Michael Prescott's Blog

Heads I win, tails you lose

My last post noted that the odd fact that, one day after a well-publicized prayer vigil in Georgia, a heavy rainstorm moved through the drought-ravaged state.

I was thinking more  a little more about this, wondering why the issue stuck in my craw a little bit. After all,I don't much care about praying for rain. It's not an issue of personal importance to me. Then I realized that what troubled me about the story was the skeptical response, which was all too typical of the stubbornly intractable mentality of hardcore skepticism.

Consider what would have happened if no rain had fallen after the prayer vigil was held. The skeptics would have lost no time in declaring this to be "proof positive" that prayer doesn't work.

Instead, rain did fall. Unfazed, the skeptics responded that it wasn't enough rain, or that the rain damaged a church, or that there was a 30% chance of rain in the long-term forecast.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

No matter what the outcome of the prayer vigil experiment (if we can call it that), the skeptics would refuse to revisit their beliefs. Even if a downpour had arrived out of the clear blue sky while the prayer was underway, the skeptics would have chalked it up to that all-explanatory last resort, "coincidence."

A slightly more sophisticated skeptic might say that a single instance proves nothing, and that a whole series of tests must be run in order to establish a meaningful pattern. Fair enough ... but observe that even when whole series of tests are run in other areas of psi investigation, with positive results, the skeptics still refuse to accept the outcome. They quibble about side issues, question the experimenters' honesty, misrespresent the statistics, or simply decline to talk about the subject (except when issuing armchair denunciations). So the issue of running more tests turns out to be a red herring. An infinite number of tests would not change the skeptics' minds. Nothing can change their minds.

Many scientists today accept Karl Popper's thesis that a scientific theory must be falsifiable - that is, there must be some way to test it that could, in principle, disprove it. By this standard, skepticism is an unscientific approach, since clearly it is not falsifiable by any known means. No matter what evidence is presented against the skeptical worldview, skeptics cling to it. There is no psi experiment, no matter how rigorous, that would persuade a Michael Shermer or a James Randi to change his mind (even if, for public consumption, they like to profess their open-mindedness). If 2,000 individual trials of the ganzfeld protocol cannot persuade skeptics that something paranormal is going on, nothing ever will.

But why? What is it about skeptics that makes them so resistant to changing their minds, at least in this area? I think it has to do with the subject of my second-to-last post.

Psi phenomena seem to occur when inhibitions are lowered. Conversely, when inhibitions are high, no such phenomena are likely. In order to encourage psi abilities, you have to lower your inhibitions. In other words, to a certain extent, you have to surrender control.

I think that the skeptics, for the most part, are people unwilling to surrender control. They want to believe that through ratiocination they can achieve control over the circumstances of their lives. For them, any practice of intuition is a threat to this sense of control. Spontaneity, impulsiveness, any sort of emotional freedom is dangerous and scary to them. They must think everything through, analyze and judge, find (or create) rational or rational-seeming connections in order to maintain this feeling of control, which is pivotal to their sense of self.

Control is the province of the ego, which is hypervigilant, paranoid, defensive, and judgmental. Most skeptics are strongly ego-driven. Of course, ego development is a normal and healthy stage in personal growth; but some people get stuck at a level of ego development that is counterproductive. They don't outgrow the aggressive need for certainty (founded on deep insecurities) that is characteristic of adolescence. Long into adulthood and even old age, they remain at the emotional level of teenagers, scared of a world they perceive as hostile, and seeking to compensate for their fears by pretending to be in control of everything around them.

But don't people who pray for rain also seek to control outside circumstances? Yes, but with this difference: they don't attibute the control to their own powers of ratiocination. They regard God, not themselves, as the controlling agent. Even if their own minds are ultimately responsible for any effects that occur, they don't know it. Moreover, the part of their mind that may bring about the results is not the ego, but the intuitive, nonrational part that can be called the subconscious or the higher self - the very part that the ego, in its hubris and neurosis, belittles and denies.    

The ego is built on lies, and its sense of control is itself a lie. At some level the skeptic knows that it is not actually possible to control the world by even the most concerted effort at rationalization. This may explain the unfocused anger and hostility that so many skeptics project. It is unfocused because its actual focus is the ego itself, and this is a truth that the ego can't face. Far easier for the ego to project its negative feelings outward onto other people, demonizing and caricaturing them. Self-hatred becomes hatred of the Other.

A person saddled with an ego-based need for control is not going to surrender control under any circumstances. To accept psi is to relinquish control. It is to acknowledge that the rational mind cannot apprehend all mysteries, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the skeptical philosophy. And psi, by its nature, is a realm of ambiguity accessed by surrender of inhibitions. Nothing could be more threatening to the ego.

I think that's why skeptics are so stubborn and, often, so oddly vehement. Any suggestion that psi is real threatens the core of their being - as they perceive it. They will do whatever is necessary to protect themselves from such an attack. They will insist that the coin always comes up a winner, whether it's heads or tails.

And meanwhile, the rain it raineth every day.

Praying for rain

In his famous book Black Elk Speaks,  John G. Neihardt recounts the story of a demonstration provided for him by the elderly medicine man of the title. Although Black Elk said that his shamanistic powers had waned with age, he was persuaded to pray for rain during a drought. Under a cloudless sky he solemnly recited his prayer. After a short time, a small patter of rain began to fall. It wasn't much, but it did come seemingly out of nowhere.

Fast-forward to Georgia, where on Tuesday, Governor Sonny Perdue led a crowd in a prayer for rain. On Wednesday, reports the AP,

A storm crashed through the Southeast and brought up to an inch of rain in parts of drought-stricken Georgia, but forecasters said the storm likely did little to ease the state's historic drought.

"The ground probably sucked it all up," said Vaughn Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. "The ground is so dry, I seriously doubt if any of the lakes rose any."

The Wednesday storm packed lashing rain and powerful gusts, injuring at least nine in Tennessee.

So the rain did come, albeit without much an effect on the drought.

Of course, it could be coincidence - or just clever politics. Apparently, rain was already in the long-term forecast before the governor issued a call for prayer. Maybe he selected Tuesday as a day of prayer because he knew the meteorologists were anticipating rain in the near future.  On the other hand, it appears that there was only a 30% chance of rain in the forecast. If it was a stunt, wouldn't a canny pol have waited till the odds were at least 50%?

The AP story also notes that "the roof of a Baptist church in Tennessee's Marion County was heavily damaged" by the rain, which some doubters take as evidence of lack of divine intervention.

But we don't have to believe in divine intervention to see a possible link between the prayer and the rain. If human consciousness does interact creatively with what we call "reality," then a prayer - which in this case is just a statement of intention - might be expected to influence the weather, at least to a small degree.

Uninhibited

Is there one single factor that may be a common denominator for all known psi phenomena? One physical or psychological condition that may serve as the common ground linking such diverse phenomena as telepathy, premonitions, synchronicities, out-of-body experiences, and visions of the afterlife?

I think maybe there is. The common factor may be a reduction of normal inhibitions.

This is not a new notion, of course. One theory, or hypothesis, about psi is that the brain serves as a kind of filter, screening out the vast majority of impressions that come its way. The idea is that we would be overwhelmed with psychic impressions, bombarded with too much information, if we dropped our defenses completely. In order for us to function in the "real" world, the physical world, our brains are set up to block most of these incoming signals, leaving us free to focus on the perceptions of our physical senses. Naturally there's a trade-off. We gain the practical advantage of nearly undivided attention on the stream of perceptual impressions coming through our sense organs, but we lose much of the insight, knowledge, and wisdom that could come from psychic impressions.

Perhaps it is a recognition of this trade-off that has prompted most societies to set aside a small portion of their population as mystics, shamans, prophets, seers, healers, etc. Typically, these people are exempt from the more practical responsibilities of ordinary life. They are encouraged to develop their psychic faculties, while the rest of the community focuses on the needs of physical survival. It is a division of labor, with the majority of people hunting, gathering, growing crops, fighting off other communities, and so on, while a small, privileged minority is maintained in relative isolation to keep in contact with the spirit world and glean whatever advantages such contact may offer.

Some holdover of this ancient division of labor it is evident even in our modern world, in the tradition of cloistered nuns and monks, or meditators who withdraw from society, or healers and psychics who are tolerated for their eccentricities because of the spiritual, physical, or emotional comfort they provide. There is probably even a dim remembrance of this tradition in our tolerance of the quirks and peculiarities of entertainers, who share some of the "liminal" or borderline qualities of psychics.

These people are the exception. For most of us, the brain does what it is apparently supposed to do: it filters out the distracting information that flows through psychic channels. We are typically inhibited in the impressions we can pick up. But there are circumstances in which the inhibitions are removed or at least reduced, and it appears that these are the circumstances most beneficial to psi phenomena.

Consider a few examples.

Very young children often show more psychic ability than adults. They may have so-called imaginary friends, see deceased relatives, or have accurate premonitions. Youngsters, of course, have not yet acquired the full set of social inhibitions that restrict the behavior and thinking of most grown-ups, and probably the dominance of the "logical" left cerebral hemisphere has not yet been established.

Extroverts have been found to be better subjects for parapsychology experiments than introverts. On the face of it, this seems odd. We might assume that an introvert, who is presumably more in touch with his inner life, would make a better subject. But an introvert probably has more inhibitions. Extroverts are noted for their relative lack of inhibition.

Sensory deprivation can be extremely effective in promoting psi phenomena. The ganzfeld tests for telepathy and clairvoyance depend on inducing a mild state of sensory deprivation in the test subject. Reducing sensory input presumably has the effect of partially shutting down the brain's activity, inasmuch as the brain has fewer perceptual impressions to process. A reduction of brain activity would mean a reduction of the inhibitions imposed by the brain in its role as a filter.

In so-called PK parties, groups of strangers come together and bend spoons and forks and other metal objects through psychokinesis. Hundreds of such parties have been held, and some have been videotaped. People who run these events maintain that it is crucial to establish an atmosphere of conviviality. The larger and more boisterous the group, the better. What is so special about this group dynamic? Well, it's precisely in those circumstances that people are most likely to lose their inhibitions.

Meditation, relaxation, daydreaming, and stream-of-consciousness rumination seem much more conducive to the reception of psychic impressions than deliberate, methodical thinking. In all of these mildly altered states of consciousness, there is a reduction in the inhibition normally imposed by conscious thought.

Certain drugs seem to activate or enhance psychic abilities. These drugs have the effect of temporarily impairing brain function. If the brain is indeed a filter, then while it is impaired, its filtering ability will be compromised. In other words, these drugs may have the effect of reducing the inhibitions normally imposed by the brain itself.

In the dying process, the brain shuts down, either all at once or gradually. In either case, we would expect that the filtering activity of the brain would be severely reduced. And this is what we do find. Dying people frequently report deathbed visions, some of which can be verified. People who have undergone near-death experiences sometimes remember being inundated by a vast flood of knowledge or a sudden comprehensive understanding of how the universe works, as well as almost microscopically detailed perceptions of their physical environment. The inhibitions that normally prevent us from obtaining this wealth of information seem to be reduced or eliminated as the brain shuts down.

Personally, I have found that synchronicities, premonitions, and other psi-related phenomena occur to me more often when I'm in a low mood or a low energy state. In other words, I am more likely to have such experiences, and they are more likely to be intense and memorable, when I am depressed, exhausted, or physically ill. I suspect that my normal inhibitions are reduced during those periods because my brain is not functioning as energetically as it normally would, and thus is not screening out the psychic impressions as efficiently as usual.

A large number of the out-of-body experiences collected by Robert Crookall occurred in conditions where the person's inhibitions were likely reduced by illness, fatigue, or melancholy.

Even physical handicaps may serve to reduce inhibitions and promote psychic experiences. In the newly released nonfiction anthology Darklore Volume I (to which I contributed), there is an interesting essay called "Eye Spirits" by Paul Devereaux, concerning detailed and vivid hallucinatory visions reported by people who are partly blind. Possibly their blindness has the same effect as any other form of sensory deprivation -- reducing activity in at least one area of the brain and thus opening a hole in the filter through which psychic images and impressions can be received.

If it is true that reducing inhibitions is the key to promoting psychic talents and having psychic experiences, then anyone who wants to cultivate these abilities can do so with practice. The key is to lose your inhibitions -- admittedly easier said than done!

The worst skeptical argument I've ever heard

In a comments thread, Leo shared an excerpt from an online colloquy he had with a skeptic calling himself "Bones."

I found Bones' arguments so poor in every respect that I thought they should be preserved for posterity as a separate post.

Bones: Many eyewitnesses can also testify that David Copperfield flew over a crowd...doesn't mean that he did.

Leo: "i could say that about other experiments in natural sciences"

Bones: No you couldn't. Even though we weren't there physically when, say, Einstein developed his theory of relativity..his figures are there and can be verified QUANTITATIVELY. These findings cannot be verified in such a manner. Without the ability to verify we are left with what I said we were....no substantiated proof whatsoever.

This is from the site which you provided:

"Like Barrett, Thomas was a member of the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR). His experiments, along with those of Barrett, were conducted with Gladys Osborne Leonard, the renowned British medium. “The primary purpose of these efforts was said [by my father] to be a demonstration that spirit people were able to do that for which telepathy from human minds could not account, a demonstration calculated to clarify the evidence already existing for the authorship of their communication, ” Thomas wrote in 1922."

Bones: Do you know anything about the spiritualist movement in the 1920's? Spiritualism, which began its heyday in the mid to late 19th century was beginning to wane by the 20's. Groups like the SPR were trying to salvage scientific evidence to continue the movement. Why? Money...fame..etc. A lot of people had a lot invested in this movement and it had made many, not only very rich, but known throughout the world. It is this desperate environment in which these "scientists" conducted their experiments. Just read the selection I've pasted above. What can we gather from it?:

1.) Barrett and Thomas were far from not being bias. [sic] They likely had much to gain from finding for "proof" of an afterlife. Book deals, world tours..etc. The era of Spiritualism is loaded with stories such as this.

2.) This sentence stood out for me the most, proving my previous point: "The primary purpose of these efforts was said [by my father] to be a demonstration that spirit people were able to do that for which telepathy from human minds could not account, a demonstration calculated to clarify the evidence already existing for the authorship of their communication, ”

They set out to prove! They had a clear desired end result. That is bias by it's very definition. They had no intent of coming up with a different outcome.

Don't feel bad though Leo, about a hundred years ago hundreds of thousands were taken in by the same frauds.

Leo asked for my response. My response is twofold: a) it's a waste of time to argue with diehard skeptics, especially when they are uninformed, and b) Bones is spectacularly uninformed; he simply doesn't know what he's talking about.

To elaborate on "b," neither Drayton Thomas nor William Barrett made any effort to get rich off their work. In fact, psychical researchers of that period (and since then, as well) were ostracized by their peers; they suffered serious career reversals; their honesty and even their sanity were questioned; some of them lost university positions (e.g., James Hyslop); nearly all of them could have made more money and acquired more fame in other fields. Oliver Lodge and William Crookes, both knighted for their contributions to physics, had no need to seek fame as psi researchers; neither did Alfred Russel Wallace, who with Darwin introduced the theory of evolution by natural selection; neither did William James, the famed psychologist and pragmatist philosopher. These men were not motivated by fame, which they already had in abundance, or by book deals, which they could easily have had on the basis of their more conventional work.

Moreover, the SPR, far from bring a bastion of true believers, was known for its skeptical attitude. If anything, SPR investigators like Frank Podmore and Richard Hodgson were overly skeptical. See Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum's book Ghost Hunters for details.

The SPR was not trying to continue the spiritualist movement. In fact, there was a rift between spiritualists and the SPR precisely because SPR investigators had exposed so many mediums as fakes. And the SPR refused to work with any mediums who accepted money for their services, which left out most of the spiritualist-approved mediums anyway.

As for Bones' idea of proof, it is inapplicable to the social sciences - and remember, we're talking about parapsychology. Proof or evidence in the social sciences cannot be established the same way that it can be in, say, physics. It relies on observations of behavior, and behavior is never 100% predictable or 100% replicable or 100% quantifiable.

If we were to accept Bones' standard of evidence, we would have to declare that there is no proof that the Battle of Gettysburg ever took place. After all, we have only eyewitness testimony. What if the eyewitnesses were lying? Maybe they wanted to get lucrative book deals and world tours out of it!

Of course, the quality of eyewitness testimony will vary, but to dismiss all testimony as worthless is not skepticism but some species of nihilism; it means that no one can ever be trusted to tell the truth, even when they have no motive to lie and have a track record of honesty.

Even in the physical sciences, we must often trust researchers' honesty. Not every experiment or observation can be easily replicated. Einstein's theory was initially validated by Eddington's measurements taken during a solar eclipse. But how do we know Eddington wasn't lying? Maybe he falsified the measurements in hope of book deals and world tours. Absurd? Sure. But no more absurd than asserting that every serious researcher in the psychic field has been lying for 150 years. Nor is it correct to claim that Einstein's theory can be proven by mathematical analysis alone. Einstein himself said openly that his theory would stand or fall by empirical observations.

Finally Bones quotes Drayton Thomas as saying', "The primary purpose of these efforts was said [by my father] to be a demonstration that spirit people were able to do that for which telepathy from human minds could not account," then objects:

They set out to prove! They had a clear desired end result. That is bias by it's very definition. They had no intent of coming up with a different outcome.

Since Bones obviously knows nothing about Drayton Thomas' experiments, he doesn't realize that the father in question was already deceased at the time. Thus he fails to understand that the ones who were allegedly wanted to prove something were the spirit communicators, not the living investigators.

In any event, scientists frequently "set out to prove" some theory or other. The idea that scientists have no personal interest in how their experiments turn out is laughable. They will defend a pet theory to the death. This is why physicist Max Planck remarked that science advances "one funeral at a time"; obsolete ideas give way only when their proponents are no longer among the living. Human nature, with all its stubbornness, bias, and vanity, is not eradicated simply because one assumes the mantle of "scientist."

Some skeptics come up with interesting, intelligent arguments, but all too many fall back on sheer ignorance of both the history of psychical research and the nature of science itself. Bones exemplifies these tendencies more clearly than any other skeptic I've seen.

One thing I will say in his favor is that he's chosen his screen name well. His arguments are so threadbare as to be positively skeletal!

Decline of civilization, the end

Okay, the people have spoken. Almost nobody likes my depressing updates on societal disintegration, so I'll quit doing them.

But ... please note that I could have kept going indefinitely. All is not well with Western civ. I don't see how anyone can argue with that.

Decline of civilization, part 4

It's good to know that cultural implosion isn't limited to the USA. From Tuusula, Finland, via AP:

An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at his high school in this placid town in southern Finland on Wednesday, killing seven other students and the principal before mortally wounding himself in a rampage that stunned a nation where gun crime is rare....

Investigators said the gunman, who was not identified, shot himself in the head after the shooting spree at Jokela High School in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of the capital, Helsinki. He died later at Toolo Hospital in Helsinki.

The teen killed five boys, two girls and the female principal with a .22-caliber pistol, police said....

Investigators were searching for connections to the shooter and a possible motive in YouTube postings that appeared to reveal plans for Wednesday's deadly attack.

One video, titled "Jokela High School Massacre," showed a picture of what appeared to be the Jokela school and two photos of a young man holding a handgun....

Another video clip showed a young man clad in a dark jacket loading a clip into a handgun and firing several shots at an apple placed on the ground in a wooded area. He smiled and waved to the camera at the end of the clip.

A third clip showed photos of what appeared to be same man posing with a gun and wearing a T-shirt with the text "Humanity is overrated."

Don't fence me in

It is a huge mistake ever to let somebody else define you. People try this on the Internet all the time. Someone on a message board will express an opinion, and another person, usually very hostile, will say, "You only say that because you're _______." The blank can be filled in by anything: an irrationalist, a conservative, a communist, a pagan, a fundamentalist, an ignoramus, a Luddite, a technocrat, a materialist, a loser, a failure.

This is, of course, an ad hominem attack, and as such it is a fallacy. But it's more than that. It's an attempt to impose a definition on you -- to fit you into the box of the critic's preconceptions and thereby render you neutralized, a nonperson. Anyone who engages in this tactic is on a power trip and is behaving like a bully.

Sadly, nearly all of us slip into this mode from time to time, but some people practice this style of intimidation consistently. They're what the self-help writer Jay Carter calls Invalidators -- people who seek to invalidate you as a person by denying your right to be who you are. In effect, the Invalidator says, "You don't really believe what you're saying" (you're lying) or "You can't possibly think that way" (you're delusional) or "You have no basis for feeling that way" (you're breaking the rules).

Look at antagonistic exchanges on the Web, and you will see many such messages being delivered, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. And the targets of these guided missiles of invective rarely know how to respond. That's a key point Jay Carter makes about Invalidators -- they are experts at throwing you off balance. It is very disconcerting to be told that you don't matter -- that an opinion you've just expressed "can't be taken seriously," or that "nobody could believe" what you said you believe. People who express these criticisms are saying that you can't be taken seriously and that you are a nobody. It's difficult for the average person to recover instantly from such an aggressive assault.

What's even worse is when Invalidators start telling you what you're "really" thinking or feeling. "You just believe that because ______."

Fill in the blank with any negative psychological diagnosis. Worst of all is when the Invalidator claims that you believe the exact opposite of what you're professing. This tactic is not uncommon and is doubly invalidating, since it not only identifies an ulterior motive for your statements, but discovers "evidence" of hypocrisy and deceit, as well.

There are a couple of ways to deal with Invalidators. One way is to avoid them. This is easy enough on the Net. If a particular message board is filled with nasty, sarcastic voices, why participate in it? Why be a masochist? Or if one or two people on the board are baiting you, why not ignore them? This will have the salutary effect of driving them crazy; Invalidators simply cannot stand to be ignored, since they are typically narcissists who require constant attention.

This is why I advise people to avoid debates with hard-line ultraskeptics. I have found that such people are typically Invalidators. There are, of course, exceptions, but in general the rule holds true. Even the well-known academic skeptic Ray Hyman has been quoted as  saying, "As a whole, parapsychologists are nice, honest people, while the critics are cynical, nasty people." There is no point in dealing with such people if you can avoid it.

The other approach to the Invalidator is to be as nondefensive as possible. The biggest mistake you can make -- and the most natural one -- is to try defending your position, your character, or your good name. This never works and merely gives the Invalidators more grist for their mill. When you defend yourself, you are presenting the Invalidators with additional vulnerabilities for them to prey on. Whatever you are proud of will be used against you.

Some years ago I saw a good example of this on an authors' online discussion group. It went something like this:

Author: I've always placed a high priority on plot mechanics.

Critic: So what you're really saying is, you're a hack.

Author: That's not what I'm saying at all.

Critic: No real writer would be so focused on mechanics.

Author: I am a real writer. I've published 12 books.

Critic: With what publisher?

Author: Ballantine.

Critic: Oh, Ballantine. That explains it.

Etc. I remember reading this exchange (and no, the author wasn't me; even back then I knew enough not to get into this kind of argument) and thinking that the poor author was only opening herself up to more assaults. First she has to defend herself against the claim that she was saying something different from what she said. Then she has to defend her status as a "real writer." Next she has to respond to an attack on her publisher -- presumably by defending Ballantine or by listing other companies she's worked for. No matter what strategy she follows, she cannot win this argument. If she says something like, "I've also been published by Knopf," a more prestigious publishing company, the critic will simply respond, "They must've been slumming that day." The Invalidator is not interested in a reasonable discussion; he wants to undercut his victim's sense of personal identity, and the more defensive his victim becomes, the easier it is to carve the ground out from under her feet.

So how to respond nondefensively? You have to take your ego out of the picture. This is easier said than done, because the instinctive reaction is to defend the ego. But if you can be aware of this instinct and rise above it, you can respond much more effectively. For instance, in response to the critic's line, "So what you're really saying is, you're a hack," you could try self-deprecating humor:

"Yes, but I'm a happy hack."

Or honest self appraisal:

"I think every commercial writer sometimes wonders if he or she is just a hack. I've come to the conclusion that I'm in the worst position to judge my own work, so I no longer worry about it."

Or a simple statement of principles:

"I've tried to improve in every aspect of my craft, because craftsmanship is the foundation of artistic creativity -- and plot mechanics are part of the craft."

But I think the best responsible (if you must respond) is a straightforward statement of your own feelings:

"I'm happy with the work I've done and the progress I've made. Regardless of how it stacks up against other people's work, it pleases me."

The great advantage of this last approach is that any statement about your own feelings is -- or should be -- unassailable. After all, no one but you knows how you feel. Of course, the determined Invalidator may stoop to lecturing you on how you "really" feel, but this technique is so transparent that it can be easily ignore it or laughed off. "I guess you know me better than I know myself!" would be one obvious riposte, maybe with a little :-) to complete the thought.

The other good thing about this or any other nondefensive approach is that it immediately establishes you as the more secure person. Believe me, people can tell. The more strident the Invalidator gets, the more he blusters and rails, the more sarcastic his invective -- the worse he looks to nearly everyone (except his fellow Invalidators, perhaps). The more you repulse his attacks with effortless humility and poise, the better you look. You will come across as centered, self-aware, and self-possessed, while the critic will seem like a blustering blowhard -- what I call a SLAP (Silly Little Angry Person). SLAPs are everywhere on the Web, and almost anyone can recognize them.

So don't let the critics define you. Don't let the Invalidators undercut you. Either ignore them (a wise policy when at all possible) or answer them without ego, without defensiveness, without posturing and justifying. Remember, there's only one person who knows what you're "really" saying or how you "really" feel or who you "really" are -- and that person is you.

Render unto Caesar

I've been reading Adrian Goldsworthy's bio of Julius Caesar, and it's produced very mixed feelings in me. Goldsworthy himself clearly admires Caesar and sympathizes with him. Though he does not deny Caesar's more inhumane acts, he tries to place them in the context of Roman society at that time. I'm afraid I can't quite be so forgiving. To me, Caesar is something of a monster - a man who engaged in systematic warfare for most of the last fifteen years of his life, beginning with a series of largely unprovoked attacks on the Gauls, continuing with an entirely unprovoked excursion to Britain, and culminating in a civil war that tore Rome to pieces and ended the Republic - the longest lasting system of representative government on earth up to that time.

And why did he do all this? Goldsworthy makes no bones about it. Caesar did it for power, for prestige, for "auctoritas" and "dignitas" - authority and dignity. He wanted to be the "first man in Rome." His ambition was boundless, and it could be satisfied only by first annexing Gaul as a new Roman province rich with slaves and raw materials, and then by destroying his political opponents when they tried to rein him in.

Make no mistake: The Gallic wars, the two ill-conceived British invasions, the civil war itself - all were fought to feed Caesar's ambition. The conquest of Gaul made him rich and influential, a hero of the people. The invasions of Britain, which served no practical purpose, enlarged his personal mythic status. The civil war was the outcome of Caesar's refusal to surrender his "imperium" - his generalship - and face a possible trial for alleged misconduct during his earlier consulship. (As long as he held the imperium, he could not be prosecuted.)

Had Caesar been less monstrously ambitious, he would have been content as governor to rule the parts of Gaul that were already in Roman control, perhaps with an occasional foray into enemy territory when circumstances required it, but without any master plan of "pacifying" the whole region. His "pacification" resulted in an untold number of deaths - Plutarch claims that one million Gauls died during the eight-year campaign and another million were sold as slaves. Caesar's troops burned whole villages to the ground, set fire to crops so the people would starve, raped and pillaged (sometimes with their general's encouragement), and provoked battles at will. Though Caesar could exercise clemency for tactical reasons, he was not above cruelty; in one case, after a besieged town surrendered to Roman troops, Caesar ordered that every warrior have both hands hacked off. In another case, he refused to allow Gaulish refugees - women, children, and old men - into his camp, preferring to watch them starve to death outside his lines.

In the civil war, he again exercised clemency when it suited his purposes, and he does deserve some credit for it; but there would have been no war in the first place if he had agreed to disband his troops and lay down his imperium, as age-old custom demanded. Had he been successfully prosecuted, he would have gone into exile, a rich man living in comfort and ease. Yes, he would have been banished from Rome and deprived of the ultimate political power he sought ... but he would have saved the Republic and prevented the deaths of many thousands of his fellow Romans. Yet the idea of making this sacrifice apparently never crossed his mind. He was more than willing to throw away any number of human lives, even Roman lives - which were valued more highly by the Romans than the lives of Gauls and other "savages" - willing to lay waste to Italy and destroy the republican form of government, all to feed his insatiable appetite for prestige and power. He is, in many ways, the ego incarnate, in all its rapacity and single-minded devotion to self.

What makes it somehow worse is that he was not a stupid man. Far from it; he was highly intelligent, erudite, a polished orator, a masterful prose stylist, a crafty and remarkably efficient general, and a man of consummate charm. He had every gift nature and learning could supply, but he wanted more. He wanted to crush anyone who stood above him or even as his equal. He wanted no peers. And so he enslaved the Gauls and eventually cost his own people their liberty for centuries to come.

With all of that, how can I have any mixed feelings? Well, there is another side to the story - namely, that Julius Caesar remains one of the most fascinating historical characters on record, someone who has captured the interest of poets and playwrights, novelists and historians, for more than two thousand years. Had he been gentler, less ambitious, more self-effacing, he would have been a better man, but perhaps not such an interesting man. He created vast tragedies for the Gauls and for the Roman people, and he even became a tragic figure himself - but there is something hypnotizing about tragedy. We may not like Caesar, but few men have ever dominated their times as he did.

A couple of years ago Matthew Cromer suggested to me that we can look at the world as a story told by God, with every human being cast as a character in the story. Just as an author can get lost in his own story and start to identify with his characters, just as the characters may take the story in directions that the author himself didn't anticipate, so we can see the world as a kind of gigantic ongoing exercise in role-playing, with the mind of God expressing itself through a cast of billions of characters, and each character unaware that he or she is a player in a larger drama, the outlines of which are largely unseen. (At least, I hope I have expressed Matthew's idea accurately.)

I kept thinking of this as I read Goldsworthy's book. For the Gauls trampled under the hooves of Caesar's cavalry, or for the Romans terrorized by the anarchy of the civil war, there would have been no such high-flown thoughts. But when we look back from a distance of two millennia, we do see - and enjoy - the drama of Caesar's story, even as we disapprove of his ambitions and methods. World history would be a more peaceful narrative without men like Caesar, but also a duller one.

So perhaps there are two ways of looking at Caesar. We can judge him as a man and find him badly wanting in decency and human kindness; and we can enjoy him as a dramatic figure, larger than life. He is both a badly flawed man and a marvelous work of art, no less than Shakespeare's Hamlet or Michaelangelo's David. And we can see his victims in the same way - as dramatic players in their own right.

There's a famous statue from the ancient world called The Dying Gaul. The Greek original (now lost) dated back more than two hundred years before Caesar's conquests, but the Romans reproduced it, and it's the Roman copy that survives. The Romans saw in the figure of the dying Gaul some quality of heroism and tragedy. We can see the same qualities in Caesar's victims and in Caesar himself. And if we had a God's-eye view of history, would we see every human being that way, and would the story, with all its twists and turns and shocks and horrors, finally stand revealed as a master Author's grand design?

Hooray!

Joss Whedon finally comes to his senses and returns to TV, the medium that suits him best.

Whedon created the outstanding TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the most original and consistently entertaining shows in television history, as well as its underrated spinoff Angel and the short-lived but first-rate sci-fi show Firefly. After these shows went off the air, Whedon turned his attention to feature films. He directed a Firefly movie, Serenity, which had its moments but did not, in my opinion, equal the best episodes of the TV series. Then he got bogged down in writing a Wonder Woman feature film, which went nowhere, and a project called Goners, which also seems to have stalled.

And all this time, those of us who remember Whedon's glory days in TV were wondering when he would realize that TV, not features, is where he belongs. He's a storyteller, and big-budget feature films nowadays are not about stories; they're about special effects, loud music, raunchy gags, and gore.

Well, he got the message. I hope his new show, which already has a seven-episode commitment from Fox, is a hit (and I hope Fox handles it better than they handled Firefly). In a world of trashy reality TV, we need more Whedon. And the sooner, the better, please.

P.S. Minor synchronicity: Just yesterday I found myself thinking about Whedon and wishing he would come back to TV. It's not like I think about this guy all the time, especially since he's been off the radar screen for the past few years, so it's a bit of a coincidence. Meaningful? Meaningless? Who knows? (I do know what Whedon would say; he's a professed atheist and "absurdist" who claims to find no higher meaning or purpose in life. His work to date somewhat belies this perspective, though.)

Darklore

Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail informs me that Darklore Vol. I is now available in paperback. Sample chapters, including mine, can be read online.

For details, click here.