Love Science. Love Ken Wilbur (but not at the same time).

[yepsme21]

A hundred, or a thousand years from now .... there will still be lots of people gong about making trivia into 'State Business' .... as always.

Religion of the childhood is always required for the children, no need to get irritated.

If I've to choose between Wilber & you... you win hands down. Not that it matters.

[Neuromance27]

Too easy to judge and debunk people based on such superficial, materialistic nonsense. If all of these critical minds were around when Jesus were around rather than the mythical minds that deified him we'd see a very different person. No doubt be the ones to string him up and crucify him... much like many seem to be doing to Ken and whoever else comes along in the present. Many philosophers and great psychologists lived affluent lives. Makes zero sense to judge ideas based on that.

[justperceptiondotnet]

Yikes.

[ratioetscientia]

I'm not sure what to think anymore...I had seen your video some time ago and looked up the video you refer to and I found it pretty ridiculous and pseudo-rational and just arrrrghgh. And only now I realized that I have been reading "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality" last year and that this is actually the same guy! The German title of the book is "Eros, Kosmos, Logos" (which is way better) and in fact I found it extraordinarily structured, clear, very sober and logical...doesn't compute, error

[YUG77]

Not pretending to be a guru is no excuse. Impoverishment as an expression of love is not the exclusive domain of 'hypocritical' gurus or pandits as ken prefers to be called. You could still sell your house and give the money to the poor. Proclaiming loudly.. ' I am no guru, but here have some money to save your life' You could even call that person a fucking asshole while you're at it to confirm your non-guru status. I'm sure they wouldn't mind too much as they eat ther first meal in a week.

[YUG77]

If your into impoverishment as an expression of love I would like to see a more sacrificial less comfortable love coming from you. Is that your house in the background? nice... sell it and give the money to the poor!

[conferencereport]

@YUG77 Fuck you asshole, I'm not pretending to be a fucking guru

[winstono75]

You ought to be capable to get his name right.

[Yamikaiba123]

I'm even slightly uncomfortable when teachers are explaining atoms coming together because of their charges, etc, and use the expression "such and such cation wants to have two of these anions". It's an easy way of putting it, but I think it's an annoying anthropomorphism. We can simply say "so and so is inclined to join together with, etc".

[conferencereport]

@Yamikaiba123 Is that 'inclined' meaning 'leaning toward'?

:)

[Yamikaiba123]

@conferencereport Spacial metaphors are cooler than metaphors of conscious deliberation.

[Yamikaiba123]

lol. Is love also the force that asks animals to slaughter one another for their vital nutrients?

[Yamikaiba123]

@Yamikaiba123 Maybe there's nothing more romantic than one being joining together with another... through the other's digestive system, and then the excrement becoming one again with the earth. Now wasn't that spiritual?

[meghan42]

You would like Ken to have more of a sacrificial love, like Jesus. But remember Jesus allowed his feet to be washed with expensive oils. Being wealthy and comfortable does not indicate a lack of spiritual integrity. I would also say that to see the love that created this world and every atom in it, is to have insight because one would never see this with the thinking, logical mind. It's the difference between actually having insight into this force of love and theorizing about it.

[xy11xy]

We are all storytellers. We aim to tell a story about how, and who we are. I like Wilbur's story(as told by you) better than say.. Dawkins' story.

Good story...er, I mean video.

btw, maybe Ken is hypothesizing a force called Love. And, Dawkins also is a book-peddler, why is he not suspect?

[Franc28]

@xy11xy Who cares if YOU like it better? Does it have the evidence to back it or not?

[xy11xy]

@Franc28

..the most obvious answer is: I care that I like it better!

Isn't that the only person who really matters here?

[Franc28]

@xy11xy No, all that matters is the evidence. And you have none.

[DanaGarrett]

The more I think about this the more I wonder why Ken Wilbur is any more obligated to "impoverish" himself to promote beneficial causes than you are ConferenceReport or me or anyone who isn't already poor.

[gedgetips]

@DanaGarrett True, but I can see the pt of criticizing a person promoting higher level integration in his words who then doesn't produce much of anything but a spiritual product people consume to feel better. I don't know how effective Wilber's ideas have been for bringing people together in a productive way. In general, it would be to the extent he creates value for himself and others that would matter more to me, vs how much he would engage in self-sacrifice to serve the poor.

[BugsMr123]

Wow ... this from an atheist who just romanced us with the notion that science is the poetry of reality ...

[mrkurt13]

How are the strong force or gravity or elecrtomagnitism any more real than love? Follow up video please?

[conferencereport]

@mrkurt13 Not more real, just different.

[astrotometry]

@conferencereport What if the electrical force, in it's deeper complexity, is no less complex than love. Consider cars in traffic. At a distance their movement seems completely mechanical. And if you were counting them like you might count electrons in a circuit, could you know if they were racing off to meet their honey? In your "science is the poetry of reality" video, you talked about "staying behind the fume hood". Does your conclusion do that, or are you speaking for the electron?

[mrkurt13]

Read, "The universe is a green dragon"

[conferencereport]

@mrkurt13 I'll try

[gedgetips]

Altho I am not on board with you regarding loving action having any need to serve the poor or truly needy folks, I do agree with the point that any relationship we call "loving" should be productive in nature regarding more than the feelings of those directly involved. Even if a guy would be mainly loving his mutt, this can become expressed in ways that reach others and create value for them by way of insights and his overall creative output beyond him just feeling good and caring for Fido.

[gedgetips]

I experience love as more of a way of looking back on very close and effective cooperation, versus as an appropriate ideal to pursue or identify with as a "loving relationship." I can be inspired by the attraction I have for another as I move into doing things with this person, but until I lose myself in the process of what we do together to create value for others, there is too much felt sense of separation for me to call it "love."

[0ThouArtThat0]

Wilber is definitely selling a product, and for that reason he has always turned me off. But I share many of his philosophical influences (his ideas on Eros come from Plotinus, Teilhard, and Whitehead). The problem with your account is that it inscribes a bifurcation that separates nature from human conceptuality, poeticality, and emotionality (all of which are an "illusion"). Why should the human object be ontologically separated from all other kinds of objects?

[0ThouArtThat0]

To my mind, it is just bad metaphysics to call any phenomenon an "illusion," especially if you're sticking all that constitutes our direct experience of the world as humans into that category. The trouble with metaphysics is that it often does violence to reality; we cannot avoid metaphysics, though. The trick is to tread lightly by not violently trying to explain away one aspect of reality by reduction to another.

[0ThouArtThat0]

When Whitehead suggests that Eros has a fundamental role to play in the non-human universe (as well as the human), he is using the term in a very abstract way, such that it becomes that "force" responsible for all the novel "coming together" (or concrescence) that constitutes the history of our universe. I would add, with Schelling, that Love also meets an opposite force, call it Evil, which breaks apart. We could tone down the metaphor and just say there is an expansive and contractive force...

[0ThouArtThat0]

So long story short, even if Wilber isn't getting the conceptual job done with his feel-good tactics, I don't think we should be satisfied with the basically positivist account of things you have retorted with in this video. Wilber is trying to overcome the bifurcated view of nature that leads to an account of reality that separates our illusory experience as humans from the real truth of nature. Human experience is also natural, and to explain how this is so requires not calling it an illusion.

[conferencereport]

@0ThouArtThat0 Again, illusion is not synonymous with unreal. I'm also not arguing for positivism, rather that positivistic accounts mobilise specific poetic strategies which co-exist with other forms of expression and conceptualisation. I do think it's important to be able to distinguish between the forms though. Wilbur systematically elides any useful distinctions to try to claim both the wisdom of the mystic and the authority of science.

[conferencereport]

@0ThouArtThat0 I would add that, since we can't look at the rest of nature other than through our embodiment, we are bound to use metaphors like love(and evil) to organise that looking. I do think we have to be sensitive to how widely and appropriately they are being applied though, and to what extent significant details are being squeezed out or squeezed in by this over-application

[conferencereport]

@0ThouArtThat0 I don't mean illusion in the sense of unreal, moreto suggest not being what it appears

[conferencereport]

@0ThouArtThat0 I wouldn't want to make the separation you suggest, so if it comes off that way I'm wrong. Human conceptuality, both of itself and of the other phenomena of nature, are necessarily 'poetic' I would say, and since that's all we have then the game is determining the different genres and how they function.

[astrotometry]

@0ThouArtThat0 Agreed. "Why should the human object be ontologically separated from all other kinds of objects?" And anthropomorphizing is a scientific no, no. Ironically, it is the thinkers like Dawkins who tend to mechanize the interpretation of the human animal. And if we are merely machines, then something like love would be reduced to a force in a simple equation. So there is a major contradiction in the stance that love could not manifest as a force. (also see comment to Kurt)

[MusicByInterval]

The fifth force has been called Long force. It doesn't seem to diminish with distance as the other forces do. We see it in Dark matter and Dark energy. Some physicist think it might increse with distance. They call it infered free and ultraviolet bound.

The other force has been called Infotron. A photon combined with a chronon in diolog with each other. One unit of energy combined with one unit of time. Not all forces have been discovered yet! Not enough room so I should video about this.

[NuyBard]

@MusicByInterval please do make the video.

[MusicByInterval]

Fred I agree with U about Ken in general. Don't likke the new age bull....but I need to point U to a chem word I learn long time ago. ENTHALPY. I science most people only think of entropy but there is this term used in chemistry. Closes thing to Love I've ever seen. Don't think it is just check it out. Also the two forces weak and strong force are new concepts. Physics has for some time now considered a fifth and sixth force.

[SpiritualAtheist]

Really well put.

[Monolith1618]

I watched his video when I was intoxicated and it made sense at the time, but given the combination of sobriety and your clarity I have decided that it is wishy washy philosophy. Love is largely a mammalian property and does not apply to a large part of the animal kingdom. Attraction (Eros) is not the same as genuine love (agape)

[Mjhavok]

Nice vid.

[WeirdUniverse]

i have no idea what the fuck wilber is talking about. he seems to be smooshing ideas from western and eastern philosophy together and topping them with a layer of bizarre new age nonsense that he's obviously pulling straight out of his eroshole.

[Loreleilala]

You think he's likely to reply to you? Or even watch this?

[conferencereport]

@Loreleilala He's only tangentially associated with the channel, so I'd be surprised if he's even seen his own video, and certainly will never see mine.

[AnomalousDataPoint]

Nope, I think he's just barmy, how did you manage to sit through that twaddle all the way to the end?

[conferencereport]

@AnomalousDataPoint Years of meditation have calmed my soul

[TWITfromURANUS]

agreed

& i don't know about the universe but the earth is most definitely ruled by evil, not love

[DanaGarrett]

Perfect response. Well done.

[MetaCraken]

Great vid!

[tmafkap]

Wonderful video! Wilber's video made me wonder about the amazing human ability to anthropomorphize everything. Wasn't it that same ability that gave birth to the belief in fairies, gods and stuff like that?