Talk:Ken Wilber/Archive 3

message: Has anyone checked out wiki page on Cohen of being a cult leader, etc. It seems that Wilber has another case of supporting an unsavory character like Da Free John. Is there anything worth mentioning on the wikipedia page of Wilber??? ForrestLane42 04:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Andrew Cohen connection

message: I think this page needs to be shortly a bit...as Wikipedia says this page has to many buzzwords. I think the Ideas section needs to be trimmed down. First thing that should be done is revamping the section with the Wilber 5 section which seems more linear to his ideas. Sections with Absolute/relative truth section, Wilber-Combs lattice, etc add information that those more interested in studying wilberian thought can go find in a library. Statements like "In a recent (dated 2006) online article/interview on his Shambhala website, "On the Nature of a Post-Metaphysical Spirituality: Response to Habermas and Weis",[11] Wilber speaks of Post-Metaphysical Spirituality. On another page, "Future Excerpts from Kosmic Karma and Creativity to Be Posted",[12] he presents an outline that includes "Excerpt F: Integral Post-Metaphysics", but (as of 28 January 2006) no further material has been posted regarding this." Can be written in a much smaller sentence, like "In a recent (dated 2006) online article/interview on his Shambhala website, Wilber has spoken of a post-metaphysical spirituality and has been in the process of elaborating this thought into his work. In fact I plan to make the switch now. Basically, can we trunicate the words into a more concise page.ForrestLane42 01:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you want to edit the prose in the article, go right ahead. But stop deleting entire paragraphs. I will continue to revert your deletions. And it's not "Wikipedia" which claims that a section contains buzzwords, it's whatever editor added that tag.  — goethean ॐ 18:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Ok. I look forward to hearing your suggestions. — goethean ॐ 21:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Why don't you go to other articles and start deleting entire paragraphs without discussion. See how far you  get. — goethean ॐ 15:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: *On that page, I pointed out that your activities under this username consist almost entirely of nominating articles from the integral thought category for deletion. Users who appear suddenly with an intimate understanding of the process and who evince a clear agenda often have their identity and motivations questioned. You fall into that category. Seriously. This was your fifth edit under this username. That's so suspicious, it's funny. — goethean ॐ 17:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Revising Idea section

message: Okay, I think the main parties have now been heard from.  If you want me to go ahead with this, we need some ground rules.  I'm going to have to do a significant amount of work here, studying not just the article, but also edit histories and external sources, and I don't want to do it if it's not going to do any good.  I don't have a personal oar to pull with regards to Wilber, but I do want to help Wikipedia to work right.
So, the rules:
* Our goal is to produce a top-quality Wikipedia article, encyclopedic and appropriately detailed, properly sourced, and free of WP:POV and WP:OR problems.  (Note that WP:POV doesn't forbid POV, it only requires it to be properly expressed.)
* We are doing this cooperatively and dispassionately, with no more personal attacks or passion or anger among ourselves, so please, no more good faith or bad faith.  We hereby re-boot the old debate from scratch, and leave all that stuff behind.  In particular, we are not discussing the propriety of past edits or reversions — we are only discussing the form and language of the future article.
* There's a non-binding presumption, but still a presumption, that when I rule on a disputed issue, you will respect it.  (Otherwise, why am I doing this?)
If this seems reasonable, please sign on by adding a line of the form "*Agreed (optional comment) (four tildes)" to this block, and when all three of you are there, I'll start my slog through the horrific pile of relevant prose.  Cheers! Eleuther 02:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *On that page, I pointed out that your activities under this username consist almost entirely of nominating articles from the integral thought category for deletion. Users who appear suddenly with an intimate understanding of the process and who evince a clear agenda often have their identity and motivations questioned. You fall into that category. Seriously. This was your fifth edit under this username. That's so suspicious, it's funny. — goethean ॐ 17:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mediation

message: I typed in "new age" and got this, which I think shows that the Wilber article is relatively sane.  My idea was to see if it would be realistic to describe Wilber as a new age philosopher and religious leader.  It seems I need to change my tack.  Cheers, more to come, Eleuther 04:19, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Progress Report

message: This quote must be highlighted for it is evident that goethean does not plan to work in good faith and feels entitled to run this page to his whims. Sorry that is not how wikipedia works. Eleuther, goethean has attacked backface unprovoked, he says this article is his vision, how can there be mediation with such a tyrant? Eleuther,  if you know how to contact Wikipedia to get involved, it would be appreciated.
as for a bias against integralism, that is bogus and a false front to protect your own agenda. There is no bias, if there is rampant deletionism on integral pages, it is because most of them have no substance,not noteworthy, and end up being a waste of space. Take the Matthew Dallman page for example. Wikipedia is not a place for advertisement of integralism. I fully endorse Backface's statement:"I do not see this as 'rampant deletionism' but as a correction of a tendency of the integral community to spread its internal debates outward."
As for goethean's statement "I welcome constructive criticism, but I have not as yet seen evidence for it." He has never set a standard of good faith in this area, he reverts without explaining them, without having a democratic discussion on the deletion, it is his view of constructive criticism - if I didn't know better goethean is Wilber himself. Seems to define the game and wants you to play by his rules.
Lastly, goethean I do not understand how I put my comments in the middle of anyone's statements. Sorry if I did, but please a minor mistake. goethean, wikipedia is not a place for the war in the  integral world, how bout you start a clone of wikipedia for all things integral. Infact isn't there such a thing called Integral Wiki????? 
backface, sorry that you had to face such remarks from goethean.
ForrestLane42 00:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoever wants to can look at the article history and see that other editors have edited the article successfully. But when someone vandalizes the article, I undo their changes.  When you deleted entire paragraphs, I undid your changes. This is reasonable. As I suggested earlier, why don't you try deleting paragraphs from other artifles and see what happens? See also Wikipedia is not a democracy. — goethean ॐ 01:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: If the paragraphs that don't make any sense are from Wilber, then rather than deleting them, introductory material needs to be introduced that will guide the reader into the quotation. Eleuther is fully capable of reading the article for himself. — goethean ॐ 04:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "the article is my vision"

message: Hi, crew, sorry to have been missing in action, my network router was down for awhile.  I see you have managed to stay busy.
*Backface, I liked most of what you said in View from the Backface.  I would happily turn this whole mediation job over to you, if only you could moderate your language and swallow your pride a bit.
*ForrestLane42, when you add a comment, it's best to do it after the signature line of the previous talker, and maybe to indent it to make it clear who is responding to whom.  This is a minor formatting error, not a major sin.
*Goethean, it's improper in the current context (where we're all trying to cooperate) to attack ForrestLane42 over a minor formatting error, and to go on to attack Backface over his past contibutions.  Past conflicts are not relevant to the current discussion.
*Goethean, you go on to say that you have singlehandedly written most of the article.  Thanks for your work, but Wikipedia articles are not owned by single editors, and it's clear the article can't stand in its current form.  Backface has invited interested parties to describe what they want the article to look like.  Please contribute to this – give us a paragraph or two about what you think the content should be.  I'm waiting for this before I give my opinion, since you seem to be the main skeptic.
Over all, all of you, stop it!  No more personalities, no more history, no more breast-beating.  Only polite discussion of the content of the article.  Cheers, Eleuther 03:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, ForrestLane42, I said stop it — forget it, let it be.
-Ouch.
-ForrestLane42
Eleuther, I didn't attack Forrestlane, I made a polite request of him. I also didn't mean to imply that I owned the article; but merely that there is no need for me to give a vision for the article when I have already made that vision into reality. But since Backface has successfully framed the debate in this way, I suppose that I should say something so that I do not appear obstructionist. The article should consist of two major sectons: biography and ideas. The biography should highlight when he released which books and should describe his five phases. The ideas section should be organized the way it is now -- into subsections on his major ideas, plus a section on major criticism. Much of the recent criticism has taken place online, and the criticism section should note that. — goethean ॐ 04:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reboot! 

message: So what is the proper term, then?  If I had to pick a single word for what Wilber does, I personally would pick philosophy — but I also acknowledge that he's not a university professor, and there seems to be a presumption that only university professors can do that thing.  So what's the right word, eh? Eleuther 06:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ForrestLane42, you are correct, IMO. He's basically a new age author and thinker who attempts to weave various ideas (often derivative) into an integral pattern, which has resulting in a following; has endorsed highly flawed gurus (Adi Da, former followers of Da like Deida, Saniel Bonder etc, and Andrew Cohen); and more recently, has taken on the role of a spiritual transmitter in his own right. He can be soundly criticized for everything from his new age psuedo-scientific views to his new age belief in an evolutionary enlightenment. He may be influential in new age circles but he's hardly the influence his followers would like to have one believe. --Dseer 07:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think "writer" is a reasonably NPOV way to describe Wilber, despite its vagueness.  I'm not saying that only university professors can be called philosophers, by the way (see the discussion above).  271828182 07:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I disagree, "writer" is a weasel-word.  Sure, he writes well, but that's not the point.  The important thing about him is his ideas, not his wordage.  If you can't stomach philosopher, call him a religious thinker, or whatever. Eleuther 08:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with Eleuther. Writer is not a weasal word. Wilber writes on many subjects: psychology, sociology, philosophy, science, new age, religion, spirituality...he is a general non-fiction writer. (And he wrote a novel.) — goethean ॐ 16:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A weasel word, as I understand it, is a qualifier that implies something dubious: e.g., "Leaves glasses virtually spotless", or "Wilber may be the greatest thinker of the 21st century".  Describing Wilber as a writer, then, is not to weasel.  It is vague, as I said, but the problem is that Wilber's own work is exceedingly vague.  "New Age writer" or "New Age theorist" are both agreeable to me -- more specific than "writer" but basically neutral.  (I don't think calling him a New Age writer would be much of an insult to a supporter, since someone sympathetic to Wilber will tend to think that New Age ideas are on the right track.) 271828182 05:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

text: A weasel word is a word that is being used to avoid the real issue. Eleuther 10:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: So what should it be?

message: I heartily approve of Backface's change to the second sentence .
His opening phrase, "Working outside the mainstream of academia," opens the door to unweasling the rest of the paragraph in a way that (maybe) everyone else can agree on (I wish I'd thought of it), for example something like:
:K ... is an American philosopher, writer, and religious thinker.  Working outside the mainstream of academia, he has drawn on a variety of disciplines including <existing list> to formulate a theory which he calls the integral theory of consciousness.  <Defer discussion of kosmos, etc. to Ideas, spare us the story-teller bit, go directly to factual founding of Integral Institute,  etc.>
Reactions? Eleuther 09:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you describe Wilhelm Reich as a physicist?  Or Immanuel Velikovsky as an astronomer?  Or L. Ron Hubbard as a psychologist?  All of them have as comparable a claim to those titles as Wilber does to "philosopher", i.e., they all wrote works putting forward substantial, complex theories about physics, astronomy, and psychology.  However, none of them had any professional training in those fields, and no experts in those fields take their theories seriously.  Calling Wilber a philosopher would be as bad as a Wikipedia article calling Hubbard a psychologist.  "New Age theorist" is the most specific appellation I'm comfortable with for Wilber. 271828182 21:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Philosophy can't be just the non-science "leftovers", since that would lump theology, much of the social sciences, and the humanities into philosophy.  Philosophy does have general consensus boundaries, just as any discipline or science does: look at what the experts talk and write about.  And Wilber doesn't make that cut.  I'm not attached to "New Age" as a label, but considering the company Wilber keeps, it seems descriptive rather than POV. 271828182 02:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "New Age" writer (and I would add thinker) is perfectly appropriate discriptively and not POV. A number of "New Age" figures claim they personally are not "New Age" despite falling within that spectrum, and the simplest way to see this is to ask how Wilber would have fared writing books in pre-"New Age" times? "New Age" also captures the religious quality of his work.--Dseer 08:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He would not have written these books in pre-New Age times - I think because he is post-New Age. Pevos 11:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A nice solution

message: Can we shorten this as well? Wilber has written so many books, etc and we have a section of those who have written about Wilber. I looked at Plato's entry, and he doesn't nearly have as much. Can we condense the two sections into one at least and maybe highlight Wilber's major works - i.e. Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, etc?? What do you think Eleuther, pro crast in tor, and dseer and backface? ForrestLane42 18:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bibligraphy

message: I recommend that the Bill Clinton quotation be restored that Forrestlane42 deleted with the following edit summary: deleted clinton comment, only placed in for self-promotion for wilber. First of all, that edit summary does not assume good faith. Second of all, it is not your typical new age writer that can boast a quotation from a US president. I submit that the quotation is highly notable, was not placed for promotional purposes, and should be restored. — goethean ॐ 21:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded, the Clinton quote seems like name-dropping to me, and does not add enough value to the article to justify the length.  Pro crast in a tor 08:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I see nothing wrong with leaving the quote there. It is verifiable, relevant, in-line with npov and nothing to do with self-promotion. Apart from anything else it is quite interesting--Backface 14:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It seems premature to make this decision now, because of the implications of using that quote in that context, until the article is fleshed out more. Why? Look at the quote itself. "If ordinary people don’t perceive that our grand ideas are working in their lives, then they can’t develop the higher level of consciousness, if I can use a kind of touchy-feely word, that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about, called A Theory of Everything. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us". Right away, you have a popular ex-President defining Ken Wilber as a philosopher, and that has an impact on the writer and/or philosopher discussion. In reality, all Clinton is really doing is saying is he agrees on a macro scale with an idea he read in Ken Wilber's book, and it is that Clinton liked the idea and used it that makes in noteworthy. I think at this stage it makes more sense as a reference or possibly a wikiquote than in the body of the text, because it is noteworthy that he was referenced by Clinton, so I would not delete all information regarding the quote, but I'm not convinced yet based on where the article seems to be headed it belongs in the text of the article where it could give it more weight than deserved. --Dseer 17:37, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Clinton quotation

message: There seems to be a dispute over whether to include Youtube links to videos. The first question should be: "are the videos copyrighted?" If they are, and if they have not been released under a free license, then WP:EL#Restrictions on linking indicates that we should not link to them. The guideline is that we should avoid linking to copyright violations. Are there other issues as well? -Will Beback · † · 22:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To clarify: the sex video is no longer hosted on YouTube, having been removed by the director, Integral Naked, who is indeed the creator of the content.  I added back in the existing link to a video of Mr. Wilber, as I found it note worthy to see him in person. Pro crast in a tor 03:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

text: ForrestLane42, I agree that an encyclopedia is meant to "give some starting points for further research", as you put it.  As such, a single link to a single video to let the interested reader know that there are videos out there, filed at the end of the article under "external links", does not seem at all inappropriate to me.  After all, how best to know someone that to see them "in the flesh", hear their voice, etc?  Which video it is doesn't matter to me, only that it's just one.  I maintain that a single link to a video is good for the article.Pro crast in a tor 05:13, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Youtube videos 

message: I think that when we conclude editing this page to all parties satisfaction that the tag -  should remain since this has been a battleground for integralists and nonintergralists.Please give a yea or nay.
ForrestLane42 23:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Nomination of Bias Warning

message: Hello there. I think this article should include his hand/partnership with that networking website. 
See http://yeago.net/works/jesus-buddha-ken-wilber for a synopsis.
Yeago 20:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Involvement with [[Zaadz]].com

message: Time for a deep breath.  The purpose of the article is not to dispute Wilber's philosophy, only to describe it.  The purpose of the talk page is not to dispute Wilber's philosophy, only to discuss how the article should read. Eleuther 10:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True enough, but how are we supposed to discuss how the article should read when certain editors don't even understand what it is they're writing about? (That's a real question, not a rhetorical one.) --Grey 11:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Good point.  Non-understanding (and other pointless) content, I hope, should eventually be edited out by well-meaning editors like yourself.  I don't claim to understand the nuances of Wilberianism (i.e. which blogs are evil), and I haven't tried to edit the ideas area yet myself.  The wiki-theory is that contentious and clueless editors will eventually be marginalized — though it may not happen as soon as one wants. Eleuther 14:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deep breath 

message: Since I get the feeling we may be approaching some sort of consensus on the Wilber entry (at least no less than any other page subject to "discussion"), I was wondering when we might be able to remove the ActiveDiscuss warning from the page. I wasn't around when it was added (and I'm still something of a newbie to Wikipedia editing), so I don't think it's my place to decide when it can be removed. Thoughts? (not on my "place", but on the tag itself... ;-) --Grey 14:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The tag should be removed. — goethean ॐ 15:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm just saying that it's being discussed now no more than many other articles that don't display the ActiveDiscuss template. And please get over the fact that you now have to debate against more than just goethean and deal with it, rather than lamenting. It's getting old. --Grey 09:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: You want statements, grey, look at as per Holotrope statements as per Dseer statements as per my statements, we all have different ideas on what should be here - thus the word disputed, incorrect, biased, etc would seem previous evident? I already know the answer, no. ForrestLane42 20:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Statements in the article, not on the discussion page. --Grey 21:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree the tag should be removed, as the article has settled down and I see no major disagreement about article scope or POV.  Sure, there are still lots of edits (and even more talk!), but any statement that is in serious dispute was removed long ago. Pro crast in a tor 00:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand your sentiments Pro crast, but there has been major disagreements IMO - the word "sometimes-controversial", etc, etc etc. ForrestLane42 00:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether there "has (sic) been major disagreements" is entirely irrelevant. I don't see any current "major" disagreements, especially since the Adi Da influence passage was reworked. --Grey 08:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: ActiveDiscuss tag

message: :Sorry, I didn't realize that "mainstream" was an insult.  My reasoning still stands though, because being a work of "consensus", Wikipedia is necessarily a work of the mainstream, and I'm personally tired of arguing with people who are convinced that academia, tradition, and current consensus are the definitions of "fact".  Maybe you're right and I'm wrong, and that's fine, but I'm done debating and being attacked for my ideas. That's all I'm saying, and if that's inappropriate, then that's even more reason for me to bow out of the debate. --Grey 18:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If I could respond to that, I think it's not a matter of fact versus fiction, but that the particular selection of facts that each of us prefers reflects our POV. Holotrope, you prefer a selection of facts that emphsizes the influence or Adi Da on Wilber. People who are more sympathetic to Wilber see those facts as less relevant details and see the emphasis on those facts as motivated by a desire to paint KW in a darker (or different) light. — goethean ॐ 20:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Continuing after interruption

message: This page is nowhere near to done case in point Adi Da! That simple fact alone says that this page is far from NPOV consensus. If everyone disagrees, then the tag above should be placed on this page, HOW bout the person who removed it justify their position, gadrane or goethean? If one was going to remove the tag, then it should be discussed in the talk page FIRST, but they did not. So I am going to revert, please bring it here, before you revert without discussion! ForrestLane42 19:09, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not going to glorify most of your comments here by offering a response to them, but I would like to point out that I did start a discussion before removing the tag, and no one provided any reasonable arguments to justify keeping it.  Nor have they yet.  Just because a page is being developed doesn't mean that it is "disputed, incorrect, biased or otherwise objectionable".  If you think something is missing, then add it and we'll see if it flies, but I don't think you can say that the information that's there now is "objectionable".  Even the Adi Da references that may be "missing" are nothing so important as to warrant the ActiveDiscuss tag, in my opinion.  In any event, the burden of proof should be on those who support the tag, not on those who think it's unnecessary.  You can point to the objectionable passages, whereas I cannot point to the unobjectionable ones to support my case.  "Innocent until proven guilty" after all. --Grey 10:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Justify My Position?!

message: I am wondering what is the point in having them in that section, why not eliminate the section
and have them placed under a subtitle of that little integral template, seems to me more concise and understandable. See also section should then be gone or left to other things like the form of Buddhism that Wilber ascribes to. ForrestLane42 17:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the template appears on several article, adding the links to the template is a different topic then whether they should be on this article. Generally, links should appear under "see also" because they are relevant but have not been mentioned in the text of the article yet. The two current 'see also' links fall into this category and are relevant to the article. — goethean ॐ 18:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: See also section

message: Eleuther and 271828182 (do you mind if I call you e?) have been the primary parties involved in the discussion of the philosopher question for some time, and based on this conversation (above), what are the opinions of the people here?  Please put your name under yes or no, and (optionally) a short reason why.  Note I've rephrased the question to "should he be described as a philosopher?", as that's the salient issue for WP.  This leaves unresolved and unremarked about whether he is or is not a philosopher, which I think may reduce the contention here.
This is in anticipation of moving this talk page into the archives, something I'd like to do in the next week or so, and wanting to see where we stand prior to moving into the archives, where few will read the discussion. Pro crast in a tor
:The entire talk page needn't and shouldn't be archived. Only the conversations that have not been used recently need to be archived. — goethean ॐ 02:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed, I didn't mean to say the whole page, just the older stuff (like the philosopher debate). Pro crast in a tor 02:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

text: See what I find troublesome about the idea or the word "integral" is that its implying that Wilber is taking every single theory and somehow synthesizing it into one grand meta-theory. His work seems to ignore to most western religions, I have yet to hear anything about integral Judaism,Islam, Christianity. So his work seemingly then is sweeping generalizations from the work of "real" philosophers, theologians, psychologists. So I find it hard to say its map or body of theories (even though he has used the word map - his map leaves many cities and towns along the way in his work). The fact that when I first read Wilber was the fact that he was trying to synthesize other theories that attracted me to his work, but the more I read the less was I am to see that he really was being "integral". 204.183.184.114 16:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Straw poll: Should Wilber be described as a philosopher?