Wednesday, October 10, 2012

why IS Newsweek indulging make-believe?



gawker | For millennia, humans have wondered what happens after we die. Finally, we have a definitive answer: this week, in an exclusive cover story, Newsweek reveals that "Heaven Is Real." And it sounds suspiciously like a DMT trip as described on internet drug forums.

For nearly as long as humans have been thinking about the possibility of an afterlife, they've also been reading the "Experiences" essays on Erowid.org — accounts of trips and experimentations written by conscientious drug users. Finally, the two pastimes converge, in "Heaven Is Real: A Doctor's Experience With the Afterlife," possibly the most embarrassing cover story Newsweek has ever run, in which Dr. Eben Alexander falls into a coma and apparently, uh, goes to heaven.

Alexander's account of his experience is exactly as well-written, exactly as scientific, and exactly as interesting as most of the stories in Erowid's "Experience Vault." And that's not the only similarity! Below, take our test: Newsweek cover story or message-board post about drugs? Winners get to go to heaven.

 1) Newsweek Cover Story "Heaven Is Real" or Ayahuasca Experience "The Din of Celestial Birds"?
"Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms."

2) Newsweek Cover Story "Heaven Is Real" or Hawaiian Baby Woodrose Experience "Rebirth and Translucent Beings"? "A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. [... T]he joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise — that if the joy didn't come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it."

3) Newsweek Cover Story "Heaven Is Real" or DMT Experience "The People Behind the Curtain"? "As I walked deeper, I could see, standing in the middle of the room, [...] an object similar to an hour glass. It was slowly turning over. I became aware that this vessel, as it tipped over, transferring its contents from the small red end to the larger blue end, was transforming me."

4) Newsweek Cover Story "Heaven Is Real" or LSD, DXM, Dimenhydinate & Cannabis Experience "In Search of a Meaningful... Something"? "If the head is the center of vision, what I saw encompassed a field extending to behind the ears. A fury of colors came into focus throughout this field, and out of the overwhelming mass of color a being emerged. Although the origin and nature of this being were not known to me, I was in awe of it, and I knew that I was powerless in its presence. It both hated and adored me and communicated through ambient noise which held my undivided attention."

45 comments:

John Kurman said...

Hey, that's great for the doc. I think I've told this story before, but I had an encounter with a church woman one time who, after certain remarks I made, informed me that I was going to Hell. I told her "Honey, I've had job offers". And it is so. I already know that mexican ranchera music will be my office muzak down there, and that, and I'm sure he's got just a little bit of a clue, I've already put in the suggestion box the idea that Jack Welch (flayed and boiled) should be anally inserted into Donald Rumsfeld, who in turn goes into Dick Cheney, and so on. Got a bonus for that one! And I've lots of other diabolical ideas!

DD said...

Politics.

I guess that all these neoconserblicans may need be forces for evil, but they probably, to a man, believe they are forces for good. So is it intent or action that makes somebody a bad guy? And if it is action (I know my audience around here,) then on what timeframe and with what beneficiary? If collapse is inevitable, and imminent, shouldn't we all be rooting Cheney et al on?

CNu said...

negligence and incompetence practiced for long enough and on a large enough scale is indistinguishable from malfeasance.

the self-styled and self-calming ideologues who have canonized greed and status-seeking into an ersatz ideology are morally negligent and practically incompetent - their fuckuppery is indistinguishable from malfeasance....,

John Kurman said...

Well, I can only hope that when Cheney is playing the turkey part of an infernal turdecken, he'll feel doubly filled with good intentions!

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