This post is a “guess” … which is to say I don’t know Bakker, nor can I read the man’s mind. Over the past few months I’ve seen some criticism of the work on plot and clarity and hope to rope some of you back into enjoying these books and look forward to more, as I do.
Bakker has been presenting the coming/happening of what he calls The Semantic Apocalypse on 3 Pound Brain. He’s leveraging a “Bulls-eye” approach in that medium; he’s telling you exactly what it is, that it’s happening, why and how it’s happening and his concerns about it. I think he knows he’s losing a lot of people with that discussion and he’s not surprised by it. He’s simply showing us something most ( if not all ) of the rest of us cannot see because we’ve never looked at something like this before ( or more accurately, we’ve not used our “eyes” in a way beyond what evolution has yielded us ). He’s pointing right at it, but we’re looking up, down, behind us, eyes closed, right at it but not understanding it – his “pointing”, precision, is not good enough to get us to see it.
The books are an alternative approach to showing us this Semantic Apocalypse. By using tools such as obfuscation, misdirection, inconsistency, deception and lies, he’s having us follow him through the forest to get to “it”; since the bull’s eye approach is failing him, he’s trying to jar us into understanding using a medium so many enjoy. This is why he says those who are most put off by the books are actually “getting” the story better than those of us who don’t. Which is to say, those who are pissed off with the ending of TUC, et al are actually following him to see what he sees. The rest of us not so disappointed are risking not ever getting “there” … by trusting him too much we could be cheapening the experience taking a shortcut to the destination, missing the richness of the journey ( which is designed to enhance our “sight” ) and may still not get it once we arrive. Those of us ( like myself ) who enjoy the details so much, we risk never even arriving ( wandering around the forest, following our own path, too easily amused ). He’s not a sadist, he’s getting no pleasure from this. He’s alarmed and doing his best avoiding the Casandra trap ( clairvoyance without believability ), he genuinely needs more brains on this to vet this out so we/humanity have a chance to adapt and survive it.
If you’ve read this far ( i.e. 7 books ), considering not giving up and continuing. Yes, our beloved hero is salt. Yes, there’s a lot of crazy shit that doesn’t make sense. Keep going and bring your anger/disappointment with you – we may find something of what he’s going on about together. Some of the richest insights into the work have come from the harshest critics.