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Rooms and CSICOP Imagine our presently known universe as a room, a very large room. We have traditionally defined and described this room in terms of sensory knowledge. That is, the ""universe" is what we perceive through our senses, what we see, touch, hear, taste, and smell. As thinking animals, we cleverly then use those perceptions in various ways. Lately, we’ve become even cleverer and have learned to extend the range of our senses. Now we can "see" and manipulate large parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which our eyes cannot perceive. All well and good. The results of these activities are both useful (Bic pens, anti-biotics, Camrys) and entertaining (CDs, movies, the Internet). This "room" is a big one, and no doubt other discoveries and new combinations of expanded perception await our ever- cleverer offspring. Which means we can most likely count on a more comfortable, less painful, and more entertaining future. Also all well and good. A small problem, though: in our comfortable, entertained state, we can easily be lulled into believing that the "room" is, well, all. That our self-defined, self-limited space is it. That there ain’t nothing else. Why in the world should this be the case? Given the plethora of phenomena, which even to our limited senses and logical cleverness appear to be infinite, should we not also believe that unimagined (and possibly unimaginable) vastnesses of experience lie outside our room? Yet, as we become more and more "successful" in dealing with just what’s in our room, we as a society become more and more irritable when anyone suggests that there may be more, a whole lot more, outside the room. It’s as if we’ve welded steel shutters in place over the windows of this room and put some pretty stout police locks on the doors. We forget the rather impressive personages who've persisted in looking out the windows (before the shutters were welded in place) and even strolling through the doors. Newton, remember, spent a good part of his life, doing alchemy. The farther along he got, the more Einstein talked of mystery. Nowadays, if there are any cracks in the walls through which the occasional "weird" person peeks, that person is quickly branded as a non-player. Historically, or course, religion has happily played the role of sensory cop. Lately, our current religion, Science, has joined the corps of elite mind patrol cadets. CSICOP is an organization dedicated to such branding. Its name—the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal—reveals its commitment to the received "room". Namely, the room is closed, and there’s only one way of knowledge, i.e., the "scientific" way, for examining the room. And of course the acronym--CSICOP—is also revealing. CSICOP = PSYCOP. Psychic cop. We’re talking culture cops here. The intellectual police have arrived. Is it important to guard against fraud? Of course. Is it important to repeatedly remind ourselves of the dangers of human gullibility? Of course. Like Houdini with his crusade against fraudulent mediums, CSICOP does good work in exposing exploitative psychic deceit. But—and this is a big "but"—the problem with CSICOP, as with so many human endeavors, is its failure to see and examine with equal rigor its own assumptions. CSICOP admits that strange stuff may well exist outside the room. But CSICOP is willing to use only its own method, its own way of knowledge ("scientific investigation") to examine the strange stuff. But the room itself is defined and limited by science which means, automatically and absolutely, that anything outside the room will fail the test of science. It's okay to ask questions, but the only questions allowed are the ones whose answers are pre-framed in terms of the questions. What to do? First, you recognize and acknowledge the usefulness of groups like CSICOP. Then, you also keep in mind that their usefulness is limited. Finally, you set about exploring outside the room, with an open mind, as pure a heart as you can manage, and—always, always—a sense of humor. Do that for a while (a lifetime?) and other rooms with other doors and other windows may well open to you. Back to The Idea Man |
