We feel
highs, depressions, and withdrawal pains.
I find Twitter to be especially addictive.
Twitter, Facebook and other social media thrust pictures,
videos, and narratives in our faces, stimulating our emotions. We feel rushes of joy, sadness, anger and
outrage, until we can’t distinguish between what is existentially critical and
what is totally insignificant.
A little kerfuffle between a few conservative high school
students and some leftist protesters turns into the monster news story of the
year. There was no violence
involved. They didn’t even touch each
other. The only violence occurred when
the news and social media decided to intentionally report it inaccurately in
order to inflame peoples’ emotions. Another
mental opioid rush.
Everyone on Earth instantly gets a version of the story thrust
in their angry faces and sees it unfold on video while their blood pressures
rise. Except for perhaps my wife. She refuses to follow the news, and instead
reads a lot of fiction. She’s the smart
one in the family.
Because when you look through the spyglass backward and see
the world in true perspective, it’s all insignificant.
In an earlier AT piece,
I mentioned I was reading a book
titled “We Have No Idea” by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson. In it, they describe the fact that we are
only aware of about 5% of the known universe.
The rest is all dark matter and energy that we know absolutely nothing
about. And yet that is just a minute
fraction of what we truly don’t know.
Our limited brains and senses are totally inadequate to be
able to comprehend the concept of eternity times infinity, where time and space
cannot exist as we currently perceive them.
We are really no different from ants, which can only see and understand
their own little anthill. Once in a
great while, something incomprehensible (to them) from the outside world
intrudes into theirs. I believe the same
thing happens to us, as well.
I just finished Scott Adams book,
“Win Bigly”. He puts forth a convincing
case (originally theorized by philosopher Nick Bostrom) that our universe and
everything in it is a giant computer simulation created by an advanced
civilization. All of the “crazy” phenomena
we “moist robots” (as Adams describes us) observe are merely glitches in the
program. Although Adams is a cartoonist
(Dilbert), he is dead serious about this.
Back in the Silver Age of the 1960’s (at least for my Marvel
comics) when I was a kid, I would make weekly trips to the library and each
time check out at least a half-dozen books on the topics of UFOs, psychic
phenomena, astral projection, and ghostly close encounters. I was ravenous for information on the
alternate dimensions of things we know nothing about. Most of it scared the hell out of me.
A few years ago, my wife and I were vacationing in New
Hampshire. As we drove up Route 3 to the
White Mountains, I observed something very startling. We stopped, and I took a picture of it. It was a state historical marker
commemorating the first documented alien abduction in America. I had long ago read about this account in the
book
“The Interrupted Journey”. I find it
amazing that the state of New Hampshire would deem the alleged incident so
credible that they would honor it this way.
A few times in my life, I have experienced brief
incomprehensible intrusions into my little world. Things I can’t explain, unless you attribute
them to mental mirages or delusions. I
believe most people have also witnessed some inexplicable events at some points
in their lives.
Being a descendent of Doubting Thomas the Apostle, I agree
that anything we witness could be a product of our own delusions or
imaginations. There is no way to
discount that. But we do know that there
must be an infinite number of possibilities of things in existence that are
beyond our knowledge and senses. It is
statistically highly likely that some of them would intrude into our little anthill
at some point.
The Pentagon has spent $22 million from
2007 to 2012 studying UFOs in its Advanced Aviation Threat Identification
Program. The Defense Department has a
number of ongoing studies on advanced propulsion systems, which are related to
their study of UFO’s. One program
is trying to develop a warp drive powered by dark energy.
In my early UFO studies, I read several books
by George Adamski, who told incredible tales of flying in spaceships to the
Moon and other planets in the solar system.
His books were illustrated with photographs and detailed diagrams of the
spacecrafts’ interiors. He said that the
aliens told him the saucers were powered by crossing a cathode with an anode.
Today, our satellites are powered by ion drive, with a
cathode and anode. More recently,
scientists have developed the first flight of an airplane
by ion drive. Back in 1955, when Adamski
first wrote about alien ion drive propulsion, it was totally unheard of. Is it possible that scientists are
reverse-engineering alien technology? It’s
an intriguing question.
Honestly, I don’t know how much of the bizarre accounts in
books and articles I have read that I am willing to accept. I’m keeping an open mind. Some accounts seems very credible, some do
not. As a Doubting Thomas, unless I see
it for myself I will always have doubts.
Even then, I may have doubts.
However, based on a few personal experiences in these areas,
I can attest that there is more going on around us than we are aware of in our
daily lives. I won’t go into describing
these personal experiences, since you probably wouldn’t believe them anyway. And I don’t blame you.
I’m convinced the human soul exists, as well as an
afterlife. I believe this not from
reading the Bible (which I really haven’t read yet), but from phenomenological
evidence. I can’t accept the theory that
we are only computer simulations.
Life is very, very short.
Once we go to our reward, it is doubtful we will even remember our lives
on Earth, as they will be but a flicker in the scope of eternity.
I think it’s best if we take a deep breath, go out and look
at the stars, and tear ourselves away from the addictive drugs of social media
and network news as much as possible.
They are not good for the soul.
Angel
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