Adopted Universe

Typical, I go to the newsstand and return home with both a copy of Fortean Times and one of Skeptical Inquirer. Surprisingly the FT actually contained plenty of debunking and complaints about rampant misinformation and hoaxes (along with some articles from the Weekly World News 8-] ). Just as interestingly, the SI basically stated that skeptics, by definition, do not dismiss possibilities offhand - they are as skeptical of their own skepticism as they are of the theories they study.

At first all the debunking of religion and parapsychology began to get me kind of down; it seems like the world of believers is strangely random and rather credulous, but the skeptics have the scientific method on their side. So the universe is becoming less and less magical in my head, with fewer possibilities for the hidden, the magical, to exist at all or ever have existed. Are there no surprises to come in the future, no OBEs, no cryptids, no dimension beyond ours that allows the 'dead' to walk? No future past death? No old hidden civilizations? Then I watch programs that, using the bounds of science, allow some interest to remain. The other night there was a fascinating docu about robotics in the renaissance and before. Not electric of course, although a battery was invented back then, but of clockwork and water, torque and springs and gear ratios. If it amazes us that Da Vinci could create a programmable lion from clockwork, when our only known way is with chips and electricity, is it possible that some distance in the future, perhaps after our next dark age, civilization will be amazed that we could create programmable things from only chips and electricity? What will their workings be? Shame I won't be around to find out.

All this also made me start to think about things like Atlantis and aliens and so forth. It struck me that especially the Atlantis adherents are very like adopted children unhappy with their parents for imposing discipline. "Maybe my REAL parents are a king and queen. Maybe I am a prince/ss in reality and someday they'll come for me and I can eat cake all day." The seeming mundanity of a working world full of starvation, political inanity and blue collar work could certainly lead some to think, "maybe there is a REAL civilization, maybe it had magic machines that could do EVERYTHING easily, and everyone could eat cake all day." And if they find evidence of it, maybe they were a part of it in the past or will be someday in the future. Contact from Atlantis spirits, Lemurians, aliens etc. are a definite way for someone to be able to declare, "I am special, I have this word/knowledge/past history that I don't have now but I can at least carry it within me to raise myself above this mundanity." Maybe that explains claims of ESP, cult membership, even religion - to raise oneself above others by harboring this specialness that is secret or special, that others don't have. "Well I saw a ufo." "Well I can speak to the dead." "Well MY house is haunted." So there!

Does that explain my disappointment (maybe disenchantment is a better word)? Probably. But the reality is that so much still exists that hasn't been explained or discovered by science. Heck, if a coelecanth can show up living, anything can, really. What if all the unknown 'dark matter' in space is the 'body of God'? What if ufos really are time travellers? What if ghosts are emotional imprints that sometimes walk among us? Can science really explain everything at the moment? Nah. But no matter how skeptical things get, at least I can feel reassured that we know that we don't really know much about anything, and anyone who claims to is an idjit. What happens after death? We don't KNOW. Will FTL travel be viable in 100 or 1000 or 1000000 years? We don't KNOW, no matter if our current equations tell us it's not possible, ever. So I guess I'll just savor the memory of things that I've seen that baffle me, enjoy the stories of things that other people see that baffle them, and continue to read both FT and SI.

Is it a weepie, then?

Lately I've been feeling a deep melancholy. Probably I've felt it most of my life, but meds have kind of erased it the last few years, although it pops up now and again. I've settled into it; it's like finding your old favorite t-shirt at the bottom of the closet and, even though it has stains or holes, you wear it for days because it's so comfy and familiar. This time though, I see that it has stains but choose to wear it anyway. Knowing that the melancholy isn't really a response to life events, but rather more of a phantom that settles in, doesn't keep me from enjoying the feeling. (Yes, enjoying - wallowing? Whatever) But more important is not letting it take over, operating from outside of it, observing that you're wearing a torn shirt and enjoying it on some level but moving on independent of that fact. Aaaah, I'm trying to explain but it's not working. In any case, I see that it's occurring to me, but isn't me, and isn't really part of me. Any better? Best guess is that it gives me an excuse to feel sorry for myself even when there isn't anything to feel sorry for myself about. So I'll let it linger for a bit, like a good cry in a sad movie, then kick it to the curb and wear a clean shirt again.

Not So Sweet Dreams

Terrible terrible dreams lately, with people who dislike me with cool indifference and refuse to listen to my side of things, while I am making things worse by shouting at them in frustrated anger. And this time the dreams are of family - not my immediate nuclear family but more my extended family. What's up with this? There must be something I'm harboring inside or, perhaps more correctly, something I fear. I've had these kinds of dreams off and on for a while and still can't quite figure them out - probably I'm too close to it. Usually not of family though, but strangers. Frustrating.

Drumroll please

Aaaaand .... it's Toby! The kitten, that is.

Dilemma of the moment

We gave in. After my cat died at age 18, we adopted a shelter kitten, sleek and silvery grey, who came ready-named Storm. He's great. But a few days ago we ran across some kittens-in-a-box outside our local grocery, and had to adopt the orange tabby boy. So now we have three cats again *sigh* but wouldn't trade any of them for anything.

But what do we name the orange baby? Rejecting obvious names like Garfield, Tiger and Tigger, and our son's "rap" name suggestions like P Kitty, has left us with a list of odd names ranging from Japanese to Celtic, to just plain words. And none of them is preferred by all three of us. Will this poor kitty ever have a name?

I Want To Believe

What a great, telling phrase that is, although mostly associated with fiction's least skeptical character. But it seriously sums up the dilemma faced by a skeptical believer. I want to believe - ufos, ghost activity, cryptids, elves and fairies, lemurians in Mt Shasta. I CAN'T believe in them as fully as I want. In fact, I generally swing between total belief and total disbelief. Watching Ghost Hunters, there's a distinct thrill when 'activity' is captured, and then almost an equal thrill when it is disproven. Perhaps because, the more they disprove, the more plausible are the things they can't?
Religion, same thing. I want to believe in a heaven; actually, I prefer believing in a pastiche of afterlife and reincarnation. But logic and science tell me it's most likely that we simply 'end'. I really WANT to believe. And sometimes I do.
How terrible and boring life would be if we have discovered everything there is to find. The extinct coelacanth was found alive... why not a bigfoot, yeti, sasquatch, something that exists in pretty much every culture? Dragons? Couldn't they have existed? Why do we have asian river spirits in dragon form, european dragons of fire and ice, of course Leviathan from the Bible, but never have had dragons exist? Since we're told that humans didn't coexist with dinosaurs, I doubt it's a racial memory. Then what? Proof we all began from the same few people, who told their kids strange stories, which then passed down and on to every corner of the globe?
There's an overlap for me of mysticism and science. The weirdness of outer space, of the deepest parts of the ocean, are as crazy as any fairy tale yet are documentable. The fact that what we see in the night sky is a vision of the past, the sight of a puddle of heavy water in the ocean... soooo very strange and mind twisting, yet real. Maybe we are so focused on the lore that we overlook reality. Perhaps dragons don't look like we always assumed?

My son was scared of his room the other night, for no other reason than that he's 8 and doesn't want to sleep. But we'd been talking about spirits and ghosts, which both fascinate and scare him, and me as well. Trying to ease his mind I suggested that a ghost or spirit may simply be someone in a place we can't see them at that time. When Daddy is up in the bedroom, he can be heard but not seen, yet is still in the same house. Could it be that way with a ghost? Once in a while they pass through our family room then return to their bedroom. ;) But seriously... I also explained death to him a while ago using the metaphor of a car and driver. No driver, no gas, the car stops. But the driver is still around, even if they aren't in the car. Imagine your body as the car, and your soul as the driver. He seemed to like the idea. But I wonder what we step out into as we exit the car? It's probably not as simple as the car and driver would lead me to think. But we know so little about the brain and the way it processes things, that I can easily believe we simply haven't learned to see certain things.
And it's not even a matter of intelligence - so many highly intelligent people over the centuries have believed (or refused to believe) things that we seem to fully understand now. Someone explain to me how Arthur Conan Doyle could have been so duped by obvious paste-job fairies? Guess he wanted to believe.

So the seesaw continues; the ache of longing for a miraculous, exciting discovery of extraterrestrial life we could communicate with, a truly real photo or film of bigfoot, stuff like that, so I don't feel so ... trapped, I guess ... on a contained, fully explored sphere. But the beauty of the sphere brings its own joy as well, on days when the skeptic is happy to simply enjoy the view.

To Sleep, Perchance...

Lots of long, involved, weird dreams the last few days. Full movies, with sequels, made from books (not real ones), set in locations from other dreams and also in strange new places. Sure, dreaming is really important to me, but I like sleeping too. :P
So, strange dream guys - get your acts together and stop doing what you're doing - get back to normal and let me rest!