Karl

Too cold to go riding here, I'm going to send my Avatar

Because he isn't actually spiritual at all. His philosophy is Mystic muscle and he is using eastern spiritual doctrine as a lure. As adherents go up through his categories of thinking, they are unwittingly participating in his actual philosophy. He is a very clever manipulator and will hook those who are looking to find something they can believe in. Uniting mystic muscle and mystic spiritual is very clearly mysticism itself. So, if a manipulator begins on the common ground of mystic belief as typified by Buddhism, it's fairly easy to move the subject towards the real goal. The ace here is to create categories of reward for the initiate which they will attempt to ascend-that is also common in hynotism. It's necessary to both lead and pace the subject by mirroring their experience and then moving them towards the next step. A therapist/hypnotist is only interested in improving the clients condition, but Wilber is using the technique for his own aims. It's a great way to build a cult following in the same way Scientology became a powerful and lucrative business for L. Ron Hubbard and Blatsvy Theosophical cult. The initiate will be led through a series of controlled steps which lock them into the programme and make them almost impervious to de-programming. There was a time when I came to think that if people were not smart enough not to fall for these things and seemed to be more than happy to play along, that maybe I should take advantage of a very successful business model myself. I hadn't realised that I was in the same philosophical ditch in which pragmatism meant morals could be twisted, if not ditched entirely. At least I still had the sense to know it was wrong on some level, even if I didn't know why it was wrong. Now I see why.

Yes, those things are certainly true of him and mostly I'm on the opposing team in many respects, but this is a talk on democracy, which, is in fact the world we currently inhabit. No doubt it irks him that his form of big C conservatism has ceased to exist and that allows him to see the blemishes.

I can smell you from here ;-) Penguins always look so cute until you go and see a colony. Then it's clear that they are as vicious as seagulls and the smell.....holy crap....the smell.

Pussy.

I prefer your real avatar face.

Being an author without a non de plume with a semi auto biographical book is quite a challenge to throw out to the world. Talk about naked exposure! Hanging out all, my dirty washing in public was quite scary, but, as I sold less than 200 books, it turns out the public aren't that interested after all :-) Fame must be a funny kind of thing. Personalities are more often famous for the personality they portray than who they actually are. That must be hard on those who have gained popularity and fame by playing characters and don't actually want to be in the public eye, but want recognition for their work. It must also be hard on those who do want to be in the limelight and find themselves unable to step into the shoes of the characters they portray.

I steadfastly refuse to be your agony aunt. Get thee to a nunnery.

Yeah, but your still bloody ugly.

That's not Gerard. I know Gerard and that definitely isn't him.

Gallileo would have had to go back in the bag and we would have the classic queen song bohemian rhapsody.

That's gravity for you, it always creates a familiar shape.

The queen doesn't make a lot of sense to many of us either. However, if we didn't have her, then we would have to pay for a globe trotting, golf playing, playboy with a narcissistic streak as wide as the Pacific Ocean. At least the Queen doesn't have any powers. I have to agree, Gravity is important, but luckily it's also abundant and therefore completely free. Which makes one wonder why we are paying so much to go look at a wave that has no effect on anything but the most highly sensitive laser array. It was possible to guess it was possible because every other force emits a field, so gravity should be no different. Basically it's billions of dollars of iron filings.

It's not an absolute reality. We don't have to pay for someone to attend his hobby. Im not suggesting we use the money in another way that some lobby group to other tells us is valuable. It's just another example of where the state should not be intervening. The First World War seemed like the perfect created excuse for social engineers to introduce greater and greater levels of state intervention. The war effort seemed to people to be such an apparent miracle of organised success that the state was the perfect mechanism for that success to continue. It did not occur to people that this apparent success was actually a very costly, destructive and wasteful exercise. That producing things to kill men and demolish property was nothing like the real market which had to careful manage scarce resources, not employ resources to destroy other resources in a negative sum game. Scientists from educational institutions have become used to state funding. These same scientists are as much a part of the fabric of the establishment as the politicians. The state sees the scientists as the golden goose which must be fed the best food and sheltered in the finest home. The link between scientific institutions and the political system is just as strong as that between the state and crony business which buys itself power. The institutional scientists have become the equivalent of a modern day priesthood carrying out tasks for the rulers. Each year these scientists ask for more money for ever more abstract projects which hold the promise of a new kind of bomb, weapon, detection, or spy system. The state wants its advantage, the arms manufacturers want the product. No project is too strange that it might not hold out the possibility of the next Manhattan project, the next launch system or listening array.

It would be a start if we weren't all oohing and ahhhing at the Kings new clothes, that he bought with our money. We could stop agreeing with Gubermint spending on research that doesn't actually improve lives. I would stop it all together as its been proven to be ineffective in numerous studies as its back to front. The useful stuff comes out of purely private finance and Gubermint spending actually crowds out development and innovation. Come the revolution brother.

What you refer to as grumbling is my outrage at money being stolen to finance hobbyists. I don't mind them stumping up the money themselves or getting private backing, but not tax payers, many of whom are struggling to put food on the table, cloth their children or pay for a retirement home. What use is a gravity wave to those people who have contributed to the project ?

Altruism ? No, but my capitalism certainly is. I don't know why the tax payer is footing a billion dollar plus bill plus the ongoing costs of staff and maintenance for a project that appears to me to have zero commercial value. It's looks like a combination of vanity project and a group of scientists grabbing a salary at the expense of everyone else who has to work for a living to produce things that other people want.

Different argument Apech. Its about who is paying for it, not that it may or may not be a good thing. I'm sure that the ancient Brits, Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all felt somewhat similar about using their people to build incredible structures by which they might fathom the mysteries of man and the universe. Most of those structures are now mausoleums to civilisations that ignored economic reality and poured effort into those grandiose projects which did not provide the answers that were being looked for. Instead, those civilisations died out.

Answer my question first.

At what cost was this information obtained ? What will be the continuing costs ? Who is paying ? What use is this information at a time of global economic slowdown ? Much though these things are exciting for the scientific community-like the search for the God particle-they appear to have no practical short term application except to create ever more requirement to fund more research. I can't say it's useless because I have no idea, but it seems to me that the great discoveries have not required multi-million dollar research projects. Most are a result of necessity driving innovation, or financial gain driving innovation, or often by an inventor stuck in a garden shed that had an idea for a product. I certainly don't wish to stop the scientific search, but I'm increasingly thinking these projects are similar to Stone Henge, or The pyramids. Research in search of nothing useful in particular, but impressive engineering at high cost. No doubt I shall be in a minority as usual, the Luddite who can't see the importance of great discoveries, but the question needs asking-what the fuck use is a gravity wave produced by two black holes colliding ?

Its not new Nikolai. Where do you think Wilber got it from? It's just plagiarised philosophy tweaked with a bit of the old esoteric Indian scepticism which is popular today. If you want to sell a book it's a good way of latching on to the present populist fad for eastern esotericism. You seem to have taken it as some kind of gospel of St Wilber and are approximating his thought scale. I don't know why you cannot see that you are reading a book, by a bloke who borrowed from other philosophers then created a scale which you are now clinging to as a truth in which you are a 'second tier thinker'. Does it not occur to you that this guy is not some spiritual divinity, but a guy selling a book which you appear to come to regard as having some terrific importance. Now you think second tier thinking is a real because some bloke writing a book told you it's real ? First you say you cannot be put into a box, but that you are a second tier thinker, then others are also in a second tier box and I'm in a no tier box ? A touch hypocritical I think. Then you bait me with your description of objectivism and complain if I reply by saying its trolling. If the Dao is the Dao then it is all things including objectivism. If the US election can be discussed then I'm sure it cannot exclude a philosophy !

I have told you what I believe Wilbers aims and philosophy are, but you don't discuss that aspect. Should we delve into the philosophies that underpin it, the historical context ? No, of course not, how could I have been so stupid to think that was the aim. What you really wanted to discover is how far up you were on Wilbers little chart.

Exactly, I understand that to be the case, which is why I can only say I wish you all the best. Plotinus wrote 9 volumes on the ineffable one that could not be described, known, understood, or even thought about. This is what you are doing also. You are talking about something that you say cannot be talked about. There was another philosopher around the same time who recognised the conflict and stopped talking for the rest of his life. You have made Wilber a subject of discussion because he somewhat appears to support your views, but then you notice that there are some discrepancies. This, for what it's worth, looks to me like an attempt to seek confirmation of your beliefs. I get sucked in to posting because it appears you want an open discussion-which you clearly dont/then the sceptics jump in the reinforce your position and I see pretty quickly that my input is unwelcome. Stupid me eh ? Another doh! Moment for Homer. It isn't me that has put you in a box, it's your claim that your spirituality is impossible to talk about, then you proceed to talk about it. If you were so sure then you would have no need to post on this forum would you ? but then you would doubtless claim that you aren't actually doing so.

I asked you that before and you either did not grasp where you were positioned, or didn't want to debate it. You are a spiritual mysticist. Which is to say one who believes in the primacy of consciousness and for whom knowledge is intrinsic in the sense of a kind of divine knowledge. You follow a Neo platonic philosophy which Plotinus would have recognised. He would also have said that it wasn't possible to know the divine, it could have no identity for it would then be limited, therefore you either know it or you don't. This is the ineffable one, to some that would be Dao, to others it is God. Whatever it is, man does not have the faculty to comprehend it. I understand that you won't be put into a box, because It contradicts your sense that any such box exists which could contain this sense of spiritual divinity. A box is an argument used by the Mystics of muscle, the logical positivists, materialists and empiricists. Anyway, as I said before, I wish you well with it. Wilber is a mystic of muscle which is why you see some similarities. He clicked on to the new age fascination with Buddhism which, if you go back to B.C Greece, has its roots in the invasion of India by the Greeks and first skepticist who brought back that philosophy who was Pyrrho. Wilder is teally remaking that connection to push a Neitzchian philosophy.

Ever thought of adopting the objectivist approach. What you have said is pretty much it. That if you do things that are against your virtues (virtues what ch are the direct result of existence, identity and processed knowledge.) then you take unearned values and so feel bad, if you stick to your virtues then you always feel good about your actions. You cannot account for the thief, murderer, or circumstance of life of course, only what you can do directly and no control over the absolutes.