Department Of My Favorite I KNEW IT Headline
That would be from this book review:
The guru who loved to lie:
The wild celebrity and dark secrets of author Carlos Castaneda
( review excerpt ):“The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.
That book (…and those that followed) seduced millions of readers….That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Casteneda, reveals the depth of his deception — and…how easily people can be taken in by it.
‘He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,’ Marshall writes. ‘He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.’…
Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s…he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books.
His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of The Teachings spoke effervescently about both.
It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups… were massive bestsellers.”
The writings of trained [1] anthropologist Castaneda, in particular his Don Juan series, were all the rage during my early college years. If often seemed that, when walking down the residence hall hallways, you couldn’t spit (and I did try) without encountering a fellow student, slumped outside their dorm room, taking a break from cramming for their chemistry midterm by searching for some stoner wisdom from the mythical [2] Yaqui “Man of Knowledge” Don Juan Matus. Castaneda’s books portrayed Don Juan as a shaman (of the indigenous Yaqui people) who imparted his wisdom to Castenada via a purported apprenticeship Casteneda had with Don Juan in the early 1960s.
I tried to understand the appeal by reading [3] the first and some of the second of what would eventually be a series of quasi-spiritual drivel nine books. [4] My reaction to what I read was further evidence to moiself that I would never be as hip as my comrades…and I was relieved to be so.
I only said, You realize he made up all that shit?!?! a few times to Castenada/Don Juan true believers. The reactions my skepticism received made me realize that if the reason for my lack of mystical illumination after reading the books – the reason moiself couldn’t understand the deep spiritual enlightenment wisdom of the books’ teachings – was that I wasn’t stoned while reading them (as one devoted Castenda follower informed me), then that was a burden I was willing to shoulder. I got more enlightenment, and a better use of my time, via playing a game of racquetball with friends.
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Department Of Sometimes The Analogy Can’t Be Stretched
Dateline: Sunday 2:52 pm, listening to a TED Talk podcast, Sports Psychology For Everyone: The Psychology of Winning (and Losing). Some interesting stuff there, including interviews with sports stars and behavioral scientists. The hour-long podcast is divided into four segments:
* Soccer legend Abby Wambach reflects on the most iconic goal of her career
* Why we choke under pressure, according to a cognitive scientist
* Don’t be afraid of failure. Instead, embrace the near-win
The third segment had some key insights into why some sports develop and maintain a loyal audience while others – e.g., women’s sports – have a harder time doing so. Obstacles include good old-fashioned sexism…
…coupled with cultural traditions, familiarity, and generational inheritance.
Journalist Kate Fagan:
“When I worked at ESPN…I was always pitching women’s sports stories.
It almost never worked. Every once in a while, it would work. But this thing would happen when we would do a women’s sports segment. Many of the other men on the segment – they didn’t really do their homework. So they were kind of blah, then the segment would be kind of blah. There’s actually a term for this. It’s called gender bland. And then the segment would end, and the producer would be like, ‘See, this is why we never do women’s sports, ’cause they’re boring.
When a men’s segment fell flat, the problem was us. We would redo it. All right, come on, do your homework. Pick it up. We’re doing that again. When a segment on women’s sports fell flat, the problem was women’s sports.
The reality is that, just existing in our culture, you will know a dozen men’s storylines… these things are literally push-notified to your phone. Or you’re at a bar or a doctor’s office, and the talking heads are giving you the latest NBA drama. In America, osmosis will have you knowing men’s sports storylines…”
Fagan:
“There’s so many veins of generational inheritance in sports. There’s the one that does take time and literal family generations where you can actually say, Why am I a New York Met fan? Well, ’cause my grandpa was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And then they left for LA. And then the next team that we got was the New York Mets…. And there’s something bigger than yourself about that.
I think why we love sports at its core is for the culture and community of it. And whether it’s your literal community, it’s like your city team, or you live out of state, and it’s your grandmother’s favorite team…That’s all part of community as well.
And then pair that – and they often go hand in hand – with cultural value….We want to be in on what culture is talking about.”
Fagan and other podcast guest spoke of factors that get people interested in more obscure/not-so-popular-in-our-culture sports – factors such as when we understand the stakes to the games and the storylines within them (e.g., the underdog USA ice hockey team battling the heavily favored USSR team; the Romanian gymnast struggling in poverty…). Then Fagan shared a story of how her father, who taught her basketball, guided her with two pieces of advice about the game, which she applies to life today:
” ‘Always make your last dribble the hardest’….
The other one I loved was…‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’
And that’s a standard basketball one, but…my wife and I will say it to each other all the time when we want to do something we’re not sure we should. It’s like, ‘Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ “
Moiself’s mind immediately began trying to analogize that shot-taking adage to other sports and activities. For some reason, rock climbing was the first one I thought of:
“You survive 100 percent of the cliffs you don’t fall off of
from the mountains you don’t climb….”
Hmmmm? Needs more work to reach pithy aphorism status.
* * *
Department Of Why AI Sucks
Moiself looks forward to AI applications that can assist doctors to more quickly distinguish between benign and malignant tumors, and which can also help medical researchers fine-tune existing/invent new treatments and for illnesses from cancer to tuberculosis…and help scientists discover non-toxic ways to eliminate air- and waterborne pollutants and develop non-toxic, renewable energy sources…
As for the rest, this sums up my feelings and fears. When it comes to writing (both fiction and nonfiction/journalism) and the creative arts, don’t be fooled by a seemingly bland term like, Artificial Intelligence. It’s counterfeit coding ; it’s plagiarism software.
BTW, that ingestion of written output…without consent, compensation, and credit…? It’s happened to moiself.
BTW 2.0: for any other published writers out there, whether or not you are involved in one of the many class action lawsuits re AI-enabled pirating, [5] AI-enabled pirating of your work has already happened or will happen to you, whether or not you are aware of it.
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [6]
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May you be able to spot spiritual flim-flam;
May you not be the easiest person to fool;
May you not fall off of the cliffs you do not climb;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] But never professionally employed as an anthropologist.
[2] As in, Casteneda pulled Don Juan (and their encounters) out of his ass.
[3] By the second book, it was more like skimming, as I found it so uninteresting I couldn’t concentrate on paying actual attention to the twaddle.
[4] The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power, The Eagle’s Gift, The Fire From Within, The Power of Silence, The Art of Dreaming.
[5] I am one of the many parties to the Anthropic CA lawsuit.
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
