each, and can hardly see the world at all through two orbs that refuse to
cooperate; cross-eyed I stare at that which is before me, a Picasso universe
where things don’t quite line up. Or perhaps I see more clearly precisely
because of that?

This much seems certain: I am a child of the times, and the times point in two
wildly incompatible directions. On the one hand, we hear constantly that the
world is a fragmented,  torn, and tortured affair, on the tremulous verge of
collapse, with massive and huge civilization blocks pulling apart from each
other with increasingly alienated intent, so much so that international culture
wars are the greatest threat of the future. Cyber-age technology is proceeding
at a pace so rapid that, it is said within 30 years we will have machines
reaching human-level intelligence, and at the same time advances in genetic
engineering,  nanotechnology, and robotics will mean the possible end of
humanity altogether: we will either be replaced by machines or destroyed by a
white plague – and what kind of future is that for a kid? At home we are faced
with the daily, hourly, minutely examples of a society coming apart at the
seams: a national illiteracy rate that has skyrocketed from 5% in 1960 to 30%
today;
51% of the children in New York City born out of wedlock; armed militias
scattered about Montana like Nazi bunkers on the beaches of Normandy, braced for
the invasion; a series of culture wars, gender wars, ideology wars in academia
that parallel in viciousness, if not in means, the multicultural aggression on
the international scene. My father’s eyeball in my head sees a world of
pluralistic fragmentation, ready to disintegrate, leaving in its riotous wake a
mangled mass of human suffering historically unprecedented.

My mother’s eye sees quite another world, yet every bit as real: we are
increasingly becoming one global family, and love by any other name seems the
driving force. Look at the history of the human race itself: from isolated
tribes and bands, to large farming towns, to city-states, to conquering feudal
empires, to international states, to worldwide global village.  And now, on the
eve of the millennium, we face a staggering transformation the likes of which
humanity has never seen, where human bonding so deep and so profound will find
Eros pulsing gloriously through the veins of each and all, signaling the dawn of
a global consciousness that will transfigure the world as we know it. She is a
gentle person and sees the world that way.

I share neither of their views; or rather, I share them both, which makes me
nearly insane.  Clearly twin forces, though not alone, are eating away at the
world: planetization and disintegration, unifying love and corrosive
death-wishes, bonding kindness and disjointing cruelty, on a colossal scale. And
the bastard, schizophrenic, seizure-prone son sees the world as if through
shattered glass, moving his head slowly back and forth while waiting for
coherent images to form, wondering what it all means.

As the Picasso-like fragments assemble themselves into something of postmodern
art, flowing images start to congeal: perhaps there are indeed integrating,
bonding, unifying forces at work in the world, a God or Goddesses love of gentle
persuasion, slowly but inexorably increasing human understanding, care, and
compassion. And perhaps there are likewise currents viciously dedicated to
disrupting any such integral embrace. And perhaps they are indeed at war, a war
that will not cease until one of them is dead – a world united, or a world torn
apart:  love on one hand, or blood all over the brand-new carpet.

What immediately tore at my attention, all that year, was the three-decade mark
of Armageddon doom rushing at me from tomorrow: in 30 years (30 years! ),
machines will reach human-level intelligence, and beyond. And then human beings
will almost certainly be replaced by machines – they will outsmart us, after
all. Or, more likely, we – human beings,  our minds or our consciousness or some
such – would download into computers, we would transfer our souls into the new
machines – and what kind of future was that for a kid?

That was the year the event occurred, altering my fate irrevocably, a year in
the life of a human machine that miraculously came to life. It was a year of
ideas that hurt my head,  made my brain sore and swollen, it seemed literally to
expand and push against my skull,  bulging out my eyes, throbbing at my temples,
tearing into the world. Of that year, I recall almost no geographical locations
at all. I remember little scenery, few actual places, hardly an exterior, just a
stream of conversations and blistering visions that ruined my life as I had
known it, replaced it with something humanity would never recognize, left me
immortal, stains all over my flesh, smiling at the sky.


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.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸ <º))))>< .·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º> ¸.·´¯`·..·´¯`·.¸

******PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF ADDRESS******

Eric Lilius
Box 27  Eagle Lake, Ontario, Canada
K0M 1M0
email:elilius at halhinet.on.ca
ph:     705-754-9859
fax:    705-754-9860

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

                        Rumi

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