Pavlina and Violence
Quite a few fellow-bloggers have been commenting on Steve Pavlina and whether he's a 2nd-tier or a 1st-tier thinker. I will resist the temptation to add my vote on this, simply because I never met the guy or seriously studied his work. However, prompted by the tragic event at Virginia Tech, he's got a new post, something to do with violence and subjectivity, and in it I see a perfect example how a nondual perspective grounded in imbalanced development can get dangerously whacky. If millions of visitors are exposed to this type of reasoning, I only hope he's not very effective in getting all of his ideas accepted.
Pavlina by others, recently:
Colin Bigelow at KW's Blog
~C4Chaos
Julian Walker
Integral Options Cafe
Joe Perez
NOTE apr23: Meanwhile, Stuart Davis and Ken Wilber have a new dialogue at Integral Naked, where they give their own brief comments on this Pavlina's post, giving it as an extreme example of interpretation. SD: "... only truly twisted interpretation I saw of the [VA Tech] event was the Steve Pavlina blog (...) which just dismissed the whole thing as the projection of a subjective reality (...) he literally took credit for it (...) that it was all just a creation of his own dream and reality. So that was the farthest end of a pathological interpretation that I've seen..." And later, KW: "... the probably smallest slice of pie [in an integral overview] is the Pavlina slice. It's just the meanest of the green meme and boomeritis run wild..." Right. Stuart has elaborated his views on his blog, read here.
NOTE apr27: Same subject, this by Julian Walker at his zaadz blog. Another worthy read.
"It’s all a projection of my consciousness. The conflict is within me. If I turn within, I can see that I’m really wrestling with my own lack of compassion. That’s why it bothers me to see others doing it — it’s resonating with something already inside me. I manifested the whole thing to help me become more compassionate. The solution is never to attack what I perceive to be others’ lack of compassion or cruelty. It’s to rework my inner relationships, to come to a new understanding of what role I want compassion to play in my life, one that creates peace instead of pain."And so on. Read it and judge for yourself.
Pavlina by others, recently:
Colin Bigelow at KW's Blog
~C4Chaos
Julian Walker
Integral Options Cafe
Joe Perez
NOTE apr23: Meanwhile, Stuart Davis and Ken Wilber have a new dialogue at Integral Naked, where they give their own brief comments on this Pavlina's post, giving it as an extreme example of interpretation. SD: "... only truly twisted interpretation I saw of the [VA Tech] event was the Steve Pavlina blog (...) which just dismissed the whole thing as the projection of a subjective reality (...) he literally took credit for it (...) that it was all just a creation of his own dream and reality. So that was the farthest end of a pathological interpretation that I've seen..." And later, KW: "... the probably smallest slice of pie [in an integral overview] is the Pavlina slice. It's just the meanest of the green meme and boomeritis run wild..." Right. Stuart has elaborated his views on his blog, read here.
NOTE apr27: Same subject, this by Julian Walker at his zaadz blog. Another worthy read.
5 Comments:
yeah bro, i read that part. and i scratched my head too. but maybe because i have not actual experience of nondual or even the witness state yet.
but then again i think Pavlina is expressing the truth on the upper left (subjectivity) quadrant. i remember when i was in a loft with Wilber, someone asked him, how do we solve all the suffering in the world? Wilber's answer is, "wake up." he goes on to say that *this* life is like a dream so when you wake up, the dream disappears and so all the suffering in this dream too. but of course, that's only true for the subjective part of reality. the Upper-Left. i think that's what Pavlina is talking about too.
my two cents.
~C
P.S. apparently, a lot of his readers on his forum are scratching their heads too...
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/steve-pavlina/6250-subjective-reality-nonviolence-blog.html
~C
hey ~c, thanks for the link. a recognition of the ever-present nondual, which is our "always already" fundamental condition, is actually not necessary to get around this one. some healthy good old paradox will suffice. yes, Pavlina is talking about waking up as well, and that's mainly upper left (and upper right to be technically precise:-). however, there's a combination in his post that is dangerous.
(1) events themselves are meaningless
(2) subjective internal changes manifest objective external results (more Secret here)
(3) ultimately everything is only MY perspective
(4) therefore I manifest all objective reality
In my understading, he's NOT talking of One Mind in which everything arises as a Dream. Because That Mind needs no amount of working on that. That Mind has no inner resistance or "violence I’m repressing and refusing to acknowledge". It's simply another case of some bright reasoning infused with magical thinking.
yeah, but :)
http://pods.zaadz.com/ii/discussions/view/133998
alright, bro, lets move this discussion to zaadz.
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