2006 - What A Year!
In 2006, Integral World broke all visitors records, with close to 200.000 visitors, and 600.000 page views. It even topped the record year of 2003. One year ago, I was wondering if the time for Integral World, as a public space for debate about matters integral, was over. Not so.
I started blogging. I started running Google ads. I started writing essays to stress the need for validating Wilber's ideas (over merely promoting them), such as "A Spectrum of Critics", "My Take on Wilber-5", "Talking Back to Wilber". About 130 new postings were added to the Reading Room, including essays by Smith, Harris, Edwards, Benedikter, Galli, Benjamin, Falk and Chamberlain.
I published Jeff Meyerhoff's "Bald Ambition" and Alan Kazlev's "Integral Esotericism" (in progress) in separate chapters, thereby closing in on Integralism from different angles. I started republishing my old book "Seven Spheres", and reissued David Lane's criticism of Wilber's treatment of evolution, to which Lane added some new writing. As Wilber once published a "case study" to show that critics (e.g. De Quincey) misrepresent him, we can now build a case study to show how Wilber has misrepresented the status of evolutionary biology. Perhaps we will. Given the attention Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" has received (now #3 on Amazon!), this subject will stay on our agenda for a while.
But the greatest event of the year, of course, was Wilber's demonstration, in the Wyatt Earp Episode, that he was unable and/or unwilling to take criticism, or even feedback, and chose to ridicule and insult his critics. Thereby harming his reputation more then anything any critic has ever written. And showing his true colors.
For 2007, I plan to publish essays that touch on topics that have captured the interest of many: Iraq, the Middle-East, Atheism, Evolution, Reductionism, Intelligent Design, etc. as seen from an integral perspective, but with full acknowledgement of non-integral voices. The aim on Integral World is not to promote, but to validate, debate and discuss things integral. Not to explain but to explore.
I started blogging. I started running Google ads. I started writing essays to stress the need for validating Wilber's ideas (over merely promoting them), such as "A Spectrum of Critics", "My Take on Wilber-5", "Talking Back to Wilber". About 130 new postings were added to the Reading Room, including essays by Smith, Harris, Edwards, Benedikter, Galli, Benjamin, Falk and Chamberlain.
I published Jeff Meyerhoff's "Bald Ambition" and Alan Kazlev's "Integral Esotericism" (in progress) in separate chapters, thereby closing in on Integralism from different angles. I started republishing my old book "Seven Spheres", and reissued David Lane's criticism of Wilber's treatment of evolution, to which Lane added some new writing. As Wilber once published a "case study" to show that critics (e.g. De Quincey) misrepresent him, we can now build a case study to show how Wilber has misrepresented the status of evolutionary biology. Perhaps we will. Given the attention Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" has received (now #3 on Amazon!), this subject will stay on our agenda for a while.
But the greatest event of the year, of course, was Wilber's demonstration, in the Wyatt Earp Episode, that he was unable and/or unwilling to take criticism, or even feedback, and chose to ridicule and insult his critics. Thereby harming his reputation more then anything any critic has ever written. And showing his true colors.
For 2007, I plan to publish essays that touch on topics that have captured the interest of many: Iraq, the Middle-East, Atheism, Evolution, Reductionism, Intelligent Design, etc. as seen from an integral perspective, but with full acknowledgement of non-integral voices. The aim on Integral World is not to promote, but to validate, debate and discuss things integral. Not to explain but to explore.
posted by Frank Visser at 12:43 PM
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