The other day my friend and I were talking about conspiracy theories thanks to a blog post he had recently read by a fellow occultist (fyi, this is a garden path sentence. whee!). As he described to me the Kennedy assassination in relation to coups in other countries, I could see his point: we're willing to believe that other countries could have governments that plot to overthrow their leaders, but god forbid we believe America to be capable of the same thing. That's just crazy talk.
Probably the biggest thing in favor of the JFK assassination NOT being a conspiracy is that we haven't definitively exposed it as such yet. Are you seriously expecting me to believe that there's no Edward Snowden out there to expose the crap out of this with hard proof? That no one's been on their deathbed with nothing else to lose? That we were just so much better at keeping things a secret back then? C'mon. There should have been something hard and irrefutable by now to prove it was a government conspiracy. But while I don't currently believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, I leave that door open to the possibility that there was something more to it.
The way my friend was describing things that night though almost tipped me in the direction of belief. I have to give him credit as a storyteller. He weaves his words like he's creating a spell, which I suppose is quite a good skill for an occultist to have, but I digress... He's a persuasive speaker who tends to cut out the dubious parts and get straight to what's salient, palatable, and intelligent. Listening to his interpretation of the blog post was a wholly different experience than reading it. I found myself agreeing with my friend but having serious doubts about the blog, despite how beautifully it was written.
I suppose I was expecting the blog to actually focus on the JFK assassination rather than it just being a blip at the end. Honestly, it was hard for me to get past the first part without wanting to comment on EVERYTHING. And then the middle just lost me as he started to reference people I typically thought of as kooks. At the risk of contradicting myself, I will say the writer brought up a good point that as occultists why is it that we believe the "crazy" things we do but have no problem labeling these people as crazy. I believe I have the answer, and it's quite stupidly simple, but I think it's an answer people need to find by themselves. Because if you're going to immerse yourself in the occult then you need to regularly ask yourself questions like this in order to stay grounded.
...and look at how much I just wrote without even getting to what I wanted to discuss. Ugh. Honestly, I just wanted to take a moment to vent about science-y things. Particularly in relation to the whole human beings are really some alien star race bullshit. If the following makes no sense to you, I apologize. I am literally just going to respond to quotes from a book - quotes from a book on a blog , neither of which you have read.
Yes, we have hair all over our bodies. We are not "hairless apes." Maybe you fair folks have no idea what it's like, but as an Italian let me tell you how much I dread bikini season. I am proud to say I have never shaved my stomach, but those first few days before the sun bleaches me are a special sort of self-conscious hell.
Let me also explain, in an admittedly layperson sort of way, just how genetics and evolution work. Yes, skin cancer is bad... but it takes time to kill you. By the time you die of skin cancer, you've already successfully passed on your genes and your children are probably passing your inferior genes on to the next generation. Especially if you have other traits that are positive to procreation and surviving to sexual maturity. It's easier than you think for shitty genes to get passed on when they're piggybacking on the good ones.
Speaking of piggybacking... sometimes two traits come from the same gene, chromosome, whatever. So while one trait is crucial to the survival of the species, the other trait is kinda shitty, useless, or potentially harmful in the long run. But the crucial trait wins out and gets spread among the species because it's what they need to survive their environment and their competitors/predators. But in order to have that trait, we're stuck with this other, shitty one since they are both created by the same code. You can't have one without the other. Too bad, so sad.
Not getting it yet? Take a look at dog breeding or cat breeding. When you selectively breed the animals for a particular trait, they come with a whole host of other traits thanks to genetic piggybacking. You'll have certain breeds prone to hip dysplasia or deafness, particular fur patterns giving rise to particular eye colors or heterochromia, or a bobtail for no apparent reason. Yes, even animals have vestigial traits (like finger bones in their fins) from another time and different evolution.
So yeah, while it's easy to point out all the shitty traits we have that make us wonder if we were meant to exist on a different planet, it's also pretty easy to explain why we have them. For all our useful traits and detrimental traits, we also have a ton of practically useless traits. We love to talk about how certain animals are perfectly adapted to their environment, but animals have problems too. They get sick, they have useless traits, detrimental traits, and sometimes that leads to extinction but other times their positive traits keep them afloat.
Hell, look at trees! Look how many fucked up diseases trees are prone to. You'd think they weren't meant to exist here and yet they're a pretty integral part of the landscape. Of course, you have to remember that anything bacterial or viral is also just trying to survive on this planet. So rather than asking why a creature is prone to such diseases, it's sometimes more productive to ask why those diseases adapted to being really good at getting into that particular host. Why is that host so crucial and convenient to their survival?
Fuck, I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. Suffice it to say that I don't believe we are star children or aliens or whatever. I think it's time for more coffee.
Probably the biggest thing in favor of the JFK assassination NOT being a conspiracy is that we haven't definitively exposed it as such yet. Are you seriously expecting me to believe that there's no Edward Snowden out there to expose the crap out of this with hard proof? That no one's been on their deathbed with nothing else to lose? That we were just so much better at keeping things a secret back then? C'mon. There should have been something hard and irrefutable by now to prove it was a government conspiracy. But while I don't currently believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, I leave that door open to the possibility that there was something more to it.
The way my friend was describing things that night though almost tipped me in the direction of belief. I have to give him credit as a storyteller. He weaves his words like he's creating a spell, which I suppose is quite a good skill for an occultist to have, but I digress... He's a persuasive speaker who tends to cut out the dubious parts and get straight to what's salient, palatable, and intelligent. Listening to his interpretation of the blog post was a wholly different experience than reading it. I found myself agreeing with my friend but having serious doubts about the blog, despite how beautifully it was written.
I suppose I was expecting the blog to actually focus on the JFK assassination rather than it just being a blip at the end. Honestly, it was hard for me to get past the first part without wanting to comment on EVERYTHING. And then the middle just lost me as he started to reference people I typically thought of as kooks. At the risk of contradicting myself, I will say the writer brought up a good point that as occultists why is it that we believe the "crazy" things we do but have no problem labeling these people as crazy. I believe I have the answer, and it's quite stupidly simple, but I think it's an answer people need to find by themselves. Because if you're going to immerse yourself in the occult then you need to regularly ask yourself questions like this in order to stay grounded.
...and look at how much I just wrote without even getting to what I wanted to discuss. Ugh. Honestly, I just wanted to take a moment to vent about science-y things. Particularly in relation to the whole human beings are really some alien star race bullshit. If the following makes no sense to you, I apologize. I am literally just going to respond to quotes from a book - quotes from a book on a blog , neither of which you have read.
Yes, we have hair all over our bodies. We are not "hairless apes." Maybe you fair folks have no idea what it's like, but as an Italian let me tell you how much I dread bikini season. I am proud to say I have never shaved my stomach, but those first few days before the sun bleaches me are a special sort of self-conscious hell.
Let me also explain, in an admittedly layperson sort of way, just how genetics and evolution work. Yes, skin cancer is bad... but it takes time to kill you. By the time you die of skin cancer, you've already successfully passed on your genes and your children are probably passing your inferior genes on to the next generation. Especially if you have other traits that are positive to procreation and surviving to sexual maturity. It's easier than you think for shitty genes to get passed on when they're piggybacking on the good ones.
Speaking of piggybacking... sometimes two traits come from the same gene, chromosome, whatever. So while one trait is crucial to the survival of the species, the other trait is kinda shitty, useless, or potentially harmful in the long run. But the crucial trait wins out and gets spread among the species because it's what they need to survive their environment and their competitors/predators. But in order to have that trait, we're stuck with this other, shitty one since they are both created by the same code. You can't have one without the other. Too bad, so sad.
Not getting it yet? Take a look at dog breeding or cat breeding. When you selectively breed the animals for a particular trait, they come with a whole host of other traits thanks to genetic piggybacking. You'll have certain breeds prone to hip dysplasia or deafness, particular fur patterns giving rise to particular eye colors or heterochromia, or a bobtail for no apparent reason. Yes, even animals have vestigial traits (like finger bones in their fins) from another time and different evolution.
So yeah, while it's easy to point out all the shitty traits we have that make us wonder if we were meant to exist on a different planet, it's also pretty easy to explain why we have them. For all our useful traits and detrimental traits, we also have a ton of practically useless traits. We love to talk about how certain animals are perfectly adapted to their environment, but animals have problems too. They get sick, they have useless traits, detrimental traits, and sometimes that leads to extinction but other times their positive traits keep them afloat.
Hell, look at trees! Look how many fucked up diseases trees are prone to. You'd think they weren't meant to exist here and yet they're a pretty integral part of the landscape. Of course, you have to remember that anything bacterial or viral is also just trying to survive on this planet. So rather than asking why a creature is prone to such diseases, it's sometimes more productive to ask why those diseases adapted to being really good at getting into that particular host. Why is that host so crucial and convenient to their survival?
Fuck, I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. Suffice it to say that I don't believe we are star children or aliens or whatever. I think it's time for more coffee.
