NitN 13 - Nine of Swords (Radicalization, Collapse, Anarcho-Reincarnation)

You literally can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but if you and a friend or partner both tug on each others', you can get radicalized into the occult, anarchism, and a metaphysical perspective that silences your fear of death. Here's instructions!

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Intro: "Prompted by a Haunting"

I snapped awake to my daughter’s horrified, drawn out scream of “DADDYYYYY!”

It was still dark out, but the glowing hallway night light illuminated her standing in her bedroom doorway, the door open just about the width of her tear streaked face.

Her voice a sobbing tremble, she told me there was someone in the house. That she saw and heard her door open from her bed.

I paced back and forth in front of her room for a few steps, trying to dig our emergency plan out from under an avalanche of panic.

After a moment that dilated into an astronomical epoch, I remembered the first step: get the whole family in one room.

Cross-legged on our bed, my wife and I listened to our daughter, who was wide-eyed and visibly shaking, elucidate for us what woke her. She was atypically articulate as she enunciated each word with unusual precision, a reflex that kids seem to have for situations that demand seriousness.

I put on a thick jacket and jeans as a sort of armor and the dog and I investigated the house.

There was nothing there. 

Now, as I talk about in this episode, I’d characterize my ideological beliefs as polygnostic: I tend to buy into more than one explanation for events simultaneously and only value one story over another because of it’s pragmatic value. 

So for this apparent haunting, what did the pantheon inside me have to say?

Mania told me the particularly potent LBRP I had practiced the previous day—the first one accompanied by a visual hallucination I ascribed to etheric energy. It told me I summoned something incorporeal to spur action.

Paranoia painted the danger as a home invader working for the shadowy powerful who ”suicide” true rebels.

Materialism pointed out that our backyard gate and front door were locked and that it would be strange, if not impossible, for a burglar to lock up on the way out. My daughter was probably just having a hypnagogic hallucination.

I believed all of them because it doesn’t serve me to agonize over objective truth. 

But which one would help me effectively navigate the world?

II. 

Douglass Rushkoff once described the famous discordian, Robert Anton Wilson, as “believing in nothing.” In essence all he did was call RAW “agnostic” but the latter took a friendly sort of unbridge with that, proclaiming instead that he believes everything simultaneously.

I share RAW’s philosophy: this polygnosticism is best defended by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I believe everything at once, then choose to hold in mind the explanation that serves me most effectively.

Sometimes it gets me closest to my objectives or values to act on Paranoia’s story. Maybe I need to slow myself down to not burn out and the paranoid narrative woven from moments of anxiety is a sign I should shrink the sphere of my concern to my family, to myself, or—after a dire overreach—to how comfortable a sleeping position I’m in while stuck, strung-out, in bed.

Other times, it’s worth paying heed to Materialism’s placating, measured explanations—if I get too wrapped up in grandiosity or terror, I tend to neglect the basic maintenance that comes with adult life like car care, bills and work.

When my daughter woke me up by screaming hysterically there was a burglar in the house and I found no evidence of an intruder, I leaned into Mania. I spent the extra hours of wakefulness writing, submitting work and, with a nod to Materialism, buying a home security system. 

Like a troublesome puppy, sometimes I need a higher power to snap a leash to get me to behave. 

I want to, but frequently stumble into consumerist autopilot, ferried mindlessly from cause to effect because it’s easier.

I want to, but find myself paralyzed and doomscrolling as if some amount of horrible information will be enough to finance careful decisions that will keep me safe.

I want to, but sometimes the grandeur of believing you’re meant to save the world can get in the way of crawling toward a goal. It can be hard to appreciate the little victories won with hard work.

I want to. I really do. But sometimes my true will needs a nudge from a haunting.