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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).

The Elephant in the Room

Power, Justice, and the Failure
of Wilber's Developmental Politics

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Introduction: The Problem with Integral Idealism

In the wake of 9/11, Ken Wilber wrote a widely circulated essay interpreting the terrorist attacks through the lens of his Integral Theory.[1] He framed the conflict as a clash of developmental stages: premodern religious absolutism confronting modern secularism and postmodern relativism. His followers praised the analysis for its clarity and depth. Yet, more than two decades later, as global injustice festers and Western powers support or enable military occupations and mass atrocities, many—including long-time Integral thinker Joseph Dillard—are questioning the adequacy, and even the moral legitimacy, of such a framework.[2]

Dillard's recent remarks on Wilber's 9/11 essay expose the glaring omission at the heart of developmental theories: the failure to confront the naked role of power in world affairs. In this essay, I explore Dillard's critique as a necessary corrective to Wilber's spiritualized worldview. Development, Dillard argues, is not the key issue. Power is. And unless developmental theories incorporate the primacy of legal accountability and structural justice, they are little more than elevated abstractions for the privileged.

The Illusion of Consciousness Evolution as Political Maturity

Wilber's developmental framework—from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric and beyond—assumes that psychological growth leads naturally to greater compassion and inclusivity. But Dillard flips this narrative: the very people and institutions that claim to be more evolved are often those who enable, excuse, or ignore the most grotesque abuses of power. The U.S., EU, and other self-proclaimed liberal democracies, for example, claim to operate at “worldcentric” levels of care and rational governance. Yet they actively obstruct international legal bodies, violate the Geneva Conventions, and arm client states that commit war crimes.

If this is what the “leading edge” of consciousness looks like, Dillard asks, what exactly is being developed?

Wilber's model treats moral maturity as a function of interior growth. Dillard insists that moral maturity must be rooted in external, enforceable structures—specifically, in global adherence to agreed-upon legal norms. Developmental models become not just inadequate but delusional when they ignore the hard constraints imposed by realpolitik, imperialism, and economic coercion.

The Masquerade of Integral Maps

In his 9/11 analysis and elsewhere, Wilber draws upon a complex color-coded model (Spiral Dynamics) to describe global cultural conflict. He identifies Islamic extremism as “red/blue,” modern liberal democracies as “orange,” and postmodern relativists as “green.” From this, he constructs a quasi-Hegelian narrative in which higher stages must confront and integrate lower ones in order to evolve society toward an integral future.

But Dillard calls this approach a distraction from the true dynamics at play. It focuses the reader's attention on psychological interiors and evolutionary potentials rather than on the material reality of domination, exploitation, and lawlessness. Wilber's maps, for all their rhetorical brilliance, provide no clear answer to the basic political question: who benefits, and at whose expense?

The emphasis on quadrant integration, stage transcendence, and spiritual awakening risks becoming a rationalization of systemic injustice, especially when it fails to name power as the organizing principle of the global order. As Dillard argues, "might makes right" is not a premodern vestige—it is the ongoing logic of empire. Any spiritual or developmental theory that sidesteps this reality becomes morally compromised.

Is the New World Order Just “Might Makes Right” in a Suit?

Dillard's core point—that raw power continues to override collective justice—finds an especially sharp expression in the so-called New World Order, often praised by centrists as a framework of global cooperation and stability. But what is this New World Order, really, if not the normalization of spheres of influence dominated by superpowers?

Whether under the banner of “liberal internationalism,” “rules-based order,” or “multipolarity,” the logic remains the same: those with power carve out zones of control, while smaller states are pressured to align or risk destabilization. This is geopolitics as feudalism, dressed up in diplomatic language.

The Western-led version of this order hinges on military alliances (NATO), financial coercion (IMF/World Bank), and narrative control (media and think tanks). Meanwhile, emerging powers like China and Russia assert their own spheres—often through parallel methods. The result? Not a new dawn of planetary cooperation, but a reheated 19th-century balance-of-power game, where laws are optional and “development” is a fig leaf.

And here we must ask: Does replacing U.S. world hegemony with multiple regional hegemonies truly constitute progress? Or is it merely a reconfiguration of the same “might makes right” dynamic—one that shifts the centers of domination without dismantling the underlying structure of coercion? A fragmented order in which local powers impose their will on weaker neighbors may look like pluralism, but it can easily reproduce the same patterns of subjugation, just under new flags.

This is where Dillard's critique must also be applied universally, not selectively. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's military posturing toward Taiwan are not enlightened moves in a multipolar evolution—they are classic expressions of imperial ambition, grounded in territorial control and historical revisionism. Just as Western democracies should be held accountable for violating international law, so too must non-Western powers be judged by the same standards. Any developmental or geopolitical model that fails to apply its moral framework universally becomes a new form of ideological cover—whether for NATO expansion or neo-Tsarist revanchism.

Wilber's vision of integral politics presumes an upward spiral of consciousness that eventually subsumes and integrates such conflict. But that presumption dangerously underestimates the self-reinforcing nature of geopolitical power. It overestimates the capacity of individuals to transcend their systemic constraints and overinvests in interior development as a path to planetary ethics.

In this light, the New World Order is not a stepping-stone toward a more integral global consciousness—it is a regression into managed hegemony, where justice is sacrificed to order and human dignity to strategic calculus.

Legal Norms, Not Spiritual Ideals

Rather than calling for more evolved models of governance or higher levels of interior integration, Dillard's remedy is stark and grounded: enforce the laws we already have. The UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Principles, and other international statutes offer a workable framework for just global relations. The problem is not a lack of wisdom; it is a lack of will—and, more specifically, a system designed to shield powerful nations from accountability.

Dillard points out that both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice have been compromised—undermined or bypassed by the very Western powers who trumpet human rights in rhetoric while flouting them in practice. Until such imbalances are addressed, talk of “global development” remains hollow. Integral Theory, with its metaphysical optimism, floats above the battlefield, blind to the structural realities of force and complicity.

To Dillard, the real task is not designing a new integral system, but creating an equal playing field where no actor—no matter how powerful—can exempt itself from collective norms. Only then can development be more than a private pursuit of spiritual refinement.

Conclusion: Power Before Progress

Wilber's developmental idealism has inspired many, and it offers a coherent system for understanding psychological and spiritual growth. But when applied to the political realm, it fails to address the foundational issue of coercive power and legal impunity. Joseph Dillard's critique is not a dismissal of growth or consciousness, but a reminder that there is no authentic development without justice.

The elephant in the room is not the lack of an integral worldview. It is the lack of accountability among those who claim to possess it.

Until Integral Theory confronts this truth—until it puts international law and structural justice before abstract spiritual ascent—it will remain what Dillard suggests: an elegant map that obscures the terrain.

NOTES

[1] Ken Wilber, "The deconstruction of the World Trade Center: A date that will live in a sliding chain of signifiers", www.integrallife.com (2001, originally published on wilber.shambhala.com). See also: Frank Visser, "Beyond Blowback and Blame: Decoding 9/11 with Integral Vision", www.integralworld.net, July 2025.

[2] See Dillard's comment under "Beyond Blowback and Blame".