I appreciate the honesty, let me answer your question. I like etymology, so I'll call on it here. The word "paranormal" comes from the Greek "para" meaning "beside, near, issuing from, against, contrary to" and the word "normal", which is from Latin "normalis", which means "made according to a carpenter's square,". If you dig in you can see that normalis is from the Latin word norma, which again means "rule, pattern", and that the Latin word norma originates from the Greek gnomon, which again means "carpenter's square." I guess that 3000 years ago the carpenters square was the ultimate metaphor for what one knew to be true. From this I understand the word "paranormal" as literally meaning "contrary to what I accept as being true", nothing Earth shattering there but note the lack of baggage commonly associated with the word as it is used today. The interesting bit is that most of what I accept as true in my life today would have been considered paranormal by people who existed >100 years ago. For this reason I believe that things that are considered paranormal today are worth thinking about. So yes, I do have a genuine interest in the topic.
As proven by past experiences there is a lot of noise around the signal of developing truth. I was drawn to the Paracast in particular because of the tagline, "Separating the signal from the noise". That said there is a lot of noise; some of it originates in blindly embracing any idea that is contrary to what is commonly accepted as being true, some of it occurs naturally as people work through experiences that they don't understand, and some of it is generated on purpose by people trying to gain something from it. I don't know where I fit in all of this.
I like to think that there is truth in the unknown. I mentioned earlier that I like etymology, I also like epistemology. Combining the two we see that the word epistemology comes from the Greek word epistēmē, meaning "knowledge", and logos, meaning "logical discourse". Where the paranormal is concerned with trying to understand experiences that fall outside the accepted norm, epistemology is concerned with understanding what is knowable. I believe that truth lies at the intersection of these two ideas; there are events that occur that are treated as paranormal due to a lack of knowability, there are events that are truly paranormal that will lead to deep truths, and there are completely unknowable events that can never be experienced.
That said, I sometimes let my personality get in the way.
Lost in the supermarket,
Gene Lionberg
