Emancipatory writing

I am re-reading Ken Wilber's One Taste, a "philosophical journal," he kept during the year of 1997. The format of the book, I realized as I began reading, is very similar to the format of this blog, especially in the content, which Wilber describes as "ideas that orbit the sun of the perennial philosophy (or the common core of the world's great wisdom traditions)."

One topic he discusses early on is emancipatory writing--writing, whether theoretical, spiritual, literary, etc. that helps to liberate the reader from a range of subtle ills, like feelings of meaninglessness, shallowness, narrow-minded-ness, the list goes on. In an entry on the life of the late novelist Christopher Isherwood, himself a liberator for Wilber, he lists similar figures like Jiddu Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, and Thomas Mann (all of whom were connected with the Los Angeles branch of the Vedanta Society in the mid-20th century.

Reading Wilber himself has been and still is liberating, for many reasons. An important one is that he has provided me, and many others, with a theoretical framework of the world's knowledge and experience that is profoundly embracing. In the words of Jack Crittenden, in his lucid foreword to Wilber's Eye of Spirit (1997):

The general idea [of Wilber's philosophical system] is straightforward. It is not which theorist is right and which is wrong. His idea is that everyone is basically right, and he wants to figure out how that can be so. "I don't believe," Wilber says, "that any human mind is capable of 100 percent error. So instead of asking which approach is right and which is wrong, we assume each approach is true but partial, and then try to figure out how to fit these partial truths together, how to integrate them--not how to pick one and get rid of the others."

Philosophy's true purpose is to improve one's way of living, and the philosophical attitude Wilber adopts has improved not only my critical and theoretical capacities, but my everyday living. Taking the attitude that "everyone is right" has opened me up to the world in so many ways, and has instilled in me a commitment to finding the truth in every voice, no matter how offensive or inferior I consider a particular perspective or point of view. It also supports my conviction that truth can be found in human voices from anywhere and anywhen, from the ancients to today. Conversely, and this is important for me because my critical faculties have always been on the weak side, I am able to criticize in a more penetrating manner, by acknowledging that every perspective is partial. So from this fundamental attitude, Wilber has outlined a vast yet cogent system in his books, from 1977 to the present, and each one I read further opens my mind and soul, and liberates me in ways that I sometimes don't even think about consciously, but which I notice after reading and digesting his works.