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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

An Allergy to Green Goes a Really Long Way

Layman Pascal's Interview with Ken Wilber

Frank Visser

The recent interview Layman Pascal did with Ken Wilber for The Integral Stage was deeply disappointing.[1] But then again, not altogether unexpected, given other recent interviews with Wilber. It is not that Layman did not try to make the best of it, but after a few minutes Wilber took to his old routine of endlessly explaining Integral 101, as if he had not done this a zillion times, in his many books and online video performances. The interview was part of a series called "My Kind of Country", set up with the following agenda: "In My Kind of Country, the Integral Stage launches a new series to speak with members of our overlapping communities about their histories and experiences with politics, their relationships to the imaginal souls of their nations, how they relate to their present political situations, and what they would most like to see unfold in the future." Yet, Wilber's 2017 book Trump and a Post-Truth World was recently released again, with the new, shorter title A Post-Truth World: Politics, Polarization, and a Vision for Transcending the Chaos (2024). Apparently, "Trump" got erased from the cover.

Is there a Trump 2.0?

The 2024 book as a new foreword (online available on Amazon) and a new afterword (not online available), so we can grasp if Wilber still stands by his explanation of why and how Trump rose to power the first time around: by symbolizing to different audiences everything that is not Green or postmodern (i.e. capitalist, vulgar, religious, sexist, racist, nationalist, violent)—apparently resonating with half of the US, mostly rural population, and enough to win the elections. (We will not go into the myth Wilber presented in this book that evolution had a hand in all this as well, don't make me start). And why did half of America react so strongly and negatively to Green? According to Wilber, Green had morphed into the Mean Green Meme, symbolized by gender diffusion, over-sensitivity, identity politics, victim culture and other excesses. This analysis played into the hands of conservatives of all stripes, who share this allergy for everything postmodern.

So it all seemed to be the Democrats fault, for they had failed to present a healthy version of Green, and instead were stuck in a pathological version of it. No wonder the Republicans won. But hey, didn't all memes have their healthy and unhealthy versions? And wasn't there every reason to speak of a Mean Orange Meme, a Mean Blue Meme, and even a Mean Red Meme?[3] The Mean Orange Meme would be rampant globalism and capitalism, which depletes the world's resources and creates global warming. The Mean Blue Meme would be dogmatic religion, both Christian and Moslem, which got stuck in absolutist and even apocalyptic thinking. And the Mean Red Meme would be the expression and even glorification of violence, toxic masculinity and even civil war. None of this was covered by Wilber's diagnosis of American culture. In his view, it were the postmodernist he had given in to narcissism and Red agression, with their own intolerance for non-relativistic worldviews. Talking about blind spots.

In his new foreword, Wilber opens with summing up some books by Douglas Murray—a strongly pro-Western and pro-Israel propagandist—in which he sees an ally. Wilber deplores the decline of fundamentalist Christianity, now that nowadays "none of the above" is ticked the most in polls about one's religiosity. Isn't that a sign America is finally Growing Up? The US is lagging behind in mature religiosity, since it registers a very high amount of creationists and anti-evolutionists (only just behind Turkey).[4] Then, he mentions the impact of social media, which favor anonymous trolling and statements that are "crude, vile and often mean-spirited, even vicious, and definity irrational." One wonders, doesn't this capture nicely Donald Trump's state of mind? Trump never found someone he could not insult, denigrate or abuse. And third, Wilber invokes "a national Zeitgeist in general", heading towards "glumness and depression". Most Westerners are moving from rational to pluralistic mindsets (or shorthand from Orange to Green), and this transition has to happen in the midst of these cultural changes.

Yet, postmodernism has heralded the Age of Unreason, according to Wilber, because instead of believing in universal truths we now have endless contradictory perspectives. And Wilber gives his worn-out argument that postmodernism is caught in a performative contradiction: stating there are no universal truths is in itself a universalist statement. But couldn't the thrust of postmodernism have been that perhaps we should become more sensitive to the views of other cultures? And that our usual Western outlook on things might in the end be partial and incomplete? Here Wilber easily attacks an extremist version of a given stage, without duly acknowledging the qualities a more moderate version can provide. And yes, I know he has (briefly!) written about "the many gifts of Green", but this comes across to me as lip service, since there's no energy behind it. He really gets excited when he can lambast this nasty Mean Green Meme. More on this later. Confronted with the criticism that he has not much dealt with the Mean Orange Meme, all he can think of is "I wrote extensively about flatland", thus giving an abstract and rather anemic analysis of the ills of this particular meme.[3]

The foreword concludes with an optimistic recipe. The solution is "fairly simple". Though a majority in the West is stuck at the postmodern or Green stage, the next Integral stage will cure all these ills. He claims the book presents an Integral Political Theory (all caps!), that will throw light on "such happenings as January 6th, Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, the rightward lurch in Europe, the upcoming presidential elections, and China/Taiwan"—no less! Was that squeezed in as a last-minute afterthought? If only Wilber would flesh this out in a single volume, that would be very interesting and helpful. I am puzzled why Wilber keeps referring to Douglas Murray, though, for if many Westerners are stuck in Green, the conservative Murray seem stuck in Orange (rationality) and Blue (Christianity), and has no idea of development, as Wilber admits. He has a dualistic worldview in which the West is threatened by its enemies, both external (Islam) and internal (liberalism), and needs to be rescued. In any case, Layman Pascal had read through both of Wilber's post-truth books, and was ready for some meaty conversation. Which did not happen at all.

An "Integral Political Theory"

In this interview, Wilber comes across not as a seasoned political theorist, but as a lazy conservative who throws around some tropes about the "far left". His whole argument boils down to anti-wokeness. Isn't that exactly the point of conservative voters? And does he share with them the facile stereotypes about some lunatics who want to abolish the family, traditional roles, individuality, religion and so on? Kamala Harris he sees as a representative of the extreme left, who has "serious problems", and Bernie Sanders is "a socialist", which in American culture is not very much different from a scary communist. And Trump? He sees him as "rational", against Kamala Harris, who for Wilber represents "broken Green". I kid you not. What is more, he says we need to distinguish between what he says (which is often rude and chaotic) and what he does, and Wilber seems to have no concerns about Trump's second term here. For when during his first term he surrounded himself with capable people without loyalty to him, he now has learned his lessons and has appointed only loyal experts. As is the case with any criminal, one wonders, according to Wilber we need to give Donald Trump a second chance. I would add: mafia dons only allow loyal servants around them, all other can go to hell, or to jail, if we leave it to Trump. Forget about his atrocious behavior (yes, what he does) in his many failed business enterprises, which went bankrupt, against women, whom he abused, against minorities ("they eat our dogs!"), which he will deport by the millions.

Around 2000 I attended a meeting at Wilber's chalet in Boulder, and set next to Tony Schwarz, who had ghost-written The Art of the Deal back in 1987. Boy did he have regrets now for having launched Trump as the archetypal and successful dealmaker! But Wilber? He says: "Let's wait and see". A chilling lack of psychological and political acumen.

So what the hell is going on here? Does Wilber have any notion of what a healthy Green politics could look like? Or is he just venting his own personal allergies? Why does he only resort to conservative stereotypes around wokeism? Which, by the way, originally referred to "a liberal progressive ideology and policy as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices", but is nowadays more often used disparagingly.[5] A fine definition of a Healthy Green Meme, as any. But on Wilber's radar, there's only the Far Left, extreme postmodernism, the Mean Green Meme, destroying "our" values and obstructing human development into integral (and spiritual) stages. If anyone has eroded trust in truth it is Trump - and not because he is postmodern. Post-truth, nah, pre-truth.

In the past Wilber at least held on to a fourfold segmentation of the American political landscape: modern-left, postmodern-left, premodern right and modern right. Which adds another dimension, that of development, to the mix. And all four have their healthy and unhealthy expressions. So we get this picture (taken from [2]):

So pathology can occur in all of these boxes. And here's the catch. To grow into integral stage, a healthy Green stage is needed, according to Wilber's own analysis. Has he done anything to help strengthen the Democrats and guide them? Not that I know. He has continuously bitched about the Mean Green Meme and postmodernity being stuck. If he would widen his scope to non-US politics, he would see that the much despised "socialism" of a Bernie Sanders is more or less realized in the North-European countries, which consistently show up at the top of the rankings for happiness.[6] Their "socialism" is a democratic socialism, with multiple parties forming coalitions. When Layman asks if the US political system perhaps needs reform, to overcome the rampant polarisation, Wilber looks puzzled. He asks for more details... The author of an "Integral Political Theory" actually has no idea.

The most common pathology

Why is Wilber incapable of overseeing the total political landscape in a more or less neutral way? Because he suffers from an allergy to Green. Let's quote extensively from The Religion of Tomorrow, to see why that is the case. In a chapter on "Dysfunctions on the 2nd Tier Structure-Views", we find this description:

A very common pathology at 2nd tier—perhaps even the most common—is a green allergy. With a green allergy, the 2nd tier individual, sick and tired of the extreme green culture that he or she had to fight so hard in order to emerge into Integral, simply dissociates and disowns any and all of its remaining green impulses and qualities, and projects them onto the world at large, and then the "mean green meme" seems to be absolutely everywhere. As always, the projection of a shadow element makes the presence of that shadow element in the world seem enormously greater than it really is, and this certainly happens with the green allergy that 2nd tier often develops. The only cure, as always, is to re-own and integrate the green components of the self (via something like a 3-2-1 process), and then transcend and include them in a healthy 2nd-tier structure. Failure to do so can significantly slow, even stall, further development (into 3rd tier).[7]

For the integrally uninitiated this paragraph needs perhaps some decoding. Wilber divides human development into 1st tier (personal), 2nd tier (holistic/integral) and 3rd tier (spiritual). The notion of tiers comes from Spiral Dynamics, and that community rejects a 3rd tier phase altogether. But both systems see the transition between 1st and 2nd tier as "momentuous" (quoting Clare Graves). One could say that it aligns with Maslow's distinction between need-stages and being-stages. In any case, Green is the last of the 1st tier stages, and the "jump" to 2nd tier is not without its risks and pathologies. Simply rejecting Green won't help, and often leads to repression. These repressed elements then show up as shadow, and Wilber has devised his own technique to cure this (called the 3-2-1 process).

More importantly, has Wilber looked into the mirror when he wrote that paragraph? Ever since he joined forces with Don Beck around 2000 the Mean Green Meme was selected as the major problem in the world, at least in the West, and page after page was devoted to diagnosing this pathology. The world was not in trouble because of rampant capitalism, or the re-emergence of religious fundamentalism, but because on US universities students became over-sensitive and professors no longer believed in anything universal. Could it be that shadow elements in both gentlemen have made all this "seem enormously greater than it really is"? And was it a wise strategy to focus so much on unhealthy Green instead of joining forces with whatever exists of healthy Green? When specifically asked by Pascal about this, Wilber lamely says we should do both. But that does not tally with his own track record.

In any case, this recent interview leaves us with the impression that Wilber basically has lost any interest in the world of politics. It used to be high on his agenda, and even in his recent Trump book he still talks of an Integral Political Theory. But ambitions like this need to be fleshed out with grounded clarifications of the real world conflicts, especially in global geopolitics. We haven't heard him on the war in Ukraine, and about the Middle East all he could muster was "they all need therapy"[8] To quote from an earlier essay:

In sum, Wilber's view of the Middle East conflict and world politics in general seems very naive and Western-centric, which is quite a disadvantage for a philosopher who advocates taking all perspectives into account. He sidesteps issues of geopolitics, justice and morality, and sticks to his hobbyhorse of mysticism and teaching integral principles to political leaders. But when he envisions these poor guys to get trained in the 4 quadrants and even the 8 zones, I think integral theory has devolved into Integral Scholasticism, which doesn't offer much to solve the worlds problems.[8]

When I see that the new Afterword of the Trump book is called "An Overview of the Integral Model", this does not give us much confidence this extensive groundwork will ever be accomplished, at least not by the Wigged One.

NOTES

[1] The Integral Stage, "My Kind of Country (Ep. 3: Ken Wilber)", www.youtube.com, 16 dec 2024.

[2] See my review of the 2017 book: Frank Visser, "A Self-Help Guide for Democrats, Review of Ken Wilber's "Trump and a Post-Truth World"", www.integralworld.net, February 2017.

[3] This very issue had been raised by the late Bill Moyer, in his ""The Missing Links" of Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber: The Mean Orange Meme (MOM) and the Healthy Green Meme (HGM)", February 2002, to which Wilber briefly replied with "On the Mean Memes in General, Red to blue to orange to green to yellow...." February 2002. The late Chris Cowan responded to that reply here: "Response to Ken Wilber's Response to "The Missing Links" of Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber, a posting by Bill Moyer on the Post-Conventional Politics (Post-Con Pol) discussion list, reproduced on The World of Ken Wilber website", www.spiraldynamics.org, 21 Dec 2002 (offine, but available on web.archive.org). Cowan laments the "paintballing" craze of explaining everything with the simplified SD color scheme popular in integral circles.

[4] "Level of support for evolution", Public support, Wikipedia. Data are from 2006.

[5] "Wokeism", dictionary.com

[6] "Ranking of happiest countries worldwide in 2023, by score", www.statista.com

[7] Ken Wilber, The Religion of Tomorrow (2017), p. 332. For a 100-page review see the 7-part series "Climbing the Stairway to Heaven", www.integralworld.net, May-June 2017.

[8] Frank Visser, "'They All Need Therapy', Ken Wilber on the War in Gaza", December 2023