30 seconds.  The end is sweetly inspiring!

At Lifehacker.

I'm stealing this from Dash, but it's worth pointing to - an excerpt from a book Twilight of the Gods:  This is one of the coolest and funniest takedowns of Ken Wilber I've seen, sly without being mean, recognizing Ken's work, without devaluing, yet freshly descriptive:

JE: In your book Coming Into Being you compare the work of Jean Gebser with Ken Wilber. Can you discuss the differences that you see in the approaches of both of these men to the evolution of consciousness?

WIT: Oh, it's almost classic cultured European versus Midwestern American hick. You know, I think people like Terence McKenna and Ken just grew up in Eastern Colorado and Nebraska in such culturally deprived areas that they get captured by a kind of abstract construction of what they imagine the big European thinker is, or the psychedelic hero in the case of McKenna. And Wilber, as I say in Coming Into Being, is just very abstract but Gebser is an artist. He has an incredible insight, for example, into the role of adjectives in Rilke, and what it means when you use language in a particular way to create an imaginative landscape that's more processive and less prospective of composed object nailed down into perspectival space. So there's an amazing senstivity to art and poetry and painting and the richness of European culture. But when I was teaching temporarily at the California Institute of Integral Studies, all the students didn't like Gebser because they can't remember a painting of Cezanne; they don't read Rilke. They're just into drugs and taking Extasy and going to Raves, and looking for some kind of psychotherapy technique. And so Wilber is their hero because he just gives them all these maps and charts, this Michelin guide. He's a control freak. There's no sense of humor, there's no sense of art, it's all just sterile and masculine in a very dry and abstract way.

I didn't want to be an egomaniac and say, well, my culture history is better than Wilber's. I didn't want to go into that. So I went out of my way to use Ken Wilber's Up From Eden as a textsbook, and had everybody read it in my Lindisfarne symposium at the cathedral. But when I did that, and went out of my way to give equal time and to really be open to Wilber, and read the book, and underlined it, I just thought, God, the difference between this and The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light--they cover exactly the same turf--is the difference between a textbook and a work of art!

Now, I think there is a lot of value in the Midwestern American hick philosopher - starting with William James, and onwards!  But it sure is interesting to get a different take on it - European arrogance rather than american!

Umguy reminds me of what I consider to be a great chart - from What Is Altitude?

The chart is useful to see the change from the "old" colors to the new color scheme from Integral Institute.

UPDATE:  One other point - from the article -

"States and stages, however, are deeply interrelated: research has shown that continued development through stages can help convert passing states into permanent traits, which is one of the more exciting findings of an Integral Approach....)"

Another attempt in this line - and I STILL haven't seen Wilber or II give credit, but maybe I've missed it - is Timothy Leary's 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness.

In regards to the Integral Institute quote above, I think the power of imprints - as permanent traits - hasn't been examined in depth, that I have seen.

Mainstream AP article here.

The must-read Jack Balkin article here:

The choice quote:

The bottom line is simple: The MCA preserves rights against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, but it severs these rights from any practical remedy.

This means, as a functional matter, there is no recourse for the innocently accused.  More:

There are many things that are deeply distressing about the Military Commissions Act of 2006. One of the most distressing is its deeply cynical attitude about law. The President has created a new regime in which he is a law unto himself on issues of prisoner interrogations. He decides whether he has violated the laws, and he decides whether to prosecute the people he in turn urges to break the law. And all the while he insists that everything he does is perfectly legal, because, the way the law is designed, there is no one with authority to disagree.

It is a travesty of law under the forms of law. It is the accumulation of executive, judicial, and legislative powers in a single branch and under a single individual.

It is the very essence of tyranny.

Also of note in the main article, is that a collection of religious groups were the protestors, in this case.

That shows one of the essential functions of a working religious or spiritual consciousness - the refusal to find acceptable degraded forms of treatment.

A cool feature for Google Search. Type in a "who is" question, and, if you are well known enough, a brief description of that person comes back:

Who is Albert Einstein? a German theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century.

Who is Elvis Presley?   Early in his career he was referred to as The Hillbilly Cat and was soon nicknamed Elvis the Pelvis.

Who is Ken Wilber?     is an American philosopher.

And there are the beginning of the metaphysical:

Who is Truth?   is part of philosophical logic, and within philosophy it is of special interest to metaphysics,

Who knows how good this will get, as search engines improve?  At some point, combine psychological assessments, with Google Search History (and personal Gmail, and personal GDocuments, and GSpreadsheets), and when you ask "What is my perfect job?" Google might respond!! 

Scary.

However, there are still some "bugs" in the ultimate question search engine.

When I ask the ultimate question:

Who am I?  

The top result is a mediocre Jackie Chan film...

Wisdom from Bill.

I just had a cool idea, when emailing a friend, (and I mean literally *Just*.  I emailed out to him a quick distillation of my thoughts, hit send, and then thought "I have to blog this!"), so I thought I would put it here. 

I have a history here of pontificating, ruminating, on Web 2.0, blogging, and spirituality.  And there have been all types of implementations.

Many times, I've thought to setup a SCOOP style site - for either Skillful Means posts, or for Integral posts.

However, at this point, Zaadz - which already has a bunch of other features that a SCOOP site wouldn't have - needs to do TWO things - and then there the NEED for a SCOOP style site, is made completely superfluous.

Ability to search blogs by tags (does Zaadz already have this?), and then ability to RATE a blogpost.

Most of my blogposts are mediocre.  I accept that. 

BUT

Some of my blogposts are excellent!! 

I know that is true as well. 

If people can RATE a blogpost, and you can lookup a blogpost based on recommendations, ratings, and taggings - well, then why do you need a SCOOP site?  You already have the functionality that, say, DailyKos is so useful for, right?

So - how is that coming!?



also posted at Zaadz

Another perspective.

A good overview of Habermas, and some post-critical philosophy.  (Philosophy after the "death of objectivity".)

This is especially important, as Haberman is addressing from his framework, what Wilber is attempting to address with Integral Spirituality.   By the way, here is a review.

Namely, as is said by the article, a “contextualist challenge to the realist intuition".

More than any other work, Integral Spirituality attempts to point out a way how RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS can "transcend and include" the lessons of post-modernism, without losing the essence of the traditions.  That is a big push for Wilber, in the sense of categorizing the types of knowledge domains (inner, outer, 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person.)

I saw from Integral Options, that scientists are reporting success in quantum teleportation.

That's pretty cool!

At any rate, the Wikipedia has a couple of good articles. 

One on quantum teleportation.

One on why it works, quantum entanglement.

From what I understand, in no way is this the normal understanding of teleportation, but have to do with the weirdness of quantum measurement, and exploiting the properties thereof. 

Two interacting pairs that have been entangled, if you measure one pair, you immediately know the state of the other pair.  From a wikipedia article:

Einstein coined the term "spooky action at a distance" or "SPAD" to describe these situations, which exhibit quantum entanglement. Relativistic quantum field theory requires interactions to propagate at less than the speed of light, so quantum entanglement cannot be used for faster-than-light-speed propagation of matter, energy, or information. However, it must be understood that a change to one entangled particle does indeed affect the other instantaneously, but this is only known after the experiment is performed and notes are compared, therefore there is no way to actually send information faster than the speed of light.

Hey there,

I've been debating over at Vomitting Confetti, this new act of Congress.  The debate - and it is important for me to have this debate remain civil - has mainly been with Matthew Dallman. 

At any rate, to further that end, I setup up poor Tuff Ghost in a thought experiment.  I reproduce below:

MD,

Thanks for providing the text, it is appreciated.

I think what you gloss over is the assumption of guilt, of someone who IS picked up as an unlawful enemy combatant. Mistakes happen, and there needs to be a way to challenge those mistakes.

Let's look at section two of unlawful enemy combatant:

"(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."

Since I want this debate to remain amusing between us, I'm going to continue to, in imagination, subject poor TG to what happens when he is picked up in the U.S. by mistake:

Okay, so while flying to visit you in Chi-town, TG is mistakenly tagged as a dangerous enemy combatant, and taken into custody by the FBI.

He is then transferred to a facility where he can be interrogated.

Let's have some more fun, and we will say his interrogation consists of taking a page - with variation - out of The Clockwork Orange".

He is strapped to a chair, with eyelids forced open, and forced to watch The Star Wars Holiday Special for 72 hours straight at full volume.

Hey, you really can't consider that torture can you? Everyone loves Star Wars!! And people stay awake for 72 hours all the time.

At any rate, poor TG of course, doesn't know anything. Although, he might start making stuff up, if he thinks it will get him relief from seeing one more Wookie.

Then of course, his case eventually will be brought to a "Combatant Status Review Tribunal". That tribunal will get the transcripts of his interrogations, the reasons for the suspicions against TG (perhaps there is a person who hangs out on some of the al queda message boards who ALSO uses the moniker Tuff Ghost, or an approximation - that could have been the reason for the pickup, plus the fact that there are many posts about the War on Terror on this site!!)

Note - at no point does TG get access to a lawyer, or a chance to competently refute these charges. At no point does TG get the chance to see the evidence against him. Most likely, he doesn't go before this Tribunal personally. It is very possible that the evidence is provided to the tribunal, is very skewed, yes?

And if the tribunal says "we need more information", or agrees with the "evidence" produced, that's it for TG.

And that is a HUGE problem, don't you think.

By the way, TG - when are you coming to the States? You will enjoy US hospitality - why, at the beginning of the year, the United States decided to build a whole new group of accomodations!

Isn't that thoughtful?

I'm sure I'm missing a lot, but go over there to Vomiting Confetti's, and give your thoughts (be civil please).  Help me keep Tuff Ghost out of detention!