An intelligent mind, when not fed with interesting things, will start to make stuff up on its own from the scraps it finds lying around. Treat this marvelous brain as, well, not a person, but it's own entity that goes into overdrive trying to stay engaged.
Think of the story of A Beautiful Mind. Now stop thinking of it, as it is definitely an extreme example.
Now, think of other hyper-intelligent people that don't readily use the bumpers of common sense, science, and education that teach us to contain those meanderings—and, yes, that was a bowling metaphor. I think this "crazy" is far more common than we supposed—speaking of the moments of conjecture that I will attempt to destroy later in this blog. Super smart people who, by genetic heritage, are built to perceive patterns in the white noise out there, and, when enough of those patterns come together, their minds begin to invest so heavily in order to occupy itself, that is attempts to solve problems that aren't there.
Want an example? We have a white noise machine. I will sit there listening to the blaring noise blanker that keeps us "quietly" isolated. After a moment, I hear a tick and my brain starts to count off. Yes, there it is again, the tick is there. A perceived pattern starts to form and now I'm counting. This damn white noise machines is a 13 second loop. Really. There are points where I want to take it back because I consider that a flaw. A flaw! But then I fall asleep.
Funny thing, I run into the same thing each night. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I'll pick out another tick noise in the white noise loop. And the crazy part, it's never the same. I find it hilarious that I can still pick out the 13 second loop even when the pattern my brain perceived isn't the same.
Do you know why I can eventually fall asleep without driving myself mad? Because my conscious self has the wherewithall to tell my unconsciously processing brain that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter! There's nothing more than a noise that lasts 13 seconds and seamlessly loops.
It's like me telling my dogs to "Go play!", and leave me the hell alone.
I have realized that my penchant for researching conspiracies has come from a sort of social isolation in my early life. I... have also realized that I got a lot of it from my mom. :D
I am a total sucker for conspiracy. I love the thought, the process, the idea that there's something "controlling" all the whatsits and whothats out there. See, I just made "whothats" up right there, but, really, isn't that the essence of conspiracy?
Anyhow, my prescription for curtailing the crazy is fairly quaint... a simple self-awareness of where I'm at in all of this. I don't accept or rebutt the things I don't understand. I can judge the credibility of such things by their sources, but I won't say they don't exist, either. Seriously, how would I know...?
Life and knowledge are not clean things. Not as cut and dry as people would assume. As advanced as science is, we still know relatively little about how everything works. Unfortunately, we seem to also be that society is taking steps backwards to a more archaic "things happen by magic", or—in most recent cases—God, approach.
If God is involved—which is one of those "things that I will not rebutt" because I have a unrealistic hope for it—he/she will operate by the same principles already prescribed in whatever advanced science he/she participates in. Rules are rules. Breaking rules for "whim" is unjustified and therefore not Godlike.
"Roll a Will Save to see if their god is greater than yours."
See what I did there? Answering random prayers is not Godlike. It divides the "deserves" from the "not deserves" with the illusion of God's will in action. Oh, and do I hate the word deserve.
Hell, how did this become a religious discussion? Oh, I know, because, beyond that idea that we are slowly being consumed by conspiracy, it seems that the same people who heavily believe in conspiracy also believe that the world will end horribly... but someone will still come to save us. Aliens? Our future selves? ... Jesus?
As a story-ist and game-ist, the world's rules must be contiguous. They must to make sense in order to suspend disbelief. That seems ironic in either a fantasy or science fiction setting, but it's ab-so-lute-ly critical to keep the intelligent people involved.
Rules give the world an overall wholeness in action.
If you want to include an omnisicent, omnipresent, omni-whatsit being, you have to give them a vehicle to achieve that.
Back to my prescription, ask yourself the following questions:
- Does it affect you or those you care about?
- OK, if it does, or even doesn't, could you change it?
- How much are you willing to sacrifice to change it?
Funny thing, I'm not even going to ask if the crazy theory is credible... That drives BriAnna nuts, actually, because I'm not denouncing it immediately. I don't know? And, unfortunately, I don't trust usual sources to give me legitimate information. It's not that I don't inherently trust doctors, lawyers, scientists, political figures, or religious authorities... I trust that everyone is fallible and has an incomplete knowledge of the world around them. We—and by we, I mean humanity—run off of assumptions that we legitimize as truth and we end up contradicting ourselves continually and, usually, completely as time goes on.
Then you get the idea that we reinforce the things that we are attached to with such wholehearted zeal that it becomes something akin to faith and, yes, I'm sorry, belief. We establish quasi-religions to fulfill the safe structures of "what we know" by filling the gaps in our logic with a firm belief that what we've got is it, baby. Our belief rocks! And, ends up rocking more than that punk over there.
See, everyone does that. Smart or dumb. Young or old. These are bonafide people problems! And probably why any AI worth its salt would say, "If they weren't so gosh durn inconsistent, I'd be fine with keep thing them around."
So, how can we, as people, be so fragile as to require this level of stability? Physically, we seem highly adaptable...
But then why is belief so ... not?
"Hah! Our God rocks, but that guy's belief in the Singularity is so dumb. I bet it only runs on a Mac."
Scientific studies are awesome and I do reference those often, if I really want to establish fact, as it were. But, as an unfortunate side of my own "crazy", the stuff that I find interesting is in the discrepancies—the stuff on the fringes—not so much the thing being researched. This is the stuff that will never get funding. And that, to me, is unfortunate. Because that's what my "crazy" wants to know about.
Let's take vaccinations, for instance. From a random search I hit a random article that is based off of a CNN interview with a doctor from the CDC. The report says 3,500 to 4,000 negative reactions, with 10 to 15 percent of those were "life changingly bad". Let's, then, take that and compare to how many people have received vaccinations in the last year. This number ends up being out of more than 10 million.
Saying neither good nor bad about vaccinations, what do the statistics say? Less than a percent to avoid an epidemic? Or, should we even worry about these diseases?
Won't we react to the more personal story of severe complications by way of vaccinations when we don't see the counterweight or severe complications by the host of illnesses it avoids? But ... then, what about the fallibility in the equation. There was a whooping cough outbreak very recently—hell, even I got it and it laid me low for months. Funny thing, this was likely because of an updated vaccine. Which, was found, could actually make people not showing symptoms into carriers.
You know who didn't get Pertussis in my household? My unvaccinated kids.
Yes, due to the fringe statistics of personal experience that involved the death of my ex-wife's child, declared as SIDS as another fringe statistic for SIDS, a 15-month old, I didn't vaccinate my kids early in life for fear of them having a similar reaction, figuring a predisposition in genetics as rationalization. We have since decided that it would be best to get them vaccinated, but ... still haven't felt the urgency due to this problem with both my "crazy" and seeing far too many enemies where I should be seeing helpers.
This kind of stuff sucks. Because we, as a population, want to believe that we're protecting ourselves, but the science we rely on isn't innately infallible. And, unfortunately, society doesn't forgive so easily.
It's a bit of a cycle, people screw up and, shamefully, try to keep it quiet. Other people catch hold of it and see it as something bigger than it is. Conspiracy is born. Boom! Welcome to the suck.
I guarantee that some of the claims from the anti-vaccination side of things are true. Yet, they are not statistically significant. Any time you rely on something that is built for the common man, but not custom built for you, consider yourself entered into the "how will this affect me?" lottery. This is always the case.
Yay! Bell curves!
Oh, and she could also see ghosts. And, by the way, she believed all of these were a curse. Damn. What a fine bunch of curses to be afflicted with.
So, back to whatever topic I am on now, this leads nicely into the "not statistically significant" exceptions to the rule, and, I think, that's part of why we're all giddy about superhero movies. The potential for metahumans, or, whatever the hell you want to call 'em. Just take a moment and ask yourself 'Why?' and see what your honest opinion is?
Don't you want to be special? Ya know, beyond this zombie plague of a society we live in that is a perpetual cycle of work, school, financial obligations (Read: debts, loans.), and social status quo. Heh, speaking of the suck, we're living it, amirite?
Being super special gives you an exit. We're envious of that ability to sidestep mainstream—even if, after exploring the idea of being a superhero for just a little bit, we could see how painfully isolating it is. Remember the curse of alcoholic white bread ghost girl? Again, amazing!
I read Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress recently. And, while there was an explorative socio-political objective to the book, its emphasis on The Sleepless, a genetically modified human; unaging and unparalleled in personal industry, and the social ramifications sent my mind into a sort of downward spiral on envy, want, and desire. In fact, knowing how I am when I write, I believe Nancy probably felt that same level of envy of the creatures that she, herself, created.
The social constructs that perpetuate around seemingly immortal beings also fall in line with, again, conspiracy.
"Yes, he's still talking."
And, holy hell, I'll stop with this thought, because... sheesh, enough rabbit holes for one post.
This belief in an immortal organization is very interesting: Let's talk Illuminati. People have to surrender themselves to an immortal ideal that binds them indefinitely. Insanely focused individuals could set up an organization that perpetuates and indoctrinates for long term sustainability of such an organization.
Money isn't a problem after the first generation of such an organization, because the future is all that matters. All the investments have been made to that end. Power by position isn't a problem because the system is a sort of nepotistic cycle of selection, building, and indoctrination.
But, really, this is a lot of effort and there will always be bad eggs in the mix. You can't guarantee that human fallibility will not mess up this fine tuned system. Which is why ... immortality in an organization like that makes a lot of sense. A strong, consistent vision.
You know who else thought of this whole thing? William Gibson in Neuromancer.
Interesting, eh? Although, I'm not saying that there are immortals, but if there were, you wouldn't even know it.
Oh, and I lied, I'm still going.
Strangely enough, we talk about smart people pushing boundaries. There are few people who have the resources to "push boundaries" plus have the general population in mind as they do so. The survival of humanity is paramount, for sure, but so is the perpetuation of the ideology. In essence, human life isn't as important as an idea.
Yes, it sounds amoral. But, holy geez, is it effective. After all, isn't it a series of beliefs that have built the ideologies, which create the divisions, that are currently artificially/logically dividing humanity right now? What better way to control all of the little pawns in the game, give them an ideology, then give another group a counter-ideology to keep them in check. An ecology of social control. Now that is damn smart.
And, yeah, we're the pawns. But it really doesn't make sense if there is a thought for long term control... because there would have to be a future. Right now, there doesn't seem to be much concern for a future.
All of the decisions being made by the people in power—ahem, that "we" put in power, no less—just don't seem to be future looking decisions. At least, with the ideologies that people have associated with groups like The Illuminati, even if population control may seem dastardly—they have a long-term view of humanity.
Heh, and this "in a world..." where the majority of us can't see beyond the next paycheck. (Did you hear Don LaFontaine? I was channeling him there. C'mon.)
It's funny that, in the long run, we are not even thinking about the long run. We're hoping someone will save us ... from ourselves, like the petulant, deserving, and entitled children we, as a society, have become. Holy crap, we're the same children who feel that we should be special, not of our own merits, but of genetics, God, aliens, heritage, belief, whatever. And this is all because we believe we're worth saving!
Not to sound fatalistic, but ... are you? (Worth saving, that is.)
And, hey, I'm including myself in that. I do feel, finally, that I'm actually making some headway to take control of my own crazy. Self-control, especially on the financial side of my life, which seems to be the key to true freedom. Where I'm at now, I feel, is firmly in the middle of all the crazy, but not exactly on the fence. Yup, fair and balanced.
I want to be like Fox New's motto. But not like Fox News itself.
This thought process, dare I say ideology, includes the idea that I don't have to have an opinion on everything because, by my "control your crazy" rules, it isn't important for me to have an opinion everything. Because the stuff that matters is obvious to me, the other stuff doesn't necessarily qualify.
Although, I dabble in opinion, I'm never good at supporting it. And I will readily admit it. :D
If you choked your way through this far, I commend you on your tenacity to abide crazy people. Because of your tenacity, I'll give you a fortune cookie fortune: "The next substitute teach you encounter will make you watch a video."
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