For the first post since the interregnum, I'm going to reprint here the piece I posted on goodreads.com that inspired me to restart blogging. It's here in it's original form, unedited, with the comment I posted there after I actually finished reading the book. Enjoy...
Daniel Pinchbeck 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
this guy is a fucking idiot. i'm forcing myself to finish this because i need to see where he ends up. after a promising start, the book cruised straight downhill into a pile of endless shit. um, buddy, guy, dude, you've based your stupid book on widely (and I mean WIDELY) discredited pseudoscience and touchy feely new age drivel. i'd be laughing while reading this if it wasn't so infuriatingly tragic that people believe this garbage. uh, you do understand that science is based on that which is experimentally verifiable and not just some wild thoughts and premises that people of questionable psychological stability dreamed up ages ago. rudolf steiner? carl jung? seriously? c'mon! you've even botched the parts where you criticize Jared Diamond's conclusions (which are based on actual evidence and testable theories) in his books. did you even read his books, because it doesn't sound like you did.... you use whitley strieber's "Communion" as examples of abductions when even he has claimed his book shouldn't be used as an example of an alien abduction, since there's no way to prove it wasn't something that was dreamed.
oh, and i'll end here, but i've done hallucinogens. a fair amount of them. they fun recreationally. they are, however, not a spiritual doorway to new "consciousness". all they do is reinforce some belief that you already hold about them. jesus, the '60s sucked for a reason, don't try to bring them back you vapid, baby-boomer fuckhead.
okay, deep breaths, deep breaths...i'm done.
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i posted that review before i had actually finished the book. now that i'm done forcing myself to finish it, i have another final comment about the "sexual politics" that pinchbeck throws in at the end: "oh gosh, you have issues with monogamy? join the crowd! but don't start going off on how it's the fault of women for leading men around by their collective vaginas just because you can't make a decision as to whether or not you want to stay with your wife (who has obviously called you out on your bullshit and you can't really write that in a book about your personal bullshit). "you remind me of that handful of neo-hippie guys at vassar who talked a big game about who knows what that made some pathetic girls wet and then slept with as many of them as possible. give it up, you're no better than any frat boy ever. in fact, you're worse, because you try to veil your misogyny in postmodernisms and can't admit to yourself that all you care about is keeping your dick wet and you don't care about 'liberating women' or humanity or any other nice sentiments." i'm proud of myself, that was a pretty good part II of my rant. pat on the back to me!
3 comments:
i don't know what the proper way to type slow, sustained applause is, so i'll just put breasts instead:
(@ Y @)
(well put, sir)
Thanks for your blast of poorly written hostility. I hope you feel better about yourself after writing it?
I don't have time to go after your points one by one, and why should I, when you don't offer any reasoned thought? On the question of sexuality, it is not that women are leading us around by their "collective vaginas," but that both men and women are subject of old forms of repression and oppressive power relations that take different forms. I am currently rereading Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization", and he presents this case beautifully. The positive and rational emancipation of Eros and sexuality is critical to creating a non-repressive civilization - a world where the pleasure principle and the reality principle are not in conflict.
You might want to check out my new web magazine, Reality Sandwich, http://realitysandwich.com , where we are looking at the current transformation of culture and consciousness from many angles. It will probably give you much to spew about in future blog posts.
Yours,
dp
nah, i don't think i'll bother, the book was quite enough.
oh, and i felt great after writing that. i thought my post's prose was better than yours, but i guess that's just an opinion and not really verifiable scientifically. i guess there are a couple typos in there i'm not gonna bother to fix.
love,
myself
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