From 1998 - Wackier than Tom Cruse

For no good reason, a piece from all of 10 years back, about a I guy I haven't thought of for at least that long.

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Ann Arbor: There's a moderately good book out there this Summer (of 1998, that is, Ed),
"Why People Believe Weird Things," by Michael Schermer. It talks about religious and other beliefs, including the bizarre cult surrounding Ayn Rand and her luke-warm libertarianism. It reminded me of a pattern I believe is identifiable in at least western culture: the association, gradual or sudden, of a group of cynical, profit-minded hangers-on with an aging, soft-in-the-head literary figure. Think of L. Ron Hubbard, Ayn Rand in her old age, and now, we find, Carlos Castaneda. The pattern usually includes outsider allegations that the group is imprisoning and controlling the figurehead individual, fights over his or her estate, and astonishingly bald and high-handed financial exploitation. There may even be dark hints of foul play and mysterious lacunae in the facts. Certainly, the case of Castaneda exhibits all of the above.

If you were wise enough to skip reading the pseudo- anthropology of the late 60's and early 70's (think Desmond Morris and Ashley Montague), you may not be familiar with Carlos Castaneda. He was a burnt- out anthro student who almost certainly invented a character named Don Juan Matus; Castaneda claimed that Matus was a Yaqui witch doctor, and chronicled the drug-induced philosophizing of the old man in a series of rambling books, starting with "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge." What the book demonstrates most clearly is that -- like many academic disciplines -- anthropology in the 60's attracted a subset of intellectual misfits who were unprepared for the reality of social science and were looking for something quite other than what Ewan MacColl calls "... some understanding of all your fellow men." I should know: I went to school with several of these people -- hell, I could have been one, except for being saved by the holy silicon. People like Castaneda and some of my fellow students really thought Anthropology was digging up jade idols and finding lost tribes. When it wasn't -- when it turned out that it meant squabbling sordidly over afine groups or bitter resentment of a colleague's name appearing before yours on a paper about Ojibwa lithics, they either found other toys to play with -- went into business with their roommates, doing something mysterious with these funny new computers that don't need punch cards -- or they just invented their own anthropologies. It's not unlike some kinds of science fiction: you don't need to understand a technology, because you make it up yourself. So it seems to have been with Castaneda: he made up a set of alternate realities, wrote 'em down, and lots of people bought 'em. I read the first one, said, "Another druggie," and went back to whatever it was I was doing. Seems, though, that not everybody was that blase', since people kept on buying his stuff. And then, somehow, he became the primary product of a group called Cleargreen who began marketing him, wrapped up in a package called "Tensegrity."

After Castaneda's death (which may have been kept secret for some time), a member of Cleargreen told a New York Times writer, "Carlos knew exactly what was true and what was not true. But the thing that's missing when people talk about Carlos is not (sic) whether Don Juan lived or not, or who lived in what house. It's about becoming a voyager of awareness, about the 600 locations in the luminous egg of man where the assemblage point can shift, about the process of depersonalization he taught." Oh.

Now, this may be a useful paradigm (at least it keeps people who talk like that off the streets), and I'm seriously considering trying it in the next difficult meeting I'm in ("No, actually, it's not about whether the product is ready or not. It's about becoming a voyager of softwareness, about the 437 pathological couplings of your data model where the entry point can shift in the luminous egg of garbage collection"), but still, like the luminous egg of the Bimota Mantra, we have to ask: who buys this stuff? Who goes to these seminars? And why?

And, as you probably suspected all along, I have a theory. It's part of a larger and increasingly well- documented theory of group dysfunctionality. It hypothesizes a unifying psychological characteristic or complex of characteristics, linking together individuals who exhibit a need to be told, at a large fee, about luminous eggs. It suggests that they're idiots.

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The WCA News Service has been brought to you by the Odd Town Tavern and by the upcoming bestseller by Carlos McLuggage, "The Teachings of Don Tempeh: A Yucky Way of Knowledge."