What's Missing in the Intellectual Dark Web
The Intellectual Dark Web—the term was coined by IDW member Eric Weinstein—refers to a loosely bound worldwide internet community of over a hundred major thinkers (and hundreds of millions of views) who do not find any present day intellectual trends to be that inviting. They don’t like the far Right, but they don’t like the far Left either—they’re looking for a much more unified and inclusive ways of thinking.
In an article posted on the Rebel Wisdom website — a website that was created in part due to a very positive response to the work of Jordan Peterson — David Fuller makes the following observation:
“It was while watching these two interviews in quick succession—Dave Rubin’s talk with Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and his discussion with Eric and Bret Weinstein—that I came to my conclusion of what the conversation actually represented! It mapped clearly onto a model I was familiar with—the philosopher Ken Wilber’s idea of ‘Integral’ consciousness as an essential evolutionary leap. I’m going to argue that the conversation is an early but spontaneous manifestation of a more advanced way of thinking that Wilber calls ‘Integral.’ I’m going to apply Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to the Intellectual Dark Web….”
Integral Theory—or technically, Integral Metatheory—seems to be applicable here because it is basically an attempt to draw together as many different approaches to truth as we possibly can and integrate them in a unified framework. Integral sometimes refers to all these different truths as ones that include Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Opening Up, and Showing Up.
Welcome to the "Integral Dark Web".
Below you will find a series of videos by Ken Wilber, where he will take an in-depth look at the Intellectual Dark Web though the lens of Integrative Metatheory. Feel free to watch these videos in any order you wish.
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Who Is Ken Wilber?
“The twenty-first century literally has three choices: Aristotle, Nietzsche, or Ken Wilber.”
Often referred to as the "Einstein of consciousness studies", Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is an internationally acknowledged leader, founder of Integral Institute, and co-founder of Integral Life.
Ken Wilber is one of the most important philosophers in the world today. He is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages. Ken Wilber currently lives in Denver, Colorado, and is still active as a philosopher, author, and teacher, with all of his major publications still in print.
Ken is the originator of the world's first truly comprehensive or integrative philosophy, aptly named “Integral Theory”. As Wilber himself puts it: “I'd like to think of it as one of the first believable world philosophies” — something that is becoming increasingly necessary in order to navigate and thrive in today’s world.
Incorporating cultural studies, anthropology, systems theory, developmental psychology, biology, and spirituality, Integral Theory has been applied in fields as diverse as ecology, sustainability, psychotherapy, psychiatry, education, business, medicine, politics, sports, and art.
Wilber explains the need for an Integral Approach in the following way: In our current post-modern world, we possess an abundance of methodologies and practices belonging to a multitude of fields and knowledge traditions. What is utterly lacking however, is a coherent organization, and coordination of all these various practices, as well as their respective data-sets. What is needed is an approach that moves beyond this indiscriminate eclectic-pluralism, to an “Integral Methodological Pluralism” — driving toward a genuine “theory of everything” that helps to enrich and deepen every field through an understanding of exactly how and where each one fits in relation to all the others.
In short, the Integral Approach is the coherent organization, coordination, and harmonization of all of the relevant practices, methodologies, and experiences available to human beings. Through the Integral approach, we reveal the previously unseen possibilities for a better, more compassionate, and more sustainable future for all of us.
“I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.”
“Ken Wilber is one of the greatest philosophers of this century and arguably the greatest theoretical psychologist of all time.”
“The most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times.”
“Ken Wilber is a national treasure. No one is working at the integration of Eastern and Western wisdom literature with such depth or breadth of mind and heart as he.”
“How can I possibly find the words to express the depth of the admiration I have for the way you’ve gathered together all the world’s disciplines and organized a map that virtually anyone can learn to understand?”
More with Ken Wilber
Ken helps identify the healthy expressions of five themes near and dear to the liberal heart — tolerance, nonviolence, power, privilege, and gender — while weeding out the unhealthy regressive narratives that most of these have devolved into.
Ken explores how today’s transnational challenges and realities may be hastening humanity’s eventual growth toward increasingly inclusive and global forms of governance, what government might look like at the level of the global holon, and how we might actually be able to get there from here.
Ken takes an in-depth look at the “major and minor scales” of integral politics — an inventory of the most critical elements, polarities, and patterns of self-organization that are at play within all of the major political systems across the world, from the rise of civilization to today.
Ken Wilber LIVE
About Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is an internationally acknowledged leader, founder of Integral Institute, and co-founder of Integral Life. Ken is the originator of arguably the first truly comprehensive or integrative world philosophy, aptly named “Integral Theory”.