by Donald Croft Brickner
America has a big-time World View problem:
Selective blindness.
It does. And, yes, yes: this is a philosophical issue — World View is how one views their world and universe, and their place in either (or both) — but please read on. I’m going to do my very best, right here, right now, to help alleviate this knotty mess, and for everybody concerned.
By everybody concerned, I refer to all-but-all Earthlings. I care not about what goes on in Ursa Minor.
The short form is this:
We all must become a lot more observant … about what goes on in our individual lives.
That’s it.
Ba-dump-bump.
It’s so-o bleeping simple.
* * * * *
For those of you familiar with my work, I apologize for what was an unwelcome lack of access to my computer keyboard — the very one I use to write with — over the last six months or so.
The computer was entrenched (read that, buried) in my car most of that time. I was, you know — homeless.
I am no longer. Yay. It’s all better now.
Achoo.
* * * * *
Sociopaths, paranoid schizophrenics and passive-aggressives aside, there are two types of individuals I find it very difficult to spend much time around: cynics, and bigots — and I don’t “merely” speak just of racial bigotry. There are enormously common styles of widely accepted (and even smugly casual) prejudice-enthusiasts I’ve long referred to as “concept bigots” — the brunt of whom can be found in both inflexible religions, and science. I expect you get the idea.
Cynics can be bigots, too, if, say, they’re hard, fast atheists. I have a co-worker who referred to himself as “90 percent” atheist, and that’s really fine with me. I’ll take that 10 percent and run with it. I’m doing that here, in fact — for many I’m hoping to challenge with this essay are either atheists, or those infamous fence-sitters, agnostics. (Both consistently act as if there is no God anywhere, anyhow, btw. Well: think about it a sec — they do.)
You there — please stop snoring.
* * * * *
Cynicism is both a conscious and unconscious reflection of one’s World View. It doesn’t take a black projects deep waters sonar technician to figure out that when one encounters a cynic, they’re encountering a disbeliever. What such individuals disbelieve in is mostly everything.
Can anybody say, Debbie Downer?
Life, for the most part, is supposed to be embraced as a personal adventure, with you as the star. Compare your life to that of a favored movie star right up there on the big screen — only that’s you — you, you, you — up there, instead. And, hot damn — how cool is that?
Oh, what — your life is incredibly boring? No problemo. All that means is that your theater in the Multiplex of Your Dreams is almost completely empty, almost all of the time. If you want to spiffy things up a bit and draw in a few more perusers, bring in a new team of screenwriters.
Cynics, unfortunately, rarely even begin to think like this. For them, a tragic sense of cosmic victimhood overrides all other perceptions. Their universe, and hence their World View, is both random and meaningless. How in God’s name … whoops … did they end up in this place!
What they think about religion, too, is often this: people are weak, and for a lot of them (not all of them, certainly), it’s not even their fault. So, to make themselves Fake Happy, they invent some preposterous beliefs about an elusive Creator Of All Things who may (or okay, may not) be flat-plastered drunk most of the time.
Then, to make things even flakier, this wholly-concocted “God” “loves” its creations by setting them afire, or quashing them in a variety of “natural” disasters which, as it happens, He also created (…what — is He Doing Methamphetamines now, as well?).
In turn, those of us who choose to be Fake Happy also opt to love-the-daylights out of this Godfather of the Heavens, and His Kiss of Death. Now, cynics will rarely say such words out loud, perhaps due to some marginally justifiable fear of getting murdered in retaliation.
Quietly, then, they’ll silently stew, knowing in their heart of hearts that they’re the most correct.
Only, here’s the deal:
They’re not.
All absurd (and relentlessly heralded by Fake Happys) religious scenarios notwithstanding.
* * * * *
And, oh please — I’m not taking barely concealed potshots at Christians, in particular. Lighten up a little, for those of you who may be offended. Jesus is All Right, beyond all doubt. This is a philosophical discussion. Please don’t read more into my delivery than is colorfully intended.
* * * * *
Cynicism, unfortunately, is destroying us as a species.
I’m more than willing to repeat that.
Such a World View is horribly misguided, never mind turbo-charged destructive. Even the cynics among us have to acknowledge that … or, must example after example be cited? And, so, it’s here that I wish to shift gears, and strongly insist upon the validity of a likely powerful observation:
There are no coincidences.
Instead, there are only synchronicities.
What’s the difference between them, then … short of outright declaring that synchronicities — coincidences of some unseen intention — powerfully imply a non-physical intelligent design?
Not much.
* * * * *
Would such an admission on the part of cynics that synchronicities are valid change the world as we know it — all but completely?
(We’re talking acknowledgment of the reality of synchronicities in the everyday here-and-now, period. We’re leaving God [and Jesus] completely out of the equation for the time being.)
…So: would such an admission do that, then, Mr. and Mrs. Cynic?
You bleeping betcha. Because this next immediate extrapolation would necessarily follow:
There’s an observable intelligence operating “behind the scenes” of our physical reality.
There actually is. Christians call it “grace.” Others call it, well, other things. But one need only begin to pay attention to it (although putting away the vodka, beer and pot would surely help).
So … what do you say?
How’s them apples?
Are you on board?
* * * * *
Here are some suggestions as to how to go about discovering this intelligent intercedent for yourself. Are you courageous enough to test any of it out? Are you game? Or are you wimpy?:
You begin by simple conscious observation of the circumstances and events that occur in your life — and while you’re doing that, you’re paying extra special attention to both what you’ve heretofore believed were “coincidences,” along with some personally meaningful real world events we’re going to label here now, “plot points.”
I’m not kidding (and my name’s not Shirley).
It has always been prejudice, concept bigotry, that’s blocked us from seeing some things that we might ought to have been seeing all along. This is what we’re calling “selective blindness.” We notice only that which our limited World View allows us to see, and discard the rest of it.
As but one example, here’s some (mix-and-match) dialogue from 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Granted, “Ronni” wasn’t literally being blind here — merely concept-dismissive:
Him: I saw something tonight I can’t explain!
Her: Oh, it was probably just one of those things.
Him: One of what things, Ronni? One of what things?
"Ronni" was practicing selective blindness. It doesn’t matter to what concept — or, what reality.
* * * * *
Plot points are those moments in your life when something seemingly important does — or just as often, doesn’t — happen. The event or non-event, just as it might turn up in a movie for the hero or heroine, causes a shift in your personal “story line.” As in, boy wins girl. Boy loses girl. That sort of thing.
Both plot points and (non-)coincidences share a number of characteristics in common, not the least of which are issues that may be deeply personal, and even buried to a certain degree. If you find yourself laughing (or crying) out loud, what are the chances of that happening! — you must begin to file that event away in your memory, right away. Otherwise, the observation end of this enterprise simply isn’t going to work (and you’ll not only forget, but also prove yourself to be a wimp — and maybe, upon further examination, a concept bigot). The goal is to link.
There’s nothing black or white about this endeavor. At the beginning, the plot points and non-coincidences may not make a whole lot of sense — but I promise, after a time, they will slowly come together in a pattern. Unfortunately, however, those patterns — the next step up the ladder in your related conscious awareness — may then, themselves, appear to make little sense.
I never promised you this would be easy. Just simple.
* * * * *
Sometimes, however, the meanings/interpretations are so forehead-slapping obvious, you’d have to be a lunkhead like Ronni not to connect the dots.
Author Dean Koontz, in his recent novel, Breathless (which I highly recommend, on several levels), appears to have made a related observation through one of his secondary characters, a rogue chaos theorist who successfully tests his theories out in Las Vegas: he discovers that there is unanticipated order within chaotic events. Unseen order, one might also add here.
Simply put — something’s going on behind the scenes of our physical reality, is the implication. And it’s neither random nor accidental.
Regardless, once it’s been experienced and consciously observed, there’s no going back to the smallness of glib intellectuality.
To experience such astonishing occurrences, though, one must first be open to them.
The ego-centered intellect, operating alone, is chicken-bleep. It despises being overwhelmed, and runs away from any and all of emotional chaos as a matter of course. It also wants to be in charge, and pitches a snit when it’s not. Outrageously smart and educated individuals often experience arrested development in their emotional evolution due to focusing on their brains.
If x-number of high IQs were human beings, they’d be really smart pod people.
* * * * *
The intellect of even a very bright and astute individual is commonly blind to the world of the subjective — or, in this instance, to the”world of synchronicities.”
The physical universe is a lot grander than empirical science is yet able to grasp, or willing to acknowledge.
Returning to the Christian concept of grace: cynics don’t know what to make of it. Were they to sit in a room full of veteran recovering alcoholics, however (and, in fact, many of them do), they’d hear some personal testimonies of grace – i.e., being “supported” by unseen sources — that never, ever seem to be able to make their way into the halls of science for examination.
What is the cynic to make of grace, then, if it’s usually viewed as “just one of those things?”
The failure to test assures anyone — and nowadays everyone — of the failure to acknowledge.
* * * * *
I promise results if you are but willing to undertake this mission of observation. There are very few, if any, universals to be gleaned from this effort, I’ve noticed. But just by making the effort, one sometimes unexpectedly finds one’s self transported “back” to the integrity of innocence.
And what a discovery that one is. Turns out, innocence is not only not for just the very young, but conceptually has the power within it to transform cynicism into love.
Honest to bleeping gosh, it does.
The biggest lie that a cynic tells him- or herself is this: that they have the courage to be right.
Yet in actuality, no — they don’t, it turns out.
It’s closer to the truth to say that cynics are uniformly scared to death.
And over little more than self-created conceptual prejudices and contrivance.
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