Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber 2nd ed 851p (2001) (review revised 2019) Michael Starks ABSTRACT It is both amazing and fitting that this huge, jargon-laden (this book really needs a glossary!), heavily academic work has become a best seller in the world of the educated. One has to be dedicated to learn the jargon and then plow through 551 pages of text and 238 pages of notes. Meanwhile, we are told time and again that this is just an outline of what is to come! Though he severely criticizes the excesses of the three movements, this is a deconstructive and New Age Mystical and postmodern interpretation of religion, philosophy and the behavioral sciences from a very liberal, spiritual point of view- i.e., without the worst of decon, pm and NAM jargon, rabid egalitarianism and antiscientific anti-intellectualism. He analyzes in some detail the various world views of philosophy, psychology, sociology and religion, exposing their fatal reductionistic flaws with (mostly) care and brilliance, but most of the sources he analyzes are of almost no relevance today. They use terminology and concepts that were already outdated when he was researching and writing 20 years ago. One has to slog thru endless pages of jargon –laden discussion of Habermas, Kant, Emerson, Jung et.al. to get to the pearls. You get a terrific sampling of bad writing, confused and outdated ideas and obsolete jargon. If one has a good current education, it is doubly painful to read this book (and most writing on human behavior). Painful because it s so tortured and confusing, and then again when you realize how simple it is with modern psychology and philosophy. The terminology and ideas are horrifically confused and dated (but less so in Wilber s own analysis than in his sources). This book and most of its sources are would-be psychology texts, though most of the authors did not realize it. It is about human behavior and reasoning-about why we think and act the way we do and how we might change in the future. But (like all such discussion until recently) none of the explanations are really explanations, 2 and so they give no insight into human behavior. Nobody discusses the mental mechanisms involved. It is like describing how a car works by discussing the steering wheel and metal and paint without any knowledge of the engine, fuel or drive train. In fact, like most older  explanations` of behavior, the texts quoted here and the comments by Wilber are often more interesting for what kinds of things they accept (and omit!) as explanations, and the kind of reasoning they use, than for the actual content. If one is up on philosophy and cognitive and evolutionary psychology, most of this is archaic. Like nearly everyone (scholars and public alike-e.g., see my review of Dennett s Freedom Evolves and other books), he does not understand that the basics of religion and ethics-in fact all human behavior, are programmed into our genes. A revolution in understanding ourselves was taking place while he was writing his many books and it passed him by. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see 'Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019)  Anything that can be said can be said clearly` Ludwig Wittgenstein `Heaven and Earth are inhumane--they view the myriad creatures as straw dogs` TaoTe Ching It is both amazing and fitting that this huge, jargon-laden (this book really needs a glossary!), heavily academic work has become a best seller in the world of the educated. One has to be dedicated to learn the jargon and then plow through 551 pages of text and 238 pages of notes. Meanwhile, we are told time and again that this is just an outline of what is to come! This book and most of its sources are would-be psychology texts, though most of the authors did not realize it. It is about human behavior and reasoning-about why 3 we think and act the way we do and how we might change in the future. But (like all such discussion until recently) none of the explanations are really explanations and so they gave no insight into human behavior. Nobody discusses the mental mechanisms involved. It is like describing how a car works by discussing the steering wheel and metal and paint and the wheels without any knowledge of the engine or drive train. In fact, like most older  explanations` of behavior, the texts quoted here and the comments by Wilber are often more interesting for what kinds of things they accept (and omit!) as explanations, and the kind of reasoning they use, than for the actual content. As with all reasoning and explaining one now wants to know which of the brains inference engines are activated to produce the results and how fast thinking automated prelinguistic system 1 (S1) and slow thinking deliberative linguistic system 2 (S2) are involved and what is the Logical Structure of Rationality that explains (or rather describes as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. It is the relevance filters (the reflexive processes) of S1 which determine what sorts of things that can be input as appropriate data for each engine and their automatic and unconscious operation and interaction that determines what our brain will pass on to S2 for higher order expression in language. Cognitive and evolutionary psychology are still not evolved enough to provide full explanations (descriptions) but an interesting start has been made. Boyer s `Religion Explained` is a good place to see what a modern scientific explanation of human behavior looks like as of 2002 (though it completely misses enlightenment!). Pinker s `How the mind Works` is a good general survey and his `The Blank Slatè (see my reviews) by far the best discussion of the heredity-environment issue in human behavior. They do not 'explain' all of intelligence or thinking but summarize what is known. See several of the recent texts (i.e., 2004 onwards) with evolutionary psychology in the title (above all "The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology" 2nd ed by Buss) or the web for further info. We now recognize that the bases for art, music, math, philosophy, psychology, sociology, language and religion are found in the automatic functioning of templates or inference engines of S1. This is why we can expect similarities and puzzles and inconsistencies or incompleteness and often, dead ends as without careful probing by experiments or philosophical (linguistic) analysis it is invisible to us ('The Phenomenological Illusion' of Searle). The brain has no general intelligence but numerous specialized modules, each of which works on certain aspects of some problem and the results are then added, resulting in the feelings 4 which lead to behavior. Wilber, like everyone, can only generate or recognize explanations that are consistent with the operations of his own inference engines, which were evolved to deal with such things as resource accumulation, coalitions in small groups, social exchanges and the evaluation of the intentions of other persons. It is amazing they can produce philosophy and science, and not surprising that figuring out how they work together to produce consciousness or choice or spirituality is way beyond reach. Wilber is a bookworm and he has spent decades analyzing classic and modern texts. He is extremely bright, has clearly had his own awakening, and also knows the minutiae of Eastern religion as well as anyone. I doubt there are more than a handful in the world who could write this book. However, this is a classic case of being too smart for your own good and his fascination with intellectual history and his ability to read, analyze and write about hundreds of difficult books has bogged him down in the dead past. Though he severely criticizes the excesses of the three movements, this is a deconstructive and New Age Mystical and postmodern interpretation of religion, philosophy and the behavioral sciences from a very liberal, spiritual point of view- i.e., without the worst of decon, pm and NAM jargon, anti-scientific antiintellectualism, and the oppressive rabid Neomarxist Third World Supremacist Egalitarianism that is destroying America and the world by handing power over to the low class rabble in the West and to the Jihadists and the Seven Sociopaths who run China. Boyer points out (p20), when fear and poverty give way to security and wealth, the results of the inference engines change and you find religion changing from appeasement rituals for the powerful gods in a hostile universe to self empowerment and control in a benevolent one (i.e., New Age Mysticism etc.). He analyzes in some detail the various world views of philosophy, psychology, sociology and religion, exposing their fatal reductionistic flaws with (mostly) care and brilliance, but most of the sources he analyzes are of questionable relevance today. They use terminology and concepts that were already outdated when he was researching and writing 20 years ago. One has to slog thru endless pages of jargon –laden discussion of Habermas, Kant, Emerson, Jung et.al. to get to the pearls. He immerses himself in Freud and the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams (eg, p92), though most now regard these as merely quaint artifacts of intellectual history. 5 If one is up to date on philosophy and cognitive and evolutionary psychology, most of this is archaic. Like nearly everyone (scholars and public alike--eg, see my review of Dennett s Freedom Evolves and other books), he does not understand that the basics of religion and ethics-in fact all human behavior, are programmed into our genes. A revolution in understanding ourselves was taking place while he was writing his many books and it largely passed him by, though I have not read his latest works. If one has a good current education, it is doubly painful to read this book (and most writing on human behavior). Painful because it s so tortured and confusing and then again when you realized how simple it is with modern psychology and philosophy. The terminology and ideas are horrifically confused and dated (but less so in Wilber s own analysis than in his sources). We now think in terms of cognitive templates which evolved about 100,000 years ago (in most cases several hundreds of millions of years earlier in their original forms). They operate automatically, are not accessible to consciousness and there is abundant evidence that they severely limit the behaviorial options for individuals and for society. His new preface notes one such study, but the book needs a total rewriting. There is an enormous resistance in us to accepting ourselves as part of nature, and in particular, any gene based explanations of behavior, in spite of the fact that all our behavior, like all of our physiology, is at its roots gene based. Like all our thinking, these feelings are due to the operation of the cognitive templates, so perhaps it is the conflict between biological explanations and our automatic intuitive psychology or social mind systems that is responsible (the obviousness of our linguistic conventions and culture and the opacity of our automatisms which Searle has called 'The Phenomenological Illusion'). These genetic systems have operated for hundreds of thousands or millions of years and the new data from science is telling us the results of their operations (our feelings about what to do) are often wrong in our complex modern world. There is a huge research program in social, economic and political behavior from this new viewpoint. Some jargon you will need is on pg X of the new preface where you find that the constantly used vision-logic is postformal cognition or network-logic or integralaperspectival (all points of view are equal and must be considered). He also states the postmodern manifesto here: all views equal, dependent on limitless contexts, and merely interpretations. As he notes in great detail, this puts one on the slippery slope leading to much irrational and incoherent rant and there are very basic flaws 6 in it. Nevertheless, it virtually took over US and European universities for several decades and is far from dead, having transformed itself into Neomarxist Third World Supremacist Egalitarianism. You will also need his definition of eros from p528. You get a terrific sampling of bad writing, confused and outdated ideas and obsolete jargon. On p52 there is a quote from Jakobson which can be replaced by `the inference engines for psychology and language develop as we mature ; and paragraphs from Jantsch (p58) which say that evolution is evolution and cells are cells and (p71) the environment changes as organisms evolve. There is a quote from Foucault to open Book Two (p327) which, translated from deconstructese, says `knowledge helps to understand the world`. There is a long quote (p60-61) from Rupert Sheldrake which, when it is intelligible at all, says things that translate as  proteins are proteins  and  cells are cells . There are numerous linguistic disasters from Habermas (e.g., if you have time to waste, try figuring out the quotes on p77 or 150), but some are actually translatable, such as those on p153-4, which say that people have morals, so society has laws and language evolved so society evolved. And lots of this from Wilber himself, as on p109 where he spends most of the page to say most mutations and recombinations fail and the surviviors are compatible with their evirons. In spite of his acquaintance with Searle s work, he is often confused about consciousness. He says (p117-8) that we can regard whatever we want as conscious, but clearly, once we leave the realm of animals that have eyes and a brain and walk around, it becomes a joke. Likewise, he is on very thin ice when discussing our interior and the need to interpret the minds of others. This is very far off the mark if one knows some Searle, Wittgenstein and cognitive psychology (see my other writings). Likwise with the `explanations  of Wolf on p742 which are wrong for the same reasons that  explanations  of consciousness are wrong. It must be true that mind and spirit are based in physics (at least there is no intelligible alternative) but we don t know how to conceptualize this or even how to recognize such a concept (i.e., the language games or Conditions of Satisfaction are unclear). Many suspect we will never understand this but rather its just a matter of accepting how things are and likewise with the fundamentals of the universe (eg, see my review of Kaku s `Hyperspacè and Dennett). His notes (p129) that cultural studies have made little headway but neither he nor his sources understand that they lacked any framework to do so and typically because they embraced the sterile idea of the blank slate. They want to be factual, even scientific, but they constantly veer off into fantasy. He delineates the 7 integration of art, science and morality as the great task of postmodernism and he and others go to immense lengths to make connections and organize it all into a coherent plan for thinking and living. However, I cannot see any really useful sense in which this is possible. Life is not a game of chess. Even in the limited realm of art or morality it is not at all clear that there is anything other than that these are parts of human experience which draws them together, i.e., genes make brains and unconscious automatic System 1 rules. One can put paintings and sculpture and clothing and buildings and stick figures in an art book but is this really getting us anywhere? Please see my reviews for details on how to describe behavior using the modern two systems of thought and a logical structure for rationality. Boyer (see my review) shows in detail how religion is due to a complex of brain systems that serve many different functions which evolved long before there was anything like religion. The brain has numerous templates that take in data, organize it and relate it realtime to other data, but they each serve a specific purpose and those purposes are not ART, MORALITY, RELIGION, and SCIENCE. Cognitive psychology shows that we have many modules working simultaneously to produce any behavior and that we relate to people in many ways for many reasons. One basic function is coalitional intuition. This gives us feelings that guide our entrance into groups and our interactions with other groups. We automatically and immediately overestimate the qualities of those in our group even if it s composed of randomly chosen total strangers we met five minutes before. Likewise, we immediately underestimate the good qualities of those in other groups, and always we heavily favor those who closely genetically related (kin selection or inclusive fitness which are other names for natural selection). This and many other automatisms guide and commonly rule individual behavior, groups, nations and the world, but hardly anyone had a real understanding of this until quite recently. So, it is not surprising that almost all of his sources from Plato to Kant to Habermas have been wandering around in the dark and that Wilber is frantically running from one to the other with a flashlight trying to help them find their way out of the woods. He notes (p199) that the only serious global social movement to date was Marxism but thinks its fatal flaw was reductionism. It seems far more cogent to note that, like virtually all of modern society (and most of his sources and to a significant extent this book), it denied (or ignored or failed to understand) human nature and 8 basic biology. Nobody seems to notice that most social institutions and ideals, (including equality and democracy) have this same flaw. Debate on human nature, the environment and the future is endless, but reality is an acid that will eat through all fantasy. To paraphrase Lincoln, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can t fool mother nature anytime. The mob is programmed to accumulate resources and replicate their genes, and this means the collapse of civilization. Neomarxism, Diversity, Democracy, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Social Justice, and Human Rights are the means to this end and nothing can resist. He details intellectual history (philosophy, psychology, religion, ecology, feminism, sociology, etc) and shows where nearly everyone went too far in the direction of Ascent (to the spirit or religious life only) or Descent (to science, materialism, reductionism or Flatland). He trys to show how to heal the rifts by combining sense and soul (spiritual and material life, science and religion, internal and external, individual and social). Everything is related to everything else (holons in holarchies--ie, things in nested hierarchies-see p26,135 for his definition). The Age of Enlightenment denied the the spirit, the individual and the interior life, but developed art, morals and science and led to democracy, feminism, equality and ecology. This reductionism compressed the intellect and the spirit into the Flatland of science, rationality and materialism. He sees the loss of the spiritual point of view with the Age of Enlightenment as the major factor responsible for the malaise of modern times, but `true spirituality` or`advanced religion`--my terms-- (i.e., the quest for enlightenment), as opposed to `primitive religion` (everything else-see Boyer) was always rare. It is advanced religion he sees as the panacea, but it is primitive religion that the masses understand, and it too has only materialistic goals (money, power and all else serving to replicate genes). He understands that Jesus was a mystic in the same sense as Buddha and many others, and that what was to become the Catholic church largely destroyed his mystical aspects and the personal search for enlightenmente.g., Gnosticism, in favor of primitive religion, priests, tithes and a structure seemingly modeled on the Roman army (p363). But, for the early Christian church, as for most religion, the cognitive templates were servants of the genes and enlightenment was not on the menu. Jesus was not a Christian, he had no bible, and he did not believe in a god any more than did Buddha. We have Christianity without the real intelligence of Jesus and this, as he explains in detail, is one cause of the West s extended stay in Flatland. I am not a Christian nor even a theist but it is one of the saddest things in 9 history that the enlightened master who was to serve as the model of spirituality for the West had his vision of personal enlightenment destroyed and distorted by his own followers (but of course they are not really HIS followers). See the Gnostics and the Nag Hammadi manuscripts and above all Osho's discourses on the Gospel of Thomasfrom these. Like everyone until recently, the many authors he discusses lacked any real explanation for human behavior. It rarely occurred to them to ask why we have such ideas and behavior and the few who did had no coherent solution. Though he has read some of John Searle s superb philosophy, and has passing references to research in cognitive psychology, it is amazing that he could do 20 years research in philosophy without studying Wittgenstein, religion without reading Osho and watching his videos, and psychology without Buss, Tooby, Cosmides et al. Much of cognitive and evolutionary psychology was only published in journals at the time he was writing and Wilber has almost no references to journals. But Wittgenstein is the most famous philosopher of modern times, and Osho the most famous spiritual teacher. It is remarkable that although he spends much time in his books discussing the intellectual aspects of therapy (Freud, Beck, Maslow etc) and clearly understands that the spiritual path is the ultimate therapy, he totally ignores Osho, who had the most advanced therapeutic community in history functioning worldwide for the last 30 years. Osho never wrote a thick book containing a theory of human behavior, though his 200 books and many videos,all free online, explain it as beautifully and clearly as has ever been done. Though he tries hard to heal the world, Wilber spends too much time in the airy realms of intellectual debate. As a postmodernist, and holist new age mystic, he wants to unite art, morality and science, but science gets the short straw. As in some of his other books (e.g., A Brief History of Everythingsee my review), by far the worst mistakes he makes (along with nearly all his sources and most of the planet) are ignoring and misunderstanding basic biology. This is apparent thoughout the book. He starts chapter 7 with a quote from Aurobindo, who had the same failing. They have no grasp of the fact that the eugenic effects of evolution are driven by natural selection and when society became firmly established, this ceased and it s been totally dysgenic ever since. Genetic engineers have been at work and they have released on a helpless world the most horrifically destructive mutant imaginable. Society is the engineer and we are that mutant. If one gets the big picture, preoccupation with the possible destructive effects of GMOs (genetically 10 modified organisms) -other than ourselves-is simply stupid and is perhaps a result of the operation of the contagion templates discussed by Boyer. That is, the potential destructive effect of all the GMOs we will ever make is unlikely to approach what humans have already done themselves. He says (p 508, p519) that Darwin does not explain evolution, supposedly well known before him, and accuses him of  massive obscurantism  (he should be saying this about most of his sources!). The truth is that nothing in human behaviour or the world or the universe makes sense except in the light of evolution and no person did more to make this clear than Darwin. The work before him was little more than idle speculation and did not even approach a serious scientific treatment. This is why it had NO EFFECT on science or society, as opposed to Darwin's complete transformation of them. Of course, Darwin did not know genetics nor plate tectonics, and modern Neodarwinism adds many refinements, but it shows a total misunderstanding of science and history to say that this invalidates or diminishes his contributions. Wilber is clearly sliding sideways into the Creationist camp and one can only speculate as to which of his inference engines produce this. He shows in many places that he has a poor grasp of genetics and evolution. E.g., on p561--as Dawkins has so patiently explained, the unit of evolution is the gene, and none of the other things Wilber mentions work as a genetic unit. Though he lists `The Selfish Genè in his bibliography, it s clear he has not understood it, and it s over 40 years old. Dawkins has written half a dozen superb works since and there are hundreds of others. Wilber seems to have an allergy to good biology books--most of those he quotes are very old and others are classics of confusion. He wastes a page (p51) on the idea (mostly due to the Noemarxist pseudoscientist Gould and his coauthor Eldredge) of punctuated evolution, which is of very little interest. Gould loved to make a big fuss about his `discoveries` and his energy got him alot of airtime, but when all was said and done, he had nothing new to say and dragged millions into his own confusions (as Dawkins, Conway Morris and many others have noted). Yes, evolution is sometimes faster but so what? Sometimes it rains a little, sometimes a lot. If you zoom in, in time or space, you always see more detail, and if you zoom out it starts to look the same. Gould was also responsible for the `spandrels of San Marcos` debacle and, with his Neomarxist colleagues Lewontin and Rose, for endless insipid attacks on `determinist biology`, including the scandalous verbal and physical assaults on E.O Wilson (who, unlike themselves, made numerous 11 major contributions to biology, though he recently disgraced himself-see my review of his 'The Social Conquest of Earth'). Modern research (e.g., see Pinker and Boyer) makes it clear that Wilson was right on the money regarding evolution, except for his unfortunate recent embrace of 'group selection'. It is quite careless to say (p775) that there is no single pregiven world. Perhaps he only means we ought to be multicultural, egalitarian etc., but if there really were none, then how can we live and communicate? This is the ugliness of postmodernism creeping in. A large dose of Wittgenstein and cognitive psychology is an appropriate cure. Neither Wilber nor Derrida nor Foucault (nor most people) understand that there MUST be a single point of view or life would be impossible. This single point of view, resident in our genes, is integral to how we think and behave and largely dictates the vagaries of philosophy, politics and religion. The cognitive templates of S1 that underlie language, thought and our perception of reality logically must be the same and the evidence for this is overwhelming. Even the smallest changes, even one gene gone wrong, and you have autism, imbecility or schizophrenia. The brute fact that Wilber (and most of the world) largely ignores, is that there are 7.8 billion (11 billion or so by 2100) sets of selfish genes carrying out their programs to destroy the earth. They are an acid that will eat through any intellectual conclusions, egalitarian fanatasies and spiritual rebirths. Selfishness, dishonesty, tribalism and shortsightedness are not due to accidents of intellectual or spiritual history. He says that the lack of spirit is destroying the earth, and though there is this aspect to things, it is much more to the point to say that it is selfish genes that are responsible. Likewise, he says `Biology is no longer Destiny`, but it is an easily defensible point of view that the reverse is far more likely. The attempt to understand history in terms of ideas ignores biology and denies human nature. Selfish genes always live in Flatland and less than 1000 people in all of human history have escaped the tyranny of the monkey mind into enlightenment. Most of chapter 6 on myth and magic is outdated, confused or just wrong. To give just a few examples, we now understand that most of a child s psychological and social development is built in and does not have to be learned (eg, pg 233-4). The child does not have to deconstruct anything--the inferences engines do it all (p260). Joseph Campbell is quoted extensively and he too was clueless about how we develop and how to explain the differences and similarities in cultures (p245-50). E.g., Campbell says mythology can only lay claim to childhood, but a look around the world shows how false this is and a reading of Boyer's 'Religion Explained' (see 12 my review) tells why. His discussion of thinking about the nonfactual on pg 279 to 80 is now often referred to as running the inference engines in decoupled or counterfactual mode. To his contorted comments in the middle of pg 560 (and finally....) I want to say `explanation ends with the templates! P580-4 and 591-3 are so full of dubious and plain wrong statements I don t even want to begin but suggest that Wilber and the reader start with Searle s `The Mystery of Consciousness` or better with almost any one of my reviews of Searle or Wittgenstein. Time and again, it is clear he shares the lack of a scientific viewpoint with most of his sources. What info or procedures can solve the questions of consciousness or of any social science and philosophical theories? How do you recognize an answer when you see it? He and they go on for pages and whole books without ever having any idea (e.g., see my review of Dennett s Freedom Evolves). On p702bottomhe talks about the fulcrum driving development, but if one understands templates, the logical structure of rationality and the two systems of thought (and I mean here and elsewhere the entire corpus of cognitive and evolutionary psychology) then one either needs to rewrite this or eliminate it. Ditto for most of pgs 770-77. The tortured prose on pg 771-2 is only saying that the templates (S1 reflexes) are probed by drugs or other input but not changed and that nobody knows (in a way they can clearly convey) what these are. The background or intersubjective worldspace is the templates and they develop very early in children and then stay fixed for life. The deliberate destruction of Jesus` mysticism has created a powerful bias against higher consciousness in the West. Though he does not understand or discuss enlightenment, Boyer gives the basis for understanding how and why this happened. Wilber embraces a simple utilitarianism (greatest good for greatest number)-i.e., the greatest depth for he greatest span (p334). This basic principle of much philosophy, religion and economics has serious problems and is probably unworkable. Which people should we make happy and how happy and when (i.e., now or in the future)? On what basis do we distribute resources now and how much do we save for the future population, and who decides and how to enforce this? He calls upon our Basic Moral Intuition (ie, the operation of our templates, as we now know), but our BMI is not really to help others but to help ourselves and our close relatives (inclusive fitness), and the few thousand (or let s be very optomistic and say few million) who are spritually advanced do not run the world and never will. The BMI-eg, social exchange, coalitional intuitions, intuitive psychology, etc, evolved to serve our own interests (not those of the group--if, like Wilber, you think this way please read some of Dawkin s books or my recent review 13 of Wilson's 'The Social Conquest of Earth') and in any case is hopelessly at sea in the modern world with it s advanced education, instant communications, firearms, mood altering drugs, clothes and cosmetics, a huge and mobile population and vanishing resources. Instead of the intellectual or spiritual approach Wilber takes to history, others take ecological, genetic or technogical approaches (eg, Diamond's  Guns, Germs and Steel  or Pinkers  The Blank Slate ). In the long run, it appears that only biology really matters and we see daily how overpopulation is overwhelming all attempts to civilize the masses. The democracy and equality which Wilber values so highly are means created by selfish genes to facilitate their destruction of the planet. In spite of the hope that a new age is dawning and we will see the biological and psychic evolution of a new human, the fact is that we are the most degenerate species there ever was and the planet is nearing collapse. The billions of years of eugenics (natural selection) that thrust life up out of the slime and gave us the amazing ability to write and read books like this is now over. There is no longer selection for the healthier and more intelligent and in fact they produce a smaller percentage of the children every year. Nature does not tolerate physical and mental aberrations but society encourages them. Our physical and mental peak was probably CroMagnon man or maybe even Neanderthals (who had larger brains (yes, I know they seem not to have contributed more than a few percent of our DNA) about 100,000 years ago. It seems plausible that only genetic engineering and an enlightened oligarchy can save us. See my essay Suicide by Democracy. He thinks (eg, p12 etc.) that it is our fractured world view (i.e., denial of the spirit) that is responsible for our ecological catastrophes and preoccupation with material goods, but this is another example of the denial of human nature. Nobody views heart conditions or Alzheimer disease as due to a fractured world view, but few seem to have any problem thinking you can change the fundamentals of behavior just by education or psychological manipulation. Modern science refutes this view conclusively (see Pinker, Boyer etc). The intuitive psychology templates tell us that we can manipulate the behavior of others, but these templates were evolved hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago, and they often fail to give correct results in modern contexts. Nearly every parent thinks they can profoundly influence the adult character (patience, honesty, irritability, depression, persistence, compulsiveness etc.) of their children in spite of clear evidence to the contrary (e.g., Pinker). He thinks that animal rights people are illogical and excessive when they value 14 animals over humans and likewise with those who value the environment over people s needs. This may be logical in his system but of course humans are typically (and often reasonably) illogical. In any case, if we always put human needs first, then it is surely the end of peace, tranquility, beauty and sanity. Wilber defends Piaget, but like him he shows many places that he does not understand that the child does not have to learn the important things--they are built in and it only has to grow up. There seems to be no evidence that any of our templates, i.e., S1 change with time one we mature. The things that we learn are mostly trivial in comparison (i.e., even a computer can learn them!). His sources are mostly lost in confusion and jargon but he is brilliant and if one bothers to read his explanations and translate Wilberspeak into English, it usually makes sense. On pg 5457 he explains holonic ecology. Here is a translation. All organisms have value in themselves and are related to all others in the ecosystem and we must wake up spiritually. There is a web of life (i.e., Gaia or ecosystem) and all have intrinsic value, but higher organisms have more value, which requires a spiritual point of view. Neither the spiritual or scientific approach works alone (i.e., dualism is bad). Translated, it loses most of it s appeal but it is not fair to deny the poetry and majesty of his vision. But, this does not excuse him from writing clearly. Opacity is a nearly universal characteristic of the books he treats here. However, when Katz wrote a book denigrating mysticism Wilber took the time to do a `Searleian` analysis to show how incoherence has passed for scholarship (p629-31). Unfortunately, he does not continue this throughout the book and uses the jargonladen incoherence of Habermas and others to explain other vague or incoherent texts (e.g., using Habermas instead of Searle or Wittgenstein or cognitive psychology to explicate Emerson p633). In the USA, some 120 million (about 250 million by 2100) third world refugees from unrestrained motherhood are now the most powerful single force for destruction, having easily displaced fundamentalist European Christians. But all lowclass people are united in being against (or at least unwilling/unable to practice) population control and for environmental devastation in order to maximize the number of and resource use by their genes (though lacking any insight into this of course). This was a rational survival strategy when it was fixed in the genes millions of years ago, but it is suicidal now. The spiritual rebirth he talks about is not that of the "diverse" or the lower classes anywhere. 15 His view is that it is the poor and ignorant who are the major environmental problem and that this is somehow due to our Flatland approach, so if we just wake up, get spritual and help them out this will solve it. However, the rich destroy as much as 20 times more than the poor per capita and the third world will pass the first in C02 production about 2025. But there is nothing noble about the poor-they are only the rich in waiting. Everyone is part of the problem and if one does the math (vanishing resources divided by increasing population) it s clear that the worldwide collapse of industrial society and a drastic reduction in population will happen and its only a matter of how and when (2150 is a good guess). Like so many, he suggests living lightly on the earth, but to live (and above all, to reproduce), is to do harm and if reproduction remains a right then it s hard to see any hope for the future. As is politically correct, he emphasizes rights and says little about responsibilities. It is a reasonable view that if society is to accept anyone as human, they must take responsibility for the world and this must take precedence over their personal needs. It is unlikely that any government will implement this, and equally unlikely that the world will continue to be a place any civilized person will wish to live in (or be able to). I present here a table of rationality which I have worked out over the last 10 years. The rows show various aspects or ways of studying and the columns show the involuntary processes and voluntary behaviors comprising the two systems (dual processes) of the Logical Structure of Consciousness (LSC), which can also be regarded as the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR-Searle), of behavior (LSB), of personality (LSP), of Mind(LSM), of language (LSL), of reality (LSOR), of Intentionality (LSI) -the classical philosophical term, the Descriptive Psychology of Consciousness (DPC) , the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (DPT) –or better, the Language of the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (LDPT), terms introduced here and in my other very recent writings. The ideas for this table originated in the work by Wittgenstein, a much simpler table by Searle, and correlates with extensive tables and graphs in the three recent books on Human Nature by P.M.S Hacker. The last 9 rows come principally from decision research by Johnathan St. B.T. Evans and colleagues as revised by myself. System 1 is involuntary, reflexive or automated "Rules" R1 while Thinking (Cognition) has no gaps and is voluntary or deliberative "Rules" R2 and Willing 16 (Volition) has 3 gaps (see Searle). I suggest we can describe behavior more clearly by changing Searle's "impose conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction" to "relate mental states to the world by moving muscles"-i.e., talking, writing and doing, and his "mind to world direction of fit" and "world to mind direction of fit" by "cause originates in the mind" and "cause originates in the world" S1 is only upwardly causal (world to mind) and contentless (lacking representations or information) while S2 has content and is downwardly causal (mind to world). I have adopted my terminology in this table. I have made detailed explanations of this table in my other writings. Public Conditions of Satisfaction of S2 are often referred to by Searle and others as COS, Representations, truthmakers or meanings (or COS2 by myself), while the automatic results of S1 are designated as presentations by others (or COS1 by myself). * Aka Inclinations, Capabilities, Preferences, Representations, possible actions etc. ** Searle's PriorIntentions *** Searle's Intention In Action **** Searle's Direction of Fit ***** Searle's Direction of Causation ****** (Mental State instantiates--Causes or Fulfills Itself). Searle formerly called this causally selfreferential. ******* Tversky/Kahneman/Frederick/Evans/Stanovich defined cognitive systems. ******** Here and Now or There and Then 17 Disposition* Emotion Memory Perception Desire PI** IA*** Action/ Word Cause Originates From**** World World World World Mind Mind Mind Mind Causes Changes In***** None Mind Mind Mind None World World World Causally Self Reflexive****** No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes True or False (Testable) Yes T only T only T only Yes Yes Yes Yes Public Conditions of Satisfaction Yes Yes/No Yes/No No Yes/No Yes No Yes Describe A Mental State No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes/No Yes Evolutionary Priority 5 4 2,3 1 5 3 2 2 Voluntary Content Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Voluntary Initiation Yes/No No Yes No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes Cognitive System ******* 2 1 2/1 1 2 / 1 2 1 2 Change Intensity No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Precise Duration No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Time, Place (H+N, T+T) ******** TT HN HN HN TT TT HN HN Special Quality No Yes No Yes No No No No Localized in Body No No No Yes No No No Yes Bodily Expressions Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Self Contradictions No Yes No No Yes No No No Needs a Self Yes Yes/No No No Yes No No No Needs Language Yes No No No No No No Yes/No 18 FROM DECISION RESEARCH Disposition* Emotion Memory Perception Desire PI** IA*** Action/ Word Subliminal Effects No Yes/No Yes Yes No No No Yes/No Associative/ Rule Based RB A/RB A A A/RB RB RB RB Context Dependent/ Abstract A CD/A CD CD CD/A A CD/A CD/A Serial/Parallel S S/P P P S/P S S S Heuristic/ Analytic A H/A H H H/A A A A Needs Working Memory Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes General Intelligence Dependent Yes No No No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes Cognitive Loading Inhibits Yes Yes/No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Arousal Facilitates or Inhibits I F/I F F I I I I