Anthony North

Life is just a great big poltergeist

February 23, 2011 |  10 comments
Image Credit: Image After The title is a bold statement. I’m claiming that nearly everything we do and perceive in life is based around the poltergeist. At first, it sounds ridiculous. But maybe not if we apply my understanding of what a poltergeist is. To me, it is all about culture and psychodrama. It usually strikes when a family is undergoing some form of upheaval. Often centred around a pubescent child, fear will grip the family, and communally an alternative reality will begin to manifest. In this reality, perception will alter. Things will seem to be seen, noises heard, based on the community’s expectation that they will be and a form of communal mind becomes the director of the psychodrama that thus ensues.

The psychodrama will ape an over-culture of what society and folklore says should be experienced. This is why, in times past, the poltergeist became known as ‘mischievous’ - it was aping fairy culture. Now let’s apply the above to life in general. We all belong to a specific culture, and this culture will define what we are and how we are supposed to behave. So in other words, our psychology bends to the group. This forms a particular consensus. Typical is a religion, where a specific belief system leads to specific action. In the extreme, we have a cult, where outsiders often think they are quite simply mad.

Science also works through consensus, and comparing a religious consensus to a scientific one can be quite illuminating. In the extreme, neither can see the other’s point of view yet both claim to find proof in life and experience. Perhaps it would be better to understand both stances in terms of alternative realities. In other words, just like with the poltergeist psychodrama, ‘reality’ has fallen in line with the group view.

Of course, I’m not saying reality has actually changed. But reality isn’t as neat as this. Philosophers down the ages have advised that reality has two elements – that which is actually in the world, and human perception of it. Thus, we can argue that the changing perception of a group CAN be an alternative reality, and the upshot of this is that we all exist within a poltergeist psychodrama, writ large. Reality seems to bend to how we believe it will be. Of course, in the present climate of consensual dispute, neither side will be prepared to accept this. But then again, the subject of knowledge – which is what we’re talking of here – has never been approached from a purely paranormal standpoint.

Maybe the reality is that the paranormal is vital to understanding, not only knowledge, but how the human becomes what it is - and they say there is no value in paranormal research.[!gad]The title is a bold statement. I’m claiming that nearly everything we do and perceive in life is based around the poltergeist. At first, it sounds ridiculous. But maybe not if we apply my understanding of what a poltergeist is. To me, it is all about culture and psychodrama. It usually strikes when a family is undergoing some form of upheaval. Often centred around a pubescent child, fear will grip the family, and communally an alternative reality will begin to manifest. In this reality, perception will alter. Things will seem to be seen, noises heard, based on the community’s expectation that they will be and a form of communal mind becomes the director of the psychodrama that thus ensues.

The psychodrama will ape an over-culture of what society and folklore says should be experienced. This is why, in times past, the poltergeist became known as ‘mischievous’ - it was aping fairy culture. Now let’s apply the above to life in general. We all belong to a specific culture, and this culture will define what we are and how we are supposed to behave. So in other words, our psychology bends to the group. This forms a particular consensus. Typical is a religion, where a specific belief system leads to specific action. In the extreme, we have a cult, where outsiders often think they are quite simply mad.

Science also works through consensus, and comparing a religious consensus to a scientific one can be quite illuminating. In the extreme, neither can see the other’s point of view yet both claim to find proof in life and experience. Perhaps it would be better to understand both stances in terms of alternative realities. In other words, just like with the poltergeist psychodrama, ‘reality’ has fallen in line with the group view.

Of course, I’m not saying reality has actually changed. But reality isn’t as neat as this. Philosophers down the ages have advised that reality has two elements – that which is actually in the world, and human perception of it. Thus, we can argue that the changing perception of a group CAN be an alternative reality, and the upshot of this is that we all exist within a poltergeist psychodrama, writ large. Reality seems to bend to how we believe it will be. Of course, in the present climate of consensual dispute, neither side will be prepared to accept this. But then again, the subject of knowledge – which is what we’re talking of here – has never been approached from a purely paranormal standpoint.

Maybe the reality is that the paranormal is vital to understanding, not only knowledge, but how the human becomes what it is - and they say there is no value in paranormal research.

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