McKenna: Prophet of Nonsense

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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group

Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,441
Loc: Under the C

McKenna: Prophet of Nonsense

#14476471 - 05/19/11 12:58 AM (15 years, 4 months ago)

2012: Prophet of nonsense #8: Terence McKenna– Novelty theory and timewave zero

by Johan Normark

Why is it so difficult for the prophets of nonsense to even get some basic facts correct? As shown in my post on Calleman, his cycles do not fit world history. Here is yet another example of pseudo-scientists. Terrence McKenna was an ethnobotanist who loved numerology and as we have seen before, numerology is one these prophets main tools. They constantly claim that they have come up with an exact formula of cyclic repetition and the like, but as any person with basic knowledge of world history can see, these cycles never fit the data.

What was McKenna’s “great” idea then? According to McKenna’s novelty theory (apparently inspired by the important philosopher Alfred Norton Whitehead which definitely should not be associated with this New Age mumbo jumbo). Like Whitehead, McKenna argues that the world is constantly changing, creating novelty. I have no problem with that idea so far, but then McKenna goes astray and his association to spiritualism, shamanism, and pseudoscience is revealed. When “novelty” is graphed over time, a fractal waveform known as timewave zero emerges. The graph shows at what times novelty is supposedly increasing or decreasing.

The timewave itself is a mathematical formula created from McKenna’s interpretation and analysis of numerical patterns in the I Ching, an oracular tool based on Chinese philosophy and associated with magic. McKenna used I Ching to show that the events of any given time are recursively related to the events of other times Things change at an increasing speed and reach a point where change is all that exist and when will this occur? What do you think? Of course, on the 21st of December 2012. However, apparently McKenna’s followers claim that since he and his brother came up with the 2012 date from another source than the Maya calendar this supposedly support the idea that the world ends or is transformed on this date, since having proof from more than one source is better.

I-Ching is composed of 64 hexagrams, which are six-line figures. Here we run into numbers, numbers and more numbers, just to confuse or amaze the reader. If you multiply 6 and 64 you get 384 which is very close (but not exact…) to 13 lunar months (383.8978 days). Well, if you multiply 64 with 384 (not 383.8978) you get 67 years, 104.25 days which supposedly is the length of 6 minor sunspot cycles (11.2 years each). But, for what reason are 13 lunar months associated with sunspot cycles? They are clearly different astronomical phenomena. Of course, multiply the last period by 64 and you get roughly 4306 years (2 Zodiac ages). This must then be multiplied by 6 (not 64) to reach the time period of 25836 years which is the precession of the equinoxes (which is popular among other 2012 prophets).

McKenna choose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the starting point for his last 67.29 year cycle (as you know, all prophets believe they live in the final era, so it is and has always been). At the end of this final cycle the novelty should reach a singular point beyond which we do not know what will happen. This should happen in mid November 2012. But since this was close enough to the end of Baktun 12 in the Long Count calendar (December 21, 2012) he decided to adjust the end date so that it fit this calendar! This means than that the last of these 67.29 years periods did not begin with a major event like the atomic bomb, but with a more general idea, such as the end of WWII…

McKenna used the fractal pattern on the rest of the world history as well. By subtracting fractals of 67.29 years from 2012 he claimed to reveal the important phases of world history. As mentioned 2012-67 is 1945 (the end of WW II). OK, so far it roughly fits, but that is about it. The next period must be 64 times longer: 2012-4,306 (67×64) is 2294 BC, when historical time is assumed to have begun. Not really, historical figures and dates are known several centuries earlier in Sumer and Egypt. The next date is 2012-(4,306×64) and here we reach the date of 273,572 BC, supposedly when Homo sapiens emerged. Current estimates place the emergence of Homo sapiens to around 200,000 BC. McKenna’s estimate is over 70,000 years wrong. The next phase is 64 times longer and here we end up at roughly 17,6 million years ago, which he claims is the height of the age of mammals. But, why is such a “height” of relevance? How do you measure this height? The age of mammals is for sure a mammalcentric perspective. There are and were far more species of birds, fish, not to mention insects than there were mammals 17,6 million years ago. Would not the extinction of dinosaurs 64 million years ago be a more relevant “date” since it has number 64 in it? Anyway, the next fractal began 1,128 billion years ago and this he claims is when life began on Earth. This is not even near…

Why do these prophets of nonsense not fit the actual major “events” in the universe or on Earth into their numbers? Why is not the Big Bang included, the formation of the Earth, the Cambrian explosion of life forms, the first terrestrial tetrapods, the first mammals, the extinction of dinosaurs, early hominids, emergence of Paleolithic art, agriculture, urbanization, industrialization, etc.? Some prophets may include one of these “events” but will exclude others since they may not fit their formula.

One could of course argue that at the time when McKenna wrote this nonsense, some of the dates mentioned above were accepted knowledge by science (which they were not, but let us just believe so for a moment). But since he based his fractal timewave on ancient wisdom, he should have gotten it right from the start, and not adjust it. The ancients are always right, remember that…

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