Apart from established physical parameters like our body temperature and the Sun coming up every day and those kinds of things, it seems that the tendency is for everyone to think that they're normal and that it's everyone else who are the weirdoes. But if that's the case, then our perception of normalcy must be something entirely subjective. Or is it? What if the so-called weirdoes are actually more in tune with the truth than the so-called normal people, then isn't it really the weirdoes who are normal?
Words like "paranormal" imply that anything that is outside scientific understanding isn't normal, yet recent discussions here about the nature of consciousness reveal that consciousness remains beyond the grasp of direct scientific study. That means the very essence of our relationship to the world around us falls under the definition of paranormal. How do we reconcile such seemingly paradoxical realities? This is the thread for discussing these issues.
Starter Resources: World view - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Can you say
Weltanschauung: Weltanschauung | Define Weltanschauung at Dictionary.com
NOTE: I had also wanted to include a poll question but the default close date is stuck on 7 days, making a poll pretty much pointless. Maybe someone could fix it to allow non-expiring polls again.
I had to spend some time reading this through--and I have to say much of my thinking on these matters has changed so much that I feel like when I try to re-use the terms its almost as if I am walking revisiting a fondly remembered place from my childhood and realizing that my adulthood and experience has spoiled me forever from recapturing the first moment. I say this because I find myself balking at terms like "entirely subjective," simply because so much of what we
are as
subjects is
already all around us....and directs our very existence.
Right now: this computer with a small thin black solar powered keyboard sitting on a faux granite formica covered slab of particle board attached on three sides to walls. The monitor staring back at me from a short distance in front of the keyboard with what appears to be a nuclear powered fluorescent light above it that flickers from time to time. To the side a subwoofer blasting out noise from whatever music I am listening to ...all of these things are the results of millions of souls pouring their subjectivity into the things around me...nothing in my existence is free of subjectivity--it is embodied subjectivity. My reactions are almost predictable from that point (what else are you going to do with all this stuff?).
So what's normalcy? That's an interesting question and I hate to say that it is the familiarity for which we are already dwelling in as we
grow into the world. Now of course not everyone has my unique experience, but I doubt there are many in existent today who aren't surrounded by their own field of extra-subjectival beings (equipment, objects, art, food...) which have the same effect on others as it does to them (other proximate peers).
Better yet, there are days which I don't even realize what I have--it just gets used or consumed and I move about in a world with other people sharing the same world and never does the thought occur to me--like, for instance, when I hand in a report to my boss--that I can simply say "well, how do you know I didn't give it to you already. Are you sure you aren't just a subject with your own private thoughts without any connection to the outside real world? I gave you that report yesterday." No I am afraid before I was able to even articulate the "normality" and "familiarity" of the shared world I live in, I was already assuming it in my everyday activities.
Regarding the paranormal, I think its a horrid and meaningless term--I have up to this point, been writing these things down in this post and I haven't a clue how any of the processes in my body or mind have been processing all of this. Even though I know that somehow my brain and body functions (many breakdown scenarios in my own experience has reminded me as much: broken bodies and brains don't work very well!) are necessary for all of this to happen. Much less am I directly aware of anything like the transmission of signals, neuron synapses connecting and firing through axons, and other innumerable autonomic subsystem processes. Nope, the only thing I have is this little Fischer-Price mental playhouse where everything in my body seems telepathically controlled by my "thoughts" and simply does what I want--the rest is the man behind the curtain.
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