Logical Unsanity

This essay was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Fall 2005. Please don’t be turned off by the academic language and format… skip the abstract if you want and start on the first paragraph.

Abstract

When students in a university classroom are invited to share anomalous stories, the “skeptical” tactics used to debunk them seem reasonable at first, but eventually reveal a worldview that is cynical, arrogant, dogmatic, and unfalsifiable. Because any new evidence can, with sufficient effort, be made to fit a preexisting paradigm, belief is seen to come down to choice. Moreover, like most belief systems, the worldview of the Skeptic has an emotional component, long ago identified by Bertrand Russell and others as a meaninglessness or despair inherent in classical science. The choice of belief therefore extends beyond a mere intellectual decision, to encompass one’s identity and relationship to the world. This approach conflicts with traditional scientific objectivity, which enjoins that belief be detached from such considerations. The relationship between observation and belief is more subtle than the traditional scientific view that the latter must follow dispassionately from the former. Indeed, the “experimenter effect” in parapsychology, as well as mounting problems with objectivity in mainstream science, suggest a need to reconceive science and the Scientific Method in light of the crumbling of the assumption of objectivity upon which it is based.

For several years I have conducted a rather unusual activity in my classroom at Penn State. I ask my class—approximately 45 students representing a broad cross-section of the student body—to bring in a story that “doesn’t fit into scientific reality.” I tell them it could be anything—a ghost story, something with alternative medicine, a UFO sighting, a dream that came true, an experience with a fortune teller or ouija board. . . anything. “If you’ve never had such an experience,” I say, “ask your friends and relatives.” The justification I give them beforehand is that by considering what our culture categorizes as “unscientific”, we will shed light on what the adjective “scientific” means as well.
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New geography – no redefinition
We burn the maps and torch the archives
We live for manifest destiny
Dead politicians in Rome, flung in brothels with chastity belts see
Husbands selling wives with no motivation, less compensation, input rivals output
Lovers living lies, rope out of reach but rather handy for
Inticing games, everyone wins
Conquest like new rooms
Like old dogs and old tricks, teach me.
Old corners or old bedposts, just a new chick, a cracked egg.
Old fashioned American explorers, drawing rivers in the mud
Washed up, beached whales
Eyes cry suds with hot scents, does that make you sweat?
Work it out, clean me up, breathe me in,
Scream, declare: I found it, this flag sticks in your skin
Let my new nation pierce your flesh
Have pride in this country
Land of the free, duty free, cheap cigarettes,
Quick vacations and quicker fucks
Declare: do not touch beyond the glass, sanity displayed in the raw
Please keep all limbs inside the vehicle,
Arms and legs and tongues, you speak
A language we don’t understand
Corrections made in Dixie land, allow this revision, embrace it in its permanence,
Feel the heat from the brand
Watch the glass turn to sand.

Bail fin.
Ball fin.
Ball (pint of).
Ball (extract).
Bastard fin.
Bastard fin (extract).
Belgium lint-udder.
Belgium lint-udder (pint of).
Brunt.
Brunt fin.
Brunt fin (slanted).
Brunt fin (pint of).
Under-brunt fin.
Bugler (in a calendar).
Cardboard gusts.
Cardboard gusts fin.
Cardboard Horatio fin (extract). Read on »

Written on the 7th day of my water fast in Hopewood.
The pain in my chest finally had words,
I could not talk to anyone that morning
and when another girl from Hopewood came
to me and asked me how I was, I spoke my truth.
“J have to go to my room and cry these tears
from my chest. Bye”
These words came through as I witnessed
the re-creation of my pain.
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I will establish a savage; Man will be his name
Blood I will mass, and cover bones to be.
Verily, savage-man I will create.
He will be charged with the service of the Gods
that they might be at ease.
-Enuma Elish (Sumerian Creation Myth)

Back in the days after the Creator Gods had biologically engineered human primates to turn them into a work force, then abandoned the planet when the mines ran out, two other groups of ET’s, both descendants of the Olde Gods, began to argue about their responsibility to the abandoned native life forms. The highly individualistic Sirians, who took their role as teachers seriously (or, Sirius-ly), felt the humans should be offered instruction if they asked, but otherwise allowed to work out their own destinies. Sink or swim. Live or die. Survive or turn the planet over to whatever more competent species of predator might replace them.

The Pleiadians (Play-Aid-ians), who were somewhat more compassionate, cuddily, and community-oriented, insisted on a more protective approach. They wanted to gather the bewildered bipeds up into guarded rural enclaves, which they called Gaurd Dens, of which there were to be 5: A-Den, B-Den, C-Den, D-Den and the largest, E-Den. The humans would have their memories erased to protect them from the horrors of the past. They would live in a Zen-like state of innocence and be called Den-E-Zens of PlAN NET URTH (URTH U R THe ones you are) Unaware of the passage of time, they would be, in effect, I-Mortals. And, as the saying goes, live “happily ever after”. Though of course, “after” would have no meaning for them, nor would “before”. That is, they would not be for or against anything or anyone. And so would continue in perfect, if also perfectly blank, bliss and tranquility.
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