After the "Storm"

Warning: this blog is likely not at all what you're expecting from its title. 

Second warning: you're gonna think Ken is fuckin' nuts. 

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SCIENCE: "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

SPIRITUALITY: "concerning the human spirit or soul in harmony with life and the universe."

MAGIC: "The art and science of effecting changes in consciousness through focussed intent."

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 I am consciously cautious with popular artists of all kinds to whom I have not been exposed. Fifty Shades, Twilight and W.A.P. aside, usually things are popular for a reason, and my passions tend to consume me, at least for a short while. The deep dive into gotta-experience-everything-in-this-artist's-catalogue-multiple-times is even more exhausting than it is exhilarating.  So I try, often in vain, to limit myself. Right now, I'm trying to resist the pull to buy everything Michael Connelly ever wrote, because his Lincoln Lawyer series has me flipping pages as if it's 1985 and the world wide web doesn't exist. 

The effort of restraint... It usually doesn't work. I'm easily overwhelmed, especially musically. Just in the last year, I've gone through massive Jacob Collier, Pat Metheny, Marillion, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Tori Amos kicks. And right now I'm trying not to drown in Tim Minchin.

I've run across the Aussie musician, songwriter, strong atheist, crackerjack pianist, actor, humanist,  comic, and Matilda only knows what else before: he wrote the book for Groundhog Day: The Musical, which is if anything even better than the movie, and I say that as someone who considers Groundhog Day, the movie, to be one of the few watchable rom-coms. Minchin also played Judas in an excellent 2012 production of Jesus Christ Superstar. But until YouTube alerted me, I hadn't discovered his collection of comedic/philosophic songs. 

The first thing I heard was Prejudice, among his most famous works. I devoured this, and an umpty-fuck number of reactors to it: this is quite possibly the greatest work of comedic misdirection in the history of comedy. It's funny as hell, and if you care to examine it and your reaction to it critically, it'll leave you with a lot to think about. 

I read the comments below the reactor videos, because even text can give me that dopamine hit of shared joy. One commenter said something to the effect of "you think this is good, watch STORM. It'll change your life."

If you can spare me nine minutes of your time, above and beyond your reading this, the beat poem is worth your while. You really ought to see Tim perform this, but if you'd prefer not, here are some annotated lyrics.

At a few different points in my life, I would have let out several emphatic YES!es as this played out. Had I found this in my late teens, I would have memorized and performed it. And now, as an adult (ha) of fifty years: I love the wordplay, and I appreciate where Tim is coming from....

...but I just can't agree with him on some of it. Had I not once agreed with him on ALL of what he says here, I might be tempted to hold him in at least a little of the contempt he has for Storm. 

It speaks to an evolution in me. Some might call it devolution: I'm pretty sure Mr. Minchin would. 

In the poem, Tim is at a dinner party with his wife, another couple, and a fifth named Storm, who is your quintessential tramp-stamped vegetarian hippie. Tim struggles to restrain himself from attacking her "bullshit", and eventually can't help himself: he eviscerates her, making a hell of a scene.

I've known a lot of people like Storm. As time goes on, I'm becoming just a little more like Storm myself. Go ahead, laugh. I can take it.

Now don't get me wrong here: I'm not some kind of science-denying, anti-vax, anti-GMO, anti-reason person. Not at all. Science is and remains the best way we have of discovering what things are and how they came to be. Indeed, in many respects, the only way.

Nor do I feel that scientists are coldhearted simply because they reduce love to an aquarium in a living room: a bunch of indoor fins. You can't tell me the scientists who made and monitor the James Webb Space Telescope aren't blown away by the beauty of the images it's producing, even as they can explain each image clinically. 

But I feel like Tim, as comfortable as he appears, is in fact standing on one leg of a tripod. His worldview is wobbly because it is fundamentally imbalanced, says I. That's a harsh accusation, and the fresh hell of it is I can't prove it in Tim's own language. I freely acknowledge this. I freely admit as far as Tim and a great many others are concerned, I'm the one without a leg to stand on. And yet...

I contend that this is because science itself shies away from...this is hard to articulate. Not so much topics, exactly, but...

Okay, take ghosts. I've been interested in ghosts since long before I saw (or rather, felt) one in my early teens. To my knowledge, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for ghosts. None. Zip zero zilch. Ergo I've never seen a ghost because nobody has seen a ghost. Science posits all sorts of explanations for hauntings, from hallucinations to carbon monoxide leaks. And while I'm sure that explains the majority of spectral sightings...I just can't bring myself to believe it explains all of them. 

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Can you bring yourself to consider that humans are -- partly -- energy? A teenage boy produces, on average, 6500 kilojoules of energy in a day.  That's 1553 calories -- and you'll recall a "calorie" is the energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Centigrade.

Put another way, the average human at rest puts out 100 watts of power. Expressed as light, that's reasonably bright. Some athletes can emit a burst of up to 2000 watts. A 2000-watt lightbulb won't blind you, but it's uncomfortably bright to look at. 

Are you really dead when you die? The answer is obvious to a rational mind, just as obvious to a spiritual/magical mind -- and the answers are diametrically opposed. Of course you are, says science, because it's never been able to measure otherwise. Of course not, says spirituality and magic, because there are other [worlds/realms/planes] than the world in which we find ourselves.  and if you really back a scientist into a corner, she'll admit: we don't know what consciousness is or how it comes to be. If she's really feeling honest, she'll admit something persists after death. Yes, folks, in case you didn't know, now you know: when you die, you'll understand that you are dead. Incidentally, this is relatively new knowledge...unless you talk to people who view the world outside a scientific lens. 

Sure, none of this constitutes any sort of scientific chain of evidence for ghosts. But speaking only for myself, I find it hella persuasive. Especially when you add in a couple of pertinent scientific facts. 

Do you know how much of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see? I've been asking people this question for years and absolutely everybody is off by least THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. The answer is 0.00035%.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Tim, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Yes, of course we have ever-increasing knowledge about the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum we can't see...what the hell is going on HERE?

You know when you first hear information you've never heard before and it just CLICKS? Like "oh, I didn't know this but I feel like I've always known this"? How do you measure that? What are the mechanics behind "love at first sight"? 

I went to see my mother in the hospital about six months before she died, tragically, in a fire. She was emaciated and clearly very ill, but her eyes BURNED with vitality. We say that phrase -- I'm reasonably sure you grasp my meaning, and can picture bright, blazing almost-not-quite power. Almost? Not quite? Are we sure? Many faith traditions talk in some manner about a "life force". Does that exist? I for one believe it does. Can I verify that scientifically? Kinda doubt that. 

Speaking of faith traditions, every one of them going boils down to "WE ARE ALL ONE". I absofuckinglutely 

Look up Rupert Sheldrake on 'morphic resonance'. Sheldrake pisses science off because his experiments are scientifically reproducible and they yield TOTAL FUCKING WOO.There should be no reason why untrained rats learn a maze faster the more rats have been trained to learn that maze. The guy takes Lamarck, who has been universally branded a crackpot, extends his hypothesis and finds evidence for it. And science looks at that and goes "oh, well, that's embarrassing" and hides it away.

I feel like science, as wonderful and valuable as it UNDOUBTEDLY is, often stops as soon as it has a measurement. It grounds us in 'reality'...but as you've already seen, we perceive a tiny, tiny portion of ultimate reality. And, understandably, what can't be perceived by traditional senses is easily dismissible. I just can't help but think, pace Tim Minchin, that we throw an entire universe of babies out with our bathwaters. 

All I'm trying to say is that science is one way of looking at the world. It's magnificently suited to the observable, but it tends to break down as you move inward. That's what Tim is missing: any sense of an inner world to go along with the outer world. The inner world, you know, the world of emotions (which I have often seen cast as an abbreviation for energies in motion, and which they clearly are: what, are you going to try and assert that rage doesn't have an energy? Bitch, please. I feel these things. Daily. By a process I can't put into the language of science, but that's okay. It would be a diminishment. 

I have little doubt that some people may take me to be completely off my nut. That's okay too. I've been told as much since I was in kindergarten, I'm used to it. I still believe that if science ever gets the nerve to really follow quantum mechanics where it leads, it'll find itself merging with spirituality and magic both.

Magic. I lost some of my readers with spirituality. Magic is even more taboo in today's society: it's been relegated to sleight-of-hand parlour tricks. That's not what magic is at all. See the top: magic is quite simply focussed intent that changes consciousness. Visualizing success before a big game is using magic. Voodoo (more properly voudou) is a magical system, and while you're right to scoff at the mythmash Hollywood has made out of the practice, do know this: it has been shown to work under certain conditions. If a hexed person (a) believes they've been hexed and (b) believes in the power of that hex...the observed effects will match the hex. Science will call that a placebo effect -- and it just kind of peters out going any deeper. How does a placebo work? It shouldn't.  You shouldn't be able to believe yourself into curing a disease, and yet it happens all the time, all over the world, every day. It's almost as if your beliefs are some sort of...energy. 

Naw.

Can't be. 

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I have two people to thank for this widening (I'm sure some would still say narrowing) of my thought processes. You undoubtedly know of the first because I feel like I never shut up about him: John Michael Greer. This man is at home in every realm of thought there is, and he has a way of making the way-out-there relatable and compelling. 

The other is Mark.

Mark came here in 2016 and I can tell you, when I first got to know him, I often thought really nice guy. Full of shit on some subjects, but a really nice guy. Well, I'm no longer quite so certain he's full of shit on anything at all.  He, too, has a way of couching what seem like odd beliefs in language I can understand and apply. What he refers to as different planes of existence, for example, can be viewed through a religious lens or a magical lens (and I am confident science will catch up one day). I don't necessarily see the world through his eyes, but I can, at least a little, and I think that's valuable. Even if science scoffs and sneers at it, I still think it's valuable.