>===== Original Message From moq_discuss@moq.org =====
Okay I admit that I have only read 1 Wilber book and he is on my list to read
but I just want to comment on his ideas (excuse me if I misinterpreted them).
>Certainly it seems arrogant from a post-modern perspective to proclaim one
>way of viewing the world superior to another, as I unapologetically have
>done.
ERIN: I know there is a deep horror of the green meme but there are universal
themes throughout everyone's perspectives. That is not saying every
perspective is equal. Wilber oversimplifies postmodernism in my mind. But
nobody is perfect...even elitists.
>"It is people such as Campbell and Jung and Eliade, operating from a
>widespread access to rationality - something the originators of myth did not
>have - who then read deeply symbolic "as ifs" into them, and who like to
>play with myths and use them as analogies and have great good fun with them,
>whereas the actual mythic-believers do not play with the myths at all, but
>take them deadly seriously and refuse in the least to open them to
>reasonable discourse or any sort of "as if" at all. In short, a myth serves
>Campbell's main function only when it ceases to be a myth and is released
>into the space of reason, into the space of alternatives and possibilities
>and as-ifs. What structure does he think Kant is operating from?" (pp 238 -
>239)
ERIN: Myths contain truths and illusions. Actual mythic-believers don't see
the illusion thus it isn't a myth. The myth didn't cease to be myth when it
was reasoned about, if anything it becomes more of a myth.
Janet Frame " I set down a mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths
always toward the third place where the starting point is myth"
In my opinion elitists are aiming at the third place but forget where they
started from.
>"Instead of seeing the concrete myth as the only way that myth can be
>believed at that stage of development, and thus as being perfectly adequate
>and noble (if partial and limited) for that stage, he takes the concrete
>belief in magic and myth as a 'perversion', as if this structure actually
>had a choice for which it could be condemned." (p 239)
ERIN: huh?
>I have encountered a similar process operating in main stream religion. It
>was fashionable in the late sixties for some more intelligent Christians to
>speak of demythologising the Bible, by which they meant something very
>similar to what Campbell has done more generally. So the creation myth is
>not a literal account of how things came to be, but a poetic story full of
>insights that illuminate our being in the world, and so on. This may indeed
>be so, but in my view such a way of viewing myth was a slightly 'shonky' way
>of retaining contact with a tradition that had in fact ceased to carry the
>dynamic truth, and which acted instead as a buffer against alienation and
>anomie. In other words, a demythologised religion can still protect somewhat
>against fear.
ERIN: oh so Wilber thinks he is myth free. Wow I should make him my moral
authority (ha ha).
>"But isn't this view of mine teribly elitist? Good heavens, I hope so. When
>you go to a basketball game, do you want to see me or Michael Jordan play
>basketball? ... All excellence is elitist. And that includes spiritual
>excellence as well. But spiritual excellence is an elitism to which all are
>invited." ('One Taste', p 34) Here Wilber makes clear that the appeal to
>quality is elitist, inevitably.
ERIN: Postmodernism is all about saying Jordan plays just as good as Grandma
Mary. I am sick of this stupid view of postmodernism over and over again. But
with Wilber as the moral authority and his horror of the green meme then I am
sure it will come up soon again!!
>If this was all my gripe with the mediators of myth, it would not be such a
>big deal. But there is a deeper issue. To quote Wilber again, "Campbell
>commits the classic pre/trans fallacy. Since the prerational realms are
>definitely mythological, then Campbell wants to call the transrational
>realms "mythological" as well, since they too are nonrational". (SES p 239)
>"Campbell's dual definitions actually undo each other, and point instead to
>the inexorable conclusion: beyond mythology is reason, and beyond both is
>Spirit." (p 242)
ERIN: I think Wilber extending Jung's collective unconscious to a collective
conscious should be applauded. But Jung should be applauded for his idea too
don't ya think?
>
>Those who claim Wilber never says anything original should pay more
>attention to his pre/trans argument, since it is fundamental to clarifying
>much discussion in the postmodern era. This is the fundamental difference
>between "biological regression" and "the mystic letting the situation
>dictate" Erin, and it is something that Wilber has learned the hard way,
>from his earlier mistakes. But it assumes a developmental hierarchy, and if
>that is disallowed then all is indeed 'equal', and we live in a perverse
>world where no communication can occur, since we share nothing substantial.
>While Pirsig falls into this trap a number of times in Lila, the very fact
>of his writing a novel and a metaphysics and having it published is the best
>argument against his views.
>
ERIN: A hierarchy and growth is allowable. Some archetypes are more
self-destructive then others and there is a factor of which archetype(s) is
most dominant (and it is not the same for everyone thus it isn't equal for
everyone)
He concludes "I agree entirely with Jung
>on the necessity of differentiating and integrating this archaic heritage; I
>do not for one minute believe that this has anything to do with genuine
>mystical spirituality." (p 248)
>
ERIN: There are a lot of Jungian fans that agree with this. They think the
collective unconscious is metaphorical for genetic inheritence.
I am glad Wilber agrees with part of Jung, but to me he is still throwing out
the baby with the bath water. He "believes"....myth free??... I "believe"
not.
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