The Greatest Danger

This was the first really long article I ever wrote, originally for Shifted Perspectives, and I was honored to have it on TKforums. I'm quite proud of it, even though the style gets repetitive and declamatory at some parts, the footnotes don't really cite facts and many facts are uncited by footnotes. I should probably define some jargon before just posting it here...


psi n.
1. The twenty-third letter of Classical and Modern Greek and the twenty-fourth letter of Ancient Greek.
2. In parapsychology, a blanket term for psychic phenomena such as extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis.

psion n. A practitioner of psionics.

psionics n. The study and application of extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. A portmanteau of "psi" and "electronics", looking forward to the day when everyone's innate psychic abilities will be awakened, and be utilized as reliably as electronics today.

Otherkin n. Refers to a subculture in which the members, who are physically and socially human, believe that their nature conforms to something other or more than human. This group may or may not include the following: animal totemism revivalists, extraterrestrials, vampires, dragons, fey, perhaps even indigo and other New Age children. The Otherkin subculture branched into the "Otakukin", whose members believe themselves to be incarnations of fictional characters.



I. Introduction
II. Basic Fluff
III. Skeptics
IV. Traditionalists
V. Armchair
VI. Roleplayers
VII. Conclusion




Title: The Greatest Danger
Summary: Something every psion should know about the world of psionics. Includes how to handle these most damaging, wide-scale, and insidious of mental assaults.

Psi is dangerous. Psions meddle in a world far beyond our ken. We expand our minds, at the risk of going insane at this one truth: everything is possible. We can harness the greatest untapped powers: to stop time, walk through walls, fly, heal the gravest damages to the body and spirit with only our mind, or throw out blasts of pure energy at our enemies! And we will have enemies, for the practice of Psionics leads us to another world, inhabited by a different people, its own history and politics -- yet, inseparable from our own. To have felt a calling to this power, means that you are a Psion. You are more than human. And you are in great danger.

I will tell you now the most important thing every psion should know: if you believed me in the paragraph above, just believed me, without a thought or question... then, you are a Fluffbunny.

A Fluffbunny is not a real bunny. A Fluffbunny is airheaded person that boasts “Fluff,” or insubstantial content. Being insubstantial, Fluff contributes nothing. A Fluffbunny cannot advance in psionics. If you believed me right away, without bothering to check the facts, or even taking a moment to ponder logically, then you are a Fluffbunny.

In the context of the psionic community, I consider this is a worse insult than any swear words could express. Fluff will cheat you of time, effort, and even money. Fluff undermines trust, damages reputations, and harms the very spirit of exploration and innovation. Fluff is the greatest danger to psionics, and the greatest danger to you from psionics.

If you are a fluffbunny, then please read on to be “de-fluffified.”

The Basic Fluffbunny
As we’ve covered, a fluffbunny is the kind of person who can’t or won’t discern what is reliable information. This could merely be excitement, clouding the reality that a system or community has its weak spots and flaws-- as all systems and communities do. It could be a result of social conditioning, reinforcing a respect for others’ beliefs and opinions. It’s not a bad thing to be open-minded, excited about a topic, and considerate of other people’s feelings. However, gullibility will harm you. Think of the choices you make every day, that depend on what you believe to be true. Has a professional clairvoyant ever pronounced you cursed, and told you, “Only I can lift it… for $180”? Have you quit your job in anticipation of the coming apocalypse? What about feeling unnecessarily persecuted by the thought that you may appear human, but are really part of an astral race that is not protected by the Constitution?

Simply holding certain beliefs may be harmless, and nobody else's business. Act on fluff, however, without setting a standard of what is worth your trust... and you could ruin your life and the lives of those around you. [1]

Fluffy Skeptics
But it's easier to strike fluff at the source, right? So, the solution is simple. Just don't believe anything. That’s setting a standard, and a really high one. Yell "Fake!" every time anybody says anything, determine that psionics is hogwash and proceed to sign up for some paranormal forums for the sole purpose of telling all the other members how stupid they are. Complain loudly at how nobody respects logic and science enough to understand and agree you. You are a critical thinker now. That makes you automatically smarter than these idiots who believe everything. If they try to show proof, say you debunk, refute, and reject it until there's only your own mind that you are sure of. Maybe not even that...

Whoa. Ease up, Descartes! Sadly, it is not going to be that easy. You could end up in the same situation as the fluffbunny who believes everything. How can you find value or direction in life through eyes that see absolutely no truth anywhere? How can you relate to people? How do you suppose people will relate to you, if you take on this attitude that everyone, except you and people who think like you, are sheeple?

Logic dictates that the burden of proof is not on the skeptic. That does not mean you are protected from criticism by being a big enough jerk. That means that the burden of evidence is not on the person asking for evidence to consider and evaluate. A true skeptic is questioning. They take a position of doubt and neutrality, and do not make claims. [2]

However, fluffy skeptics are not neutral. They are not questioning, or seeking to evaluate. They are making a claim-- that something is fraudulent-- without any cause to support that assertion. That is a fluffy skeptic.

A Segue

Between the "I want to believe" fluffbunny and the "deny everything" fluffbunny, there are those who only believe what already appeals to their own biases and rejects anything else. To accept paranormal phenomena, but reject Otherkin on the basis that it’s delusional… isn’t that hypocritical? Wouldn’t psions be betraying the spiritualists and occultists who share their experiences and ideals?

Not necessarily. The reasons you can offer to defend one and/or doubt another, is what make the difference between fluff and real psionics. Without these reasons, the line between what someone considers fluff and non-fluff just becomes arbitrary.

ar·bi·trar·y adj.

1. based solely on personal wishes, feelings, or perceptions, rather than on objective facts, reasons, or principles
2. chosen or determined at random
3. used to describe a constant that is not assigned a specific value

[3]

Traditionalists

Where can you get these reasons, and how do you know that they are good reasons? First, I'll contradict myself and give you something arbitrary: Let’s take for granted that the world most of us share an experience in, is real. You'd have good cause to believe that this computer (or whatever you’re reading this off of,) won’t disappear if you stop believing in it; that it will probably hurt if you tripped and fell on the street, and that you are part of a dynamic based on relations with other real people— a family, circle of friends, city or nation.

If we consider that last part, it follows that our perspective is limited. One person sees, for example, a computer screen from the front, as another person sees the same screen at the same moment from an angle— because they’re standing beside person one. Maybe a third person sees the computer monitor from the back, dismantles it, and reconnects a wire so that the screen actually lights up.

What am I getting at?

Expertise.

A lot of what we learned in school, and owe our convenience to, today, is the product of other people’s perspective and actions. These people could be long dead. They could be people, living or dead, who searched or are searching for artifacts and documents having to do with these dead people. They could be people who write about artifacts and documents about dead people, or even living people who learn as much as they can about what these dead people figured out that was so important before going on to figure out important things themselves.

Either way, we trust the expertise and experience of others to expand our perception. Note the word expand… not dictate. As described, the passage of information through time depends much on people, and people make mistakes.

This brings us to the traditionalist fluffbunny. While the basic fluffbunny may believe anything, a traditionalist fluffbunny specifically looks to the psions who made the foundations, and follows them to the letter. They will not stand for anything that tests the ideas of their heroes. Certainly not these crucial questions:

1. Does this proposal make common logical sense in its own terms?
2. Could the person proposing this idea have an ulterior motive, other than presenting the truth?
3. Where did they get their data? Personal experience, or more formal research like books or websites, or even super-formal research where they conducted an experiment firsthand?

3a. If it was a personal account… how much could they be roleplaying? (See the “roleplaying fluffbunny” section below.)
3b. If the information came from books, websites, articles or videos, do they cite these sources so you can see for yourself if they are credible?
3c. If it was a formal experiment, then what was the sample space-- that is, how many times did the exact conditions cause this exact result? What were the conditions, and how well were these conditions controlled? Did they define the terms, as well as the units of measurement? Were they able to explain the anomalies?

4. Could their findings have been distorted or misrepresented by themselves, or by middlemen?
5. What is the feedback from other sources that have also passed this evaluation? Do they corroborate with this source, or do some point out some valid flaws (such as the conclusion needing an update according to new findings, or the premise being faulty?)

No. The voice of authority is infallible and timeless, period. Besides, it’s just easier to do what a ready-made system tells you: stock up on those quartz crystals, work on those handforms and body poses, improve your visualizing skills.

If it doesn’t seem to be working, it’s because you are in some degree being impudent towards the most popular New Age writers, revered Ki Masters, Ceremonial tomes from the Victorian era, and other practices that lay the foundations of psionics and should be taken whole and followed to the letter—or else, no wonder it never works. Or, so the traditionalists may think.

You can guess that this doesn’t actually help psionics to progress. While authorities should be respected in their managerial sphere, we should not be afraid to advance psionic facts— even if that means breaking down the old ideas. Even if that means abandoning practices that have lasted so long precisely because nobody has ever tried abandoning it. (That can be considered an elegant system, with all the contributing parts fitting together perfectly— or it can be considered circular and stupid.)

We all owe the ones who came before us, and ones living today, for the information that expands our world. However, if we do not evaluate the source of information in the way described above… or even discern what parts have standing and which ones should be discarded… but set-in-stone and vigilantly guard the whole, psionics will become little more than a cult.

Armchair Psions

Suppose you find a decent number of sources, all of which passed the above evaluation to your satisfaction. Suppose they agree with each other, on, say, that psi is energy, energy is force, force moves matter, and that’s how they were able to shift a breeze. They describe their psychokinesis techniques to make what feels like a ball of physical air spinning in the palm of their hand. Concentrate, visualize the shape, then visualize the direction, they say.

It’s basic logic, then, to say that if you can increase your concentration then the force will be more powerful. If you can visualize a ball to make a ball of wind, a disk of wind under your feet can’t be far off. You might trip, but just make another disk of wind to catch you and that won’t be a problem. That’s the way to maintain levitation. You could even fly!

Let’s say you rush to post an article detailing this new method of yours. Being a logical follow-up from reliable sources, this can not possibly be fluff.

Erm, actually, yes it can be. You are at the risk of becoming an armchair fluffbunny. Those who are “on the armchair” of anything, involve themselves in theories. Why things work, and how things could work. This is not itself a bad thing, in fact it’s necessary. Experiments and observations are meaningless without theoretical interpretation. We must allow ourselves to imagine in order for us to innovate.

However, theories are just as meaningless without results. So what if something “should work in theory”? We don’t live in Theory. So what if “anything is possible!”? Psions want to practice something extant.

To make an article of this armchair technique— not a suggestion, not a hypothesis, not an experiment you are conducting yourself to see if it will work— is the most notorious kind of armchair fluff. By posting that extrapolation, whether you meant to or not, you represent as tried and true what you have not tried and found true. That tutorial, therefore, is deceptive and insubstantial fluff.

In trusting others to expand your perception, there is an equally valid perspective that you must not neglect: your own. There is a difference between properly citing a source of information, and a rehash. There’s a difference between concurring and parroting an opinion. There is a difference between “seeing far by standing on the shoulders of giants”, and riding into psionics on the coattails of practicing psions.

To keep off the fine line between these, a single imperative to guide you: be true to yourself. We need you to be, for psionics to advance. We need new eyes on this to find better methods to practice.

Role Players

These are probably the most violently loathed kind of fluffbunny. Maybe that’s unfairly so, since we are all playing at some role. We’d behave in one way at a rock concert, but a different way at a fancy party, visiting a hospital, at a political rally, or in the privacy of our room. We act differently around a girlfriend or boyfriend than we do with parents, and differently with our close friends than with strangers. Depending on your culture, you might have been taught to treat those of a certain gender or relative age in a specific way.

It’s a matter of social survival to take on another layer of identity, to cue us for what signals to look out for and how to react. This identity-layer could be “professional” or “casual”, it could be the profession itself or a subculture; it could be an ideal like “kind person,” “rebel,” or “intellectual”; or, in the context of online communities, it could be “troller,” “flamer,” or one of millions of kinds of contributing “member.” This layer of identity could be easily sloughed when you’re done with it, or it could lie much deeper.

Let’s take this role: “psion”. How deep does that identity go? Let it in deep enough, and the world can seem to crackle with psionic activity. Every time someone agrees with you must be your subconscious telepathic suggestion at work, and every causeless movement of an object can be owed to your accidental psychokinesis skills—not that you looked very hard for the cause of movement. Evil entities haunt every plane, psionic attackers wait to pounce out from every corner, and television shows that use psionic concepts as a storytelling device become documentaries.

Closer to the surface, you have taken on this identity layer: roleplaying fluffbunny. A roleplaying fluffbunny takes vague impressions to fantastic conclusions, instead of evaluating their experience and only deciding it to be psionic because pursuing any other explanation was becoming futile. They don’t take storytelling device psionics, as a good metaphor or great inspiration— they take this fiction as tradition.

To avoid this kind of fluff, it would help to clear up as much as you can with yourself, what you witnessed versus how you interpret that experience. When reading other people’s anecdotes, take note of where their observations and interpretations meld, and beware of what details may have been left out or exaggerated.

Being this honest may sound boring, socially suicidal, even impossible when there is always some truth lost in perception and expression, but there is not excuse for doing less than our best. The root of all of these fluff types, after all, is dishonesty.

In Conclusion

Consider the first paragraph in this article once more. Not all of these statements are automatically false, just because I set them up for ridicule. Don't just take my word or anyone’s word for, or against, anything. Think for yourself, that’s the bottom line to all this.

Welcome to the world of psionics. Shave off the Fluff, and we'll be overjoyed to have you.




^ 1 Farley, Tim. What's The Harm? 10 June 2009 < http://whatstheharm.net/ >
^ 2 Truzzi, Marcello. "On Pseudo-Skepticism." Zetetic Scholar (1987): 3-4.
^ 3 Encarta World English Dictionary. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.