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A little over a year ago I reviewed a book in these hallowed electronic pages called 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. That review mainly consisted of an ad-hominem attack on its author, Daniel Pinchbeck, for which I am marginally regretful. Not because the book is good, or its ideas are worthwhile, but because I failed in my objective to shine light on a tremendous pile of stupidity and, instead, flinged mud at a messenger. At the time an opportunity arose in which I could (and should) have criticized convoluted new-age spiritual garbage, but I got lazy faced with the prospect of actually having to re-read the book to really pick it apart and expose its lack of merit.
Fortunately all I got was a weak type-lashing from the author in my comments scolding me for being a bad boy. Unfortunately, the beast has returned, new tome in hand culled from the vast storeroom of vacuity that is his website. Titled Toward 2012, it's clear Pinchbeck has a fetish and is determined to mine it for all it's worth, presumably until three years hence, when Y2K happens all over again. Dwight Garner just reviewed this for the NYTimes and, while much subtler than I in his criticisms, pretty much labels the book a steaming pile. But first he had to provide some context and so blurbed Pinchbeck's previous book thusly:
In a previous book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” Mr. Pinchbeck seemed to want to have it both ways about earth’s fast-approaching deadline. He didn’t entirely dismiss the possibility of Armageddon, but he used his book as an occasion to urge humanity to come together to stop global warming and heal the planet in other ways. Maybe, you know, we can head this bad juju off at the pass. Mr. Pinchbeck also wrote about crop circles, alien abductees, experiences with poltergeists, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms and practicing “new ideals of erotic freedom,” but never mind.
I read that and laughed, reminded of exactly how far removed from any rational thought this material is. The mention of "new ideals of erotic freedom" nearly made me lose my coffee all over this keyboard, since it was belittling Pinchbeck's views on that topic in particular that got me in trouble in the first place.
Seeing this review on the screen as I set myself up here at work this morning got me thinking about people close to me who go in for this sort of thing (Garner does mention "woo-woo friends" in his review). It makes me a bit depressed to know people are desperately reaching for meaning in a universe devoid of any such enduring thing and, thus, cling to outrageous anti-scientific and pseudoscientifc claims in books such as Pinchbeck's.
Just yesterday Scientific American posted a story, "Finding Control In Chaos", whose subtitle read: Feeling helpless leads to see nonexistent patterns. The article is short, I recommend reading it, but the ultimate point is that test subjects imposed fictitious order on situations in which they lacked control. I've found among people who are into new-age or vaguely spiritual "philosophies" that acute lack of control over their place in the universe and an intense desire for meaning to show its face.
This isn't a rare phenomenon by any stretch. In fact, it's probably the default human setting as far as anyone has determined. Our imaginations are a wondrous tool, but to deny ourselves the use of our rational functions is as criminal as denying our imaginations for rigid logic and order. We have the capability for dialectical thinking, for synthesizing our logical functions with our imaginative capacities. It would be to humanity's benefit for us as individuals to take advantage of this. Wallowing in shallow pools of pseudoscientific drivel and spiritual horseblather is a waste and proponents of this kind of thinking should be seen as the hucksters and contemporary snake-oil salesman they are.
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!
