Daniel Pinchbeck video
I enjoy contemplating Daniel Pinchbeck's McKenna-like ideas about the nature of time and human consciousness. I don't buy everything he's saying, but still appreciate much of what he has to offer.
Here's a video he created that presents the concepts in his latest book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Apocalypse fever in New York Magazine
• Profile of psychedelic author Daniel Pinchbeck
• Profile of psychedelic author Daniel Pinchbeck
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Nothing against you, Markji, but listening to Pinchbeck muse about his entirely subjective, DMT-addled "insights" on time is nothing but a waste of it.
2012 is going to be a big, fat bust. Remember the Harmonic Convergence of 1987?
isn't there always someone who finds themself on the eye of the public eye, claiming we're on the verge or cusp of a new age of enlightenment or conciousness?
and if it's so important, and we should all be aware, couldn't we get some better computer animation to help the process?
"I don't buy everything he's saying"
One disclaimer should be applied to one-half of the earth's population. The other half, of course, gets "I don't buy everything she's saying."
-- SCAM
I read (most of) 2012, and was very intrigued at first. It actually starts off with some seriously compelling and thought-provoking ideas.
Then as it progresses, it starts to go off the metaphorical deep-end. First, in a slightly amusing way, and then in a ridiculous 'you've got to be kidding me' way. I got so disgusted I couldn't finish reading it. He comes across as just plain arrogant.
Then there was that weird Rolling Stone article that painted him as a total sleaze. Who knows how much of that is true - he went to great lengths to dispute the author's claims - but there's something about him that's just a little disturbing...
Pinchbeck's full of shit. I've spent some time around actual Mayan daykeepers in Guatemala and Mexico, and his interpretation of the Mayan calendrical system and Mayan cosmology is just pura mierda.
No, the world isn't going to end in 2012, nor does the Mayan Calendar end then, any more than the Harmonic Convergence was real. Damn, pero gabachos is stupid sometimes.
Look, I am no scholar in this field. I am not a "Mayanist" expert, nor am I Mayan obviously, or someone who's qualified to speak for the indigenous people who originated this knowledge, as it were.
But having spent considerable time in Mayan communities in Guatemala since I was a teenager, among priests and older community members who maintain this tradition, I can say with much confidence that hucksters like Pinchbeck (and Castaneda and Argüelles and their profiteering ilk) are just constantly, willfully, clumsily misinterpreting and co-opting this material to sell books and fashion themselves as new age messiahs.
Seriously, move along.
An authentic understanding of Mayan calendrical systems and religion is a lot more complicated and hard to come by, if you're non-indigenous, and you damn sure aren't gonna get it by munching on DMT and staring at fractals.
BTW no disrespect to Mark there, at all. I can totally understand why reasonable folks find the broader array of Pinchbeck's ideas interesting or amusing. But the part of his schtick that co-opts what's left of tribal culture, and sloppily, inaccurately reinterprets it at a profit pisses me off.
xeni and others,
first of all i admit there's something unsavory about pinchbeck in general. he's not very charismatic and it makes his already jagged ideas even more hard to swallow. and when you look at him in the face of mckenna's absence you say "oh thank god, someone's here to fill his shoes", but when you immerse yourself in mckenna and then take another look at pinchbeck you say "this amateur's got small feet".
that being said, there's nothing about pinchbeck's book that tries to co-opt mayan culture or tries to set him up in a position of messiah. like his other book, Breaking Open the Head, he examines the culture at large by pulling together disparate philosophies of myriad philosophers. and really the point of the book is not so much that the mayans say the world is going to "end" soon, but that many cultures and theories and world views all sort of point to this general time period as an ending of one world age and the beginning of another: from the kali yuga to the apocalypse to the switching of the zodiac age, all these are sort of converging. even ray kurzweil's singularity lines up with this loose time frame.
the theory is not that we will wake up one frosty december (or maybe balmy with global warming) morning and the thumb of god will be descending to snuff us out, nor is it that the collective consciousness of an incredibly selfish and isolated people will suddenly click over to utopia mode in the nick of time. it's simply this: bad shit is happening, the planet is suffering, people are suffering, demons are running amok, "the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity," and we will soon be free of all control if we don't pull in the reigns. our view of the world is extremely, extremely narrow, and the proprietors of our world view make a concerted effort to keep it as narrow as possible. there are other, different, and potentially transformative ways of knowing the world. perhaps if we utilize them we could save ourselves.
and xeni, you can't munch DMT. it's not orally active without an MAOI.
@okkoto, wasn't intending "munch" literally, I'm aware of how it's ingested.
The reason these guys cite "2012" and "2013" and refer to "the return of Quetzalcoatl" has everything to do with a new age misinterpretation of Mayan and Nahua cosmology. End of story, AFAIAC.
I'm totally with you on the broader notion that human beings have done a lot of damage to the world, and that we need to think very differently and act very differently now if we want to leave a good inheritance to our grandchildren (and the many other species that will inherit the planet).
Poor Pinchbeck, born 20 years too late. But hey, somebody had to repackage the 60s for the video-game age.
xeni,
well if your with "me" on that stuff, you're with pinchbeck. that's my interpretation of his book.
i agree, putting 2012 and quetzalcoatl in the title is at best misleading, bordering on marketing ploy, but the book is not about an interpretation of mayan cosmology. an earlier commenter criticized him for being purely subjective which is far more accurate of a criticism.
do you think that joseph campbell is a great co-opter and misinterpreter? i think pinchbeck is working more in that vein. he's not saying "hey let's all be mayans and save the world with their magic". but he's looking for universalities across world views. one of the more intriguing ones being the mayan cosmology. and i see the danger in that. i see how culture is a sacred thing and shouldn't be mishandled. but i dont think the scales should be tipped in either direction: co-opting or isolating.
but the largest chapter in the book is about friggin crop circles, so call him out on that rather than the whole 2012 thing. call him out for his thoughts on time at the beginning of the video being straight out of Jay Griffith's A Sideways Look At Time. but really i'm just saying cut out the brown spots and dont throw away the whole apple.
and i'm not a huge fan of pinchbeck, especially after the 2012 book. i thought Breaking Open the Head was far better in research, theory, writing, and as a cohesive whole. but i think people just see 2012 and call BS because they are rightfully skeptical of any prophecy, but i think that is a misrepresentation of what's actually in the book.
he had a dialog with rushkoff a year ago. it's worth checking out because i'm sure most of us wind up in the middle of both of them.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=pinchbeck+rushkoff&hl=en
in that video, Daniel keeps dismissing every single one of Douglas' insights as "mere ideas" and Doug gets so pissed off he retorts with "What the hell else are we talking about, buddy?!?!"
Good stuff.
I love Doug Rushkoff. For that reason, and many others.
I haven't read either book yet. But check this out ODD SYNCHRONICITY that worth a laugh from even the most devoted Pinchbeck fan:
pinch·beck (pĭnch'bĕk') pronunciation
n.
1. An alloy of zinc and copper used as imitation gold.
2. A cheap imitation.
adj.
1. Made of pinchbeck.
2. Imitation; spurious.
from answers.com - link above.
- gregoryp(tm)