xtcian

senses working overtime

7/20/04

Tonight we watched the unthinkably twee "mockumentary" called The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, which was made bearable only by the presence of Ilana Levine, who offers an oasis of quality in any misbegotten production. The show did ask an interesting question at one point, however: "Which are you more inclined to believe in, ghosts - or aliens among us?"

To, me the question was sort of like asking if the tooth fairy or Santa Claus seemed more realistic (my answer: tooth fairy), but Tessa and I spent the better part of an hour formulating an answer.

I had to say that my head would answer "aliens," because it wouldn't require a complete paradigm shift in the afterlife. My heart, however, would answer "ghosts," because of long-held mysticisms and all those stories everyone else has about plates and jewelry being rearranged while you sleep.

Here's the thing about aliens. You'd have to be a pigheaded, grotesquely-exceptionalist moron not to believe there are other self-aware, sentient races of creatures out in space. Where it gets hard is believing they've come here, and have elaborately avoided detection. First, they'd have to have a reason to stay undetected (which seems counterintuitive given the distance they'd traveled) and the means to do so. Not impossible, mind you, but stunningly unlikely.

But ghosts are another matter. If we're talking about the cliché of a ghost; i.e., a translucent, corporeal form of a person who has died, then science has a lot of 'splaining to do. More believable is an "energy force" that takes no actual shape and may not be seen, but even then, you're dealing with issues of the soul, which always verge uncomfortably into religion and geeky books about the occult.

My side question is this: why are people scared of ghosts? Honestly, what's the worst thing they could do to you? Sure, scare you, but what is the actual threat? Unless we're talking about a poltergeist handling kitchen knives, the worst thing a ghost could do is reveal that the afterlife is a dreadful fuckin' bore.

Which leads to my next question. Almost all reports of death – by those who have experienced it and were revived – is one of calm, warm, acceptance. It has to be a little like the Infinite Perspective Vortex in the "Hitchhiker" books, except that it breeds serenity rather than madness. My psych mentor at UNC, Dr. Lucas, saw about 800 people out of this world (he was a counselor for those with AIDS and cancer) and said that the precise moment of death was always quite beautiful.

So it's hard for me to accept that anyone dead has an opinion. They have just been awarded the perspective of the universe, and they're going to come back to fuck with a house? They're going to "right some wrongs" and follow around their old girlfriends? That just seems like bullshit. The dead would be the last people to care about the vicissitudes of this petty world, and should at least have the understanding that "righting a wrong" could even produce more wrongs. I just don't buy that the dead care.

But we do have to accept that we only have five senses, and the only reason you say you're "looking at a computer screen right now" is because we've all decided to agree. What if we met a race of people with only four senses and we had to describe what "smell" was like? I don't mean describing the smells, I mean describing the sense itself.

Perhaps that is what psychics, mediums and those "close to the veil" of the other worlds feel like. I'm willing to believe them more than aliens. Which is to say, not very goddamn much. So if I still had to answer the question, I think the edge goes to ghosts.