Apocalypse's Eternal Return (review in Reason)

[K.J]

I found this review of 2012TROQ both disappointing and interesting. I've yet to read a review of 2012TROQ that looks at it from this particular lens. But that hardly makes up for the many distortions of Daniel's ideas. I think this review is just positive and skeptical enough to get a few people (hopefully many) to pick it up.


Apocalypse's Eternal Return (http://www.reason.com/news/show/116784.html)
Hipster guru predicts: Capitalism will destroy the world!

Brian Doherty | December 2006 Print Edition

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, by Daniel Pinchbeck, New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin, 416 pages, $26.95

Did you know that the ancient Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl—the all-encompassing plumed serpent whose return has been prophesied for centuries—has decided to weigh in on politics? Here’s an excerpt from his message for the world of mortal men: “The global capitalist system that is currently devouring your planetary resources will soon self-destruct, leaving many of you bereft.”

Quetzalcoatl has chosen to speak through the curious medium of Daniel Pinchbeck, 40, a former editor of the Manhattan lit-journal Open City. Pinchbeck has had a glowing reputation in hipster circles since his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head, a travelogue and treatise on exotic psychedelics, which transformed him into the 21st century’s chief pop guru on the meaning and significance of altered states—a thought leader whose musings, no matter how offbeat, are considered worthy of review in publications as mainstream as The New York Times.

Pinchbeck’s latest intellectual-spiritual journey, recounted in his new book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, has taken him on a globe-girdling tour of New Age fantasies, from crop circles to alien abductions to Mayan communication with ancient space brothers. It ends with him serving, he insists, as a medium for Quetzalcoatl, who dictates a message that sounds more like a zonked-out Inconvenient Truth than a traditional religious revelation.

Quetzalcoatl apparently has no idea or knowledge that was not already present in Pinchbeck, whose general sense of dread and dissatisfaction regarding capitalist modernity existed before his spiritual journey. Those sentiments are in fact nearly universal in the post-’60s counterculture for which he is a spokesman. Indeed, they’re pretty common in mainstream intellectual culture as well; few literary intellectuals under 40 do not share them to some degree, though most refrain from claiming they learned them from a supernatural serpent with feathers.

Pinchbeck knows you’ll think he’s a bit of a freak for saying that he did just that. He openly acknowledges that seeing oneself at the center of a great cosmic drama is normally written off as a sign of mental illness. With that on the table, the reader can either give up or go along for the ride. Despite the zaniness, it’s a ride worth taking, partly for the wild entertainment value but also because the book is a document with genuine sociopolitical relevance. Beneath the nutty metaphysical musings, 2012 is an engaging take on contemporary eco-politics, pretty much the hottest topic around in this year of awful summer heat and the Second Coming of Al Gore.

Pinchbeck’s title refers to the idea that 2012, the final year of the Mayan calendar, will be, as New Age cranks have argued for years, the end of the world, or at least the world as we have known it. In Pinchbeck’s reading, that end is approaching via planetary death caused by capitalist excess. Modernity, Pinchbeck argues, is inherently doomed and deserves to be doomed for playing into the detestable human urges of atomistic individualism and ugly greed; it has led to global warming, irreversible and tragic forest depletion, and a rapidly hastening loss of all the resources on which life depends.

2012 is more interesting than the typical doom-laden environmental policy document because Pinchbeck delivers his eco-political message in the form of a syncretic mad masterpiece, a colorful mash-up of the alien-archaeology fabulist Erich Von Däniken, the purveyor of fabricated Amerindian wisdom Carlos Castaneda, the psychedelic theorist Terrence McKenna, and the robed mystics behind the 1987 “Harmonic Convergence,” who prophesied a shift in planetary consciousness to a higher level. Pinchbeck thinks almost all the phenomena he discusses—including the calendar (our Gregorian one, for reasons this reader found very hard to understand, is held responsible for a lot of our spiritual/cultural crises), his trips on the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, and various ancient cultures’ prophecies— suggest a rapidly approaching apocalypse.

But he holds out hope that this end of times might just be the beginning of even better times if we can all somehow shift our consciousness on a planetary scale. “As much as everything seemed to be collapsing,” he writes, “everything was also going seamlessly according to plan…the Plumed Serpent was meant to slither-flutter his way back to Earth, reestablishing ‘Sacred Order,’ reasserting harmonic concord amidst rampant discord, before the Great Cycle reached its end.”

Or not. Pinchbeck has no trouble embracing paradox and ambiguity, because his evidence is always equivocal. You try to get precise, unarguable conclusions from crop circles or reports of close encounters with extraterrestrials. But such phenomena sure can suggest a lot, to the suggestible. About crop circles, for example—one of his biggest fascinations—he notes that “For every article or book I read that supported their validity, I found an equally convincing text or hoaxer’s Web site that undermined such a perspective” and ultimately decided, hey, that’s just the nature of the beast: “the [crop circles] offered instruction in how to work with paradox…you advance your understanding when you can hold both sides of a dichotomy in your mind at the same time.”

Pinchbeck may equivocate about his more mystical excursions, but he’s sure he’s on solid ground when he sees evidence of our spiritual malaise in the damage caused by our abuse of natural resources, particularly burning petroleum. Neither species depletion nor forest depletion are moving along quite as quickly as Pinchbeck fears. If virtually everyone nowadays seems to agree that anthropogenic global warming is a cold hard fact, it remains unclear precisely what such warming will mean to human beings—and the “planet” per se shouldn’t be concerned with how much usable coastline we have. And as for exceeding Earth’s capacity to sustain us, food continues to get cheaper and more abundant as centuries of Malthusian fears continue to fall flat and population growth slows to well within our food-producing means.

Man unquestionably has an enormous impact on the world. If unaltered nature is your value, that impact is no doubt destructive. And if you think man’s impact has been intolerably destructive, you are bound to recoil from markets and property—institutions that treat the natural world as something we can own, use, buy, and sell. Pinchbeck seems conflicted here. While he hates capitalism for its endlessly innovative “exploitation of resources” (put differently: he hates people for using the materials of the earth), he also hates “our patriarchal religions” for their “lockdown of possibility.” In one sentence, he (well, Quetzalcoatl) insists we must fight for both “human freedom” and “preservation of the planetary environment.” Neither he nor the Aztec deity grapples with the ways those impulses can both mesh and conflict.

Human beings have and will continue to cut down forests and burn oil to make room for themselves and to improve their lives (although the planet’s overall forest land area has hardly changed in the last 60 years). Human freedom inevitably means using, even at times using up, parts of the world. But the key to taking environmental concerns seriously—to doing more with less—has been market institutions.

A planetary commons, like a dorm refrigerator commons, will quickly be depleted. Crises such as overfishing the oceans, which Pinchbeck laments, are a direct result of lack of property rights. Intelligent awareness of long-term values, and the incentive to preserve them rather than just slash and burn to get whatever you can today (because if you don’t someone else will), is best actuated through private property. Such awareness and incentives ultimately can make the world greener as well as richer. The wealthy are best equipped to see forests as valuable for long-term, intelligent use, rather than something to be chopped and sold for today’s immediate survival needs. Pinchbeck sees none of this promise.

The emotions behind apocalyptic thinking recur as eternally as doomsday is postponed. These days the most prominent doomsday theory sees the fruits of markets and liberty as harbingers of the angel of death. But anyone reading 2012 should also contemplate the computer-world guru Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the “singularity,” an idea moving along in a countercultural universe parallel and very close to Pinchbeck’s. It’s a vision that, while not designed as such, is in direct competition with Pinchbeck’s. Kurzweil believes our increasing control of machinery, computer intelligence, biology, and the material world at the smallest levels puts us on the cusp of an earthly near-paradise in which we will have highly advanced control over both matter and mind without destroying the earth or even using very much of it.

Human beings have a fairly decent history of meeting the needs of a growing population while using less (per capita, at least) of the earth’s resources. The technologies of the 20th century’s “green revolution” have allowed us to grow more food on less land. Burning coal—not to mention splitting the atom—puts more energy at our disposal than burning wood, and with less impact on the earth. So whether or not its wildest extrapolations come true, Kurzweil’s vision of a technological rescue from environmental and human limits seems more plausible than either Pinchbeck’s apocalypse or his alternative Quetzalcoatl ex machina of a sudden shift in planetary consciousness.

What is more likely than either the Pinchbeck or Kurzweil visions of a planet utterly changed is that 2012 will pass into 2013 with the world a little bit different and a lot the same. But the kind of slow, gradual betterment in overall human well-being—the sort that has swept the Western world in the last century—lacks that shot of emotional drama that human beings crave. Some of us don’t fear a vivid, certain end to the world we know; for various psychological reasons, some of them quite creepy, we want it. In an essay written after 2012 came out in June, Pinchbeck acknowledged this about a certain element in his own fan base: “A lot of people in the radical and progressive cultural realm, on some level, are actively looking forward to the destruction of the present system and then a truly horrendous and volatile passage before we potentially come out the other side.” Pinchbeck means that as a criticism, but it’s no surprise that such people would find his book attractive: He frequently sounds just like them.

Put another way, he frequently sounds like that other apocalyptic tribe, the Christian fundamentalists. His book lays into fundamentalism early on, but both he and the religious right are offering variations on the same ancient mentality—the one that’s always finding new reasons everyone else deserves to get it good and hard.

Such people see our Western world of unprecedented wealth and opportunity as based on something akin to sin and thus deserving punishment. The richest culture on Earth includes a substantial minority who despise its economic basis even as they benefit from it. That is a dark emotional truth worth understanding.

[drew hempel]

Humans have a history of using less resources with better technology while the population is growing --- BLAH BLAH what bullshit!

REASON magazine is full of this glib, simplistic clap-trap based on ignoring how imperialism works.

We have 25 years left of fresh water. Yeah water ain't like oil folks nor is it like "expendable" slave labor (God wants us to be rich you know!). Sure companies are consolidating and grubbing over the new "water market" but guess what -- it can't be leveraged into some "new technology" when it runs out.

Or can it? Deep dark in the recesses of military think tanks (Sandia Labs) people put all their hope in nanotechnology.

http://www.cientifica.com/archives/000195.html

That's right REASON is all about Techno-Worship. Whip out the great Synthetic Phallic named Howard Roark and all will be welcomed into the light.

Or can we really make artificial life through silica-DNA biochips (and silica-nanowater?)......

Or is it Howard Stern? The Great Priest of artificial happiness... hmmm.....

Good thing synthetic estrogen will be the CALCULUS CONVERGING TRAJECTORY of technology and population....

hahaha looks like the CUNNING REASON OF NATURE has some more sinister plans for humanity...

And DICK AND BUSH going UNDERground ain't going to be some great moment of enlightenment is it?

Can't wait to have MY body turned into a "quantum computer" for the holographic superconducting Nano-Matrix:

http://www.merlinq.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=231&Itemid=74

[craazyman]

nothin like a ringside seat watching the battle of the cunning-linguists. the popcorn dribbles down my shirt as I stare on in consternation, amazement and delight while I miss my mouth completely. as sayeth the salmon ghillie in quebec--fuck! what sport, what sport.

drew, we'll figure out how to drink the oceans and then make H20 from space debris--never fear--nature is too huge to even notice. animal man, animal man, animal man, colonialsts of the universe. move over Greys and reptilians, we're on our way, ha! ha! ha!.

[drew hempel]

See REASON relies on the same sophmoric arguments as the Communists.

"those who benefit from our economic wealth also lament it" blah blah...

The commies say the EXACT opposite -- "those who benefit from the wealth try to change it."

So you can't win or lose -- you can't born into "wealth" without praising it or criticising it too much -- you're just supposed to be "reasonable."

So Howard Roark -- the secret hero of REASON (all based on really bad, cheap fiction) is that all the socialists should be murdered a la FASCISM.

The Chilean "miracle" is the wunderkind of REASON -- send in Milton Friedman and who cares if thousands are murdered.....

There's this great myth of "clean" technology -- as if China building one coal plant a WEEK is not affecting global warming.

As if ancient Greece building Catapults did not "impose" on any people.

As if we can all just apply technology "efficiently" for "clean extraction"

RHEA'S SON is reason: LUST, Greed -- the main sins of the church, etc. ZEUS AND HADES:

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/dailygod/blg051010.htm

EXTERNALITIES -- that's what classical economics constantly overlooks.

The "market" has always been a lie -- it's never been "free" but based on NATURAL LAW -- "certain" people do not use "reason" and therefore are SAVAGES, etc.

REASON is no different than Working Class Republicans -- just ASS-KISSERS needing cheap drugs to wash away REALITY.

The truth is that the West is based on a DIMINISHING RATE OF RETURN FOR TECHNOLOGY.

The Reason of Science is based on closed parameters that end in apocalypse -- be it the Singularity of Kurzweil or the End of Time of NeoPrimitivists (Free Lovers).

What Reason ignores is that the benefits of technology increasingly go to a decreasing number of people.

So population growth? YES but qualitative DECLINE (more sweatshops, more slums, more poverty, more ecological crisis).

There is no "next Green revolution" -- and the first one wasn't CLEAN (pesticides, irrigation, monocultural cash crops).

Reason: IGNORANCE IS BLISS -- that's the true title of that Trash

ASS-WIPE magazine.

[drew hempel]

T & A Goddess Angelina Jolie to star in new "Atlas Shrugged" movie (NY Times, 1/14/07)

Ah -- the voice of Reason at last!

[daniel]

I found the following post criticizing my work at The Consciousness Cafe.

After the post, I have offered answers to the criticisms.

http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/pinchbeck -watch-2012-review-in-reason.html

Thanks to Bruce Eisner for telling us about this review in Reason magazine of Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

The review focuses on several areas of Pinchbeck's thought that have concerned me for some time:

1. Pinchbeck's millenarian belief in redemptive apocalypse
2. his soteriological belief in an immaterial "consciousness shift"
3. his distrust of modernity and technology (which lead him to reject Viridian-style engineering and bioremediation approaches of the planet's climate problems, and dismiss transhumanist optimism about the future), and Pinchbeck's accompanying romanticization of aboriginal societies and magical modes of thought (at the expense of rational/analytical cognition).
4. his revisionist critique of capitalism as essentially rapacious
5. Pinchbeck's seemingly transcendentalist perspective that only by transcending the evils of this world, by shaking capitalist modernity off our back, can the world somehow be saved.
6. An accompanying underlying nihilism that suggests that perhaps Pinchbeck does not want the world to be saved. Perhaps he believes that the Earth is just a staging area for our souls as we evolve to "higher" planes of existence. Perhaps he believes that our world must be "purged" of civilization in order for us to pass beyond the Kali Yuga. I am not sure. He appears to have a strong belief via his personal interest in occultism in other nonphysical realms of existence, which may be superordinate to our own. This is suggestive of "another world" more akin to the Christian heaven or Mormon Celestial Kingdom, where everything will be made right in death. In my opinion this is a tempting and dangerous idea which moves Pinchbeck closer to the apocalyptic radical Luddites of our dawning age.



((At the same time I would like to applaud Pinchbeck for being such a public and outspoken champion of entheogens - the idea that psychedelic plants and chemicals are gateways to the divine. He wears an affable and agreeable countenance in his public appearances, and has been accessible and never aloof. He did not ask for the title of psychedelic guru that Rolling Stone magazine hung on him, though it was perhaps inevitable when we consider his intense self-promotion.

I have the greatest respect for him as a committed and devoted father; as an intellectual who has made great sacrifices to pursue his craft; and I find him to be an entertaining writer and story-teller.

My enduring interest, however, is in portraying psychedelic culture as life-affirming, not world-negating; a culture, not always a subculture, capable of taking a seat in mainstream society. I want to see psychedelic culture empowered as a mature and acknowledged healer, no longer the guilty and ostracized child of the American counterculture. I feel that Pinchbeck is not taking us in that direction. ))

Now excerpts from the REASON review itself:

Did you know that the ancient Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl'the all-encompassing plumed serpent whose return has been prophesied for centuries'has decided to weigh in on politics? Here's an excerpt from his message for the world of mortal men: “The global capitalist system that is currently devouring your planetary resources will soon self-destruct, leaving many of you bereft.

Quetzalcoatl has chosen to speak through the curious medium of Daniel Pinchbeck, 40, a former editor of the Manhattan lit-journal Open City. Pinchbeck has had a glowing reputation in hipster circles since his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head, a travelogue and treatise on exotic psychedelics, which transformed him into the 21st century's chief pop guru on the meaning and significance of altered states - a thought leader whose musings, no matter how offbeat, are considered worthy of review in publications as mainstream as The New York Times.

... [Pinchbeck's] general sense of dread and dissatisfaction regarding capitalist modernity existed before his spiritual journey. Those sentiments are in fact nearly universal in the post-'60s counterculture for which he is a spokesman. Indeed, they're pretty common in mainstream intellectual culture as well; few literary intellectuals under 40 do not share them to some degree, though most refrain from claiming they learned them from a supernatural serpent with feathers.

Pinchbeck knows you'll think he's a bit of a freak for saying that he did just that. He openly acknowledges that seeing oneself at the center of a great cosmic drama is normally written off as a sign of mental illness. With that on the table, the reader can either give up or go along for the ride. Despite the zaniness, it's a ride worth taking, partly for the wild entertainment value but also because the book is a document with genuine sociopolitical relevance. Beneath the nutty metaphysical musings, 2012 is an engaging take on contemporary eco-politics, pretty much the hottest topic around in this year of awful summer heat and the Second Coming of Al Gore.

... In Pinchbeck's reading, that end is approaching via planetary death caused by capitalist excess. Modernity, Pinchbeck argues, is inherently doomed and deserves to be doomed for playing into the detestable human urges of atomistic individualism and ugly greed; it has led to global warming, irreversible and tragic forest depletion, and a rapidly hastening loss of all the resources on which life depends.

2012 is more interesting than the typical doom-laden environmental policy document because Pinchbeck delivers his eco-political message in the form of a syncretic mad masterpiece, a colorful mash-up of the alien-archaeology fabulist Erich Von Däniken, the purveyor of fabricated Amerindian wisdom Carlos Castaneda, the psychedelic theorist Terrence McKenna, and the robed mystics behind the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, who prophesied a shift in planetary consciousness to a higher level. Pinchbeck thinks almost all the phenomena he discusses'including the calendar (our Gregorian one, for reasons this reader found very hard to understand, is held responsible for a lot of our spiritual/cultural crises), his trips on the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, and various ancient cultures' prophecies' suggest a rapidly approaching apocalypse.

... anyone reading 2012 should also contemplate the computer-world guru Ray Kurzweil's vision of the singularity, an idea moving along in a countercultural universe parallel and very close to Pinchbeck's. It's a vision that, while not designed as such, is in direct competition with Pinchbeck's. Kurzweil believes our increasing control of machinery, computer intelligence, biology, and the material world at the smallest levels puts us on the cusp of an earthly near-paradise in which we will have highly advanced control over both matter and mind without destroying the earth or even using very much of it. . . . whether or not its wildest extrapolations come true, Kurzweil's vision of a technological rescue from environmental and human limits seems more plausible than either Pinchbeck's apocalypse or his alternative Quetzalcoatl ex machina of a sudden shift in planetary consciousness.
...
What is more likely than either the Pinchbeck or Kurzweil visions of a planet utterly changed is that 2012 will pass into 2013 with the world a little bit different and a lot the same. But the kind of slow, gradual betterment in overall human well-being'the sort that has swept the Western world in the last century'lacks that shot of emotional drama that human beings crave. Some of us don't fear a vivid, certain end to the world we know; for various psychological reasons, some of them quite creepy, we want it. In an essay written after 2012 came out in June, Pinchbeck acknowledged this about a certain element in his own fan base: "A lot of people in the radical and progressive cultural realm, on some level, are actively looking forward to the destruction of the present system and then a truly horrendous and volatile passage before we potentially come out the other side." Pinchbeck means that as a criticism, but it's no surprise that such people would find his book attractive: He frequently sounds just like them.

Put another way, he frequently sounds like that other apocalyptic tribe, the Christian fundamentalists. His book lays into fundamentalism early on, but both he and the religious right are offering variations on the same ancient mentality'the one that's always finding new reasons everyone else deserves to get it good and hard.
*

Here are my answers to the criticisms offered:

I found this commentary on “Pinchbeck’s thought,” and figured I would respond to it. My perspective is that the critic made a number of projections onto my work, leading to serious distortions. He quotes from Brian Dougherty’s Reason review of my book, which presented a terribly reasoned libertarian and rational skeptic’s critique of “2012”, and was full of misunderstandings and reductions of my positions into easy pigeonholes.

1. “Pinchbeck’s millenarian belief in redemptive apocalypse”: I don’t have such a belief.

Up front, it is important to make a distinction between thoughts, hypotheses, and beliefs. What I find in a lot of critiques of my work is that ideas I explore as hypotheses are taken as “beliefs,” even though I insist, again and again, in my books and talks, that I am making a “thought experiment.” I frequently pause to note that what I am describing is hypothetical, possible, or theoretical – or just my perspective. Critics tend to take the easy shot, and reduce my theoretical arguments to beliefs. If we can’t entertain alternative hypotheses, we limit our possibilities, and may miss important phenomena, because we have not allowed ourselves to take it seriously.

In “2012”, I do put forth the hypothesis – not the belief – that we are currently in the Apocalypse. I look at this possibility through a Jungian lens, as an archetype that may be currently constellating in our human reality, with physical as well as psychic dimensions to it. I quote Edward Edinger, Jung’s student, on the Apocalypse as “the momentous event of the coming of the Self into conscious realization.” I offer the possibility that the Maya possessed a different system of knowledge than our own, but one that was at least equally legitimate. Their calendars are, by the hypothesis explored by several thinkers, actually “timetables for the evolution of human consciousness” (Calleman). 2012 represents the completion of one cycle and the beginning of the next. I offer as a hypothesis that this next cycle might represent a different form of human consciousness, with a different relationship to time, space, and being.

2. My “soteriological belief in an immaterial “consciousness shift”.

Once again, I do not have a “belief” in this – I offer it as a hypothesis, to a certain extent, a possibility. I do make an argument, utilizing a number of different perspectives, that a consciousness shift, or “consciousness mutation” in the term of Jean Gebser, might be the evolutionary destiny of our species. I also wouldn’t call such a consciousness shift “immaterial” – it would most probably have many material manifestations.

3. My “distrust of modernity and technology.”

It is not a question of “distrust.” I argue throughout that modernity and the development of technology were necessary for our evolutionary process. I argue that technology is a representation of our psychic development – any instrument begins as a thought-form that is then rendered in material form. Hence, until we heal the destructive and regressive aspects of our psyche, the more powerful our technology becomes, the more endangered we are. I do think that the solution of the crises we face will require more nuanced and sophisticated use of techniques and technologies that do not violate the integrity of natural systems – along with the acceptance of psychic energy and intuitive and mystical modes of cognition. .

My “romanticization of aboriginal societies and magical modes of thought (at the expense of rational/analytical cognition).”

Once again, this is the opposite of what I actually write and say, again and again and again, and is therefore based on the writer’s projection onto my work. My entire concept is that we are moving toward an integration of rational and empirical consciousness with the intuitive and mystical modes of cognition known to indigenous tribes and myth-based civilizations. Obviously, before we can make such an integration, we would have to recover those lost modes of intuitive and mystical knowing, which modern society forfeited, leading to the extermination of the witches, the repression of psychedelics, etc. If it seems that I am giving priority to the magical and intuitive modes of cognition, this is only necessary as a balancing force, as it is these modes that have been repressed.

I also do not romanticize aboriginal societies – however, once again, some rebalancing is needed here, as these societies have been regularly denigrated and derided by modern Westerners. The fact is, aboriginals survived in unbroken continuity for tens of thousands of years, maintaining a sustainable balance with the natural world. For this reason, we may have things that we need to learn from these cultures, if we would like to secure our own continuity. I also believe their training in supersensible perception through initiatory discipline may be very important to our future.


4. My “revisionist critique of capitalism as essentially rapacious.”

I am not “anti capitalist” or “pro capitalist,” just as I am not “anti tribal culture” or “pro tribal culture.” I respect capitalism for its tremendous powers of transformation and its efficiency. I write in “2012” that “technical efficiency” is value-neutral and could be used to help and heal the world. It is a question of repurposing the energies of capitalism so that they are helpful rather than harmful.

I do critique capitalism, as it is currently practiced, through the philosophical perspectives of Walter Benjamin (Breaking Open the Head) and Herbert Marcuse (2012), and I stand by those critiques.

5. My “seemingly transcendentalist perspective that only by transcending the evils of this world, by shaking capitalist modernity off our back, can the world somehow be saved.”

As I said above, it is not about “shaking capitalist modernity off our back,” but by mastering the tremendous forces for transformation that have been unleashed by capitalism, and turning them toward helping the world and salvaging the integrity of the planetary environment. Far from being anti-capitalist, the first thing I did upon completing “2012” was co-found The Evolver Project, a llc.

6. “An accompanying underlying nihilism that suggests that perhaps” I do “not want the world to be saved.”

I would have to see this, and the rest of his comments here, as the writer’s projection upon my work, with little connection to what I actually write or say. My perspective is that “We go deeper into the physical to get to the infinite” – we have to engage on a much deeper level with this reality if we want to aid our own spiritual evolution. I do not like the concept of transcendence, but prefer the ideal of immanence. I am definitely not a Luddite, but see the accelerating development of technology as an aspect of our psycho-spiritual evolution.

I do think that there are other “realms of existence,” which are not “nonphysical” but have their own substantial reality in ways we cannot fully understand yet. I think these realms exist because of my own experiences of them, which to me are more important as proof than any theoretical refutation. I do not think it is a question of these realms being “superordinate” or subordinate. They simply operate on different principles, corresponding to other forms of consciousness and intelligence.

[K.J]

I found the following post criticizing my work at The Consciousness Cafe.

After the post, I have offered answers to the criticisms.

Here are my answers to the criticisms offered:

I found this commentary on “Pinchbeck’s thought,” and figured I would respond to it. My perspective is that the critic made a number of projections onto my work, leading to serious distortions. He quotes from Brian Dougherty’s Reason review of my book, which presented a terribly reasoned libertarian and rational skeptic’s critique of “2012”, and was full of misunderstandings and reductions of my positions into easy pigeonholes.

1. “Pinchbeck’s millenarian belief in redemptive apocalypse”: I don’t have such a belief.

Up front, it is important to make a distinction between thoughts, hypotheses, and beliefs. What I find in a lot of critiques of my work is that ideas I explore as hypotheses are taken as “beliefs,” even though I insist, again and again, in my books and talks, that I am making a “thought experiment.” I frequently pause to note that what I am describing is hypothetical, possible, or theoretical – or just my perspective. Critics tend to take the easy shot, and reduce my theoretical arguments to beliefs. If we can’t entertain alternative hypotheses, we limit our possibilities, and may miss important phenomena, because we have not allowed ourselves to take it seriously.

In “2012”, I do put forth the hypothesis – not the belief – that we are currently in the Apocalypse. I look at this possibility through a Jungian lens, as an archetype that may be currently constellating in our human reality, with physical as well as psychic dimensions to it. I quote Edward Edinger, Jung’s student, on the Apocalypse as “the momentous event of the coming of the Self into conscious realization.” I offer the possibility that the Maya possessed a different system of knowledge than our own, but one that was at least equally legitimate. Their calendars are, by the hypothesis explored by several thinkers, actually “timetables for the evolution of human consciousness” (Calleman). 2012 represents the completion of one cycle and the beginning of the next. I offer as a hypothesis that this next cycle might represent a different form of human consciousness, with a different relationship to time, space, and being.

2. My “soteriological belief in an immaterial “consciousness shift”.

Once again, I do not have a “belief” in this – I offer it as a hypothesis, to a certain extent, a possibility. I do make an argument, utilizing a number of different perspectives, that a consciousness shift, or “consciousness mutation” in the term of Jean Gebser, might be the evolutionary destiny of our species. I also wouldn’t call such a consciousness shift “immaterial” – it would most probably have many material manifestations.

3. My “distrust of modernity and technology.”

It is not a question of “distrust.” I argue throughout that modernity and the development of technology were necessary for our evolutionary process. I argue that technology is a representation of our psychic development – any instrument begins as a thought-form that is then rendered in material form. Hence, until we heal the destructive and regressive aspects of our psyche, the more powerful our technology becomes, the more endangered we are. I do think that the solution of the crises we face will require more nuanced and sophisticated use of techniques and technologies that do not violate the integrity of natural systems – along with the acceptance of psychic energy and intuitive and mystical modes of cognition. .

My “romanticization of aboriginal societies and magical modes of thought (at the expense of rational/analytical cognition).”

Once again, this is the opposite of what I actually write and say, again and again and again, and is therefore based on the writer’s projection onto my work. My entire concept is that we are moving toward an integration of rational and empirical consciousness with the intuitive and mystical modes of cognition known to indigenous tribes and myth-based civilizations. Obviously, before we can make such an integration, we would have to recover those lost modes of intuitive and mystical knowing, which modern society forfeited, leading to the extermination of the witches, the repression of psychedelics, etc. If it seems that I am giving priority to the magical and intuitive modes of cognition, this is only necessary as a balancing force, as it is these modes that have been repressed.

I also do not romanticize aboriginal societies – however, once again, some rebalancing is needed here, as these societies have been regularly denigrated and derided by modern Westerners. The fact is, aboriginals survived in unbroken continuity for tens of thousands of years, maintaining a sustainable balance with the natural world. For this reason, we may have things that we need to learn from these cultures, if we would like to secure our own continuity. I also believe their training in supersensible perception through initiatory discipline may be very important to our future.


4. My “revisionist critique of capitalism as essentially rapacious.”

I am not “anti capitalist” or “pro capitalist,” just as I am not “anti tribal culture” or “pro tribal culture.” I respect capitalism for its tremendous powers of transformation and its efficiency. I write in “2012” that “technical efficiency” is value-neutral and could be used to help and heal the world. It is a question of repurposing the energies of capitalism so that they are helpful rather than harmful.

I do critique capitalism, as it is currently practiced, through the philosophical perspectives of Walter Benjamin (Breaking Open the Head) and Herbert Marcuse (2012), and I stand by those critiques.

5. My “seemingly transcendentalist perspective that only by transcending the evils of this world, by shaking capitalist modernity off our back, can the world somehow be saved.”

As I said above, it is not about “shaking capitalist modernity off our back,” but by mastering the tremendous forces for transformation that have been unleashed by capitalism, and turning them toward helping the world and salvaging the integrity of the planetary environment. Far from being anti-capitalist, the first thing I did upon completing “2012” was co-found The Evolver Project, a llc.

6. “An accompanying underlying nihilism that suggests that perhaps” I do “not want the world to be saved.”

I would have to see this, and the rest of his comments here, as the writer’s projection upon my work, with little connection to what I actually write or say. My perspective is that “We go deeper into the physical to get to the infinite” – we have to engage on a much deeper level with this reality if we want to aid our own spiritual evolution. I do not like the concept of transcendence, but prefer the ideal of immanence. I am definitely not a Luddite, but see the accelerating development of technology as an aspect of our psycho-spiritual evolution.

I do think that there are other “realms of existence,” which are not “nonphysical” but have their own substantial reality in ways we cannot fully understand yet. I think these realms exist because of my own experiences of them, which to me are more important as proof than any theoretical refutation. I do not think it is a question of these realms being “superordinate” or subordinate. They simply operate on different principles, corresponding to other forms of consciousness and intelligence.

Again and again I find that your ideas and hypotheses - your thought experiment - is in perfect harmony with my own feelings, thoughts and hopes. The above was a great response to what can only be interpreted as the shadow projection of a misinformed critic. I have to wonder if he/she has read any of your works. Baffling indeed.

Oh, the link you posted wouldn't work for me. Try this one (http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/pinchbeck-watch-2012-review-in-reason.html).

[drew hempel]

Yeah Daniel can probably spend his whole life giving answers to people fixated on LANGUAGE. Words, through logical axioms, will never provide the "final solution." haha.

Still it's a fun dance -- these words.

[magicbean]

Daniel can probably spend his whole life giving answers to people fixated on LANGUAGE.


Heretic here: I actually think the Reason article was pretty good. Goodness knows why I'm bothering to say that here, it's not like it will have any effect except to horrify posters.

I haven't logged in to read here for a long time, and I'm not going to hang around and bother to read the mostly inane replies pile up, but I do find it amusing that every time there's a criticism (reasonable or not) of 2012 on this board, there's an adolescent chorus of "These people just don't GET US. They must be stupid, they just don't GET IT." It's like watching sheep who think they're rugged individualists and not herd animals.

And though Daniel provides some honest and intelligent responses to criticism, and I applaud the dialogue, what it basically comes down to is he complains no one understands or has read his book, time and time again. In some cases, I think he's right. But maybe if so many people "just don't get it" from the book, then it just wasn't well-written. Or maybe it's just that....gasp...he might be wrong about some things.

And see, the thing about language is it's like science and art and all sorts of other ways of communicating and understanding. It may not be the Answer, but it's a human-given tool and a damned useful skill. If language is so useless, why write a book like 2012? Or...why bother to write a post on a website?

I know I'm starting a stampede of defensiveness here. Fire away kids. That dumb Magicbean, she just doen't get it.

[drew hempel]

Read "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D. Oupensky

[sidecross]

I agree with magicbean and her post.

I wish magicbean would continue to write on BOTH; we need this point of view to make it worth reading this site!

[_JR_]

Well, you can't really argue with statements like "I actually think the Reason article was pretty good." I agree with Magicbean post too--she DID think the Reason article was pretty good! And then state there's a lot of lame people on this board in a very snarky manor and that your not going to read any of the responses? If this is not hubris then I don't know what is.

[Mars]

I welcome your point of view, magicbean, and would also encourage you to not feel suppressed. I agree with you that sometimes posts critical to Daniel's work get excessively defensive responses of the "you just don't get it" variety and that does little to nothing to further debate and discussion. I suspect, however, that that is symptomatic of any forum to some degree, and that perhaps the vehicle of communication is to blame, rather than something unique to these board. What I feel is lacking in many discussions here is specifics - if someone takes issue with an idea presented, than I'd like to hear the counterargument with as much detail and with as many sources as is reasonably possible. Here's the rub: this takes time. It's much easier to respond emotionally and indignantly than to engage in a true debate of ideas. I'm guilty of this myself, certainly.

I think Daniel is setting a good example above, answering point-by-point each of the criticisms with great specificity. I am not saying I do or do not agree with these points necessarily, rather that it presents a response that truly continues and contributes to the exchange of ideas and that helps me to digest and clarify my own thoughts. You're right that language is the tool we have to express ourselves in this medium. As such I would say that it is hard to fully appreciate your sentiments with regard to Daniel's thoughts without those heretofore mentioned specifics.

[K.J]

Heretic here: I actually think the Reason article was pretty good. Goodness knows why I'm bothering to say that here, it's not like it will have any effect except to horrify posters.


I'm not sure we read the same review. It was very clear to me that the reviewer warped so much of 2012TROQ to fit their own view of things. And I generally respect much of what is written over at Reason, being a one-time libertarian (of both the big and little "L" variety) myself. But this review was mostly garbage.


And though Daniel provides some honest and intelligent responses to criticism, and I applaud the dialogue, what it basically comes down to is he complains no one understands or has read his book, time and time again. In some cases, I think he's right. But maybe if so many people "just don't get it" from the book, then it just wasn't well-written. Or maybe it's just that....gasp...he might be wrong about some things.


Notice that that the bulk of Daniel's response wasn't a defense of his ideas, it was a correction and clarification of them made necessary due to the egregious errors made by the reviewer. If the reviewer had truly read the book, there wouldn't have been so many obvious mistakes in their interpretation of Daniel's ideas. Or maybe it was an intentional slandering? I honestly don't think Reason would stoop that low. I think the bulk of their criticism comes from the fact that the folks at Reason are rabidly pro-capitalist, and they erroneously interpret Daniel to be anti-capitalist. It appears to me as if that imagined divide was the impetus for the entire critique.

I don't ever recall hearing Daniel say in response to a critic "but...but...you just don't understand me!" More often than not, when Daniel responds to a critic, he spends most of his time doing damage control because there are so many ill-informed critics out there.

[drew hempel]

Seriously if you want to understand what I said then you gotta read "In Search of the Miraculous" -- I put it right up there with "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" and Master Nan, Huai-chin's books.

http://www.amazon.com/In-Search-Miraculous-Fragments-Teaching/dp/0156445085

[sidecross]

This might be another occasion to repost the opening of Rene Daumal’s book:
A Night of Serious Drinking.




TO BE READ BEFORE USE


“I refuse to accept that a clear thought can ever be inexpressible. Appearances, however, are against me. For just as there is a level of pain at which the body ceases to feel because, because should it become involved in its pain, should it groan but once, it would seemingly crumble and return to dust; and just as there is a peak at which pain takes to the air on its own wings – so there is a level of thought where words have no part to play. Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct can not be named: what is clearest is unutterable. And yet things merely appear so. If human discourse is capable of expressing perfectly no more than a level of thought, it is because the mean of humankind thinks with this degree of intensity; it is to this level it assents, it is to this measure of exactness that it agrees. If we fail to make ourselves clear, we should not blame the tool we use.

Clear discourse presupposes three conditions; a speaker who knows what he wishes to say, a listener in a state of wakefulness, and a language common to both. But it is not enough for a language to be clear in the way that an algebraic proposition is clear. It must also have a real, not simply a possible content. Before this happens, the participants must have, as a fourth element, a common experience of the thing which is spoken of. The common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds; algebra in fact is no more than a vast intellectual credit exercise, a counterfeiting operation which is legitimate because it is acknowledged: each individual knows that it has its object and meaning in something other than itself, namely arithmetic. But it is still not enough for language to have clarity and content, as when I say “that day, it was raining” or “3 + 2 makes 5”; it must also have a goal and an imperative.

Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion. In this confused state of languages, men even though they have a common experience, have no language with which to exchange its fruits. Then, when this confusion grows intolerable, universal languages are invented, clear and hollow, where words are but counterfeit coins no longer backed by the gold of authentic experiences, languages which allow us from childhood to swell our heads with false knowledge. Between the confusion of Babble and the sterile esperantos, no choice is possible. It is these two forms of non-understanding, but more particularly the second, which I shall describe.”

[craazyman]

"Despite the zaniness, it’s a ride worth taking, partly for the wild entertainment value but also because the book is a document with genuine sociopolitical relevance."

You can't ask for more than that. It's a good, fair review and you could put some of its lines on a dust jacket. The publicist earned their fee with this one.

[drew hempel]

If you analyze the meaning of "zero" and "letters" (i.e. A Number has a successive Number marked by the symbol "a") -- algebra is not at all clear. Algebra is fucked.