I agree that something like a math theorem can be independent from its author’s life details. But Wilber is a philosopher of life, talking about human development and so on, and the people he holds up as examples again and again turn out to be abusers and frauds. There’s just no way his philosophy of life is any good.
I’m not familiar with Integral Theory, but I read an earlier book by Wilber that arguably also qualifies as “philosophy of life”. I found it to contain some stuff that felt very valuable and some stuff that felt like obvious nonsense.
It strikes me that he was approaching the topics in a way that might be considered somewhat analogous to a study of cognitive biases—in that even if you do actually have a good theoretical understanding of biases that other people can learn from, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re any good at being less biased yourself. Or possibly you have managed to debias yourself with regard to some biases, but you keep getting blindsided by some trickier ones, even if you understand them in theory.
This seems to me like a general issue with all these kinds of things, whether it’s about cognitive bias or therapy or philosophy of life. You only ever see your mind from the inside, and simply knowing about how it works will (usually) not change how it actually works, so you can have a fantastic understanding of minds in general and manage to fix most of your issues and still fail to apply your skills to one gaping blindspot that’s obvious to everyone around you. Or conversely, you can be a massive failure as a human being and have a million things you haven’t addressed at all, but still be able to produce some valuable insights.
That said, I do agree that the more red flags there are around a person, the more cautious one should be—both in terms of epistemics (more risk of absorbing bad ideas) and due to general consequentialist reasons (if someone supports known abusers, then endorsing them may indirectly lend support to abuse).
if someone supports known abusers, then endorsing them may indirectly lend support to abuse
The last US election had two presidential candidates with serious sexual harrassment allegations against them. You could say that anybody who supported either of those candidates should be suspect but I don’t think that’s a good way to think about the issue.
Often people still support a person because they believe that there are causes that are more important and because they don’t believe that the case against the accused person is sufficiently proven.
If we take Marc Gafni as the core reason to be skeptical of the Integral community that’s analogous to being skeptical of Whole Foods in early 2016 when the Whole foods CEO was also associated with Gafni. The whole foods CEO ended up disassociating due to public pressure. To the extend that the difference between John Mackey and Ken Wilber is that John Mackey bowed to the public pressure and Ken Wilber didn’t, I don’t think we can take it as a reason to see Whole foods as better then the Integral community.
If we want judge the response of the Intregral community to Marc Gafni we also have to look at the community response and not just on Ken Wilber. Contrary to cousin_it’s assertion Ken Wilber is not the leader of the Integral community. The Integral community doesn’t have formal global leadership. Ken Wilber could have set up the Integral community in a way that has him as a central leader but didn’t.
While Googling about community positions I found a post by Terry Patten founded and leads Bay Area Integral. In it he writes:
I’ve long had strong feelings about Marc, and the complex issues raised by his engagement with leaders in integral and evolutionary spirituality. I personally decided to stop working with him in 2011, and came to see him as pathological. While I sincerely pray for his healing and redemption, I think communities of practice do need to bar him from functioning as a spiritual leader within them. I’m glad that lines are being drawn, and I’m lending my name to help that happen as unambiguously as possible.
I’m writing this blog as a member of the integral community, and as a teacher and leader who has been repeatedly asked to weigh in. We have no formal elders or wisdom council, so there will be no official integral response.
The fact that there’s no central power center in Integral is from my perspective something that’s positive about it. The fact that Integral community leaders like Terry Patten are willing to write something like this, shows to me healthy community dynamics.
If you want to take an Integral workshop it might be worth asking the workshop provider on their stance on Marc Gafni and judge them based on how the answer but Wilber’s personal stance is less important if you take a workshop about which Wilber has no leadership.
I agree that something like a math theorem can be independent from its author’s life details. But Wilber is a philosopher of life, talking about human development and so on, and the people he holds up as examples again and again turn out to be abusers and frauds. There’s just no way his philosophy of life is any good.
I’m not familiar with Integral Theory, but I read an earlier book by Wilber that arguably also qualifies as “philosophy of life”. I found it to contain some stuff that felt very valuable and some stuff that felt like obvious nonsense.
It strikes me that he was approaching the topics in a way that might be considered somewhat analogous to a study of cognitive biases—in that even if you do actually have a good theoretical understanding of biases that other people can learn from, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re any good at being less biased yourself. Or possibly you have managed to debias yourself with regard to some biases, but you keep getting blindsided by some trickier ones, even if you understand them in theory.
This seems to me like a general issue with all these kinds of things, whether it’s about cognitive bias or therapy or philosophy of life. You only ever see your mind from the inside, and simply knowing about how it works will (usually) not change how it actually works, so you can have a fantastic understanding of minds in general and manage to fix most of your issues and still fail to apply your skills to one gaping blindspot that’s obvious to everyone around you. Or conversely, you can be a massive failure as a human being and have a million things you haven’t addressed at all, but still be able to produce some valuable insights.
That said, I do agree that the more red flags there are around a person, the more cautious one should be—both in terms of epistemics (more risk of absorbing bad ideas) and due to general consequentialist reasons (if someone supports known abusers, then endorsing them may indirectly lend support to abuse).
The last US election had two presidential candidates with serious sexual harrassment allegations against them. You could say that anybody who supported either of those candidates should be suspect but I don’t think that’s a good way to think about the issue.
Often people still support a person because they believe that there are causes that are more important and because they don’t believe that the case against the accused person is sufficiently proven.
If we take Marc Gafni as the core reason to be skeptical of the Integral community that’s analogous to being skeptical of Whole Foods in early 2016 when the Whole foods CEO was also associated with Gafni. The whole foods CEO ended up disassociating due to public pressure. To the extend that the difference between John Mackey and Ken Wilber is that John Mackey bowed to the public pressure and Ken Wilber didn’t, I don’t think we can take it as a reason to see Whole foods as better then the Integral community.
If we want judge the response of the Intregral community to Marc Gafni we also have to look at the community response and not just on Ken Wilber. Contrary to cousin_it’s assertion Ken Wilber is not the leader of the Integral community. The Integral community doesn’t have formal global leadership. Ken Wilber could have set up the Integral community in a way that has him as a central leader but didn’t.
While Googling about community positions I found a post by Terry Patten founded and leads Bay Area Integral. In it he writes:
The fact that there’s no central power center in Integral is from my perspective something that’s positive about it. The fact that Integral community leaders like Terry Patten are willing to write something like this, shows to me healthy community dynamics.
If you want to take an Integral workshop it might be worth asking the workshop provider on their stance on Marc Gafni and judge them based on how the answer but Wilber’s personal stance is less important if you take a workshop about which Wilber has no leadership.