I’ve been thinking about categories quite a lot lately.In a world connected by the internet, it seems that traditional categories don’t stretch far enough.For example, I recently read The Paranormal and Popular Culture: A Postmodern Religious Landscape, edited by Darryl Caterine and John W. Morehead.Published by Routledge, this is an academic study.It contains some things, however, that many academics would find challenging.I can’t summarize the entire book here since there are twenty very different essays included, but I can say this is a book that makes you think about categories.Even the word “paranormal” means different things to different people.To my way of thinking it has to tip the hat to Rod Serling and that place where fiction and fact begin to overlap.
That’s appropriate for this book: there are articles about what people perceive as factual encounters with all kinds of creatures and events, as well as studies of the decidedly fictional beings like Batman and zombies.Our categories, in the modern world, tend to be inviolable.Even scientists who handle Heisenberg know, however, that we are now in the postmodern world (as the subtitle indicates) and true objectivity is beyond the reach of all.None of us stands outside the box looking in.We’re all in the middle of it, and we look around ourselves trying to figure out what is real.Another problematic category that, reality.We don’t even understand what consciousness is yet, and how can we hope to know what is really real?We all have dreams and some take them more seriously than others.
Reading books like this with an open mind is a truly po-mo experience.After finishing more than one piece I found myself having to put the book down for a while at least so I’d have a hand free to scratch my head.You see, we’ve been taught to laugh at those who believe in the paranormal.It has been the only acceptable way that rationalists can deal with that which flies in the face of the system.The internet, however, has put those isolated, ridiculed individuals into a community and the advent of reality TV (and what can be more real than what we see on the tube?) erodes the laughter factor little by little.Plumbers can find ghosts but scientists can’t.The average person relates more to the plumber, I think.It all comes down to categories.Making sense of them can, and will, impact our views of reality.
