Of Mind and Memory and Tea Trays

Less than ten people stayed after meditation for the midweek dharma talk. With a small group like that, things are bound to be more casual. Reverend Master told some funny stories about back when the order kept milk goats and he served as goat monk. Then the talk veered toward cheese and started to get rather lively.  Once again, I became aware of how close we were to the local gourmet ghetto. At the last possible second Reverend Master swung the conversation away from the approaching iceberg of an extended consideration of the technical aspects of enhancing melting qualities in cheese and invited us instead to contemplate uncertainty.

After the talk was over, I picked up the tray and started to collect everyone’s tea cups. One woman who had been talking a bit excessively during dharma talk was now standing and chatting with Reverend Master like they were at a cocktail party. I held out the tray to collect her cup, doing the smile and half bow that is the local etiquette. She smiled back and, instead of placing her cup on the tray, took the tray from me. Apparently she wanted to collect the tea cups, so I gave it to her.

(The whole smile and half bow thing is GREAT for those of us who don’t do names. I knew Talking Woman, but had no clue what her name was. She was just another one of us older middle aged white ladies. I know my own name and think of all the other females as Mary. The guys are all Paul. Most post-ceremony potluck conversations I have start out with at least one person saying, “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”)

Talking Woman wasn’t completely familiar with the local etiquette, but so what? If you do a practice, your understanding will develop over time. The exactitudes are not important; etiquette is merely a tool for developing awareness. For instance, last week Mary showed me how to turn on the meditation hall lights. Of course I know how to turn on lights, but being shown how to turn them on for ceremonial observances felt like getting promoted in martial arts.

The moment after I handed the teacup tray to Talking Woman, the entire incident vanished from my mind. I petted the temple cat and went to put on my shoes. Mary was putting on her shoes, too, and we had to cooperate to make use of the limited space by the door. The tea tray incident flickered briefly into my mind again. Talking Woman’s behavior was like that of someone used to receiving things from subordinates. It was easy to imagine situations where those kinds of roles played out. It’s funny how much people’s behavior reveals about their background and character, I reflected, and then forgot about it.

I was buckling my seatbelt when I thought about it again. I knew Talking Woman, but from where? It really was a puzzle. It will come to me in time, I thought. These things always do. She was definitely familiar. Mainly, though, I was thinking of goats and cheese and shipping wax.

Approaching the highway on-ramp a few minutes later, she popped back into my head again. This was really annoying! There was nothing I could do about it until I finally remembered. There’s just no conscious way of intentionally remembering something, after all. You either remember it or you don’t, right? Why did I even care?

I got onto the highway. There were shoes and ships; it was night; I had my tunes playing. Then: I’m going to remember this. Not actually remembering, but the knowledge that I am now in the process of remembering and will soon have remembered. Verb tenses don’t even convey the experience! The fire was lit, the kettle was on the hob and the deep was bubbling. The question of Talking Woman was really nagging at me now. Why did I care? Why was I so sure that I was going to remember?

The whole thing unfolded over a 15 minute night drive home. I was playing tunes and thinking about a book I was reading, but the image of Talking Woman’s face as she smiled back at me over a tea tray she almost certainly didn’t want to accept kept rearing its middle-aged head. Where did I know her from? TV? No, it couldn’t be; She wasn’t British and I don’t have a TV. It really couldn’t be TV; it was highly unlikely to be TV. Why was I thinking TV? I let it go again and enjoyed the night drive.

It was TV, I was just going to have to accept that. I could feel the memory approaching. It’s like when you feel like you’re going to have to take a crap soon; I could actually feel the memory starting to emerge. This was not someone I had met in person; I was just going to have to accept that as a fact that some part of me knew to be true, even if my conscious mind was playing catch up.

If it was TV, that means Netflix; Talking Woman was a middle aged white female, and that narrowed the field considerably. What movie had I ever watched in which a middle aged white female smiled the way she did when inadvertently taking the teacup tray from me? I queried my brain.

By the time I got to the highway off ramp near my home, I thought I had the answer. I couldn’t remember the actor or the name of the movie, but I had definitely watched it on Netflix. Once home I was able to find out the name of the movie, look up the IMDB listing and confirm who Talking Woman was. Then I watched the movie again because it really was very well done. Afterwards I realized that if I ever ran into her again it could be tricky. To me she’s that character in that movie, while in real life she’s someone I’ve never actually met.

The mental unfolding of the tea tray incident was rather remarkable. We’re talking about a split second of an interaction which I put behind me as soon as it was over yet still presented some problem that my mind really wanted to be allowed to solve. None of the mental events were particularly volitional and the topic was not of conscious interest to me, but my mind kept worrying away at it like how your tongue feels around the hole a lost tooth leaves behind. The mental sensation of feeling an actual memory coming closer and closer before I actually had it was also quite interesting. It was almost like being able to predict the future, at least in terms of my own mental content;I knew I was going to remember something before I knew what it was I remembered.

House Builder, Thou Art Seen! Well, at least glimpsed.

Integrating Theoretical Approaches in the Study of the Parawhatsit

I was listening to Paratopia Oculus the other day when Jeff Ritzmann mentioned that in his writing he was struggling with integrating the notion of anti-structure he adopted from the works of George Hansen (1) with Greg Bishop’s co-creation theory (2).

Wow, that has got to be some rough going, I thought, even before you add in any element of the supernatural, paranormal or whatever the currently fashionable term is. The reason being that the theoretical underpinnings of the two approaches are themselves at odds. Hansen’s work is based on a type of social theory called functionalism that takes a systems approach to explaining social phenomena. Co-creation theory, to the extent that I understand it, is basically a social constructivist approach focused on how shared understanding creates social phenomena. In the case of co-creation theory, one of the entities sharing the understanding happens to be differently incarnated (i.e., non-human and possibly non-physical), but otherwise it’s straight constructivism.

Why does this matter? All theories put forward for explaining and understanding human social phenomena take certain things for granted. Sometimes these assumptions are explicitly named, but more often they go unrecognized. Moreover, most theories excel at explaining certain types of things but fail miserably at accounting for other stuff; they all have their strengths and weaknesses. In the case of functionalist versus constructivist theories, some of the assumptions they are based on are antithetical, that is to say, completely opposed to one another. Also, the things each theory tends to be good or bad at explaining are wildly different. Trying to integrate functional and constructivist approaches is sort of like mixing oil and water; Jeff Ritzmann has cut himself out a ridiculously difficult task.

But then, salad dressing tastes good. That’s even before you add in the paranormal croutons. If you try to integrate functionalist and constructivist explanations AND make it account for parastuff of various ilks, I definitely want to taste that salad – but I can’t guarantee I won’t snack while I wait for it to be ready.

Because there’s a further question. From a purely theoretical perspective, we still have not resolved the question of whether the stuff of parastuff is OUR parastuff or THEIR parastuff. Hansen’s functional approach seems to suggest that liminality or anti-structure breaches reality enough for an external reality of ontological others to break on through, but doesn’t address how the encounter then goes. Co-creation doesn’t address how the encounter begins, but posits that as it’s happening both an ontological other and a human being participate in shaping the nature and meaning of an event. Then we have Eric Ouellet with his recent book Illuminations arguing that the whole thing can be put down to entirely to human activity, albeit in the form of as-yet-poorly understood psi, or perhaps social psi, activity.

We are now very far from CSICOP territory, were everything has an explanation and nothing is not normal. However, that is no reason to give up on theoretical rigor, rules of evidence and meticulous attention to the logic of argumentation. I bow to the unknown, but I do not submit to it. We press on.

I find Ouellet’s theory extremely attractive; it overlaps with several areas of my own education and previous research and holds out the promise of being a powerful explanatory approach. But to me, the most exciting part is the gaping hole it seems to have. If all this parastuff can be put down entirely to as-yet-not-fully-understood human psi or collective psi abilities, WHY IS IT SO OFTEN EXPERIENCED AS AN OTHER? Specifically, as radical alterity – aliens! – not only non-human, but outside known reality – an ontological Other.

If Ouellet’s assumption is wrong, ontological others do exist and we occasionally interact with them. That is totally cool in my book. If his assumption is right, there are certain circumstances under which we define our own experiences as so foreign they can only be understood in terms of an ontological Other; we are in effect creating UFOs, ghosts, poltergeists we occasionally experience; we ARE the plants that speak to us in dreams and visions. Either way you answer that question, I’m in my happy place. In fact, you don’t have to answer the question at all (an answer may in fact be impossible) and I’d still in my happy place, which is the sociology of knowledge.

What kind of boundary work is involved in perceptions of radical alterity? How do we draw lines around what counts as us and what counts as Other? It’s rich philosophical territory and also open to empirical enquiry. How much fun is that?!?!?

Bibliography of Three Books I Have Not Actually Read, Although I May Have Heard Other People Talk About Them On Some Podcast Somewhere: 

1. Hansen, George (2001) The Trickster and the Paranormal

2. Bishop, Greg (2016) It Defies Language!

3. Ouellet, Eric (2015) Illuminations

(I have not figured out blog comments yet so if you want to talk to me you are going to have to remote view my email address.)

Theory of Everything

"Mindfulness. Situational awareness. Control over emotions. Being present. Clear analysis of threat indicators. Adapting to changes in both environment and circumstance. This is how Kali shackles your demons, brings you inner peace, sharpens your focus and gives you control, discipline and purpose."

- Doug Marcaida

Hybrid Dreams, Alien Invasion

I listen to Seriah Azkath's podcast show Where Did the Road Go?

Listened to the 3/18/2016 show with Cutchin and after hearing the hybrid show of 3/5 mentioned went back and listened to that. I have a general idea that talk in ufology about aliens and hybrids inevitably maps onto discourses of race/ethnicity and power. There’s a few people who have floated that idea before e.g. Christopher Roth. Listening to the hybrid show in the context of my current social/political climate, that idea got reinforced.

I grew up in an all-white area and moved to a very multi-ethnic area later in life. Just by living and working there I ended up learning new social skills and knowledge in order to relate to and interact with people from completely different backgrounds. It’s often struck me that people who live in monocultural settings are at a disadvantage when it comes to interacting with more global or multicultural society because they lack those skills, that knowledge or I guess what sociologists might call social capital. It’s not necessarily bigotry or intolerance but just ignorance due to lack of exposure to social others and developing more social skills and knowledge.

Learning about the Native American Holocaust in grad school, one of the things we read about was how tribes kept their culture intact even when all the leaders of the secret/sacred societies were being killed off. Even after all the designated spokespeople for the supernatural had been killed off, a dream might come to someone who was not a member of a sacred society. If it seemed like a good dream, the remaining community would run with it anyway. Kind of a preservation of old ways and adaptation to new realities.

That’s what I was thinking about listening to the hybrid show. (On the physical level all this hybrid nonsense is bullshit, but on the social-emotional level it’s highly significant.) Specifically around the 43 minute mark where the female guest is speaking. Her words are a pretty good description of what it would take for someone from a monocultural setting to open up and adapt to the fact that people radically different from them are also a part of the world they live in. Was she dreaming a dream meant to teach skills for interacting with an other? (By other I mean anything we consider to be other, either socially or ontologically.)

Then I listened to the Ouellet episode and realized it could be argued that the displaced social tension of a numerically diminishing white majority in a culturally shifting North America and Europe could be a springboard for generating hybrid dreams. From a white point of view, the aliens are definitely invading.

It all makes sense! It's in the data! 19.5