Critique of Integral Theory

Integral Theory is a substantial philosophical system that Ken Wilber has gradually developed by analyzing huge amounts of Eastern and Western philosophy. Since Integral Theory itself is complex and Wilber likes to heavily cite, it’s difficult to know where to start. My friend Janette, who I consider an expert in Integral Theory, recommended Integral Psychology, as a reasonable introduction. I read the book a few months ago and discussed it with her, but I forgot to write it up as a blog post until now.

In a nutshell, Integral Theory is a systematic combination of reductionism, systems theory, critical theory (including postmodernism) and transpersonalism: the knowledge of the self taught by religious movements and Eastern philosophy. I was attracted to Integral Theory because, as readers of this blog have probably noted, I champion postmodernism while frequently falling back on modernist analysis.

I say Integral Theory is a “philosophical system”, but I’m actually not sure exactly what it is. Is it making a falsifiable claim about the way the world is? Or is it just a metaphor with greater explanatory potential than alternatives? “If you apply Integral Theory to this problem, you will understand it better than if you apply reductionism.” Without knowing what kind of claim Wilber is making, I don’t know how to evaluate the strength of his claim.

Integral Theory has the modernist concept of progress as a central belief. Specifically, progress of belief systems: Integral Theory is the next step after postmodernism. But postmodernists see progress as specifically modernist and ask “what makes you so sure it’s progress and not just change?” Integral Theory feels like a synthesis of modernism with some premodern and postmodern ideas but it doesn’t step past modernism.

Wilber’s technique is to analyze hundreds of philosophical systems and abstract them to their core structure. For example, he sees all Eastern religions as describing the same basic development of the self. This strikes me as incredibly reductionist and I suspect believers in those specific systems would say that he’s missing a lot of important details.

No Comments // Tagged: integral theory, modernism, Philosophy

Note: Hemp Vodka…

… is not cannabis vodka.

No Comments // Tagged: Cannabis

Tokyo Story

Kurosawa called Ozu’s aesthetic “too rarified”. Tokyo Story, Ozu’s opus, really hammers home what Akira-sensei meant.

In only-just-postwar Japan a retired couple decide to visit their sararīmen children in Tokyo. The first act establishes the extreme social rigor, the crushing burden of politeness, that this action necessitates. It plays without non-formal dialog.

The second act begins with a misbehaving child — the eldest grandson is upset that his desk has been moved to make tatami room for the grandparents, disrupting his careful study schedule.

The wife of the oldest, most successful, son spends all of act two cleverly pawning the visiting relatives off on other branches of the family using guilt and gifts — the turning point of the act is her scheme to have everyone pool enough money to send the grandparents to a spa. It turns out to be one they don’t enjoy (I don’t know if that was intentional on the daughter-in-law’s part).

In the final act the grandparents come to terms with their disappointment in their children, deciding that they are “slightly above average”, and then die.

This film is pornography for people with OCD and Japanese horror for autistics. It’s the kind of film that is best reserved for a heavy late-night grass session so you can noodle along with the banal strangeness of its psychological cruelty.

No Comments // Tagged: Movies

Soundwave Review: The Party

We camped close to the Renegade Stage. Our theory was that house’s even beats are the easiest to sleep to. Renegade was always playing something pleasantly groovy when I woke up and camping where you could hear music clearly was a good way to get your ass up and out. Renegade’s inoffensive bouncy beats were also the most reliable place to find people at any hour.

2010′s Soundwave (“Copwave”) was apparently unique in that there were police wandering around the site most of the time. Given how Soundwave flaunts liquor laws, I was shocked to learn that the police had turned a blind eye until now. From what I gather, the police were handing out liquor fines and requesting to search peoples’ bags (we need more civil liberties education). Rumours of tasing are greatly exaggerated.

Maybe it’s because there was less drinking, but everyone at Soundwave seemed very polite – more so than clubs and streets in a city. That being said, everyone seems pretty into their own thing and you’d have to put in some work to make new friends.

I saw some great costumes, although there was only one little steampunk girl. Even just having a weird hat and some complementary street clothes helped me feel like I was doing my part. Although many girls were dressed provocatively, it felt more about creativity and less about being slutty than Halloween.

Soundwave definitely doesn’t really get going until the sun goes down. During the day there were an impressive array of party skills on display like hooping, stilt walking, poi and contact juggling. These skills serve not only to entertain the performer but also everybody else around, because there really isn’t much to do at Soundwave during the day.

The people who seemed to be having the most fun and making the most friends were staff and volunteers, even the guy hosing out the toilets (which were quite clean throughout the weekend). I’d love to be involved in setting up and running the festival next year.

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Soundwave Review: Music

I didn’t do any research before I went nor ask people once I was there. Now I realize that it takes much more effort to find good music at Soundwave. Note that there is no trance and little-to-no techno.

Renegade Stage

All house music. I went into Soundwave as a self-identified house fan. Renegade never played anything offensive, but they didn’t play much that excited me, either – I didn’t hear a lot of obvious electro, but my ear may have been overloaded. The beach setup looks awesome, but it’s kind of spread down the beach with the dance floor at one end.

Chill Zone

If there are a bunch of people dancing in your “chill area”, you’re doing it wrong. I was expecting ambient, but the Chill Zone was only downtempo relative to the other stages. The music wasn’t bad, but it seems like a lost opportunity and it got in the way of ordering at Juice Monkey, which was in the middle of the Chill Zone. No comfortable chairs.

Live Stage (“Daielektik”)

This stage is set up for a huge crowd but a lot of the live productions were lame and the fact that this stage was closed half the time make it a black hole in the middle of the festival. I’d rather see the live shows spread around the other stages and something else done with this field.

Liquid Soul

There’s a cliche that jungle stages are always out of the way at electronic musical festivals and Soundwave is no exception. I was never over here in the morning, when I suspect they were playing dubstep, etc., so I mostly just heard drum&bass here – and fell in love. Unfortunately, there was rarely a big crowd. They seemed to be sporadically selling water and hotdogs here. The stage is a bit separate from the beach, but there were cool fire barrels and a laser show on the rocks every night.

The Meadow

I think the music was mostly breakbeat? (The sign post said “groove ahead”.) If you stand in The Meadow in the daytime, you think “this would be awesome full of people at night”. Unfortunately, I don’t think that state ever occured.

The three best things I heard:

1. Nicolas Sfintescu of Nôze (Paris) singing live
2. Shamik (Vancouver) repeating his dubstep beatboxing from Soundwave 2008 when Mat the Alien didn’t show up (probably got abducted again):
   
3. Wookie & Joshua’s (Victoria) progressive tech-house in The Meadow while the sun was still shining through the trees: this is the only time that The Meadow captured the ewok village feel it seemed designed to evoke.

2 Comments // Tagged: Music, soundwave

New Machete Trailer…

… but can it possibly be that good?

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Soundwave Review: Infrastructure

I attended the Soundwave Electronic Music Festival at Mussel Beach near Ucluelet, BC. Unfortunately, there’s a big music festival in Australia with the same name, so it’s not googleable.

We left Victoria Friday morning but our critical path included waiting for the Ucluelet liquor store to open at 10am. Next time we’ll be sure to buy our alcohol well in advance.

The logging road to Mussel Beach was recently graded and probably the easiest logging road drive I’ve ever been on. Parking was accomplished by a routing volunteer at every intersection, which struck me as a clever way to use manpower to avoid a difficult signage problem.

When we got there, there was still lots of space in Tent City West. We chose Tent City because there’s less wind than on the beach, and it’s close to washrooms, the Renegade Stage and the centre area.

I was really impressed with the food options:

• Fat Daddy’s BBQ serves good eggy breakfasts and pulled-pork made on-site.
• Rice Burners is decent when you feel like a big pile of white rice and veggies.
• Bliss Cafe’s (rebranded “Juice Monkey” to cook eggs and use disposable cups) juice, sweets and soup of the moment provided a lot of diversity and you could pretend it was healthy. They were serving Level Ground drip coffee, but it wasn’t consistently available.

There was good cell coverage (EDGE), but nowhere obvious to recharge phones, so iPhones were effectively out of commission. We had to do pre-mobile-style planning (“meet you at point A in 30 minutes”), although it was common to run into people and not impossible to track people down.

There was effectively no Twittering for Soundwave, but I think it has potential if the organizers gave out incentives to stop partying long enough to tweet. I’d love to be able to whip out my phone to find the music and party of the moment.

2 Comments // Tagged: soundwave

Inside Man

I’m trawling Spike Lee’s catalogue. Inside Man is wicked neo-Noir. The 40s whipsaw back into present reality and Denzel ends up a Black Bogart complete with crisp cream fedora. Femme Fatale Foster, Ms. White*, flips the color palette nicely — perhaps this is better termed a film blanche.

* cf Tilda Swinton in The Limits of Control. Lee and Jarmusch seem to dovetail — both were also behind the indie film movement in the 80s in NYC, and as we all know: two points is enough for a trendline.

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The Plan Revealed

I’ve told lots of you about this privately (if I haven’t, no diss — we just haven’t talked).

Anyway, it’s on the official tip now: I’ve just been accepted into an Advanced Filmmaking program out East, starting this September. Coursework includes writing, production, directing, editing, cinematography, and something called “history of Canadian narrative”.

I had to talk my way past a lapsed admission deadline and my lack of, you know, actual qualifications, but now I’m on my way. The program is a 45 week intensive master’s certificate and ends either with an internship at a production company or a thesis film.

No Comments // Tagged: Jack, Movies

Programming Language Research is Functionless

I have a master’s degree in programming language theory. You don’t care what that is, trust me. The process of getting the master’s caused me to stop caring about it too.

There is a community for people interested in programming language theory called Lambda the Ultimate. I used to read it when I was working on my thesis, so I could pretend that someone else in the world cared about what I was doing. Every few months I go and check it out just to see what’s up these days.

One of the big issues in programming language theory is that industry completely ignores this field of academia. For example, it was just announced that the next version of C#, Microsoft’s flagship programming language, will include a feature that was considered state of the art in 1958. (Yes, I am the only computer science grad student I knew who referenced papers so old that they weren’t available online.)

A frequent topic of discussion on Lambda the Ultimate is this dismissal by industry and the related issue of teaching programming language theory in university. Such a discussion recently yielded this insightful comment:

If I take a PhD in chemistry which knows everything about coating, then I can build a company around him. If I take a PhD in physics who knows everything about nanoscale optics, then I can build a company around him.

Now I look at PhDs from fundamental computer science (CS). How many can I use to build a company around him/her? The problem is not that CS doesn’t produce programmers, the problem is that CS doesn’t produce enough new ideas which industry can use. If CS PhDs were such that you could use them to start companies, industry would stop complaining immediately.

And this follow-up math pun:

Q: What company would you build around a fresh PhD in (fundamental) mathematics [who] knows lots of things about algebraic topology?
A: There are manifold possibilities.

No Comments // Tagged: academia, Programming

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