Escarabajo, 93,
"if only because he attacks nihilism and pessimism so effectively.
Hi Edward,
Would you mind summarizing this briefly, or pointing out a certain work/passage? I'm curious about this."
My Wilber books are packed away right now. So, I'm paraphrasing him here. But he stresses that holons are evolutionary in that they become more complex over time. That is, life began with simple creatures, progressed to organisms with a spinal cord and then creatures with brains, and so on.
He is critical of much ecological thinking, and of eco-feminism, which want to take things back to their prior condition. He says, in effect, that to try to move human culture back to a pre-civilized, "more natural" state is to move back to earlier, less versatile or creative types of holons, and this is not in any way a "healing of the planet." It takes us away from spiritual growth, and is absolutely not a solution to anything.
He is equally critical of post-modernism, which reduces and relativizes everything to meaningless. In Wilber's view, each new level of holon *adds *to meaning, building on what has happened before. Collectively, we have moved from clans to tribes to nations and will, eventually, reach a global society. He doesn't accept that all lifestyles or cultures are of equal value, because to make such a statement is already to have taken a "superior" position to people who argue that some societies are more advanced than others.
Beyond that, someone who can quote his books directly will have to add comments.
93 93/93,
Edward