Prometheus' Chariot and Sundry Matters

The accident of our existence, making literary choices, co-existing with other people here on this site and the world in general, mass-extinction events, and a note of optimism.

Dear Reader,

 I assume you accidentally found yourself here.  I know, people who assume only… but I really think we're going to be fine here. It's actually much more a well-educated and reasonable guess than an assumption. For starters, we're talking about a niche hobby blog for where the first, and quite possibly the worst (we hadn't read January's selection yet) book reviewed is Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Danken (more on just how bad to come.) Secondarily, and perhaps more to the point, there are very few people who purposely come in for reading a self-described illiterate write about the "worst" book he's ever read. [Citation to The Illiterate’s post.] And, given that he is in fact, functionally illiterate, I'm shocked it is not also the first book he's ever read. Putting aside the Illiterate's millennial vacuity, he's right generally, maybe even mostly, right about the that dumpster fire of a book …

 [Look, we had a page limit. I'm not a huge fan of page limits, but it made sense. We're all busy. We all have different lives. No one would have finished the majority let alone all the books on the list if we had to slog through 400-500 pages of randomly selected drivel every other month. (Every 2 of three months actually, I only pick good books.) Page limits it was then. And Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock was 600 friggin' pages!!]

I'm not going to defend the book. But I am going to defend my decision. Because we had that page limit, and I really wanted to pick Fingerprints. So, we went down market, and got Chariots of the Gods, which is in the same vein, but suffers from being 1. really stupid, and 2. horribly written. Unlike the Illiterate, I could forgive the stupidity. I don't care if something is offensive to science. We're not a chemistry club. This isn't the Royal Society. It’s a book club. A hastily thrown together, and non-meeting book club. (And now a hastily thrown together and likely ill-advised blog.)  The last time we had a meeting, no one talked about books, everyone got buzzed, we watched a movie about a train and Homeschool fell asleep on the couch. But at least no one was writing it up. Until right now. Let's not get overly pretentious about the trash we're reading (ahem, Ministry of Truth) As a result of all of the above, I can only conclude you didn't come here because you loved the material, so by a simple process of imagination, you're here by accident.

 You're here by accident, we read Chariots of the Gods by kind of sort of accident, and this is maybe the third and longest post on the subject, and no end in sight. Which suggests that all of this sort of lacks intentionality. We're throwing pasta against the wall not even just to see if it sticks, but to see what shapes it can make, hoping that at least something will turn up interesting (even if it is only interesting in some obtuse way that only makes sense if you read The Echo Makers,) or God-forbid the hope, entertaining. 

 And while Chariots of the Gods may as well be Not Entertaining, it has informed an entire sub-industry of boomer bait Discovery documentaries and specials about Ancient Aliens, and I have to assume Ridley Scott's Alien prequel, Prometheus. But whereas Scott's modest foray into human yearning to seek our creator in the stars is informed but ancient myth (See Proto Indo-European Yamnaya culture creation myths) Draken appears to be mostly informed by really heavy use of mind-altering substances in the freshman dorms. Either way, we get the same answer, aliens did indeed do it.  BUT, maybe even more to the point… after they did, they really, really regretted it. Von Draken's most compelling evidentiary support (I use this phrase very loosely) for the existence of our alien betters is the available records showing that said aliens spent most of our pre-history trying to make us extinct. Floods, explosions, atomic holocausts… it's all there if you know how to look for it. Why? No clear answer, but the going hypothesis is eugenics. Even so, Von Draken is still really enthusiastic about us getting out there between the stars, in the hopes of finding out for sure. Ridley, maybe less so. In his movie, we do go to space. We do find our alien forefathers.

Our Alien Forefathers Just Before Regretting Their Decision

It does not go well. Not only do they not much like us, their human creations, they have decided after waking up from a nap of several millennia, that their top priority is to race back to earth to finish us off with a super bug (literally) they designed just for the job! Much grimmer outlook, but the movie is many times more entertaining than the book. 

 I'm not much for these aliens, in either work. I like people. I'd much rather we not be wiped out. Despite humanities faults, despite this blogs existence, despite the Illiterate (blog admin), I think we've made a pretty good run at things here (See the 1990's.)

 That's all for now.