I awoke in Marecia, and not for the first time.
The sun filtered through dirty clouds of burgeoning rain to create a midday twilight, as I stepped up to the door of a clinic labeled “Xianjo Wu, Counseling Psychology.” Inside, Dr. Wu shuffled a stack of plain white cards at her desk.
“Have a seat,” she said, smacking the side of the stack against the desktop. Her expert hands fanned and collapsed the cards into her right hand, where her fingers tipped and split the stack for a professional one-handed cut.
“Tell me the first thing that pops into your head when I turn up this card,” she said. Her exotic eyes flashed through me like a burst of X-rays. “We call them inkblots. They are organic forms for your subconscious mind to project onto, so we can examine what it is thinking.”
She turned up the card, but it was not an inkblot.
“I, that’s just—it’s a black and white photo,” I said, “of my mom!”
She blinked at me assertively, picked up a pen, and mumbled as she wrote, “Subject sees mom in inkblot.”
“No! Really,” I said. “Why do you have a photo of my mom? I’ve never even seen that one. What is this?”
The world is my inkblot
Every time we interpret our senses, we assign meaning by projecting expectations, hopes, fears, and more.
Everything we observe is an inkblot.
To see clearly, we need to discern our projections from reality, and yet reality has no meaning without our projections. The dog walking across the street could be a cat in a dog costume, but we don’t see it that way. It doesn’t match our expectations. If we worry that it might have rabies, we are projecting our fear, and we might be right.
This is why we gaze at inkblots, generate our star charts, and meditate in prayer. We want to see our projections on a blank canvas, to tune them up and make them work better for us.
This does not always mean making them more accurate.
When the woo is too good
We expect a good inkblot or star chart or meditation to bring us a modest, subtle hint or two, something not too spooky that we can mold into a new insight.
We don’t expect it to stab us with wild tree energy, awaken a ghost in the machine, uncover our innermost yearnings, read minds, or look exactly like our moms. When those things happen, the woo is too good, and we start asking questions.
And at this moment in Western civilization, the top question is, “How can I pass this off as a silly illusion that doesn’t threaten Scientism?”
Or, “How can I deny my direct observation, in favor of what an authority has told me must be true?” Such Science.
Quantified woo
The theory of gravity is one of our top scientific triumphs.
Gravity is a… force… that permeates the galaxy and binds all things together (but without the midi-chlorians). It operates always and everywhere, at any distance across the universe, flawlessly with no observable source—like magic—and we have no idea what “makes it go.”
Nothing to see here.
Let me try again: it’s a… field… of “lines.” Field lines in space. Not actual lines, you understand. They’re just a mental construct. But they’re real, I tell you! We just imagine the lines running along the paths that objects would move in, if the objects were there. We can physically detect the lines by… putting an object there and seeing where it moves, as if magically following lines that aren’t there. But we can see the lines in our heads in great detail. Hmm.
We have an equation. Does that help?
Gravity moves objects with such regularity that we were able to write an equation that perfectly describes how it operates flawlessly and never fails at any distance. If you want to understand how perfectly it operates, just imagine a magical all-powerful force that runs automatically by itself and conforms to this equation, somehow, as if it knows Calculus. Yeesh.
Perhaps the double-blind controlled study on the health benefits of jogging would be more compelling?
Nah, let’s try electricity instead.
A thousand years ago, the best scientific analysis of electricity might have looked like this:
Sometimes, when we touch things, we feel a brief, painful shock and hear a snapping sound, and sometimes we also see a bright, yellow-ish spark of light at the site of the pain.
It reminds us of lightning. Very small lightning.
We can make it happen on purpose by brushing our feet across wool carpet in the winter, but not always. We want to measure something about this, but no one has any ideas.
The town elders (of Science) say sparks cannot be real, because they are non-physical and unproven.
What’s an enlightened citizen to do, a thousand years before a Verdict of Proven? Dutifully ask the questions:
How can I pass this off as a silly illusion that doesn’t threaten Scientism?
How can I deny my direct observation, in favor of what an authority has told me must be true?
Well obviously, stop talking about the sparks! They are unproven speculation. You will be mocked and shunned, fact-checked on the forums.
Some day, Science will explain them—without your help. Then it will be okay to talk.
Dreamers (not you) will make up theories (stories) out of pure intuition and test them and fail. You are to mock them, roll your eyes, turn up your nose. Their small, strange band will keep trying for centuries, out of Love for Truth, enduring your derision until they succeed.
Then we will all celebrate the sparks and be scientifically sophisticated together.
. . .
Is it inkblot, Is it woo? Is it too good to be true? Is your Science really new, When you quantify The Woo?
I don’t even believe in this stuff
but my chart is too good! It is my own personal inkblot.
Don’t worry, I won’t tell.