I strongly recommend this book. My review comments.
A book about the complexity of human life that unfolds like an accordion of understanding.
The daring author will likely be attacked from every-side as it’s certain to insult everyone in the unfoldment.
The book itself is indefensible because it attempts to present a whole view that is by itself challengeable from every perspective.
If you’re a person who never seems to fit it in, you’ll find your place.
If your a person who already knows everything you’ll learn nothing.
If you’re open, whimsical and intelligent you will see the details with deep clarity and comprehension and giggle with delight.
Some will follow along with the unfolding logic until they no longer understand and conclude it is nonsense.
An enlightened few will see the entirety like a detailed garment with tightly woven stiches that create an amazing and beautiful tapestry of reality that self sustains itself with a complexity that defies logic; or supports it from any perspective.
The wisdom contained in reading between the lines can only be experienced through the art of intense living, with high engagement in the process.
From the deepest of darkness to the white light of clairvoyance this book covers it all and yet dares to deliver a take two.
Interesting book.
I found this in a review online: Freinacht suggests that Nordic societies are now mainly modernist and post-modernist, but there are the stirrings of a new metamodernist aristocracy - the Triple H of Hipsters, Hackers and Hippies, who have reached meta-modern stages of development in one or more of his four variables. They live outside traditional work structures and reward incentives, tend to work for themselves while being highly networked and rich in creative and social capital, but can easily fall into the precariat (ie they can be broke).
They are aided by the ‘yoga-bourgeoisie’, members of the business class who have ‘found that money is not the answer to a happy life and therefore begin to cultivate self-awareness, authenticity and intimacy—often in and around yoga parlours, tantra group settings, contact improvisation dance, improvisation theatre, self-help courses and coaches, and to some extent Burning Man festival and its wider cultural sphere.’
This new aristocracy is the force driving the development of new political parties. And the future belongs to them, basically. To us! Woohoo! Sound the gong, light the sage, prepare the kambo frog.
I’m gonna get an amazon affiliate link and recommend this to all my yoga - tantra-ecstatic dance - kambo - hacker - hippy - etc - etc groups.
Oh, and people who bought this book also bought a case of sage smudge sticks and a rasberry pi.
You’re never short on input @raybennett thanks for sharing even if it’s someone else’s point of view. Cutting as usual … I wish you success in your personal quest for relevance. ~ Peace
You completely missed the joke.
I myself have a rasberry pi and buy sage sticks. I also have way more Kambo than I can ever use, and so on.
If I was cutting on anyone, it was myself and the people I consider my friends and non-biological family in the same spirit as the author of the review. We are aware of our own absurdities and love to laugh at them in Portlandia style humor.
I’ve read this book a year ago and finished it in a week (during a workweek), sleep-deprived. I simply couldn’t stop reading it. It was the best book I’ve read about this topic… probably ever (I’ve read several of Ken’s books and love those too, but this one is spikier).
I totally recommend it to any integralist, though you can be offended if super-green and giggle a lot if you’ve “transcended but not yet included” green. I like his model very much.
Note that I’ve tried reading Nordic Ideology, but it’s exact opposite of the first book. Not spiky at all, very community and politically centric and kinda boring. I’m reading it for several months now and I’m still in half. But will probably re-read second part of first book since you reminded it to me.
In a word READITNOW!
P.S. It is a critique of several other models, so be prepared to suffer if you adore Ken’s Integral Meta-theory without any suspicions (I’ve had few before reading a book and a bit more after finishing it). Still thinks IMP and IT and Semiotics part is great intellectual feat that you don’t see every day (or year). But you will see more cracks after reading Hanzi’s book.
No gotcha here @raybennett, but an honest inquiry if you’re open to communicating? I’d like to ask you about the 4.25 mark on the video Ken Says we have the “Ultimate Truth” … I would love to get your personal take on what that Ultimate Truth is to you?
Sure - I think the first thing I’d say is that language is completely inadequate to the task of describing Ultimate Truth.
The best I can do is analogies. For me the truth that resonates most is that life is a Dance and Creation is the ballroom. Is the “music” played by a separate “God”? - or do all the participants together create the “music” together? That I can’t say. Or in other words, I can’t say for sure if God is a little bit of everyone’s consciousness / spirit ebbing and flowing, or more something like “The Force” from Star wars and “Mother Earth” is a God, or if God is a separate Consciousness that is more like a “Father”. Or all three and maybe more combined. I think the more it is analyzed intellectually the more it separates from reality.
I think ultimate truth is a feeling that is experienced, not a concept to be analyzed with the intellect.
From my own perspective the “Ultimate Truth” is a mixture of joy and sorrow experienced at the same time - that observing the Universe is like observing a baby being born, knowing it will never be the same baby again. Your life and mine is like a mere flash of an instant - and for that reason it’s both joy and sorrow at the same instant. Like that feeling people get when the sun shines more strongly and a rainbow disappears. I can’t say for sure this is a Universal Truth for everyone - that might be just my own life experience or my Karma. But when this identity called me is dropped, ecstatic tears is the closest English comes to a description.
I know others have different experiences when they drop their identities, so how to explain either their experience or mine as “Ultimate Truth” when they are described so differently? Quite a conundrum, so I generally avoid trying to push my ultimate truth out of respect for another’s experiences. Both our brains are limited and our bodies are as well, so as soon as we drop out that state - from that microsecond onward everything we interpret is filtered through our human identity. Lots of people experience a kind of “blackout” during these experiences, where they might not even remember the actual experience, but their identity is racing to process it subconsciously. They (or I) might believe this processing is an Ultimate Truth while really it is already being filtered through their identity.
Intellectually, I’ve pondered my experiences and believe that there’s really only two real emotions humans experience: Joy and sorrow - and that at their root even these are the same emotion. Everything else is the identity, or the ego as many call it, attempting to separate the two.
@executive - When I listen to the video I notice that Ken doesn’t actually say what that ultimate truth is to him. I’d be interested if there is a video where he actually lays out his own specific personal beliefs on what Ultimate Truth is, or if you asked me to do something that Ken hasn’t done himself?
Does anyone have a recording where Ken gets very specific on his beliefs of what Ultimate Truth is?
