Ken Wilber: The Suction

Cursing, swearing, calling names, dirty words etc. are these abusive speech? Is it slander or slang? This depends on your definition, of course, of curse, as anything else in the semantic space does. And your definition depends on the perceived context. And that depends on your total awareness, right? Now, a dirty word is at most a form, not a content. And form is not what defines meaning in any case, unless you're a three-year old. However, content is something more elusive. It's quite easy to determine a dirty word. Especially in English - it usually has four letters and it ends with a consonant, often K. It's quite another thing to determine whether it's abusive speech, though.

Ken Wilber recently suggested some of his critics should perform some suction on his shaft. I know, we all know what that means, but let's go through it once again. Suction is, of course, the act of sucking or the effect of such an act, and usually it refers to breast-feeding, but in this case it signifies a stop consonant, specifically a so-called "click". Shaft, on the other hand, may be understood as "an aggressive remark directed at a person like a missile and intended to have a telling effect", and our context is rather telling in that sense. Shaft could also be construed as "a vertical column of light", but I don't think Wilber would go that far in this case - you see, he's not like that.

Putting the two - that is, the suction and the shaft - together, we have an interesting intended meaning emerging. One way of putting it is something like "producing clicks to aggressive remarks". That is exactly what many people have been doing in the last week, although the suggestion was not intended for them, except if they all see themselves as Ken Wilber's critics. The blogosphere was alight with sucking - sorry - clicking and many seemed to feel deeply the shaft as if it was their alone to feel. I don't remember such an outcry and fury of clicking as a reaction to any of the zillion times Ken Wilber was abused publicly and openly, only to be ignored until the next abuse. This is encouraging, because it would seem that they're finally listening to what he has to say, and he's been saying this all the time, only to be misunderstood by most, and even viciously attacked by some...

Please use this key to decypher the meaning of several other remarks Wilber has made, like those to do with eye-sockets and urinating. It is of extreme importance that we don't take these self-evident phrases at their face value, but do our best to interpret them in accordance with what we know is true and obvious. Ken Wilber would never call names, you see. He's not like that. But he would blast all partiality and absolutistic arrogance to hell, and he's been doing that for the past 30 years, unflinching. Don't forget That while you're feeling abused by his shaft. It's so much better to simply relax and enjoy. Anyway, keep sucking the light - it's soul-food.

p.s. love


Ken Wilber has himself commented on this intended meaning, somewhat differently, in another post, see here. For further meanings by the man himself, see here and here and here.