May 07 2009
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Two Old Essays
Kenn Thomas just emailed me a couple of links to essays I wrote for his Steamshovel Press before the turn of the century (ca. 1998.) I had forgotten about these pieces, written while I was still publishing my old zine, The Excluded Middle. We met through the zine community and Kenn ended up as the best man for my second marriage.
The essay entitled “Revising Reality” was a reaction to a lecture by the late Jim Keith. Although I am still in awe of Keith’s powers of research (with books like Mind Control, World Control and Saucers of the Illuminati) I found his theory which proposed the use of remote viewing and other psychic engineering to change the future and “fix” the present or the past unworkable. This was based primarily on an interview I had recently conducted with Dr. Dean Radin, which flipped my world view (at least on the concepts of time and causality.)
Fundamentalist skeptics always need to be hounded, and although the author most assuredly never read my essay called “Crewes Reviewes,” Kenn provided me with a soapbox to complain about Fredrick Crews, an academic who somehow felt the need to tear into UFO researchers and saucer fans in a mega-review of books by Whitley Strieber, David Jacobs, and Jodi Dean from the New York Review of Books. Although he pointed out in his review (not accessible unless you pay for it) that UFO fans and researchers make far too many assumptions, he jumps right to the old “death knell of rational thought” argument. He also made a lot of assumptions about the UFO field and the phenomenon itself, falling easily into the skeptical/ rationalist dilettante role.
While I tend to agree that the field is rife with self-delusion and belief-driven research, the “baby with the bathwater” tack has always been repellent to me. Crews is currently an English Professor at UC Berkeley, and I agree with his criticism of hypnosis as an imperfect (and perhaps dangerous) method of recovering lost or repressed memories. I don’t agree that the UFO subject is worthless and that it should be defined as aliens from other planets. He could most likely run rings around me intellectually, but his (perhaps) willful ignorance of some of the more arcane areas of UFOdom is no excuse for an attack on three books that do not define the subject, even if they were popular.
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May 7th, 2009 at 6:34 am
Well Keith defers to Freud and Crews was a Freudian — apparently with opposite intentions. The stickler is Keith relying on the concept of “perception” to change the past or the future. My understanding is 60% of our future is predetermined (according to astrology/karma, genetics, environment, etc.) and then 40% can be changed. Also that sitting in full-lotus yoga “burns karma.” The irony is that it’s not any one’s “perception” which would change the past or the future. Actually Kurt Godel figured this out when Rudy Rucker interviewed Godel, featured in Rucker’s book “Infinity and the Mind.” When Rucker asked Godel about the classic changing the past paradox of time travel — Godel responded that time travelers would not DESIRE to change their future. Reading Godel from the perspective of yoga (and Freud on acid) it’s only by sublimating our desire is time-travel possible: The changing of the past and future is only done by the equally diminished sense of our individual ego in the present. Which is of course pretty much the same thing you said as well.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Nice essays.
Maybe Ken was too infatuated with “Quantum Leap” at the time he wrote about the possibility of ‘fixing the past’. Your arguments are very solid; although I admit I’d fantasized if our current world, despite all the suffering, wars and general stupidity, is actually the best world we could have —this if you consider all the ‘close calls’ we’ve had with global annihilation, Bay of Pigs is the most obvious example, but there have been others that were classified until very recently.
One of my favorite “Quantum Leaps” episodes was when Sam jumped into Lee Harvey Oswald; seemingly he didn’t fix anything because JFK still dies, but then he’s friend (shit I forgot his name) corrects him when he points out than in the “original” (for them) assassination, Jackie O was also killed.
The other was very good. BUT I do must point a tiny point of criticism, given the fact that you accuse this skeptic guy of “writing reviews of things he doesn’t care to research to any reasonable depth”; when you yourself admitted not reading yet Strieber’s book (Confirmation was it?), and much of Posner’s work. That doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of making an educated comment; but… well, I think you know what I’m trying to say here, right?
May 7th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
RPJ,
They’ll turn on you in a moment. First the Geller thing, and now this.
Keeping me honest. I like that.
Crews didn’t research the subject past the three books he reviewed, but extrapolated his views to ALL UFO research and writing. I had actually read all of Strieber’s UFO books to that point except Confirmation. I believe that gave me a little more insight into the man’s thoughts. I didn’t write about Posner very much in that essay, although at that point I had met him and he seemed like a reasonable guy, although many of his main arguments in Case Closed (which I HAD taken the time to learn about) seemed superficial to me, as well as taking things out of context and ignoring well-documented evidence that would hurt his case.