–Carlos Castaneda, “The Second Ring of Power”

DNW: Thanks!

The Castaneda story still bothers me. I was, admittedly, a credulous young man, but not entirely stupid, when I read his books in the early 70s and I was quite excited. Here was proof of the wild stuff I had suspected was true. An account of paranormal experiences from a tradition I had never known with the stamp of approval from a major university plus some high-powered anthropologists and intellectuals of the time.

If the Castaneda books were true, they changed the world.

Unfortunately, the books got stranger and stranger and stupider. At the end of the fifth book, Don Juan and Don Genaro, the two sorcerers Castaneda’s readers had come to know and love, leave the earth to go live in some perfect red ladybug world, I had had it.

Later I learned that after the big success of his first three books, Castaneda withdrew from the public and began one of the weirdest cults I know of (and I know about a lot of cults). He was the charismatic leader and took on many of his female followers as lovers, which is par for the course, but he had them all dye their hair blonde and wear it short. After he died, five of those women disappeared never to be seen again. It’s suspected that they had a suicide pact with Castaneda to meet him at the end of infinity or some such blather. The bones of one of his women were found in Death Valley.

Castaneda’s books are still taught in college courses. I’ve read that most anthropologists consider his work fraudulent, but Castaneda is still on the side of truth and beauty as far as official academia goes.

Bertrand Russell showed 1 + 1 = 2 from first principles. From that 2 + 2 = 4. From first principles — culture not a part of it at all.

It’s not like the Arabs, Chinese or Indians think different. Nor did Mayans, Aztecs, ancient Egyptians. These “other” ways of thinking are all — all — from societies that never built anything bigger than a large hut. They are very definitely a tiny minority, and not hugely successful, even in their own terms.

COVID will help the Ivies, the sanctimonious Leftist primas, dig their own graves.
Who will spend the money for an on-line education in order to hold a once-noble Princeton degree? We can thank COVID! A vaccine will not arrive for a looong time, if ever.

We are not entering the Dark Ages; we are in them. A few colleges, like Hillsdale (to which I contribute, as opposed to my leftist “highly rated” liberal arts college), will be sentinel hold-outs as long as they are permitted to exist.

and we all know about our Fave… right?

Oh really… hmmmm…
reminds me of the mistaken proofs that show 1=2

Good catch on Castaneda. I once had a humanities course of some kind, taught by a clown who referenced Castaneda and some book called Morning of the Magicians repeatedly, citing them as if they were peer reviewed gospels. I suppose, given enough faith in your mushrooms, and of your disciples in you, you could literally fly. Though if some mean Neanderthals dragged you to the top of a 10 storey building and tossed you off, the flight might be said to have been successful in only a metaphorical sense, the cosmic conditions not being properly aligned.

But these references and claims came in the form, or I should say formlessness, of an amorphpus jumble of assertions piled one on another. It was as if the guy would light on an idea briefly, dump criticism on the convention minded, and then flit off in some other random direction to repeat the process. The nuts and bolts of this mysterious new dawning, were never described, nor were practical examples adduced.

Of course when I arrived at a school with an at least regionally prestigious reputation, I was taught anthropology by a professor there who still covered Margaret Mead, with a straighht face.

So ….

Some might find this old article interesting and maybe even reassuring. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/13/archives/alternative-realities-realities.html

Geoffrey Britain: Since “fave” [fool+knave] is taken, how about a new category, the “knool” [knave+fool]?

Sort of like “True, False, Null” as OBloodyHell mentioned in the kafkatraps topic, we can have “Knave, Fool, Knool”.

Knools. It really does seem to me that people manage the feat by jumping between the two states as fast as they need to. Which contributes to their camouflage since the rest of us waste time wondering, “Knave or fool?”

(Of course the nicer folks wonder, “Fool or knave?”)