Saturday, July 30, 2011

Not really a paranomalist

The recent imbroglio re: Phil Imbrogno has caused me to wonder about the whole "field" of the paranormal, in general. Lance Moody deserves credit for breaking the story and wrote a very succinct exposé of it. He did a good job.

I actually had an earlier blog (since deleted) where I deconstructed a number of paranormal investigators and their various claims. It got lots of hits... far more hits than this blog does. I thought that the popularity of my critical blog was interesting; it showed that paranormal consumers are more savvy than they are given credit for being. When they are introduced to a new voice in the "field," they do what I do--go online and try to find info, pro and con, before they decide whether to bother believing the person. Other hits were probably from convinced disbelievers in the paranormal, looking for support of their disbelief.

It's actually easy to deflate many paranormal claims, and "debunk" many of the guests on the paranormal circuit. Many of my early entries practically wrote themselves.  But I deleted my earlier blog because, over time, I began to notice a strange paradox: paranormal experiences, undeniably, are real. I've experienced them; most people have. Yet, a significant percentage of the public paranormal researchers have clay feet. Many of the most vocal proponents of the paranormal have some serious psychological and credibility issues.

This tells me that there is a larger dynamic at work that gives hints about the nature of our experiential reality. It reminds me of the UFO men-in-black phenomenon; we see or experience something anomalous, and just as soon as we do, something else steps in and warns us, "Don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain."

While I follow the paranormal and listen to the podcasts (and yes) Coast To Coast, and often find some good stuff there, I'm not really a paranormalist; I'm really more interested in what constitutes the building-blocks of our reality.  I view human conscious life as a grand cosmic experiment. And I seek to know more about the experimenter.

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