Can one be psychic?

I have been pondering on the idea of being psychic lately.

Is it possible to know the future? Can one predict the future?

I honestly didn't think so for the longest time, and I generally still do not.

See, my mom raised me around the age of 10 that psychic ability is real. She encouraged me to read tea leaves, cards and look into crystal balls. One time I thought I saw the world ending in the crystal ball and I cried for like 20 minutes and refused to look into it. I still don't know if I was pretending or if it was real to this day.

I predicted I would have three children and marry a man named Mark. I want no kids and I am marrying a man named Nick... so....

I don't know. It's all weird. I don't think you can predict the future. I think you can estimate the future based on a person's personality and past actions. But even that estimate is not fact.

Why am I thinking about psychicness? My one philosophy prof is somewhat convinced it might be true and talks about it sometimes. Also, I had a psychic prediction that I would meet someone with a super abstract last name a few years ago, and it is coming true. I am scared of other predictions I had of this person, back when I used to think psychicness was real.

I am such a skeptic that it is impossible for me to determine whether or not it is. Right off the bat I want to say "no" it is not real. But certain experiences I have had make me want to say it is.

I don't want to be biased. I don't know. I am starting to think there might be some small truths, but I will not start rely on psychic predictions at all. I don't even have them anymore. My whole family on my mom's side claims to have them and they almost treat me like a relic because I wrote psychicness off for the longest time. I essentially still do, I am just using my skepticism to re-analyze my assumptions.

It's weird, I haven't had any philosophical thoughts like this in a while. School has taken me away from skepticism. I just assume truths now. It's terrible. I need more ambiguity in my thoughts to be able to think about.

That's why I love running. I am able to just think. I realize what has become important to me when I run. Whatever I think about is the top thing that concerns me.

Thanks for following along my confusing considerations. I should totally re-name my blog "Confusing Considerations" hahaha. That's pretty awesome. But I won't.

I'll try to blog soon,

Sarah

I don't know anything

"I know that I know nothing" - Socrates

In my english and philosophy lectures the concept of knowing nothing and accepting your ignorance. I was perfectly okay with this concept and let it sort of sit in my brain for a while until it hit me.

We actually really know nothing. Well, at least I do not know anything. Mark Edmunson's essay Why Read? which we read in english, essentially stated that one must abandon their past to fully examine a text. We must admit we know nothing, that we are ignorant. It also has a concept of "knowingness" which is essentially what is expressed by academics, they seem to know everything but they really know nothing. This concept is also explored in Plato's "The Apology".

After this sat in my brain for a while I finally absorbed it fully. I absorbed the concept that nobody really knows anything over a year ago. We can't be certain, we can only be almost certain, or likely. But what hit me was that I admire academics way too much.

I see people, maybe not necessarily famous academic geniuses, but teachers, professors and authors as these super geniuses. They get paid to tell me things and they earn money off of the text I am reading, so they must be right, right? Wrong. I was aware of this concept previously too, I just never made the entire connection until this week. Thanks brain.

But academics can't be trusted. Well, they CAN be. But they shouldn't be.

Also, you are not an academic who knows everything if you just know one thing. People frequently feel they are educated in all things when they are experts in one thing. I am really pushing "The Apology" on you, now. I love Socrates. So many people get annoyed with him. I just love dialectics.

Anyways. Don't trust academics. Listen to them without bias and then question the shit out of everything they say. That is my advice.

Don't even listen to me. I realized with my blog I try to be one of these "knowing people" when really, I also know nothing. I just hope that I am somewhat interesting enough to spark people's interests in some academic topic or even a tidbit of my life that can conjure a discussion or just a thought in your mind that keeps you going.

Also, I am still gathering traffic to my blog. So thank-you, traffic that somehow found me when I am never posting. I want to post at least weekly. I just find since I have started university it is so much harder to sit down and actually write out a full blog post. I will try my best. I promise. I also don't make promises, but I'll make an exception for my lovely corrupted readers. I mean, my lovely skeptics! XOXO;)

No, I did not just sign my blog with "XOXO;)". I take that back! Oh well.

Truth and Lying

The past few days I have been pondering on the subject of truth.

I was thinking about how important truth is to our society and how easy it is to become susceptible to lies. It's the easiest thing to hear a fake fact like "39% of people have yellow kitchens" and take it as truth just because it sounds real. This is called truthiness or wikiality. I recommend you do some reading on the word "wikilaity" which was coined by Stephen Colbert.

As I said, I was thinking about the importance of truth and since it's so easy to believe lies online that we are a society that is very-much-so based on lies as well as fact. I realized this a while ago and when I did I basically stopped myself in my tracks right there. I was mesmerized by this idea but I carried on with my life. When I realized this once again I thought "I should stop lying" but doing this is so hard. It is natural to lie.

We lie to ourselves all of the time. "Yes these pants fit" "Yes I can afford them" "Yes I can wear them to work" "Yes I can put them in the laundry" when really the answer is no. It's just stretching the truth.

I was thinking how these little lies aren't that bad. We can lie a little lie once in a while. I remember as a kid thinking how every small lie would always snowball into one big lie. This hasn't happened to me too often. The only time things snowball is when I lie about where I am because for some reason I have a hard time doing this.

I think lying is so common that we do it subconsciously. I am an atheist and I know god doesn't exist, so when I look at a (thinking) theist I think they are probably subconsciously lying to themselves. Maybe not, that is just my opinion. I just think perhaps theists will hear the facts but they just don't care and so they brush them off with lies.

Is it that bad to lie? I think sometimes it is, like when theists lie to themselves. This changes society as a whole. Perhaps 15% of the world population is non-religious/atheist/agnostic and approximately 29% of Canada's population is non-religious/atheist/agnostic but if people keep lying to themselves that number isn't going to increase as quickly as it should. Although in the past 10 years it has basically doubled.

See that? Those statistics up there. They could be lies because they seem easy to believe. I take them as fact, as truth. But the truth is I read them somewhere, a couple of sources but I don't know for a 100% fact whether or not they are fact. They could be made-up.

Plus surveys aren't reliable anyways because people can easily lie on them. People answer surveys based on the way the question is asked. If they are answering a survey based on ice cream consumption by a fitness guru at the gym they are probably going to lie saying they eat less ice cream rather than asking customers at an ice cream store, even if the same people were surveyed at both places.

So how can we tell truth and lies apart? We can't. This is why I am a skeptic. I try to accept as few things as possible as fact. I think we all have a good idea over what is real and what isn't but as a skeptic, I know that you can never really know.

We don't know. Another one of life's mysteries.

Everything you read out of a textbook can't be taken as fact. You may learn it in school but teachers and textbooks make mistakes, surveys are flawed and science experiments can go wrong.

"Man went to the moon" you say, but do you even know there is a moon? How do we not know that the government isn't projecting it into the sky. You haven't been into space to tell the difference, have you?

This is getting way too in depth for what I really wanted to talk about. Let me backtrack.

I want to say I think that little lies to ourselves like "This one chocolate bar won't hurt" are okay but they aren't. Lying to ourselves and lying to others doesn't lead to truth. Even if you think a small lie won't hurt anything, like being just one person lying about your religious stance or lying about your bra size while taking a survey, it does affect everything. You are a member of society, and even though you only represent one person, do you think you are the only one lying? No. Maybe. But it is unlikely.

Unlikely. This actually leads me to a new point (sorry for straying again) but certainty and impossibility don't exist. I used to just say that nothing is impossible. Anything can happen, you won't know until you see it. For example, you must be american born to be president but perhaps I will be the president if that law lifts (because I am Canadian). It is highly-unlikely but not impossible. I recently realized certainty also doesn't exist. You don't know that you aren't being controlled by little wires. You can't even know for sure that you exist.

Even though I just said even small lies are bad, will I always tell the truth? It is unlikely.

Anyways. Sorry for making your brain hurt.

See that? I just apologized for something I am not sorry for. I already lied.

Do you think it is okay to lie? When?

What does truth mean to you?

The struggle between reality and creativity

Lately I've been thinking about how my beliefs and thoughts are quite rational, logical and real. Quite often my beliefs correlate with either/or:

A) Doubt/Having no Clarity

B) Reality

I consider myself to be a creative person. I like writing, coming up with ideas, I love comedy and art. I would never consider myself to be realistic. Recently I noticed that I actually am realistic.

I'd say this time last yearish I wasn't realistic. By the end of August last year, I decided I didn't want a job, I didn't want to ever have to work or do anything. I soon justified that with wanting to go into politics or being a teacher, because those are actual jobs I'd want, but I just didn't want to do the pointless work towards them (school, elections, studying, etc).

I understand that to get to where you want to, you have to follow society. I can't be a complete non-conformist, nevertheless, I still think I am.

I have figured out that although life itself has no meaning, that society has given life meaning, in very VERY stupid ways. But yet, I adhere to some of these stupid ways because I like them. I keep being a non-conformist and a nihilist by only adhering to the things I like... which I like because I like them, not because society told me to like them.

Back to my point. I am an atheist because I like reality. I don't believe in myths, I like history, myths in history are interesting, I just think all of the theism in these myths are bologna. I consider most religious texts to be stories, fictional, possibly myths, containing bits of truth written from that point in time. Yet, I do not know there is a god, and so I believe that.

I guess it is not necessarily a struggle between reality and creativity. It's just that since creativity is generally associated with being more flexible and go with the flowy, while I am not that. I am realistic about many things.

I think they are sort of two different things. Creativity is fine as long as it is art or ideas. As soon as you put creativity into things like math and history, you run into trouble. You need reality to balance out the creativity. Reality and creativity need to collaborate. Sure, draw a picture of a dog with a horse head, but don't write a non-fiction book about it. Go ahead, write a history book, but don't get creative, history is done, history is known. That is called historical fiction.

I don't know. I just think being realistic can be also very depressing, which is why people like to be creative. I want to run for city counsellor at a young age, and it is highly unlikely that I will get the position. Many people will say "Don't think that way, because then you won't achieve anything!". I am being realistic. There is a chance, certainly there is. Anything is possible. Literally anything can happen. It is just unlikely. I don't think anything is impossible or certain. That's why I am a skeptic.

Skepticism is also associated with being more depressive and negative. But you know what? That is the reality. Question things. You must question things or else change doesn't happen. Some strong societal influences need to stop being positive and ignorant and need to get skeptical and question all good things and look for the good in bad things. That's the only time when being positive is okay. Looking for the upside in every bad thing, and the bad in the right.

This is why I am an (agnostic) atheist. I question everything. Well, not everything, just within realistic proportions. But I questioned the existence of god, rather than adhering to society's generalized belief there is a god, and I arrived at the answer that god probably doesn't exist, although since I am skeptic, I believe anything is possible, so I have to stick that little agnostic before atheist, even though I really want to be a complete atheist, I couldn't be a skeptic and an atheist, that just doesn't make sense.


Nice run-on sentence up there, eh?

I just realized how all of my beliefs sort of connect.
I am an agnostic atheist because I am a skeptic and I am a nihilist because I am a skeptic and non-conformist and I am a non-conformist because I am a skeptic and nihilist. Sort of. There are lots of reasons, it's just my beliefs instead of being scattered and unjustified are sorting themselves out without me even realizing it until now.

Weird.

I guess my point, since I have digressed so much in this single blog post, is reality and creativity should work together and support each other. Reality is important and creativity is important, and although they should "work together" they shouldn't be combined in the wrong context because that brings us to lies and things like the idea of god, which for this reason, society believes exists even though it doesn't.