How Pseudohistory Works: The Whisky Rant (Part 3)
by Gordon • • The Whisky Rant • 7 Comments
The greatest challenge when engaging with pseudohistory is its persistent need to speculate beyond the data.
Take the Paeleolithic Renaissance.
There is currently no universally accepted -or even verifiable- explanation for this simultaneous global flowering of art, and technological innovation that occurred pretty much everywhere where the earth wasn’t covered in a two mile block of ice.
Whatever it was essentially kicked off ‘modern humanity’ as we would understand it.
Pseudohistory has a tendency to immediately jump to explanations that rely on ancient astronauts and lost civilisations.
The most popular orthodox version of the story of our beginnings lies in the work of James David Lewis-Williams whom we will return to later but you can pick up the gist in the first half of this interview with him here.
Orthodoxy is essentially saying “we don’t know how it happened but it’s definitely not whatever crazy talk you’re spouting.” Forget beyond the data. It even refuses to speculate with it. Like the geological age of the sphinx, ignorance is the best policy, apparently.
Because the natural response to their position is “oh really? Well why don’t we just find out?” Pseudohistory legitimately exposes just how little the scientific method actually underpins modern historic academia. Why not start with the verifiable scientific facts and build from there? Why not start with the footprints found in South America that are 12,000 years too old for your ‘population of the Americas’ theory? Why not start with the geological age of the Sphinx? Why are you sticking to a patently wrong story?
Pseudohistory fulfills this classical satanic role. It challenges, it pokes at the artifice, it demands hegemony speaks the truth… it calls out its lies.
Wizards, I like to think, sit somewhere in between the two poles of historic and pseudohistoric. Because there is a critical interplay here… a yin and yang exchange that we use to weave the narrative of our existence, of our place in the world.
Graham Hancock says in this interview that he “presents anomalies rather than a belief system.” Debate that assertion amongst yourselves but this is the point he is driving at… wizards should hypothesise with the available data and then make amendments as new data comes to light.
And you know what? It works. Agitation in a system leads -eventually- to innovation. Here is a quote from an interview with the amazing Jacques Vallee about the orthodox treatment of UFO encounters:
By denying the reality of the reports, brushing aside the witnesses…and treating them like fools or crooks, the academic skeptics are actually teaching the public that science is impotent at studying the phenomenon.
Pseudohistory was refused entry into the tenured ivory towers of bitchy academia so it turned around and went after the villagers instead. It went after us. It’s much better at capturing mindshare because the thing about being locked out of the towers is that it applies to everyone who doesn’t put on a tweed jacket and (hopefully) metaphorically blow the head of the department.
Pseudohistory’s near-irresistible temptation to speculate beyond the data -to make ever more bold claims- is an entirely understandable manifestation of the narrative fallacy. For instance, Richard Hoagland has spent decades agitating NASA about structures on the moon and Mars. Decades. Doing one thing. That gets into your head, man. So it’s no surprise he thinks JFK was murdered because he was about to give the space programme to the Russians and that returning astronauts have their memories erased. We don’t need to talk about reality tunnels, we’re all wizards here.
One last point to bear in mind, especially as we move further into the fringe… the final thing that paints pseudohistory into a crazy corner is ‘false’ or ‘counter’ pseudohistory created by the orthodoxy; psyops being a publicly acknowledged -and regularly used- strategy by most major governments. (Sometimes I really do wonder about Crowley’s claim that his pro-Nazi propaganda was deliberately outrageous and paid for by the Secret Service Bureau so as to weaken the entire pro-Nazi discourse on the east coast. It only sounds weird until you realise we were even using Roald Dahl for a very similar thing.)
Pseudohistory should not -at least when deployed properly- function as a complete replacement of a world narrative constructed by the inherently conservative institution of academia. Far from it. It augments the story by holding up the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that don’t fit and says “what about these?”
Given we have explored a potentially more sophisticated role for the field, perhaps it’s time we take back the word? Perhaps it’s time we reclaim it as our own like so many previous pejoratives that have been hurled at those who ever dared to suggest that being different is the same thing as being bad? I can’t imagine the parades will be quite as dazzling but it’s worth a shot:
We’re here. We’re pseudohistoric. We don’t want any more Bering ice bridge theory.
You are seriously blowing my mind right now.
V.V.F.´s last [type] ..To The Conscientious Witch.
Regarding the footprints, not 25,000 years old: “Five footprints from human feet, calculated to be between 4,500 and 25,000 years old.” -Between-, aka as recent as 4,500 years old or as old as 25,000 years old. That means it was dated through a relative dating technique (possibly stratigraphic context), rather than through absolute dating (such as radiocarbon). Similar logic would be saying Gordon is between 2 years old and 1000 years old. True, but you aren’t 1000 years old.
However you make an excellent point about orthodox people often being dismissive and arrogant about fringe speculations. That doesn’t help anyone. Perhaps there are some interesting possibilities that are never considered because of automatic dismissals. And respectful engagement with pseudoarchaeologists can only benefit both parties.
I enjoy speculation very much, and am bummed as much as anyone when I discover the footprints of giants are nothing more than pareidolia, similar to seeing the Virgin Mary in a burnt tortilla. There are just different blades in my Swiss Army knife psyche. I have had a few Fortean experiences such as this fellow: http://whisperindave.hubpages.com/hub/My-Fortean-Life
If you are interested in the origins of modern human beings and their spread across the globe, you really should watch this, as I think you would enjoy it: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/journey-man-genetic-odyssey/
You’re making a great point. It’s the gaps that pseudohistory identifies. It’s very tempting to fill those gaps in with our own crazy ideas, true; but someone has to try.
@Lonnie yeah I kinda agree with that.
There’s an admirable boldness to saying “all right, well if YOU won’t build a story around these data… then here is my BEST GUESS.”
From that perspective I still manage to retain a lot of respect for Hoagland and the others on the pseudohistory fringe. At least they have the stones to give it a shot.
There is nothing wrong with speculation or. as you say, “building a story around these data.” Best guesses, aka speculation, are inductive reasoning. It is where anyone STARTS, whether the most determined conspiracy theorist, pseudoarchaeologist, pseudohistorian, wizard, tweedy professor, scientist, or debunking hardcore skeptic who would have you prove the sky above is is indeed blue. EVERYONE starts with a favored narrative, a story formed around data, arrived at through inductive reasoning.
The difference is THEN, if one wants to validate that story and find whether or not it is empirically valid (notice I stayed away from “truth” which is philosophical), one must go to deductive reasoning. What is the evidence, how does one analyze the evidence, and construct the multiple working hypotheses which must each be falsifiable (thus the process of “deducting” each hypothesis that are determined to be false, contrary to fact).
Constructing a narrative can come from dreams, novels, fantasies, urban legends, twice-told tales, observations in nature, rumor, or pretty much anything.
BUT, if it is important to determine the reliability, the “truth” if you will, of a claim or a narrative or a “fact,” then deductive reasoning, and the scientific method for testing claims of empirical reality, are the best (some would say only) tools for testing those claims and narratives.
If one dislikes deductive reasoning or scientific methodology, because it destroys or infringes upon one’s favored narrative (it ruins things), whether it is of a house being haunted, or pyramids being built by aliens, or the Chinese discovering America, that God created everything 6000 years ago, or whatever…then enjoy your favored narrative, find meaning and satisfaction in it, but do not confuse it with verifiable, consensus reality…what most folks know as “the truth.”
And yes, this is coming from a fellow who CHOOSES to believe in God, and who has had personal experiences of genius loci and other nature spirits. But I do not pretend to say they are scientifically verifiable
@Lance Okay so I’ve been trying to resist replying to your comments except I can’t.
I need to sincerely thank you for your input in case you think it isn’t appreciated but -gods dammit, buddy- keep your powder dry!
We haven’t even GOT to the meat of the rant, yet. That’s why I haven’t responded to your thorough and enlightening comments so far.
Honestly, though, it’s going some crazy places. Like… all the places you’re worried it’s going to go… that’s where it’s going. So just sit tight.
PS – In reference to your second comment, I agree with you.
Even just in the case of your final sentence and taking something as presumably concrete as archaeological evidence as the example… going back 8,000 years and more and we ARE in fantasy land. That’s slightly the point.
There just really isn’t that much data… less of it being internally consistent… to string together a ‘Bering Ice Bridge’ theory or to string together a ‘maritime successive colonisation of the Americas’ model.
However only ONE of them seeks -based on nothing more than ignoring aberrant data- to discount the other.
Because it’s not just the footprint. Carbon dating of cave paintings in Brazil going back to 42,000 BC still haven’t been refuted (disputed but not refuted). There are dozens of pre-supposed-Bering-Ice-Bridge examples right across the Americas.
You ever noticed how the ‘out of Africa’ date keeps getting pushed back? And back? And back? Each time with “definitive DNA evidence”.
Just in the fifteen years I’ve been looking at this they’ve added two and a half thousand years to the Bering Ice Bridge date. (Never mind the fact no herds would have crossed it because there was nothing to eat for more than a week as it’s a mile high block of ice and if the wind blew strong enough their lungs would freeze.)
So it’s a stretch to call pseudohistory a ‘dislike of deductive reasoning’, if you ask me when, TBH, deductive reasoning is actually what pseudohistory is calling for.
We’re not selling a book on Atlantis here. We’re ranting about hegemony’s inability to get out from under its own shadow.
More on this in the next post.
When I was a kid, I watched TV shows where cavemen rode dinosaurs and they had tigers alongside lions in Africa and animals talked. I had no trouble with animals talking really. However I knew tigers did not live in Africa with lions, though they had in Asia. I knew cavemen lived hundreds of millions of years separated in time from dinosaurs. I loved “One Million Years B.C.” as a movie, as entertainment, but as a little 7 year old, the science was abysmal.
That’s how I feel about pseudoscience, pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology. I don’t like dismissing or being dismissed without a hearing. I’m on your side there. And really, this is YOUR blog, and I am not a fan of disrespecting people “in their own house.”
These are my points.
There are things we CAN know from before 8000 years ago. It is not entirely fantasy land. There were no talking dinosaurs, BUT the science has changed…they have changed from cold-blooded dinosaurs to warm-blooded ones in my lifetime
And if they ever find evidence of a hyoid bone or other physical evidence that dinosaurs talked, that would be cool…but I am not holding my breath.
That’s the thing, Gordon. It’s kind of like how you are an Internet professional on many levels, and you have more experience in magic than I do. You know about England and Australia and New Zealand and what it means to be young and gay, etc. because those are your experiences. That is your hard-won knowledge. Now someone like me, who has never been to England and who is unlikely ever to go, might have wonderful ideas about England, stuff I have read…but I have never been there, despite how many books from the Bords I may have read.
That’s the thing.
For example, the “Bering Ice Bridge” is a terrible misnomer which has caused a lot of misunderstanding. Actually Beringia was an ICE-FREE corridor- minicontinent that was 1000 miles across (the distance from Montana to California, or perhaps Britain to Romania, or Australia to Indonesia. To ancient people following herd of mammoth and caribou back and forth, Siberia-Beringia-Alaska would have been the same country of grasslands, swamp, taiga, and tundra, one land. The immense blockade of continental glaciers were not encountered until the cordilleran mountains of Canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia
I completely agree with your idea of “hegemony’s inability to get out from under its own shadow” as a valid criticism.