Boomeritis
A Novel That Will Set You Free!
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Ken Wilber's latest book is a daring departure from his previous writings—a highly original work of fiction that combines brilliant scholarship with tongue-in-cheek storytelling to present the integral approach to human development that he expounded in more conventional terms in his recent A Theory of Everything.
The story of a naïve young grad student in computer science and his quest for meaning in a fragmented world provides the setting in which Wilber contrasts the alienated "flatland" of scientific materialism with the integral vision, which embraces body, mind, soul, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. The book especially targets one of the most stubborn obstacles to realizing the integral vision: a disease of egocentrism and narcissism that Wilber calls "boomeritis" because it seems to plague the baby-boomer generation most of all.
Through a series of sparkling seminar-lectures skillfully interwoven with the hero's misadventures in the realms of sex, drugs, and popular culture, all of the major tenets of extreme postmodernism are criticized—and exemplified—including the author's having a bad case of boomeritis himself. Parody, intellectual slapstick, and a mind-twisting surprise ending unite to produce a highly entertaining summary of the work of cutting-edge theorists in human development from around the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wilber (A Brief History of Everything) shifts (sort of) from philosophy to fiction in this story about a young MIT grad student's journey to self-discovery, which is finally little more than a thinly veiled attempt to outline and promote a theory of consciousness. Dubbed Ken Wilber, just like his creator, the novel's protagonist finds answers in his search for identity when he attends a series of consciousness lectures at an institute called the Integral Center. There, Wilber is exposed to an eight-level theory of consciousness and buys into the lecturer's premise that baby-boomers made the first step into higher awareness before they got "stuck" in their own narcissism and self-absorption, leaving it to subsequent generations to take things to the next level. Wilber makes a halfhearted effort to inject some plot elements as he tracks his friends' romances and their reaction to the theory, but most of this book is a lengthy rant about the shortcomings of boomers, padded with analysis of various thinkers, political movements and the effect of computers on modern thought. Wilber (the author) has some interesting ideas but, philosophical issues aside, this isn't much of a novel, and Wilber's failure to develop a coherent narrative, some semblance of a plot or interesting characters will deter many readers.
