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OUCH! Debunking a Dream [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-11
Dreams of Atlantis…
Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse spins an enticing fantasy about lost civilizations with advanced technologies and space-bending beings. It sits right next to the part of my brain housing stories of space aliens. Both comfort me in some weird way. I’d like to think our current existence isn’t the pinnacle of achievement - it would be too depressing.
Just because it wasn’t built by white people, doesn’t mean it’s Atlantis.
It’s much better to imagine that once there was something magic that we lost. We just need to find it again and the world would be brighter and more optimistic.
Atlantis isn’t my only mental vice. During Torah study one week, I pointed to the part about giants before the great flood. “Giants! When are we going to talk about the giants?” It was tolerated, but not well-received.
This strain of conspiracy theory is the type of comforting myth that we talk about often in The Tell. As is mentioned often, anybody can fall prey to magical thinking, fraud or gaslighters. The mind only has to be fertile from vulnerability of some kind.
Read more at The Tell with Christine Axsmith
Oops, There Goes Reality
So before being swept away with delightful musings of powerful machines that will save humanity from itself, a YouTuber enters. This young man smashes my little daydreams of utopia with logic, history and sense.
The Ancient Apolalypse episode about Atlantis is shockingly wrong:
the site is called Nan Midol in Micronesia, and was built by the Saudeleur and was inhabited until 1630;
the semi-submerged city was built that way on purpose so that people could paddle up to its buildings in canoes;
Graham Hancock, the creator of Ancient Apocalypse, is the father of a Netflix executive.
Still, I want to believe.
It’s Not About the Facts
When James Randi, spectacular debunker of psychics and the paranormal, wrote The Magic of Uri Geller he exposed Geller as a fraud. Until that point, Mr. Geller sold audiences on bending spoons with his mind.
There was an unexpected result from the book. Mr. Geller became even more successful. It simply didn’t matter that he was proven to be using magic tricks instead of mental powers. People wanted to believe. They seemed to need to believe.
That emotional pull is the driver of my need to believe silliness, and for other people to believe it also. We will all become vulnerable in our lives. Then, maybe a story of a long-ago place that harnessed great powers that perhaps we can rediscover will offer a little relief to the reality we are living in.
No problem so far. Just don’t pull out your wallet.
A woman told me once that someone she knew was in Mossad. That was ridiculous, of course. No one is a working operative for a secret service that has old ladies gossiping about it at schul - not for long anyway. But I could sense it was something she needed. I told her, “Most likely he’s with organized crime, but that’s OK. Maybe he is Mossad. Just don’t give him any money or do anything illegal for him, and it will be fine.” She smiled at me, contented.
These elaborate fantasies are just something we need sometimes. It’s OK. You need it now. Later, it will be different. Just don’t give away assets. It’s not required.
We are all silly beings in this ridiculous world. The Tell with Christine Axsmith accepts quirks of mind, while limiting its damage. Also, write a will or King Charles will take your money.
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