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What's Your Advice? Is there an item you'd recommend instead of or in addition to this one? Let the world know! Enter the item's ASIN (what's an ASIN?) in the box below, select advice type, then click Submit. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Wilber (A Brief History of Everything) shifts (sort of) from philosophy to fiction in this story about a young MIT grad student's journey to self-discovery, which is finally little more than a thinly veiled attempt to outline and promote a theory of consciousness. Dubbed Ken Wilber, just like his creator, the novel's protagonist finds answers in his search for identity when he attends a series of consciousness lectures at an institute called the Integral Center. There, Wilber is exposed to an eight-level theory of consciousness and buys into the lecturer's premise that baby-boomers made the first step into higher awareness before they got "stuck" in their own narcissism and self-absorption, leaving it to subsequent generations to take things to the next level. Wilber makes a halfhearted effort to inject some plot elements as he tracks his friends' romances and their reaction to the theory, but most of this book is a lengthy rant about the shortcomings of boomers, padded with analysis of various thinkers, political movements and the effect of computers on modern thought. Wilber (the author) has some interesting ideas but, philosophical issues aside, this isn't much of a novel, and Wilber's failure to develop a coherent narrative, some semblance of a plot or interesting characters will deter many readers. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Library Journal Wilber here introduces concepts discussed in his Integral Psychology in the form of a highly entertaining postmodernist novel. Wilber's central character, also named Ken Wilber, is a student at MIT who is energized by his belief that within 30 years artificial intelligence (AI) will have so progressed that humans can upload their consciousness and move from carbon-based to silicon-based life forms. One day he stumbles into an integral psychology seminar and comes to realize that what humans do... read more --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Spotlight Reviews (What's this?) Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
This book tracks the attendance of a 20-something young man (with a 300 IQ and a hopelessly goofy personality) named Ken Wilber at a series of lectures at something called the Integral Center. He is a student at MIT and working on some sort of artificial intelligence project with the idea that silicon can develop the consciousness that flesh has now and evolve much more quickly and that the two consciousnesses might someday merge (as in Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines) -- of course there's an alternative, sinister possibility (as in Dan Simmons's Hyperion books) but neither of these possibilities is really explored (Wilber ultimately arrives at a new understanding of the flesh and silicon evolutionary processes). The real point of the book is a kind of exposition of Wilber's version of Don Beck's spiral dynamics theory of human development. We get this fed to us through a series of lectures by a series of cardboard characters distinguished by superficial qualities (skin color, sexuality, eye color) but who all speak the same wooden dialogue. These monologues are punctuated by character Wilber's erotic imaginings which arrive with the mindless frequency and communicative vacancy of a series of obscene phone calls. In between the lectures, Wilber meets with his peers who exchange would-be witty put-downs and eat meals. There are hints of sub-sub-sub plots - this one doesn't get along with that one, that one is jealous for some reason of another one, but nothing that advances any action or seems to mean anything in the big picture of the book. In short, if you want to read a novel - whether it is a story of an unhappy middle aged person who lives in a city or a more traditional one about people who grow in relationship to one another or even a novel intended to be a tour through a particular time or space - this is not going to do it for you. There aren't any characters here, no development, no deep looks into time or space. It's like having a "conversation" with an only child of doting parents who can't stop talking about himself and can't imagine any other subject worth a moment's attention. And yet... The ideas really are compelling and seem sound. The Beck/Wilber division of human consciousness into a series of stages ranging from the barely self-aware to the transcendently conscious seems exactly right as does the searing indictment of the narcissism and intolerance of our prevailing middle brow culture, the legacy of the 1960s that has all but destroyed everything that it can paint with the label of elitism - classical music, traditional literature, high art, history as a study of humanity's attempt to overcome limitations, etc. If you can read past the goofiness, stilted dialogue, and absent characterization, you will find a powerful set of ideas and a compelling explanation of why our society is in such an intellectual muddle and how we can find our way out. Of course you will have to read past more than goofiness. As can happen in Ken Wilber books, there are some solecisms. Thus we get to read about building bridges where others dug "motes" ("moats" was probably intended) and we have one of the stick figures tell us that DNA testing showing that 40% of the convicted rapists didn't do it means that the women who brought charges weren't really raped and were claiming spurious victimhood even though the real meaning of this number is only that the wrong perpetrators were identified, not that the rapes never happened. It will doubtless console the women who have been raped and who have identified the wrong perpetrators to know that in Wilber's view, the rape never happened. And Wilber has bought into tort reform propaganda, that subset of urban legends created by insurance companies and corporations who would rather hold onto money than pay it to those that they and their insureds have injured, so that in his view the tort system is really about fakers who have claimed that they lost their psychic powers in car accidents, etc. not seriously injured people forced into lawsuits because they have no other way to deal with the problems created for them by the carelessness of others. My experience in this regard is different from his but we all have to judge things the best way we can. With all this silliness, is this a book worth reading? Emphatically yes. It does two things supremely well. It exposes the shallow and deadly narcissism of the baby boom generation and the horrible damage it has done to our academic, cultural, and political structures. It also lays out a powerful and coherent framework of human cultural and individual development. A novel of ideas can be better done than this one as Ayn Rand, among others, showed, but ultimately it is the ideas, not the novel that will compel the attention of readers. This is a seriously flawed novel but has ideas (although not all of them) that we ignore at our peril. If we are not to perish as a society under the kudzu of boomer narcissism and anti-intellectualism we need to become aware of the subtle and pervasive danger that boomer mentality poses to our society. Nobody has presented this better than Wilber does here and so this book, for all of its many and egregious faults, must be read and taken seriously. And, truth be told, it's an easy and compelling read for all its silliness. If only Wilber had spent a little more time and attention on it... Although the book says that it has footnotes on a web site, they weren't there when I checked, although there were some interesting "sidebars" in which "characters" from the novel pontificated on matters that they didn't get to in the novel itself. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition All Customer Reviews Average Customer Review:  Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Wilber is very earnest, but reading lengthy discourses on various levels of enlightenment, sprinkled with disjunct (and often prurient) bits of fiction just doesn't do it for me. Mr. Wilber, the world doesn't so easily divide into categories as your very determined characters want it to. Each page has a sort of "a-ha" moment on it, but I don't ever feel as though I'm learning anything profound or useful, and I certainly don't feel liberated as the subtitle implies. Maybe somebody will read this and tell me how I'm supposed to approach it, and then I'll get it. For now, I'm one of the unenlightened.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
As the AQAL model expands like cancer trying to cover it's major holes; Wilber demonstrates one more time that his writings are but an attempt to cash in. Breaking from grandiloquent works; Wilber has birthed something so ho hum. (Wilberians insert applause here.) Wilber has stated verbosely that this novel is meant to be terrible as a literary work to demonstrate the failings of post-modernism. His disciples question if his message will be understood while failing to recognize the errors of his absurd path to enlightenment that he based upon his All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL) model of reality which is now seeping it's way into the management of corporations, educational institutions, and probably even government. Is it correct to unleash what one believes is a damaging philosophy to the uninitiated as long as a warning label is attached? Anyone that destroys the illogic present in Wilber's books is assumed to have not read enough of Wilber's writings or, being lower on the spiral, to be misunderstanding the message due to the pre/trans fallacy. In other words, the pre/trans fallacy is Integralism's equivalent of Scientology's word clearing. The only differences are the dictionaries and the target audience. Keep looking it up in the Volumes of Ken until you agree. Once you agree, by agreeing with Ken, you have successfully avoided the pre/trans fallacy. I emphatically suggest Reason and Existenz by Karl Jaspers as one anti-dote to Wilber's madness (available on Amazon and recommended.) Wilber has read Jaspers masterpiece; he just didn't get it. The only item of value found in Wilber's books are the bibliographies and Boomeritis doesn't have one if I remember correctly. Why does he credit works he considers 'integral' to his 'non-fiction books' but not the ones he obviously took from in this work of fiction? I suggest that bibliograpahies present in his other works are there to impress those who will not follow up by reading any of his source material (that includes just about every Wilber follower I have ever met.) It might also explain why there is not one in Boomeritis, as it might lead to the reading of works he considers damagingly post-modern as if only he knows how to distribute the anti-virus. He is probably just getting lazy. Others have done successfully what Ken has attempted with Boomeritis, long before Ken ever had the idea. I suggest the Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson which can be found on Amazon. Moreover, Illuminatus! is hilarious. Not recommended to buy... Wilber's works have attracted many to the idea that there is something more to reality and consciousness and that is a good thing, but he should learn to admit when he is mistaken...
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
This is not much of a novel. Compared to other pieces Wilber has written, it is not much of a book. Wilber still has fascinating ideas all over the place, but fascinating ideas abounding doesn't make a book into a novel. What about plot, conflict, characterization -- the basics of novels? Ezra Pound notes in ABC of Reading: "One definition of beauty is aptness to purpose. Whether it is a good definition or not, you can readily see that a good deal of BAD criticism has been written by men who assume that an author is trying to do what he is NOT trying to do." I had to skim the surfaces of this one ... which is uncharacteristic of the way I've read other things Wilber has written --
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition
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Transformational Dialogue for Healing the Planet, July 15, 2002
Novel (bad) of ideas (mostly good), June 16, 2002
Not my cup of tea, March 13, 2004
Not Brilliantly Dull, February 29, 2004
