NP - 2012: Carnival of Bunkum

[David Morris]

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/art-entertainment/2012-carnival-bunkum

Much of the 2012 shtick is a light-fingered (if leaden-humored)
rip-off of the late rave-culture philosopher Terence McKenn's stand-up
routine, without McKenna's prodigious erudition, effortless eloquence,
or arch wit, and Pinchbeck is no exception. For Quetzalcoatl's sake,
if you're going to start a religion, at least invent your own
cosmology. Even L. Ron Hubbard was canny enough to concoct a pulp
theology for ham-radio enthusiasts out of leftover SF plots. But every
time I see Pinchbeck's glum mug, regarding the world with a sort of
forced bliss, I think: Would you buy a used eschaton from this man?
(McKenna, by the way, knew which side his ectoplasm was buttered on.
When I asked him, over dinner, why a man of his obvious intellectual
nimbleness endured the saucer abductees and trance-channelers who
plucked at his sleeve at New Age seminars, he rolled a knowing eye and
replied, I thought wearily, that he owed his daily crust to
"menopausal mystics" and thus had to suffer them, if not gladly.) But
the worst of the 2012 bandwagon, epitomized by Pinchbeck's lectures
and writings, is the blithe cultural arrogance and staggering
anthropological ignorance evident in the movement's appropriation of
Mayan beliefs and history.