Michael Prescott's Blog

Whither we goest?

I haven't posted much new material lately, in part because I've been busy, but also in part because I'm not quite sure what this blog should be about anymore. When I started blogging back in January of 2005, I unimaginatively titled my space Michael Prescott's Blog because I had no idea what subject matter I would end up discussing. I definitely didn't anticipate homing in on evidence for life after death and its implications. If anything, I probably figured I would talk mostly about fiction writing, movies, and current events, with the paranormal as only a small part of the mix. 

But over the years, the reactions I got from readers were usually most positive when psi and afterlife issues were under discussion. As a result, in classic stimulus-and-response fashion, I gravitated toward this material. I've written in the last year or two that I'm not quite as interested in this subject as I used to be; I've read and written so much about it that, for me, it feels kind of played out. A few times in the past year, I've put up a post on politics just for variety, but in almost all cases I've gotten many negative responses. 

What's been most apparent recently, however, is that even when I put up a nonpolitical post, the discussion can turn heatedly political in short order. This was most obvious with regard to my post "A World of Hurt," which concerned different theories of evil and their spiritual implications; the comments thread has spiraled down into a free-for-all about Donald Trump, Brexit, and other hot-button issues that have very little to do with the original topic.

My impression is that many readers, like me, are starting to get bored with rehashing paranormal and spiritual issues, and are looking for a different direction. This is fine by me. The problem is, I'm not quite sure what direction to take. I don't want to turn this blog into a political forum, because the arguments can become so contentious, and because there are already a huge number of political websites pushing every conceivable point of view. Besides, who wants to think about politics all the time?

I do, however, have other interests – for instance, the Shakespeare authorship question, classic and contemporary movies, fiction-writing techniques and practices, the history of Christianity as reconstructed by modern New Testament academic studies, special visual effects in cinema, and money management. I can probably think of other things, but that's a start.

I'm wondering if perhaps the blog should become more eclectic and deal with some or all of the above issues on a regular basis, along with the occasional paranormal post as necessary. Or would it be better to stick with paranormal stuff and simply have fewer posts? Or do you think it's time for me to shut down the blog, while leaving all the earlier posts and comments threads archived indefinitely?

I'm open to any suggestions and ideas. I'll be traveling tomorrow, so I may not be able to approve comments right away.

A categorical improvement

Roger Knights sent me a private message recently, suggesting that I index this blog to help people people find the subject matter that interests them without having to slog through the monthly archives.

It's a good idea. Unfortunately, creating a full index would be a time-consuming and tedious project. But a partial solution occurred to me.

Most of my posts have been tagged in different categories such as Afterlife and NDEs. Many posts are tagged in multiple categories, since the subjects often overlap. Until now, though, there hasn't been any convenient way to use these category tags to search the archives. A little bit of research into the mechanics of TypePad revealed that it's easy to post a list of categories in a sidebar.

So that's what I've done. Scroll down the left-hand side of this page, and you'll see a list of recent posts, followed by a list of recent comments, and below that, a list of all the categories. If you click on any category, all of the posts included in that category will come up.

Scrolling down further, you'll find a Google search box, which can be used to search the blog archives for specific terms. (This feature has been available for a while, though I think most people are not aware of it.) Below that, there are the monthly archives, which include everything in chronological order, all the way back to April, 2005.

This way, if you're interested only in reading about NDEs, you can just click on that category link and find a fairly comprehensive collection of the relevant posts. I say "fairly comprehensive" because I'm not sure that I always applied the category tags consistently, especially in the early years.

It's not an ideal system, but it's an improvement over what I had before.

Linx

FYI, here's a link to a blog post by Stafford Betty on John Adams' dying words - a subject that was discussed here recently in a comments thread.

And here's a link to a book released last year, The Last Frontier, by Julia Assante. It covers the evidence for postmortem survival and discusses ways of accessing your own mediumistic talents. I've read only part of it so far, but it seems like a very good overview, well researched and clearly written. It's available in print and ebook editions.

 

A weblog and a wig lady

Longtime commenter Bruce Siegel now has a blog of his own. Check it out! 

Bruce seems to have attracted one or two hostile commenters already. The only explanation I can think of is that his blog's title, which includes the term "militant skeptic," has raised some hackles. Anyway, he is handling those comments with his usual class and patience. 

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Here's a small premonition, of no importance in itself, but interesting as an example of how these things seem to work (at least for me). 

Yesterday I was relaxing in an armchair in a half-awake state of mind. My thoughts ran, for no obvious reason, to an episode of the old TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The villain in that episode was an older woman known as the Wig Lady, because of the obvious wig she wore. It turned out that the wig concealed a hideous demonic creature that emerged from the top of her head and ate people. Ewww. 

Anyway, as I say, there was no obvious reason for me to think of this. The series has been off the air for ten years. I haven't seen an episode of it in a long time, and that particular episode was not one my of favorites. 

A couple of hours later, I was making dinner. My habit these days is to work my way through the complete episodes of a sitcom, either on DVD or Netflix streaming video, while working in the kitchen. (I find this much less stressful than watching the news.) At the moment I'm watching How I Met Your Mother via Netflix. I played the next episode in the queue. 

And there she was - the Wig Lady! Well, the same actress, anyway, playing a small role in this episode. I don't think she appears in any other episodes; it was just a walk-on bit. I might not have even recognized her if I hadn't been thinking of the Wig Lady on Buffy just a couple of hours earlier.

Coincidence? I doubt it. These things happen to me too often, and with too much specificity, to be explained away so easily. They nearly always involve a dreamy, almost hypnagogic state in which free associations take place. And they are almost always trivial in nature, often involving TV shows and other mundanities.

My guess is that when the mind is sufficiently relaxed, it is open to some degree of "information leakage" from what I call N-space (the information matrix that may underlie our perception of physical reality). This leakage generally is random - hence its triviality. In some cases the leakage does seem to carry a message or a meaning; in those instances I would guess that either our own consciousness can explore N-space and pick out the needed data, or some other consciousness (e.g., a spirit guide) can find the data and impress it on our mind. 

By the way, I just looked up the actress. She's Pat Crawford Brown. The HIMYM episode was "Three Days of Snow." The Buffy episode was "Doublemeat Palace." 

Just a reminder ...

Comments on this blog are moderated, meaning that it can take some time for them to be read and approved for posting. This unfortunately slows down the pace of conversations. 

For those who want to participate in unmoderated, real-time discussions, there's an online forum loosely affiliated with this blog. You do have to request membership, but once you're approved, you can post whenever you like and even introduce new topics. 

Right now there's a lengthy discussion of Stanislav Grof underway, and another thread about reincarnation. 

The forum can be found here. 

Reminder

Comments on this blog are moderated, meaning that it can take some time for them to be read and approved for posting. This unfortunately slows down the pace of conversations. 

For those who want to participate in unmoderated, real-time discussions, there's an online forum loosely affiliated with this blog. You do have to request membership, but once you're approved, you can post whenever you like and even introduce new topics. 

The forum can be found here. 

 

Comments temporarily closed; update: new policy

Comments are temporarily closed on all posts. This is in response to a a bizarre and hateful influx of comments from people calling themselves "Forests," "Trees," "MU!"," and "Darryl." I think it's quite possible that all of these screen names belong to the same badly damaged, probably schizophrenic individual. 

Since it has proved impossible to ban any of these commenters - they keep changing their IP addresses - I may have to institute a comment-approval policy, in which comments will be held for my review before being posted. This will slow down the pace of conversations, but it may be the only way to way for us to maintain any sense of decorum and civility around here - not to mention basic sanity. 

Update: I've decided to just go ahead and implement the comment approval policy. From now on, at least for the time being, all comments will be held for my review. I cannot promise to review them instantly - this blog is only a hobby, not a full-time job. But I will read them, and will publish any that are not offensive or inappropriate, unless they come from banned commenters such as those listed above. 

Forests, Trees, MU!, Darryl, and all affiliated personalities should go elsewhere to find a forum.

Comments

Today I got ten spam comments on this blog in the course of about three hours. It takes time to delete these annoying (usually illiterate) comments, and the comments themselves are potentially dangerous, inasmuch as the links, if clicked, may install malware on your computer. 

So I've decided to bite the bullet and impose some controls on commenting. I tried this once or twice before, but curtailed the experiment because people complained about the inconvenience of having to sign in via a social media service like Facebook, or having to reproduce a random verification code. 

I agree that this is more of a hassle than just clicking "Post," and the verification codes are often frustratingly hard to decipher. But the flood of spam is a problem I just can't ignore. This time I'm committed to the program. And I'm sure we'll all get used to it soon enough. 

In the meantime, I've tracked down a helpful instructional video from NewsRadio that may help us better adjust to these new circumstances: 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37cf-WmEqPI

 

Comment chaos

The CAPTCHA word verification system for comments isn't working anymore, so I've disabled it. For the moment anyone can comment without jumping any hurdles. However, if I start to get comment spam, I'll have to enable a different option, requiring all commenters to sign in via some social media service like Facebook or Twitter (there are other services on the list). 

Hopefully this will work, one way or the other. 

Incidentally, I complained to TypePad about the CAPTCHA system, but they replied that they have no intention of changing it or fixing it. Which was helpful. 

 

 

Sit back and reflect

Hrvoje Butkovic, who sometimes comments on this blog, has set up a new website dedicated to "the idea of creating a self-reflective society." According to the site, such a society has the following features: 

It encourages people to stop uncritically adopting the ways of others – be it leaders or role models in the political, business, religious, entertainment, or any other arena – and instead discover for themselves the most authentic, meaningful and fulfilling ways to live.

It encourages people to scrutinise the foundation on which it rests – in the form of values and beliefs – for the purpose of identifying and replacing those that don’t accurately represent them.

It encourages people to scrutinise the social structures that were built on top of that foundation for the purpose of identifying and replacing those that do not produce results consistent with the stated values and beliefs.

It encourages people to continuously engage in the above exercises, and so keep refining themselves and the society in which they live.

With all the panic and hysteria in the news lately, now may be the right time for some quiet reflection.