I’m in Starbucks and I thought I’d blog a bit… Last night I flipped between A&E and the History Channel… Can’t understand why paranormal activities, unknown phenomena, and Cryptozoology, interest me so damn much! If UFO hunters, Monsterquest, Paranormal State, or History’s Mysteries happen to be on the boob-tube, my ass in glued!
Thanks to a bit of education, I have the ability to play it cool and appear skeptical, although, creeping from beneath my frontal lobe, there’s a little child in me that wants (so badly) to believe in UFO’s, bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. A section of my brain still feels like a young whipper-snapper peeking through the keyhole in effort to catch Santa on Christmas Eve, all the while, another part of me feels like a complete buffoon for being so entertained by television programs that are built on the same principles as the National Enquirer.
Ironically, all this is coming from someone with a BA in Psych- that’s 6 credits shy of a grad degree. Harrumph!!! I know-I know- I’m a bit of a contradiction, but still, there’s a glimmer of hope wishing upon a star that there’s still something lurking deep in the woods, at the bottom of the sea, or deep in space.
Hmm… So are ghosts simply our mind playing tricks on us? Are UFO’s all government projects? Are all Bigfoot sightings rogue Black Bears? Are people just looking for attention? As Mr. Brett Dennen says, “Its enough to make you go crazy.” There’s gotta be something Science can wrap itself around eventually- right?
Let’s take a step away from my trivial fascinations….Generally speaking, I’m very open to the unknown. Xenophobia is like a disease that makes me ill. I’m the guy that welcomes your differences and characteristics, then questions if I’m the weird one for being different than you!
In my days, I’ve found that ignorance is the comfy blanket keeping people from safe from new (sometimes threatening) ideas. In other words, new information (if challenging) is often sadly rejected.
Every day is a new learning experience. As cliché as that may be, it so too true not to explicate (blab) about. I wish more people (especially in the music BUSINESS) could open themselves up a bit. It seems, everyone’s way is the “RIGHT way.”
So my thesis you ask? Well, I know there’s nothing truly individual or unique with my words- Socrates expressed it best, “One thing only I know is that I know nothing”…
Yes, there is stuff out there, for reals. At least where ESP and Psi are concerned. I can't speak for Bigfoot. But Psi turns up all over, if you have the eyes to look for it.
ReplyDeleteIf you're seriously interested in looking at the paranormal, and you're coming from a psychology background and aren't afraid of a large amount of footnotes, I strongly recommend Kelly et al's "Irreducible Mind" (you'll have to Google Amazon for it because you seem to have disabled pasting on this page, which is a pain). It's a big textbook reporting on the outstanding anomalies from the last 150 years of scientific parapsychology research ,but it's worth it.
If you want a lighter introduction to the subject, try Dean Radin's "Entangled Minds", Elizabeth Mayer's "Extraordinary Knowing", or Chris Carter's "Parapsychology and the Skeptics". All have come out in the last five years and are excellent resources.
As for UFOs, again, if you really want to look at the facts, I have to recommend Two Roads' brilliant DailyKos historical series on the 1947 sightings wave. http://two-roads.dailykos.com