EDITOR'S COMMENT:
I've been waiting for all three "draft" chapters of Ken Wilber's new "nonfiction" novel "The Many Faces Of Terrorism" to be posted online before sending out this post. But with Wilber in the hospital, it looks like the release of all three chapters has been delayed. So we'll run with the two that are available.
Here are a few highlights:
1. The novel includes a clear description of what, exactly, Wilber has been trying to do with his integral philosophy and corresponding books, organizations, conferences, and websites (see below for a description of "The Human Consciousness Project");
2. The novel suggests that humankind is beginning to evolve at ever-increasing speeds and when 10 percent of the population reaches the next stage of development, in 10 years from now, a "tipping point" will take place that 20 years later will climax in a Singularity event.
3. The novel suggests that the Singularity event that we've heard so much about will take place on two fronts -- on the technological front (in the manifest world), and on the cultural front (in the inner worlds).
4. Finally, Wilber's novel suggests that while there are ample reasons to be concerned with the frightening events currently unfolding in our world, in the end, after 10 percent of the world has transitioned to the next level of development, a Singularity event will happen and when it does, it will be good, wonderful, rapturous, and "off the wall" (beyond anything we can currently envision).
A summary and selected excerpts from Wilber's new novel follows.
--- David Sunfellow
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HERE AT LAST! INTEGRAL POLITICS
kenwilber.com
November 29, 2006
http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/202Ken Wilber's long-awaited material on Integral Politics (theory and practice) is being made available here for the first time. Starting today, and in three installments over the next week, we will be posting the first drafts of three chapters from his work-in-progress, The Many Faces of Terrorism.
The Many Faces of Terrorism is a nonfiction novel (actually, a trilogy of novels), a follow-up to Boomeritis. It is set three years after Boomeritis, and involves the continuing exploits of the staff of Integral Center, in Cambridge, Mass. (Of course, this is all loosely based on Integral Institute, but only loosely.) Rumors have been circulating for months that IC has discovered "the Code," although exactly what the Code is remains unclear -- it is rumored to be everything from further DNA programs to the secret of absolutely everything.
What you and I might expect, of course, is that "the Code" is really the AQAL code, and we would be right. But one of the brilliant things about The Many Faces of Terrorism is that it is written on two levels with two plot lines: one plot for those who know absolutely nothing about Integral Theory or about AQAL, and one for those who do (with the two plots coming together as the book educates the former group). For the former, the plot line involves the discovery of AQAL and what AQAL means; but for the latter, the plot line involves, as one character puts it, "It's not about AQAL. AQAL has been around for several years. It's about what the computer future scenarios using AQAL are showing." Because what those future scenarios show is that, at a date 30 years from now, an unimaginably world altering event occurs. It is the nature of that "something unheard of" that is the focus of the plot.
The Many Faces of Terrorism is actually a trilogy of books, as indicated, with each book, to be published separately, being around 450 pages long. Book I is the introductory material. Book II lays out a theory of Integral Politics. Book III is an extensive discussion of the role of religion in the modern and postmodern world, with an emphasis on the conveyor belt. More importantly, none of these are merely theoretical; they contain extensive discussions of real-world politics and events, at home and abroad (including terrorism -- its nature, cause, and "cure"; presidential politics; the key to a second-tier political campaign strategy; the role of a future World Federation, etc.). This is the first in-depth discussion and commentary on the world by the world's foremost integral thinker.
As Book I begins, and readers are introduced to the main characters, the dual-plot structure begins to unfold. But what both plots have in common are the computer future scenarios that Integral Center has been running for several years. It is well-known that the computer programs that attempt to predict future scenarios are today a mess; they can't even predict the present accurately. That is, if you take data from a year or two ago and feed it to these programs, they can't even predict the present. The book suggests that the main reason for this is not the programs themselves but the human psychology models that these programs use, all of which are thoroughly flat-land psychological models. They assume that human beings are all driven by a single human motivation -- perhaps rational self-interest, or survival drives, or pleasure-seeking, and so on. None of those models have any vertical depth (or altitude) -- not to mention that none of them are anywhere integral -- and thus it is no surprise that they can't even predict the present.
What Integral Center did was plug AQAL into the most sophisticated computer future scenarios available, and the shocking results are the core of the plot.
The following chapters are from Book II, Integral Politics. Not all of this material will make complete sense, of course, without reading the rest of the trilogy, particularly the chapters that come before these. Further, this is the first rough draft, as will become obvious from various items, such as charts and figures that are not yet included. But Ken's first drafts are notoriously close to complete as they are written, so a good deal of this should be very clear.
But these are a riveting glimpse into the long-awaited response to today's fragmented world situation, from the most inclusive thinker alive. Look for Integral Institute's membership magazine -- The Integralist: A Magazine of Both/And -- for further material. Its premier volume, set to be released at the beginning of the new year, is devoted to Integral Politics (
to subscribe, click here).
Oh, by the way. The following chapter (Chap. 11), the first of three to be posted, does not actually deal with Integral Politics itself, but is simply the first chapter that very briefly outlines the AQAL Code. This is included for those who will be coming to this site hungry for Integral Politics but unfamiliar with AQAL. Those of you who know AQAL will find nothing new in this chapter, except the humor and the fun and some of the important plot lines. But the next two chapters to be posted give a very succinct summary and overview of the theory of Integral Politics itself, chapters that are beautiful and profound in their delivery...
Chapter 11 (pdf)
Chapter 14 (pdf)
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EXCERPTS:
Chapter 14 (pdf)
"As many of you know, but I will repeat for the benefit of our guests, the AQAL Code is the result of what started as The Human Consciousness Project. Similar to the Human Genome Project, the Consciousness Project was created to map every state of consciousness, personality type, meme, neurotransmitter from dopamine to serotonin, every synapse, PET distribution scan, meditation state, altered state, peak experience, neuropeptide, stage of consciousness, neuronal display, twitch, twinge, and tingle of the human mind, or psyche, or bodymind, or brain-mind, or whatever you want to call our being. The idea was to get a complete map of the human brain-mind -- a composite map created by looking at every known culture and its psychological, spiritual, and scientific maps of the human psyche -- going back thousands of years, and then using all of those partial maps to create a composite map of the full potentials of the total known territory of the human psyche to date."
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"The enhanced humans are coming, and within your lifetime, so enhancement is a choice you will soon have to make to increasing degrees. The enhanced humans -- you in a few decades -- have amazing thinking abilities. They have photographic memories and total recall. They can devour books in minutes. Although they don't put much of a premium on exercise, their bodies are remarkably ripped. They talk casually about living a long time, perhaps being immortal. They have been vaccinated against pain; they never feel acute pain for long. They are always connected to each other if they want, sharing their thoughts no matter how far apart, with no apparent gear. They call it 'silent messaging.' It almost seems like telepathy. They have this odd habit of cocking their heads in a certain way whenever they want to access information they don't yet have in their own skulls -- as if waiting for a delivery to arrive wirelessly. Which it does. For a week or more at a time, they don't sleep. They are the enhanced humans, and they are you in a few years."
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"The Singularity is going to be positive, that's what the data shows. That's not just what Kurzweil and Garreau are saying, but that's what this handout is saying, that's what the teachers at Integral Center think, and that's what I am slowly letting in. Or perhaps I should say, I am slowly allowing for the simple possibility that something deeply positive might happen in the manifest realm, because my depression had ruled that out entirely, and so I wasn't even capable of looking at the facts. The Singularity might be negative, it might be positive -- but I had to be able to deeply accept both, whereas I have been ruling out one entirely."
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"You've probably heard that using the Code, these programs can predict the present accurately for the first time. Therefore experts believe they can predict the future with much greater accuracy than was heretofore thought possible. At this time, we have gone back 30 years and predicted the present accurately from there, so we believe we can go forward 30 years and get a good scenario of the likely future. We are presently running scenarios even further back and forward, and we will let you know those as they become available. 'As of today, our computer scenarios suggest that, in addition to standard linear and exponential changes -- and the typical societal ups and downs of all of that -- there appears to be a type of tipping point in many areas around 10 years from now, and a major fruition of that around 30 years from now. We call this tipping point 'P+10,' indicating that it appears to occur around 10 years from the present, and the major fruition or transformation point 'P+30,' indicating that it appears to occur around 30 years from the present. This press conference has particularly been called to discuss the nature of that transformation point -- what it is, what it might mean, and the AQAL Code that disclosed it."
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"To start with the technological trends, you might have been following the so-called Singularity arguments that have emerged in the last few years. Our scenarios indicate what we call a singularity-like wave function across 15 key variables starting at around P+25 and then crashing, or crescendoing -- we're not sure which -- around P+30. Basically, our computers crash at that point. Our simplified summary is that we believe a technological singularity of sorts occurs at P+30, and that is why the computers are crashing at that point, but that the fluctuations and the crash that we observed cannot be explained by technology factors alone. That's important: technology factors alone cannot and do not account for this singularity-like wave at P+30. For that, we need to enter into interior variables across differential and integral vector functions and AQAL algorithms..."
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"... Various polling and research tools have disclosed that the percentage of the population at second tier -- or turquoise, or vision-logic, or integral, or centauric -- whatever model you are using -- the percentage of the population at second tier has today gone from 5% in the last decade to 7% now. 7%, ladies and gentlemen. This leads us to believe that we will in fact reach a 10% level within a decade. In other words, by the time that the scenarios refer to as P+10, we expect 10% of the population to reach second tier. We call this 10% level a tipping point. "What does that mean, tipping point? Historically, as you will hear, whenever the leading edge -- whether that was red or amber or orange or green -- reached 10% of the population, there was a massive tipping point, a point that ushered in profound social, cultural, and political changes. These might take anywhere from 5 to 50 years or more to materialize once the population reached 10%, but materialize they did. When 10% of the Lower-Left quadrant reaches the leading edge at any given time in history, then leading-edge transformations follow in the society at large, even though society itself still has only 10% at that leading edge. The entire society does not embrace the new paradigm -- 90% do not embrace it!, in fact; but the 10% leading edge does, and that reaches down and changes everything in many profound and far-reaching ways. This 10% tipping effect, incidentally, is now called the Carlson Effect, after Dr. Margaret Carlson, who first spotted it. "So, ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts. It's not just a coming technological singularity, which may or may not occur -- we'll talk about that in a minute. It's the coming cultural singularity, if you will. Our future computer scenarios indicate that 10% of the population will reach second tier around 10 years from now, or P+10. And if that happens, along with hundreds of other variables I needn't bore you with, then our computer scenarios indicate it is highly likely that there will be a newly emergent World Federation at P+25. We will be describing want that might mean later today."
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"... 30 years from now, a Transformation Point occurs, which is the result of the combination of a Technology Singularity (or more accurately, Singularity-like wave) and a Cultural Singularity-like wave. And these results are OTW or Off the Wall -- which is all we could think of to call it; the second tier Transformation Point."
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"And OTW means..., well, as I said, it means Off the Wall -- a future that in some ways is so positive that neither we nor the computers can figure it out."
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Ken Wilber's Website:
http://www.kenwilber.com/
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Integral Institute:
http://www.integralinstitute.org/
Integral Naked:
http://www.integralnaked.org/
NHNE Ken Wilber Resource Page:
http://www.nhne.org/tabid/489/Default.aspx
NHNE's "All Things Integral" ForumNHNE Singularity Resource Page