Duncan Keegan

Best when not going all Spenglerian

Revisado: 02-16-25

As a general rule, I really enjoy the works of JMG, and there was much about this particular piece to enjoy. Perhaps not surprising for a Druid, Greer is at his best when humanely sacrificing the sacred cows of the respectable classes, and his examination of the trends within American society that led to the first election of the “Orange Julius”, and the subaltern sorcery that (for those who admit its existence) aided his rise, is persuasive and compellingly presented. It’s really fun.

However, I feel he loses momentum when attempting to situate these events in the context of a broader Spenglerian reading of history, allowing himself to rush off into speculations about post-Faustian cultures destined to rise in today’s Russia and US. I can understand the appeal, but it reminds me of similar sentiments devolving from the notions of Halford Mackinder and his thalassocracies and heartland pivots. As a European and Irish Druid, I can’t help but feel JMG’s observations on “Faustian Europe” resemble those moments of disbelief and, yes, schadenfreude we Irish feel when we glance at the current fallen state of the UK, our former colonial masters.

A much more straightforward and convincing explanation for the historical trends Greer points to, to my mind at least, is the existence of originally Viking cartels with no affection or allegiance to their subjects dominating both Muscovy and England and their far-flung empires; if there even were such a thing as a Faustian culture, its paragons would have to be the US and Russia. (It would certainly explain better the slightly unnerving coincidence of Trump and Brexit that JMG mentions...)

But this would also mean that, contrary to Greer, Wotan of the Blood Eagle rite is most certainly presiding in America; indeed if one accepts Spengler’s claim that the end has come for this civilisation, then for the two titanic siblings in either hemisphere there can be no reliance on notions like psuedomorphosis to escape their fate…in other words, their gotterdammerung.

As for the other peoples of Europe who have so often struggled in their relations with the Viking cartels to their east and west, well, I suppose we’ll have to wait for a different book from someone with a clearer appreciation for the depths and nuances of their history and histories.

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Ingo Swann deserved better

Revisado: 08-09-24

I’m very grateful for the effort undertaken by Nick Cook and his colleagues in bringing these works by Ingo Swann together and making them available to a wider audience. Ingo appears to have been attempting something quite rare for psychic practitioners: outlining a conceptual framework for understanding, evaluating and developing what he called the “superpowers of the human biomind”. This outline is at once methodical and intriguing and it’s what makes this audiobook worth the time of anyone with an interest in this field.

Unfortunately, the narrator employed by the publisher for this production makes it almost impossible to listen to. Mr Hollingsworth has been allowed to treat this as an opportunity to practice his generic American accent, which has resulted in repeated errors in pronunciation of words and, worse still, in letting the impact and meaning of certain passages to be sacrificed to the narrator’s wish to “sound authentic”.

If having the book read in an American accent was essential, then an American narrator ought to have been employed. If there were production constraints that meant someone based in the UK was an unavoidable necessity, then it would have been preferable to forget about accent and instead focus on minimising errors in pronunciation, delivering on the intended meaning of Ingo’s manuscript through intelligent narration and interpretation and then ensuring the highest and most consistent audio quality possible (which is not the case here). So again, I’m grateful to have any version at all, but I would love one day to listen to a more professional production that avoids these needless problems.

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Humane, intelligent and wise

Revisado: 04-19-24

A fine book for anyone who is seeking to learn more about living wisely and dying well. Unfortunately, the intellectual curiosity and deep compassion present in the words are scoured flat by the overly mannered narrator who has all the charm of an especially self regarding dinner guest at an especially unbearable New England soirée. If you can hear past that, you’ll find gems of insight.

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Transformative listening

Revisado: 03-24-24

Transformative to the point of redemption, this insightful, compassionate and learned book has been an extraordinary read that has helped me to understand just how badly my childhood has affected me and how I can learn to accept and move beyond the past and the person it cheated me into believing I was.

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Accessible yet profound

Revisado: 03-23-24

This brief introduction to how the divinities of India are presented, and why, is well structured and genuinely insightful for anyone like myself who has not had the good fortune of being born into or raised within the Hindu religious tradition.

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Patchy and piecemeal

Revisado: 12-27-23

It was fine: a loosely connected series of chapters about individuals engaged with by Pasulka who are all experiencers of the paranormal in some way. But it’s all so similar to her previous work except less insightful. And it takes all the hyperbole about artificial intelligence at face value and then lets the author and her interlocutors run wild with little to no curiosity about the way a person’s metaphysical and ideological views shape the experience, its interpretation and conclusions arising. The unexamined materialism suffusing both the author and her characters’ understanding results in gibberish like saying data is extracted from astronauts, that AI is conscious, that language is artificial, never mind the romanticisation and thus distortion of indigenous peoples and their culture in the service of affirming the triumphant progress of materialism and its way of understanding human life and purpose.

And I don’t care how clever an interface she developed with others for fighter pilots, and how many awards she’s gotten from the USAF or for skydiving: the lady putting young children through her “earth language” programme should reflect on the ethics of her experiments with people who by definition cannot give their consent.

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Could have been an article

Revisado: 12-24-23

Should have been an article, and probably in Time magazine.

Launching off from the safe harbour of a naive materialism, it never diverts from the usual course these “explorations” take, as they manipulate and abuse words like “wonder” and “mystery” to present us with…well, nothing much new about a world that we as gene machines can never truly know, before steering us right back into port with a mawkish narrative flourish involving an 11 year old granddaughter and science lessons, and tying up the ship of enquiry at dock with nary a splash on it, bearing the predictable announcement that “we are the clock”. Given that the clock is a mirage and time a mere “myth” (figment, surely?), where does this leave the granddaughter, and indeed the author?

I mean, at least he got paid for his time. Can’t say the same for us listeners.

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A gem of a book

Revisado: 12-16-23

Barbara offers a humble yet profound and profoundly inspiring work born not as a writer’s research project or an article but from a lifetime of service to those at the end of living.

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Unexamined assumption

Revisado: 11-24-23

A good overview of the journey from end of life to the point of death. Marred towards the end by taking at face value the “just so” stories offered as supposed explanations for near death experiences by researchers whose philosophically materialist views go unquestioned and are granted a tacit yet increasingly unwarranted credibility.

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Great overall

Revisado: 06-01-23

But let down by a narrator who sounds too much like a tv news anchor. The author’s knowledge, intelligence and self awareness still manage to shine through, despite that.

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