Reality — What A Concept!

Edition #43 — 16 Apr 2003

Good Morning Sir — Here Is Your Reality Check

I was trying to sleep a little longer today, but my brain wouldn't let me. Aside from its filling in some creative blanks for a multimedia project I'm working on, my brain also started coughing up some more "Reality Checks". I was forced to jump out of bed and lunge for my writing pad three times so as not to lose my bus of thought (I don't use trains). Eventually I got the message: get up, ya lazy bum!

I'm far from lazy. I was sleeping in because most days I work till one or two in the morning because I've caught a creative wave and I'm riding it into shore. But those new reality checks were worth getting up for. I also didn't have a subject for today's newsletter yet — I wasn't worried - but this gave me the fuel I needed to commit to a particular storyline.

Reality Check Topic: Prejudice. Question: Where do your assumptions begin: that all psychics are fake, or that psychics don't exist?

OK, it may be a bit cryptic, but luckily you have me as your interpreter - consider your dice loaded.

The Backstory: Crossing Over With John Edwards

There's a psychic on TV named John Edwards. What he does is quite remarkable: during his television show, Crossing Over, he relays messages from the deceased to their loved ones who are in his studio audience. He's a psychic, and he hears dead people.

There is but one reason for this show: to reassure people. That's it. That's all. The people come there with a void and he helps to fill it. The networks runs the show to sell advertising slots, but for viewers, the only "what's in it for me?" benefit is a reassurance that death isn't a final, horrific and everlasting fatal assault on an already tentative human existence. For people like me who already believe in an afterlife, it simply presents credible evidence whenever I seek it through an entertaining medium — pun intended.

Preaching to the converted may seem redundant, but it's so easy to lose our bearings in a world where todays menu offers "SARS" and a U.S. Invasion of Oil Fields in Iraq, to be replaced by your choice of negativity tomorrow. Marshall McLuhan once insisted that the medium is the message — but why does the "filler" message slant toward pain and suffering rather than joy? Our fear of death, that's why.

Who knows what direction the medium will swing our minds and emotions next: another kidnapping? A new breast cancer warning? A brutal rape and murder? A horrific freeway pile up? It's all about death, dying, suffering and disappointment. And then you get the weather.

It doesn't matter how strong you are, spiritually, because darkness is always waiting to creep in to counteract a lighted existence. Those are the rules of balance: there's no balance in physics unless both positive and negative ions are in equal proportion. The physics of spiritually are also a balancing game.

The point is that we can get lost in all this badness and negativity. To not be overcome by grief and despair, we must keep fortifying our hearts and minds with the supplements of hope. My favourite brand of vitamin right now is John Edwards' TV show: it's direct, entertaining and sincere.

Skepticism As A Form Of Religion

I catch the show whenever I can; just another good reason to learn how to program a VCR, cause it's on here at 3:00 PM in Toronto. I've watched the show often enough, and carefully enough, to weed out any suspicions I might have that John is a fake. Yes, you can set up something like "Survivor In The Amazon" to appear as though some people are alone and stranded in the bush, but we also know that there's 300 camera guys plowing around trying to film a show, or setting up events. But what can't be faked — the reality — is that those contestants lose weight, smell from lack of washing, don't get along with each other, and have to eat live grubs if they want to win a million bucks. And that makes the show real. That is the show.

Neither can the testimonials of John's audience be faked for it wouldn't be long before someone in the production crew, or someone who was asked to lie, came clean for more money than they're making. ESPECIALLY for a show like that. Why especially? Because it brings out the nastiest, darkest prejudices about death and why many of us think, feel and behave as selfishly and uncircumspectfully as we do. (hope that's a real word!)

There is nothing more sacred, more defended than a belief. Pride and ego were invented solely to ensure that every person has the equal right to be absolutely wrong and still deny it.

There are a lot of people, atheists, agnostics, or just plain doubters and nay sayers, whose entire psychological enterprise relies on one assumption: that once you die, you're dead. If not, it opens up a whole new can of grubs — I don't do worms! — that no one wants to eat, not even for a million dollars. Not even in the Amazon.

(I do not like green eggs and ham — I do not like them, Sam, "I AM")

Just Eat Your Green Eggs And Ham — And Shut Up!

I went surfing for John Edwards related information and found a website by just such a skeptic and naysayer. In it the man claimed that the audience was kept waiting for John long enough to allow hidden microphones to pick up all the details of their private lives which were then later used as proof of John's psychic abilities after he recited them back.

If you watch the show more than twice, you know that's the biggest, most desperate pile of rationalizing bullshit anyone's had the misfortune of stepping into. John Edwards "chases" his targets. When they say "that doesn't sound familiar!" he tells them they're mistaken. Eventually something clicks and John turns out to be right. He does not acquiesce to his target. A fake psychic would grab for straws — "is there someone in the audience whose name begins with an 'M'? But John pulls needles out of haystacks the size of Missouri. This guy's on. That's why he's got the show.

The point is: how attached are you to a certain belief? How fortified is your fortress against reality? Are your walls so high that you'll never have to look out, discover and grow inside?

Years ago, I had an argument with someone about rent money: they "believed" that I didn't make my payment on time, causing them to be late for one of their own payments. I had brought my bank book along as hard evidence. It documented exactly the date, time and location of where I transferred all the money into their account. Stamped and everything. And you know what he did?

He refused to look. Belief: 1, Reality: 0. We both lost the war.


See ya next month, darlings.

Roland Kriewaldt


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