Fringe-ology

Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't by Steve Volk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I left my childhood religion informally at 23 or so and then formally at 34 at the same time I came out of the closet. That religion, Seventh-Day Adventism, had a very specific and science fictional eschatology and world view and I realized one day after leaving it that I had to decide what my new world view was. Did I believe in anything beyond the material? Had my views on ghosts/UFOs/Leprechauns changed? Did I believe in a universe run on numerical laws or hidden stories, the plots of which had yet to be revealed? Although, what are the mathematical laws of nature except a kind of story about how things are? In any case, the answer that night was much the same then as it is now: Hell if I know.

That night did spark an interest, however, in reading what there was to read about "fringe" topics, the branches of human experience where rational men of science have yet to give their formal blessing. So I went hunting on Amazon for anything that might fit, and almost immediately stumbled across Fringe-ology by Steve Volk. Lucky for me it's a great overview of paranormal topics.

The introduction alone was almost worth the price of the book to me, containing an earnest and well-argued plea for everyone to stop talking past each other on some of these topics and admit we don't know what we don't know. And that maybe the other side knows a little more than we want to admit.

What was worth the price of the book alone was the chapter on Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who I not really read much about up until now. You may have heard her name, she was a ground-breaking medical researcher who identified the 5 stages of grief and who authored the book On Death and Dying, which was instrumental in getting hospice and hospital reform for dying patients, who were routinely ignored and left unattended due to psychological blind spots on the part of doctors/hospitals at the time.

What's especially interesting about her story is the promise of the paranormal and the warning contained in her story. Left out of her book was a chapter on the out-of-body experiences and end-of-life visitations she had compiled in her time with terminally ill patients. She hadn't been looking for it and she wasn't the only one to witness/notice the events, but she thought it was a topic the general public wasn't ready for (which was probably a wise choice). But it sparked an interest in her, that didn't necessarily take her to a happy place. However legitimate and interesting her personal experiences had been, they eventually led her to divorce and then falling in with a medium who later turned out to be a simple con-man. In other words, there is a serious danger in losing one's way on these topics, even for the most sober observers.

The remaining chapters cover topics like lucid dreaming, the overview effect, the mass UFO sighting in Stephenville, Texas, the attempts to study psi scientifically, the pros and cons of professional skeptics, mediumship, a potential haunting in Volk's own childhood and a PTSD therapy that has the additional and unintended side-effect of allowing the subject to converse with departed loved ones, or convincing mental replicas, in a meditative state.

Fringe-ology reads like what it is, a series of investigative reports by an experienced newspaper reporter, with no obvious pre-conceptions on what he should find. I like his open-mindedness, I like his critical thinking skills, and I like the heart he brings to the project. I'm not convinced he saw anything entirely "real" in some of his reports, but then neither is he. He really doesn't take a hard stand on any of it, just calls it like he saw it. In an age that mostly seems to breed people prone to standing on soap-boxes and confidently declaring they have seen the vast shape and scope of all creation and from that lofty perspective have a pretty good handle on what happens and what does happen here and elsewhere and what goes on in the hearts of men, it's extremely refreshing to read stories about the paranormal that's aren't "just so."

It's really a fun, though-provoking read and will at least give you something to think about even if you don't change your mind about anything. Volk's writing is accessible and compelling and will keep you turning pages well into the night. Highly recommended.

Favorite Quotes:

"The Central problem, I think, is that as a species we seem to lack humility."

"Me? I'd like to believe in an afterlife, but I'm also not interested in fooling myself."

"If we've learned one thing in this book already, people don't like the unknown very much."

"The people of Stephenville, for instance, never asked to play hose to a paranormal controversy. The people of Stephenville just looked up."

"The scientific method is itself important, but it is not antidote to the very human frailty of ignoring information we don't like and embracing the information we do."

"We don't have to make the choice that popular culture gives us; we don't have to choose one and dispense with the other. This is not a world of binary opposites. We just live that way."

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X-men: Movies of future past

X-men:  Days of Future past is a flawed movie.  It doesn't do justice to the original comic, nor is it particularly true to the plot, but I still liked it a lot more than most blockbusters the industry craps out these days.  To be sure, it's Bryan Singer again, so if you didn't like the tone or grainy CGI look  or plastic costumes of the of the first 2 X-men movies, this is probably not the movie for you.  Or at least, none of that has really changed. But to be honest, it's the familiarity that works for me.

I still love the old cast and their interpretations of the characters.  I still love the new cast and the energy they bring to the mythos.  I enjoyed the future dystopia scenes, which mostly consist of some of my favorite mutants fighting sentinels, but found the scenes from the 70s more interesting thematically and visually.  I think putting silly comic concepts in stylish clothes from the 70s helps smooth out the rough edges of comic wackiness.  I loved the addition of Quicksilver, and his big scene is officially one of my favorites of the series.

But mostly what I love is that I didn't leave the theater with a deeply sad soul, like I do far too often with blockbusters these days.  Not because the plots themselves are too dramatic or anything, but because so many movies these days seem to be written by cynical people writing gritty reboots about how everything is shit, really, when you get down to it.  Or who purport to be upholding morals with the mouth parts while categorically demolishing the idea of moral behavior with the punchy parts.

For instance my biggest problems with Man of Steel weren't that the action wasn't good, or the plot holes, it's that the creators seemed to genuinely not understand the concepts of heroism, hope, and murder and genocide not being morally justifiable when you have it in your power to prevent it.  I left the movie feeling sad and angry about what the creators were trying to tell me being a good person is.   It felt far more like post-collateral damage rationalize of America's military violence over the last half a century, but that's another essay.

So, it was thrilling to me to see a movie whose central moral dilemma was trying to prevent someone from using their perfectly justifiable rage and pain from killing a human being, who undoubtedly had done bad things in the past and would again in the future, in order to stop a cycle of self-justified revenge on both sides that would end up destroying everyone in the end.  It was nice to see, once again, the stark judgement that Erik is not justified in aggression and oppression and violence even though he had himself been justified.  It is nice to see a movie repeat again, the lesson we all impatiently claim to know but seem to constantly forget, that our feelings of victimization do not legitimize our aggression and demonization of the hated other.  A movie that holds out the hope, again and again, that we'll get over ourselves and our pain long enough to be the first to stop the endless cycles of retribution, demonization, and rationalized aggression that we find ourselves in.

Are you human or mutant?  Are you left or right?  Are you black or white?  Are you Democrat or Republican?  Are you Russian or American?  Did that man hurt you? Who cares.  The messages of Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, MLK and Professor Xavier are all the same:  learn to care for, talk to and embrace the people who cause you pain or the future only gets worse.

Keep your gritty, soulless, pessimistic reboots.  Give me actual hope any day of the week.