Boomeritis

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.