K.J
01-10-2007, 02:01 PM
I'm not sure one could call this a review of 2012TROQ, but it pretends to be, even though the author of this tripe has never even read it. Apparently his skeptical mind is scared shitless about reading it for himself and then reasoning his way to a decent review. To be honest, I'm not sure this was even worth posting here, other than for the slap upside the head this guy will likely get via comments on his blog from a few of you. :twisted:
Why You Should Not Use Psychedelic Drugs (http://actionskeptics.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-you-should-not-use-psychedelic.html)
Tonight's Colbert Report was a pretty good one. Especially notable was his gold "WØRD" chain that he donned after discussing Russel Simmons. But the interview was interminable.
It was this fellow, a Daniel Pinchbeck, who is an advocate of psychedelic drugs. I'd never heard of him, but I was eager to see what would ensue when Stephen took on a guy who used lots of peyote.
I should have known better.
This dude was a woo of the highest calibur. Exhibit one is his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. It's the only exhibit I need. In it he harps on the tired old newage claim that the Mayans prophesied an apocalypse of sorts in 2012 based only on the idea that their calendar doesn't go any further. What's really funny is that Quetzalcoatl is an Aztec god, so the book is wrong from the cover. I can hardly imagine how bad it gets on the inside.
The interview this guy gave was full of the highest quality bullshit. I mean, he threw around Mayan prophecy, psychic ability, consciousness raising, synchronicity, and made the Chopraesque claim that "this is the direction that quantum physics is pointing in." He began by saying that his book is all about how we put too much credence in science and reason, and we need to become more spiritual and "less materialistic." Part way through he switched his stance to one of communion between science and spiritualism. Too bad what he wants to blend is quantum flapdoodle and his own strawman of "science," the evil, materialistic Satan that wants to destroy God and spirituality and has the audacity to demand evidence in order to state that a claim is true.
He spoke of how 2012 will see a world transition from materialism (by which we have apparently always been plagued) to an "ancient to Quetzalcoatl but new to us" way of life, rife with love, spiritualism, and LSD. Let me say that again: apparently science and reason are ancient evils, and happy, feel-good, warm and fuzzy, vague as hell "spirituality" is something new. And guess when this transition, which is currently underway, got started? If you guessed "the 1960's," then you get a cookie.
What amazes me is the ability of people like this to completely understand what's happening when they take acid or peyote or whatever the hell else they want to damage their brains with, but still interpret the entire thing as some sort of "psychic experience" or "growth of consciousness." Physically changing how your brain works so that you hallucinate talking green elephants having sex with a female Jesus doesn't "expand your consciousness." I can change how your brain works by hitting you really fucking hard in the head. I should sell psychic experiences. The startup is cheap; all I need is a baseball bat. The profits in terms of cash and personal satisfaction would be immense.
People like Pinchbeck choose to believe that what they know to be a hallucination, a false reality created by a misfiring brain, is somehow indicative of a "deeper truth." I did some looking and, according to Wikipedia:
In "2012," he also describes his direct reception of prophetic material: the voice of the Mesoamerican god form or archetype, Quetzalcoatl, began speaking to him during a 2004 trip to the Amazon in Brazil.
That's right. He went to Brazil, took a trip, spoke to an Aztec god, and wrote a book dealing with Mayan prophecies. Remember, both cultures existed in Central America. Not Brazil. But these contradictions don't matter, see, because "Like, it's all the same, man, when, like, you think about it." The phrase "god form or archetype" is fantastic in its vague, wooey meaninglessness.
I hate these newage fuckers.
Since I wouldn't read this book if you tied my testicles to a boulder and threw it off a cliff, let's look, for comedic purposes, at a couple of its Amazon reviews.
Says one reviewer,
His propensity for generalizing is rampant with such things as "according to Eastern thought" (cause we all know Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism are really of one mind). These generalizations turn scary whenever he broaches the topic of women. His anger and bitterness towards women (p.356) is obviously based on personal history, but he tries to couch it in cosmic terms. He also rails against monogamy, but his argument seems to be that monogamy is getting in the way of him having sex with whomever he wants (seriously).
And another,
2012 left me with the nagging, slightly sticky feeling that Pinchbeck was not a wide-eyed explorer of consciousness, but rather a rich Manhattan art world brat (his description of walking around Berlin in the rain is particularly indicative) who left his wife and daughter in pursuit of the End of the World Party complete with as much free sex and intoxication as he could afford. Rock star or mystic? Free thinker or man trapped by his own pursuit of What Is Cool?
and,
After bushwacking through the crop circle revelations and the mysteries of the modern calendar, 2012 settles upon and rediscovers - or discovers, as Pinchbeck seems to believe - the complex world of non-monogamy. He declares that the polyamorists among us are more emotionally evolved and free, and uses this thin, tired excuse to treat women with great disrespect.
Yeah, he sounds like a winner to me.
The worst of all comes from the book-flap description, probably penned by the egomeister himself:
Cross James Merrill, H. P. Lovecraft, and Carlos Castaneda -each imbued with a twenty-first-century aptitude for quantum theory and existential psychology-and you get the voice of Daniel Pinchbeck. And yet, nothing quite prepares us for the lucidity, rationale, and informed audacity of this seeker, skeptic, and cartographer of hidden realms.
So this guy is pretentious enough to claim that he's a mix of a celebrated poet, a master author of classic horror, and a loonybat woowoo fucknugget, and that he understands quantum theory? Man, he needs to buy my mind-expanding service, and soon. He knows enough about quantum theory to know, like all woos, that it's "totally, blow your mind, like, crazy, man." He claims to be the sole person to map these "hidden realms," though many other shitheads have written about the exact same nonsense over the years. And did you catch there where he called himself a skeptic? Cute, huh?
Fuck him.
Daniel Pinchbeck is a feel-good, tell-the-shitheads-what-they-want-to-hear author. He spews newage cliches and pretends he's saying something new. He isn't an advocate of psychedelics so much as he is a hippie born two decades too late. He isn't smart, he isn't right, he isn't a prophet. He's a drug-addled moron with no critical thinking skills who has seen What The Bleep one too many times. Which is to say he's seen it once. This guy is what would result if Deepak Chopra had a love child with later Alduous Huxley (though much respect to Brave New World). His view of reality is more warped than an anime version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland directed by Alan Moore. If my future children ever ask me "Why shouldn't we do drugs, daddy?" I'm going to point them to Pinchbeck and say "Because, children, nobody wants to be like him."
You can find the interview at the Colbert Report's website, and probably on YouTube any day now.
Why You Should Not Use Psychedelic Drugs (http://actionskeptics.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-you-should-not-use-psychedelic.html)
Tonight's Colbert Report was a pretty good one. Especially notable was his gold "WØRD" chain that he donned after discussing Russel Simmons. But the interview was interminable.
It was this fellow, a Daniel Pinchbeck, who is an advocate of psychedelic drugs. I'd never heard of him, but I was eager to see what would ensue when Stephen took on a guy who used lots of peyote.
I should have known better.
This dude was a woo of the highest calibur. Exhibit one is his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. It's the only exhibit I need. In it he harps on the tired old newage claim that the Mayans prophesied an apocalypse of sorts in 2012 based only on the idea that their calendar doesn't go any further. What's really funny is that Quetzalcoatl is an Aztec god, so the book is wrong from the cover. I can hardly imagine how bad it gets on the inside.
The interview this guy gave was full of the highest quality bullshit. I mean, he threw around Mayan prophecy, psychic ability, consciousness raising, synchronicity, and made the Chopraesque claim that "this is the direction that quantum physics is pointing in." He began by saying that his book is all about how we put too much credence in science and reason, and we need to become more spiritual and "less materialistic." Part way through he switched his stance to one of communion between science and spiritualism. Too bad what he wants to blend is quantum flapdoodle and his own strawman of "science," the evil, materialistic Satan that wants to destroy God and spirituality and has the audacity to demand evidence in order to state that a claim is true.
He spoke of how 2012 will see a world transition from materialism (by which we have apparently always been plagued) to an "ancient to Quetzalcoatl but new to us" way of life, rife with love, spiritualism, and LSD. Let me say that again: apparently science and reason are ancient evils, and happy, feel-good, warm and fuzzy, vague as hell "spirituality" is something new. And guess when this transition, which is currently underway, got started? If you guessed "the 1960's," then you get a cookie.
What amazes me is the ability of people like this to completely understand what's happening when they take acid or peyote or whatever the hell else they want to damage their brains with, but still interpret the entire thing as some sort of "psychic experience" or "growth of consciousness." Physically changing how your brain works so that you hallucinate talking green elephants having sex with a female Jesus doesn't "expand your consciousness." I can change how your brain works by hitting you really fucking hard in the head. I should sell psychic experiences. The startup is cheap; all I need is a baseball bat. The profits in terms of cash and personal satisfaction would be immense.
People like Pinchbeck choose to believe that what they know to be a hallucination, a false reality created by a misfiring brain, is somehow indicative of a "deeper truth." I did some looking and, according to Wikipedia:
In "2012," he also describes his direct reception of prophetic material: the voice of the Mesoamerican god form or archetype, Quetzalcoatl, began speaking to him during a 2004 trip to the Amazon in Brazil.
That's right. He went to Brazil, took a trip, spoke to an Aztec god, and wrote a book dealing with Mayan prophecies. Remember, both cultures existed in Central America. Not Brazil. But these contradictions don't matter, see, because "Like, it's all the same, man, when, like, you think about it." The phrase "god form or archetype" is fantastic in its vague, wooey meaninglessness.
I hate these newage fuckers.
Since I wouldn't read this book if you tied my testicles to a boulder and threw it off a cliff, let's look, for comedic purposes, at a couple of its Amazon reviews.
Says one reviewer,
His propensity for generalizing is rampant with such things as "according to Eastern thought" (cause we all know Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism are really of one mind). These generalizations turn scary whenever he broaches the topic of women. His anger and bitterness towards women (p.356) is obviously based on personal history, but he tries to couch it in cosmic terms. He also rails against monogamy, but his argument seems to be that monogamy is getting in the way of him having sex with whomever he wants (seriously).
And another,
2012 left me with the nagging, slightly sticky feeling that Pinchbeck was not a wide-eyed explorer of consciousness, but rather a rich Manhattan art world brat (his description of walking around Berlin in the rain is particularly indicative) who left his wife and daughter in pursuit of the End of the World Party complete with as much free sex and intoxication as he could afford. Rock star or mystic? Free thinker or man trapped by his own pursuit of What Is Cool?
and,
After bushwacking through the crop circle revelations and the mysteries of the modern calendar, 2012 settles upon and rediscovers - or discovers, as Pinchbeck seems to believe - the complex world of non-monogamy. He declares that the polyamorists among us are more emotionally evolved and free, and uses this thin, tired excuse to treat women with great disrespect.
Yeah, he sounds like a winner to me.
The worst of all comes from the book-flap description, probably penned by the egomeister himself:
Cross James Merrill, H. P. Lovecraft, and Carlos Castaneda -each imbued with a twenty-first-century aptitude for quantum theory and existential psychology-and you get the voice of Daniel Pinchbeck. And yet, nothing quite prepares us for the lucidity, rationale, and informed audacity of this seeker, skeptic, and cartographer of hidden realms.
So this guy is pretentious enough to claim that he's a mix of a celebrated poet, a master author of classic horror, and a loonybat woowoo fucknugget, and that he understands quantum theory? Man, he needs to buy my mind-expanding service, and soon. He knows enough about quantum theory to know, like all woos, that it's "totally, blow your mind, like, crazy, man." He claims to be the sole person to map these "hidden realms," though many other shitheads have written about the exact same nonsense over the years. And did you catch there where he called himself a skeptic? Cute, huh?
Fuck him.
Daniel Pinchbeck is a feel-good, tell-the-shitheads-what-they-want-to-hear author. He spews newage cliches and pretends he's saying something new. He isn't an advocate of psychedelics so much as he is a hippie born two decades too late. He isn't smart, he isn't right, he isn't a prophet. He's a drug-addled moron with no critical thinking skills who has seen What The Bleep one too many times. Which is to say he's seen it once. This guy is what would result if Deepak Chopra had a love child with later Alduous Huxley (though much respect to Brave New World). His view of reality is more warped than an anime version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland directed by Alan Moore. If my future children ever ask me "Why shouldn't we do drugs, daddy?" I'm going to point them to Pinchbeck and say "Because, children, nobody wants to be like him."
You can find the interview at the Colbert Report's website, and probably on YouTube any day now.