Do You Believe in the Paranormal?
‘Fringe-ology’ by Steve Volk offers to make space for better discussions
“This is a book about us,” Steve Volk says, about believers and unbelievers alike. It’s a book about the people who we are, more than it is a book about that which we do or don’t believe. Ideologues of either type — believers and unbelievers — often behave “as mean, petty bullies.” Often, we don’t have the true answer, but we are “neurologically uncomfortable with ambiguity” and we gravitate to “false certainty.”
The book is Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable — And Couldn’t (2011).
People who report paranormal experiences are often “ordinary people who didn’t ask for weirdness, [n]or to be seen as somehow strange themselves,” he muses, “yet had this cartoonish mantle thrust upon them.” Yes, fantasy-prone people are “more likely to develop some sort of schizophrenia-spectrum disorder,” but, on the other hand, many fantasizers “sail through life with no mental problems and exercise an increased faculty for creativity.”
‘Paranormal’ and ‘Supernatural’
Volk is talking about the paranormal, which has to do with “events or perceptions occurring without scientific explanation,” including “near-death experiences (NDEs), mental…
