Letters to the Editor
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Hey ivanveen you just made me realize something
Bush's problem in Iraq was that he thought the Iraqis were hippies!!!
What other group of people in human history would have greeted tanks and bombs with flowers and kisses?
Aha but they weren't hippies. If only they had been, eh?
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Ivaneen...
Have you ever asked your parents why they pursued the beliefs they did? Have you ever asked what kind of society they were trying to escape from? There are reasons people dropped out and tuned in back then, and it's not because they all just wanted to get high/sleep around or evilly wanted to screw up the heads of their kids. The society and mores they were escaping from weren't exactly a paradise, so as a rationalist, you might try to figure out the "whys" of what they did instead of being smug that you "know better."
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Anonymous: As you might remember...which you probably can't...
Bikers were always around (Altamont anyone?) somehow. I think it is because they were supplying all of the drugs at the parties. Plus there is only a fine line of difference between a biker and a hippie anyway, when it comes dow to it.
You are absolutely right about Yuppie Stock Brokers, they are scum.
Infact hereis a list of all of the despicable and wretched people:
Hippies
Yuppies
Lawyers
Stockbrokers (covered already, I know)
Hipsters
Nerds who want to be Hipsters
Indie people of all kinds
Psuedo-Punks
Deconstructionists
Post-Structuralists
Feminists (I guess that goes without saying)
Cranks, I hate cranks
New Agers (definitely evil)
Baby Boomers
WHiny Gen-xers (while we're at it)
Gangsta Rappers
Atheists (Just kidding, that one was actually a joke...I love atheists, I am one!)
Scientists (NO! that was a joke too)
Scientologists are definitely on the shit list though
Gen Y and Gen Z the little brats
Did I mention Hippies yet?
Baby Boomers (oh yeah already got them, well they deserve to be on the list twice.)
Global Warming Sceptics
Vegetarians (How could I forget them?)
Vegans (even worse than vegetarians)
Camile Paglia (Okay she has been covered extensively elsewhere)
Wicca
Jocks and Frat boys pure evil
Rich people
Poor People
The Middle class is truly terrible
Suburbanites
Snobbish Urbanites
Williamsburg Dwellers (even the nerdy ones)
Cary Tennis does not belong on this list!! SO don't even think about putting him here.
Most of the Salon letter writers
How could I forget Republicans?
I'll throw in most Dems as well
Libertarians are out to lunch
Big Oil
Big Pharma
Doctors are bad, bad, bad
Corporate slaves
Tech support (those people make our lives hell)
Christians and Muslims (though they are not as bad as New Agers)
Jews are awesome and totally kick-ass...unless they live in Israel
MBA's (how can you be an MBA? that is just a wierd phrse)
Oh I could go on and on, but I will stop there....
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Deering...
Oh, I've asked them why, believe me, I've asked them. A soft-headed shrug of the shoulders is the most sensible answer I've ever gotten.
You Boomers are so precious about yourselves!! Geez.
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Yeah...
The Iraqis turned out to be Bikers instead of Hippies....
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if he had had it shelved in the Religion section rather than Anthropology
like L. Ron Hubbard, he would still be in business now. ivanveen, just wiki'd Rajneeshpuram, you have my sympathy.
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Castaneda a cult leader?! Say it ain't so!
As a young anthropology student who also practiced a form of kung-fu steeped in Buddhism, I was obsessed with otherworldly mysticism and Castaneda in particular. I played the role of apologist to those who attempted to debunk him and a pusher of his books to anyone I thought might be remotely receptive. Looking back now, I realise I was a complete cliché: the tortured young searcher looking to hide from real life pain with intellectualised ghost stories and woo-woo. The only thing missing was the beret.
Eventually, fortunately, my arguments and evasions ceased to persuade even myself, and I became a rationalist, sceptic, and a full-fledged atheist. I still enjoy reading Castaneda as modern folklore, but I no longer struggle to unlock the deep secret truths I used to think were hidden behind every anecdote.
Open-mindedness also means accepting that the things you wish were true sometimes aren’t.
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Castaneda did not deny the fictional character of don Juan
In the article you state that, "Skepticism increased in 1972 after Joyce Carol Oates, in a letter to the New York Times, expressed bewilderment that a reviewer had accepted Castaneda's books as nonfiction."
I would suggest that Castaneda did not deny that he had created don Juan as a literary fiction. In a recent entry on the blog "You Bet Your Life", Harvey Bialy references a Letter to the Editor that he wrote to the Boston Phoenix in which he asks Mr. Castaneda, "Who Are You?"
"Mr. Castaneda's circumspect non-denial (Phoenix, April 19) of his correspondence with Mr. Bialy (Phoenix, April 12), brings to mind the funnel vision of poetic fiction, the prisms of fiction stretched outward to accommodate an expanding field of truths."
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2007/04/harvey_bialy_th.html
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Truth! Meaning! Woo!
Let me see if I understand the contributions from the Storytellers and the Open Minded Spiritual Hippie Boomers Who Invented Everything. I think what you're saying is something like this:
"You may think that Castaneda's books were a mix of bullshit and plagiarism, but there's a truth and meaning that dogmatic rationalists can't see. It's the truth that what isn't true in a true sense can still be meaningfully true in a meaning sense. After all, it isn't truthfully true that atheists and scientists eat babies because they have no moral code or spiritual understanding, but there is truth to the idea that atheists and scientists are evil baby-eaters, because they are evil enough to do that, so in the meaning sense it's true even if in the truth sense it isn't true.
"You can say it isn't truthfully true that he met some old Indian guy and learned ancient secrets, but he got people to believe him, and people don't believe anything they know is a lie, and even though people try to say Castaneda was a liar, people still believe what he wrote, so duh! It's obviously the truth! Truthful truth and meaningful truth! Ipso facto QED!"
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Semtex...
Truer words were never said.