I’m very interested in his novel.

More about the video:

This unique dialogue brings together two leading counterculture thinkers, Daniel Pinchbeck author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age, and Breaking Open the Head, and Graham Hancock author of Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural and most recently the fantasy adventure novel Entangled. Pinchbeck and Hancock discuss the implications of the Mayan Calendar “end-times” date 2012 which Hancock first drew to the attention of his readers in Fingerprints of the Gods published in 1995. Hancock’s evidence for a great lost civilisation wiped out in a global cataclysm 12,500 years ago is explored in depth together with his suggestion that the survivors of that civilisation may have sought to pass down a message to the future and indeed specifically to us in the twenty-first century — a warning that the next great lost civilisation may be our own.

From the geology of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Egypt to the mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant, from ancient maps showing the world as it looked during the last Ice Age to out-of-place artefacts indicative of high technology in ancient times, the discussion ranges widely across some of the most intriguing evidence for an immense forgotten episode in human history, and moves on to consider the spiritual crisis of the modern age. Could a new paradigm emerge from our present state of chaos? Hancock and Pinchbeck see hope in efforts by people all around the planet to reclaim sovereignty over their own consciousness, and identify a powerful role for shamanistic visionary plants such as Ayahuasca and Psilocybin in ushering in a gentler, less toxic, more nurturing state of mind. “It does seem like when you ingest them,” says Pinchbeck, “you get a lot of messages about how to reintegrate into the larger community of life.” For further information see http://www.realitysandwich.com/, and http://www.grahamhancock.com/. For Graham’s latest book see http://www.entangledthebook.com/

(via the Daily Grail)

Update: I hadn’t actually listened to the whole thing when I posted this.  In the second half, the tables are turned and Hancock interviews Pinchbeck.  All around fascinating and worth the two hours.  I have no idea what this would sound like to someone who’s never touched on these ideas.  Probably wacky and sort of reasonable, which is what it is.

The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn’t a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?

We finally have the answer, and you’re not going to like it: a new fleet of castles that float in the oceans. The super-wealthy are already building their first floating castle, a billion-dollar-plus luxury liner that offers permanent multimillion-dollar housing with the best protection of all: moats made of oceans, keeping the land-based Americans they’ve plundered at a safe distance.

The first such floating castle has been christened the “Utopia“–the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia’s 200 or so mansions for sale--which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot “estates.” The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.

Article by Mark Ames

2012 Time For a Change

Chris Hopkins’ Podcast

Looking forward to the movie.  Meanwhile, Scribd is amazing.  Or illegal, not sure which:

2012 the Return of Quetzalcoatl

Want to preface this by saying I absolutely love “Independence Day.” A masterpiece of crap. “The Day After Tomorrow” is watchable enough. So I had some hope for “2012,” but it was very bad. Offensively bad. One wonders if Roland Emmerich saw “Cloverfield” – a more-realistic depiction of what a Godzilla monster would do to a city compared to his heinous “Godzilla” – and said, fuck it, I don’t do realism, I do fantasy. And so he made “2012″ which has no relation to reality whatsoever. At least “Independence Day” had a modicum of reality about what an alien invasion might look like. As did “Day After Tomorrow.”

One of the dumber – but forgivable – scenes in “Independence Day” is when Air Force One just escapes the White House being blown up in a cloud of fire. Fine, if done once. But in “2012″ Emmerich chose to do this over and over again – death-defying escapes from every possible explosion: 10.5 earthquake in L.A., super volcano, etc. etc. But what is so offensive is that he had to use this escape trope at all, as if the entire destruction of a city is not dramatic enough – especially in light of what is happening in Haiti and what this type of destruction signifies. I think there is something vaguely disturbing about turning so much destruction into pure purposeless entertainment. It’s as if Emmerich doesn’t want to face what he is actually portraying, so he paints it in a coat of stupid.

When I saw “Titanic” I thought, Jesus, you’re just watching people die for two hours. There was something distressing – and worthy of study – about just why this was attractive to people. But at least in “Titanic” you had some historical sense of what maybe the sinking of the Titanic could have been like. In “2012” you get nothing of the sort – you just get chase scenes.

You could say – a truly realistic depiction of the end of the world would be too harrowing and depressing, but there are significant ideas that can be explored with this premise. The fact that – not once – do they discuss the implications that a long-ago culture predicted the end of the world and what this signifies, or even how this ties into the Book of Revelation, shows how intellectually empty the movie is. But there’s none of that – it’s just about explosions and escaping from explosions.  Surprisingly forgettable, I was hoping for more.

The Road

When I first read The Road I was critical. I am very averse to anything that fetishizes suffering. And The Road is full of that – setting up scenes only so that people, including a child, will suffer. This is what I wrote about the book initially.

It was at this point I realized what this novel is: literary torture porn. Or a zombie novel for people who read the New York Review of Books. The only people left walk around with makeshift clubs, cannibalizing whoever they can find. Yes, it’s a zombie novel. Pandering and cheap, too easy for someone who takes such great pains with language. This end-of-the-world scenario was much better, for me, in Earth Abides, in which a man walks alone through the country after humanity has been decimated. But it’s without the comic book savagery of The Road. The people he meets retain who they were, rather than being transformed into monsters. Alas, Babylon, about the survivors of a nuclear holocaust in a small Florida town, is also much more measured. Some people turn violent, but not all.

The incongruity of the setting bothered me as well. Why, if there are only a handful of people left, and some cities are still left standing, can’t people go to the many storehouses to get canned goods? I can suspend disbelief and think, that’s just the way it is in the universe of this novel, but the people are always dressed in rags and their faces are always dirty – even though there are houses full of clothing and they’re camped out right next to the ocean. Why are the cannibals keeping a bunch of diseased people in a basement – how useful is diseased meat? Maybe small things – but it contributes to my feeling that these scenes are set up only to show people suffering, needlessly.

As a movie, “The Road” is serviceable and basically unnecessary, as the book is about the mood as conveyed through words, rather than plot. All that said, the emotion of “The Road” – the movie – got to me, especially at the end. And whatever disagreements I have with the book, it’s very hard to disagree with this reaction, from an interview with Cormac McCarthy:

I have the same letter from about six different people. One from Australia, one from Germany, one from England, but they all said the same thing. They said, “I started reading your book after dinner and I finished it 3:45 the next morning, and I got up and went upstairs and I got my kids up and I just sat there in the bed and held them.”

After “2012,” which serves no purpose at all – not even to make you fear, just to kill your time – I can definitely see the value in the novel.