Nina Paley on Nostr: A friend sent me "Paranormal Experience and the Survival of Death" by Carl Becker so ...
A friend sent me "Paranormal Experience and the Survival of Death" by Carl Becker so I have been dutifully reading it and the word that best fits my response is "cringe." Am I just closed-minded? Why do I resist the "data" (ie stories of children recalling past lives of dead people)?
Death is hard to cope with and impossible to understand and humans are extremely motivated to find some assurances that it doesn't really happen, that our "consciousness" (they really mean ego, identity, self) survives bodily death. The mental contortions and pseudo-scientific language are pathetic, the refusal of a determined ego to accept the unknowabilty of the unknowable and the reality of death. The author never considers the strength of this motivation (denial of death) to bias children, parents, witnesses, "scientists" and researchers.
Look if I'm wrong and my ego survives to be reincarnated into some new human child's body, I will take it all back. BUT COME ON. Recognizing some ideas are pathetic and motivated by an obvious basic psychological drive is not always simple "closed-mindedness". The world is full of dumb ideas and delusions, I consider them in good faith when recommended by a friend, and hey I may be wrong but this is the only mind and the only life I have and it has a pretty good Reality detector. I don't think the book is bullshit, the author is not bullshitting; he believes what he writes, and that's fine for him and others like my friend. But I cringe for a reason. Trust the cringe.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Paranormal_Experience_and_Survival_of_De/2qkpAUqV3oQC?hl=en&gbpv=0
Death is hard to cope with and impossible to understand and humans are extremely motivated to find some assurances that it doesn't really happen, that our "consciousness" (they really mean ego, identity, self) survives bodily death. The mental contortions and pseudo-scientific language are pathetic, the refusal of a determined ego to accept the unknowabilty of the unknowable and the reality of death. The author never considers the strength of this motivation (denial of death) to bias children, parents, witnesses, "scientists" and researchers.
Look if I'm wrong and my ego survives to be reincarnated into some new human child's body, I will take it all back. BUT COME ON. Recognizing some ideas are pathetic and motivated by an obvious basic psychological drive is not always simple "closed-mindedness". The world is full of dumb ideas and delusions, I consider them in good faith when recommended by a friend, and hey I may be wrong but this is the only mind and the only life I have and it has a pretty good Reality detector. I don't think the book is bullshit, the author is not bullshitting; he believes what he writes, and that's fine for him and others like my friend. But I cringe for a reason. Trust the cringe.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Paranormal_Experience_and_Survival_of_De/2qkpAUqV3oQC?hl=en&gbpv=0