Three things that once happened

Part 1
Once upon a time, in the misty and distant past, I was a college student. One year while living in the dorms someone or other hired a hypnotist to come do a show in one of the dorm meeting rooms. I don't remember many details of the show, but certain elements stand out in my memory clear as glass. Somehow or another, I got selected along with 5-10 other people to go up on stage. I don't remember exactly what this fellow's system was; I think he mostly just told us to close our eyes and relax. In those days it took very little prompting for me to do just that.

There exist, no doubt, in this wide world different 'flavors' of the hypnotism experience, but in mine I remained lucid the entire time. It was something like a game of 'simon says'. He would say - "you are going up in an elevator" - and I/we would imagine going up in an elevator. He would say "you are flying in an airplane", and we would lean over to look out the window, seeing only the floor. It was a game of make-believe. Yet! Yet, it was more than just a game of charades. Some part of my mind or body DID respond to these experiences as though they were real. He said "it's getting very cold in here" and I shivered. Shivering is not something you can really do intentionally. (is it?) He said "it's getting very hot in here", and (I think) I started to sweat.

But the hypnotist's cord is wrapped very lightly around the subject. I was frequently though not constantly aware that I was sitting in front of a large audience who were laughing. I knew I was playing along (and felt a little guilty, thinking I was faking it). I had to make a choice to stick with the 'game'. I percieved that hypnosis is an illusion you need to put some effort into believing. At the very least, you need to stave off doubt. Once you grasp the absurdity of what you are doing, you can't just hop right in without a little bit of coaching.

Anyway, back in the last century, that's what it was like to be hypnotized


Part PI/2
An interlude (and apologies for telling you something you probably already know) the way your eyes are physically constructed, the center of your vision is pretty poor at picking out minor differences in luminosity. If you go out at night, you'll often see stars in your peripheral vision that fade from sight when you try to look at them directly. Really it is just the way your eyes are built, but I can't help but think of those stars as malicious little bastards. No doubt they are up to no good, just out of sight.


Part 2
When I was a child I believed in God because the alternative was too horrifying. By the time I had advanced to some indeterminate age between youth and my (yet-to-arrive) adulthood I had worked out a fairly decent defense for my faith. It involved rules of evidence, otherwise-inexplicable historical facts and a touch of the transcendant. That system of thought formed itself in an organic, piece by piece manner. I'd have a crisis of faith one month, read a lot, and after some time I would find that the emotional aspects of the crisis were gone. Some bits of what I had read stuck with me. After many cycles of this I had absorbed a lot of assertions, arguments and suppositions that formed this informal framework or foundation on which my faith rested.

Ironically enough, this "system of rational thought" operated best at the subconscious level. Its preferred mode of operation was to work like a low dose of penicillin, keeping the doubt at bay before it could flare up. When I would actually think through any of the individual ideas, they were rather flimsy and insubstantial. But doubt is usually a broad, diffuse force, and against such blows my spiderweb held firm.

I had a bad couple of years. It was probably the worst part of my life, and during that time a lot of once-certainties were undermined. The crisis was not originally about God, but more about my own identity and place in the world. But God got caught up in it all the same. Or, to be specific, my beliefs about God did. In a time of uncertainty you look for something firm to grasp a hold of. One by one I'd turn to each of these reasons and supports for help. I was losing hold of God and needed something to could make him grasp-able by my mind. One by one these reasons would wink out under my directed gaze. They fell individually with such force that when I looked away from them, they had lost their subtle power to encourage.

Some truths are hard to deny, others are hard to hold on to. I'm not sure which is the case here, but I'm rooting for the latter.

A question for the philosopher studying warrant... In some systems of belief (I am including scientific theories here), each tenet of the system can be seen as making sense both individually and as an integral component of the entire system. In others, each tenet is individually weak, and it is only when woven together with its brethern that the system makes sense. In this model, each of the individual beliefs in a sense covers the weaknesses of the others. ... Is one of these systems inherently more worthy of belief? Is there such a thing as 'emergent warrant'?


Part e
Another interlude. When I play the better sort of video game I dodge bullets. Literally (in a sense). I lean about at the keyboard. I'm not sure if it helps in the game, but I'd be reluctant to just sit stock still. This is sort of the evil twin of the star thing. When looking at stars, it is your indirect faculties that percieve things more clearly than your intentional ones. When dodging bullets in a video game, your irrational self is convinced of a state of affairs which (while entertaining for spouses) is quite off the mark.


Part 3
Once upon a time I went to Las Vegas. I stayed in a hotel that was patterned off of a stylized and idealized Venice. It was surprisingly beautiful. To my miserably uneducated eyes, the statues and murals were every bit as well done as what you might see in a second-rate Italian museum or cathedral (which is still saying something). ((( This raises a question about sculpture for one thing - if an *exact* replica of Michelangelo's David is artistically less valuable than the original - where exactly is that surplus value carried? Is the original's marble somehow chemically different? Is there some spiritual element attached somehow to the original? If the two were put in a bag and shaken up so that no one could tell them apart - would the original's value be destroyed? )))

At any rate, the centerpiece of the hotel was this indoor... mall. The ceiling was roughly two stories tall and painted to look like the sky at sunset. The walls were decorated to look like Ventian streets. There was even a canal carved in the floor in which replica gondoleers paddled replica gondolas filled with authentic overweight americans. In the larger spaces the long walls of the 'piazzas' were ever so slightly curved, making them look longer than they really were. Other than the canal, which had pool-blue water, the illusion was masterful. The first time I walked into the area I was genuinely puzzled why the sun was setting. Like most people, I generally prefer ugly authenticity to beautiful artifice. But somehow, inexplicably, the illusion worked. I won't say I believed I was IN venice per se, but in some subtle way I was willing to believe I was outside, and that there was something behind all those second-story italian shutters.

I was in LV for a work conference, but made plenty of excuses to walk through the streets of las-venice. I can't put my finger on what made it appealing - partly it was admiration for the illusion and partly it was participation in the illusion.

After a few walks something in my head started to rebel. I noticed imperfections in the illusion like the modern gates leading to the docks where the gondolas landed and vents painted over with wispy clouds. I made a choice somewhere in this time. I made a choice to push out those inconvenient facts and inhale more deeply the illusion. It was as if one part of my mind was trying to protect another part of my mind.

One night my coworker and I sat down at an 'outside cafe' in the ... mall (there really is no other more accurate word for it). In Pseudo-Venice. It was great, I was sitting outside at sunset drinking wine and talking philosophy with this guy. The sky was really nice - just enough clouds to catch the color of the setting sun. I probably had pasta, and some kind of wine that's a mix of other wines (I never knew such a beast existed). By the end of dinner I hated the place. It was too unsettling - this place that never changes. You know the fear about heaven getting boring? - this place put some stock in that fear.

After that, las vegas was totally ruined for me. It wasn't just that one area, it is really the fault of the entire town - the enormous waste of energy, the lies about money and fun and respect and sex. The whole place is predicated on these lies that are individually absolutely absurd on their face. But they are also so compelling that we visitor willingly sell ourselves to them. People going to the casino know the odds are against them yet, if honest, expect to win. The hotels rip out the asthetic beauty of world architecture from context and plop it down into a desert, as though the only thing worthwhile of something like the Trebbia fountain is the color of it's fountains at night.

I went to LV expecting to be disgusted. I was impressed for the first several days - the illusions were obvious, but I had to concede they were expertly done. In the end, my dislike of LV was essentially confirmed. I can handle being lied to - that's a fair fight. But LV asks us to lie to ourselves. It looks to start a civil war between the part of us that dodges videogame bullets and the part of us that fills out a tax form. And if the city ever catches you at war with yourself, it starts chewing on you.


Part N+1
Slogans seduce