Little Rants

[Catoptric]

"Why do some people find it hard to believe in paranormal experiences reported by others?"


Belief is subjective and can be biased due to one’s background and desire to conform to the “status quo” of group disindividuation.

People will forego truth, in favor of conforming to the desire what would seem only “rational,” or “worthwhile,” depending on the subject matter. Much of this can be molded by the environment or what one expects to find, and people also would rather ignore or pretend that you can reverse catastrophe or avoid end of life (hence belief systems perpetuate a desire,) and that leaving a reminder that we exist and existed is tantamount to the meaning of life.

If we can exist vicarious through a group likewise we desire to exist in perpetuity, through our families and their progeny. The desire to have power over other people is inherent to society, which is why things like “pyramid schemes” and “top-down hierarchies,” while being at the top by proxy of “ownership” (and subjugating others to authority,) can be intoxicating to certain people (until they have to pay the piper or face the music, as it were. . .) People would rather claim to have authority and lie about it, before accepting their fate; just as a criminal will lie to others and in turn lie to themselves, that they are a “good boy” and didn’t commit crimes or harm to others, if they willingly thought they were believing in or doing the “right thing.”

People like to be in control or believe they have control which prolongs either denial or the wherewithal of duplicitous behavior.

Imagine the frustration of working for a company or working in a position of government where you have the foresight and conviction to believe impending danger, and have the knowledge and experience to put in place regulations or focus points to prevent complete and utter chaos; either because you know that corruption exists and “drinking the kool-aid” will have dire consequences, or because you know that any attempt to thwart the inevitable is rather pointless, simply because “people don’t care about the consequences” or don’t bother to investigate it themselves. One’s experiences for another might not be the same as one’s own prior experience. If something is not replicable to observe, or one’s observations were contaminated by personal biases, then people are not as likely to agree.

Even with knowing the consequences of a possible outcome, people would rather ignore despite evidence to the contrary based on knowledge of a situation; things like Chornobyl could have had a very different outcome had proper regulations been enforced while not lying to themselves, much as people might ignore the ‘check engine’ light until the car stops completely.

A similar phenomenon with the realization, that people lie constantly. Some do it because it gets them the attention they want, so people gradually stop bothering to listen to those who they would rather stereotype as either confabulators or lunatics; since no one can truly know another person’s mindset and whether they are lying, knowing they are lying, or are too “far gone” to be taken seriously. Vice versa, people are not always capable of understanding another’s perspective, since they don’t possess the knowledge or the abilities to grasp the nuances and semantics of belief.

People can also fool themselves, or convince themselves that what they experienced was a phenomenon other than it was; either because memory can be fickle, or human perception is inherently flawed because any one aspect of what we experience with our senses is prone to “filters” of how we interpret them. Take any number of people and put them in front of a painting/picture/movie and they might interpret something completely different from what the photographer or even the subject itself represents. Perhaps it doesn’t represent anything and it’s entirely in the bias of the observer to pretend to know what they are seeing/hearing/experiencing.

When sitting in a Dentist chair when I was young I had really bad anxiety because of prior experiences with anything hospital-related; so was it simply being in a medical environment or was it the situation of not having control over my physicality and the outcome of what is ultimately a benign or novel experience I had numerous times prior (though due to having to be passed out, the “unknown” and not having experience over our sense of awareness, can render our “rational” processing “out of commission.”)

What draws people to fear and why do people find interest in the horror genre and the subject of the afterlife? Do people “fill in the blanks” of what they don’t see or understand; and by “seeing it” or “hearing it” do people satisfy that sense of objectivity?

How do you become objective unless you are subjecting yourself to an experience or preexisting belief?

Even if one claims they had a shared experience of the paranormal, people will pass scrutiny and assume that the one person they are hearing this from is lying to them, or that even with “shared testimony” you might realize there was an invested interest in lying, as the consequences of being found out in a confirmed lie may well be a very costly mistake. People go their entire life going from one grift to the next trying to dupe the next victim in their con game, and people eventually wise up to it (though too often such people will continue until they die, in which their “aura” and control over the unsuspecting public will continue to entrap people with their cult of personality.)

I had doubted claims of the paranormal for this reason for a long time. I came to understand it in a way that still leaves me with some doubts, and yet having observed numerous aspects of paranormal phenomenon during my own EVP/ITC study which includes photographing what I can only assume is an apparition. I would continue to spend excessive amounts of time looking up into the stars with a telescope and night vision goggles, some years after seeing what I a large triangular craft that was probably too large to hide anywhere on our planet. I believe science can only continue as long as a greater perspective of human limitations as well as technological limitations are addressed, as even with advanced AI, it will become rather difficult to know for certain what might actually be happening within advanced physics, to rationalize the actual truth behind the phenomenon.

Personally, I believe we are still a primitive society that is ill-prepared to understand our own limitations (but you can’t convince the “leaders” of society to come to that realization, so we perpetually destroy ourselves and that ‘Kool-Aid’—or ‘Flavor-Aid laced with something if you want to get really serious—might be the only option for them.)

[HighlyIrregular II]

If you choose to do something it means you're not satisfied as you are, but if you can't move then you can't tell, so you need to be able to move but not be moving to be OK, except sometimes you can be not OK anyway. If you're reading this, you're not OK for sure, that much I know.

[HighlyIrregular]

Lack of buttons on the front of monitors these days.

I have a roll of shock cord that comes in handy for keeping cardboard boxes closed and bundling things. Two days ago I made a loop and put it around my monitor to hold notes. St. Jude sent me free note pads and I didn't want to throw them out so now I use them instead of sticky notes. But the best physical controls on monitors that I found were on BenQ monitors, on the bottom of the rim, where the shock cord is. So when I upgrade my monitor (which I thought would be soon but resetting it fixed a double-image problem) I may not be able to use my shock cord note holding method. I have a low-end 22" monitor from 2012 and I may upgrade when Windows 12 comes out and I get a new computer. Maybe sooner.

Also, heads up: the end of life of Windows 10 is coming this year. No more security updates. I'll either continue with it for a while or switch to my Windows 11 laptop. I don't really want a new desktop until Windows 12.