I think that in the paranormal we have a problem which we, frankly, do not even fully understand (as a race) that we have. This problem, condensed to its essence, is that there is a strong relation between the paranormal and storytelling. This relation is clearly visible to anyone who is willing to look without prejudice. It belongs unmistakably to that order of human events which can be called “the attempt – strenuous or playful – to build structures of life-enhancing meaning in a difficult (and sometimes outright hostile) world”…in other words, in earlier days what was called myth.
For the greatest part of our history we have not been concerned with the problem that myths are not “literally” true. They served their purpose precisely *because* they were stories. No one cared whether they were literally true or not…and this same disdain carries on today with our ambivalent attitude towards “science” when it confronts our stories. On the one hand we still have that inner desire to protect story from the searing light of discovery…should that discovery turn out to be anything other than affirmation. Thus…when the Parnia style studies show signs of not producing, we have defensive reasons for this…but if at any point they should *actually* produce, these same processes would be fawned over and Parnia himself hailed as a new Newton and savior of story.
But it conceals a deeper problem. Science is our modern myth. At some point we tipped over from science as pragmatism to science as disclosed Truth. But all “Truths” like that are mythic structures. We have no tools for the discerning of any such thing. We only have tools for the discerning of pragmatic truths (with a small t) and which we call the empirical methods of science. The trouble is that those methods *are* powerful enough to disclose whether or not many of our stories designed to give our lives meaning…are in fact false at the pragmatic level. And this is a crisis that systems of myth have never had to face in such an open way before. You can see the conflict actually waged on a day to day basis on forums like this and many others, because (imo) the issue is not understood in terms of what is really happening at a psychological and socio-cultural level. Our mythic way of addressing the world, which has been our staple for tens of thousands of years, faces extinction if this conflict process is forced to the wall. Something must give. Either the mythic mode. Or science as a disclosure of anything beyond pragmatic truth.
Is there any “pragmatic” as opposed to “mythic” truth to the paranormal? Well before you rush in with a ready answer, try to understand that this is not straightforward. The domain of “pragmatic” truth has certain rules to it that qualify something to occupy that domain. Something that consistently steps around those rules or pleads special exceptions to them cannot really be said to occupy it. On the other hand, mythic space is characterized by story, by story-sharing, by manifestations ancient and modern of the “fireside tale.” I am agnostic on the pragmatic truth of the paranormal. I have been, in the past, so sure of its existence from a distance, only to see it vanish perversely as I draw closer, like a kind of mirage on a wet road. And one wonders if in fact it isn’t going to turn out, always, like this.
I don’t think we can have it both ways. I don’t think that the crisis can resolve like that. And we’ve been putting off the cusp of that crisis for over a century now. The attempt to “sciencify” myths (society of psychical research etc) was always potentially a grave mistake. We are at risk of cutting off the oxygen that gives most of the race a sense of meaning. Science is too peculiar, too precocious, and too recent a child of the mind to be able to substitute for it at all. Maybe in tens of thousands of years that might be possible, but not in tens of years.
On the other hand, we are kind of trapped. We have checkmated ourselves with this, because we cannot pretend, any more, that the *pragmatic* truth-discerning abilities of science are an illusion. And if the pragmatic verdict of science turns out to be that paranormal is an illusion, then the only defense of the mythic mode against this is to retreat into story. But even this is not satisfactory, for while it may retain a sense of the erstwhile mythic mode and its power, that power will be reduced and borne with a sense of doubt.
And this is what I mean when I say that H. sapiens faces a crisis of its myths the like of which it has never faced before. This question is much much more important than whether people see a teapot or not when they are apparently out of body. Really that is just a microcosmic face of the much larger problem.
