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Dedicated To The Memory of Arthur Koestler, A True Pioneer
The Iconic Irony of Belief Systems
"The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life." -Arthur Koestler
Certainty, System Psychology and Accident
One criticism of my writing was an dire observation that often that as a whole, it seemed like an odd cross between Melville and Poe, which, of course I mistook took for praise. My sense of this in my writing is that the light speaks aptly for itself but the flashlight borne down into the catacombs where we secretly reside, requires someone to at least offer brief commentaries as to just how dark it is.
Perhaps every theory should have a warning: "For the safety and convenience of our paying customers, a protective layer of self created mythology is required to be presented at the time of boarding." In these times the paranormality of what constitutes business as unusual here on island Earth, I was reminded by Arthur Koestler that, much Like R.A Wilson did "Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over." As the originator of contemporary Holonic theory, Koestler is largely forgotten. http://www.integralw.../edwards13.html
The editing we utilize to define the realities are like appliances of convenience, proverbial operating platforms that take the raw material on the surface of these theoretical platforms and fashion our own creation of mythologies, personal and otherwise, as R.A Wilson observed, as "reality tunnels". The abduction experience is one of those that take psychic anomalies and thus create a proverbial kingdom without taking into consideration that the material is likely includes a trans positioning of content into what is available in the library of thought and creates a metaphor. Certainty is the creed when we cease utilizing self skepticism and rely on pervasive memes to navigate our choices.
The unsinkable or "accident proof" notoriety of the Titanic as a parable fringing on the mythical, leads one to the requisite illusions of certainty when applied to the technological marriage between certainty and belief systems. The fatal technological flaws of the vessel, such as substandard quality steel,a lack of lifeboats, as well as waterproof compartmentalization that only protected the lower half of the hull are now postscripts to an historical tragedy as well as the preface to the recent and continuing unparalleled disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico. All of this originates not in the stars but in the mind of men and women who are suspended in a craving desire for a prosaic certainty that allows a passage amongst the dark alleys and confounding cross purposes of the human psyche. When the paranormal becomes a buried bone in what passes for normality, the truly anomalous seems like quaint reliquary, a bag of bones wrapped in velvet. Such are these times.
"The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know." -Arthur Koestler
There is no red stop indication on the approach signal when we track into theory, beyond uncertainty into believing that our conceptual models have a rigidity that can withstand our own nature as well as that of our environment. That, dear reader, is termed history. The paranormal field is oddly fraught with certainties, one is certain of this and the other is certain of that, although none would admit so directly, it is nearly always inferred, indirect and has a certain editorial prerogative to find the right angels of the intellect in randomness. Yes? As above, so below? The voluntary pawn comes to mind when one skims the surface of an oil slick as well as the anticipations of the passengers aboard the Titanic. Another is the pervasiveness of theoretical axioms made memes by a dismissal of the context of anticipation, desire and what one believes because of the inability to let go of the buffering safety zone that makes for the substitution of appearances for substance that can only derive from introspection, rather than the rote repetition of facts based on a manipulation of all of the above..by the observer who must chose. Most would prefer no choice when anxiety is more than a footnote to a downfall.
History whether it is our behavior toward the supernatural or the empirical is a certainty for now, as recurring postscript which is also a recombinant facet of human fallibility passed from The White Star Line to the hands of British Petroleum as they too ignored the failure of safety systems and pressed onward with the same strange sense of immunity that was aboard the Titanic as it receded into the deep. While the deep toxicity beyond this metaphor seeps upward onto the surface of our own affairs, the players change upon the stage as the band plays on, from the Mayans to the Capitalists. In this, belief systems,cross the neutral territory of their consideration to acceptance, based not on probability but on an addiction to having one's head buried in the sand, lest one meet monsters ten time worse, that feed upon the creation made persuasive by a willing participant. A viral addiction to believe any old tale in the face of slings and arrows. All of this is couched in certainties, subtle or overt in the eye of the observer.
The script only exchanges the stage scenery as the conflict portrayed by behavior remains a eternally unchanged theme. Think of blond Venusian's, or Nazi garbed extraterrestrials as the reinvention of Quetzalcoatl, as taking yet another page from history upon a reflective universe, upon whose shoulders we would prefer to be placed the blameworthy, the trickster, the demonic rather than seeing through this patent scrim of belief as a panacea for our own weaknesses as a projected plea of either insanity or innocence, when it may be both.
The entangled state of the human mind which seeks the countenance of safety in certainty with little room for self skepticism in both the local and non local attributes of this isthmus world, is now in full alarm that is sounding in the dead of night.
Again I ask, when you enter into the paranormal field either under your own presumed volition or compelled as a moth to a flame, what is the demarcation we place as a context before we plant philosophic flags and markers on a territory where ownership is an self fulfilling prophecy that will ultimately lead to the reality of realities countering by a painful comeuppance, as all things under the sun must be bought and paid for in advance by a belief, a bet, a comfortable wager that nearly always leads to disaster, when belief supersedes irony.
The day of the fateful explosion and the sinking of the oil platform were the one and the same day, a safety reward was to be bestowed upon the crew with great ceremony. Like the much vilified Bruce Ismay, the capitalist who ordered the Titanic to increase it's speed in the midst of a ice field, B.P took an untried and expedited approach to capping the well which led to it's horrific immolation based upon a desire for a reduced cost and an increase in profit much like the speed record Ismay was seeking the night of another historic marker upon the play of certainties. Only the players change.
Sacrificial Lambs and Choice
Certainly the majority of the passengers of the Titanic with notable exceptions, were enjoying all the utility of modern contemporary conveniences in the comfort of a entire sociological culture of the Victorian Age, built into the superstructure of a craft. Notably one woman who refused to board, proclaimed it's premise of certainty as unnatural, as well as an omen of it's fate as a rusting, fragile tomb at the bottom of the sea. She, her husband and children survived by her instinctual premonition of common sense. One of her children became one of the longest lived exceptions to a death whose cartography was oceanic, then as now.
Note she was the exception to the rule when compared to those who sacrificed their children, their husbands and loved ones, who became floating corpses drifting with the tidal current, past ice floes in the dead of night, enshrouded in dead silence, under the stars. Again Koestler remarks to this as well as to the death of my son some months ago, that "Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion." Gurdjieff called the denial of today, "the disease of tomorrow", an illusion that there will always be an endless string, infinite reediting and retreats against the short passage of certainties and the long journey homeward.
The toxic oil flow also drifts in comparative silence, the sacrifices of the human species versus nature are underlined with such a ironclad underscoring that it is a eerie repetition of the same play of human system psychology, certainty, accident and a illusionary mastery of nature that compels me to note this for future generations as some of us here in the past, were aware of a certain inevitability of another level of sacrifice that has not occurred which is equally notable.
Outflanking The Paranormal
That is the lack of alarm, as if our crows nest on this vessel has no binoculars to spy what's ahead in our own past right here in for what is our present. Where are the calls or mandatory restrictions on fuel consumption? Where are the global meetings on alternative energy sources that should have occurred three decades ago? Where is the Manhattan Project for alternative energy? Fisheries are dead, the coastal communities threatened, the Gulf irrevocably polluted like a toxic waste dump, and yet, the parade of carnival goers see no writing on the wall within their air conditioned cabins. A certain ghost leans over my shoulder, as unswerving as the eye of a owl perched atop my biochemical desk, it's drawers littered with the detritus of what must be unlearned and forgotten. As one remarked this ghost in "All his books grappled with the theme of contradiction between two poles: thought and action, ideal and real, tragic and trivial, mysticism and science. There are no Koestlers anymore."
"Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means." -Arthur Koestler
Imagineering The Realities
In all we inhabit a denial that is reinforced by the false front of a variety of self comforting psychologies, as comfortable as the technological conveniences that are wrested from exploiting the environment, as a normality. The "greenwashing" of corporate interests as a means of propagandist efforts through the media, is yet another scrim that utilizes a naturalist iconographic design with the sun as a proverbial life giving totem that superimposes itself upon the synthetic nature of it's profiteering upon what it claims to represent just as the equally totemic comic book characters of popular paranormal media hide the fallibility of human nature transposed to a supernatural monarchy. The Janus faces of denial? No totemic memes could be designed without a willingness in the eye of the observer to abide by them rather than digest uncertainty as a diet. Probability goes out the window and the stage is set.
No sacrifices, or strategic retreat is even being discussed while two fronts on a war over oil continue in the billions of dollars daily. The roaring silence is paved with trivia, even the paranormal is outflanked, as the normal is decidedly paranormal.It seems irresponsible to avert one's eyes from this seeping of toxicity on many levels into our habitat while wringing our hands over will of the wisps. I seem to be alone in this increasing hesitation to add to a distraction of entertainment or vicarious experiential ruminations, when the ground beneath our feet is cracking with the sound of thunder..oh, let's discuss abductions, fifty year old cold cases and ambivalent theoretical trivia, while Rome burns. Perhaps it should burn.
As the band plays on.
Bruce Duensing
Reproduced by kind permission of Bruce Duensing http://materialintan...-certainty.html
