Last Updated on September 25, 2009 by James Dziezynski
The supernatural world is an interesting place.
On one hand we have the ghoulish, ghastly, other dimensions of time and space stuff: U.F.O’s, bigfeet and Yetis of varying degrees, Champ and Loch Ness Monsters, fairies and sprites, spirits, ghosts and demons. At the other end of the spectrum we have the culturally accepted supernatural characters: gods from Allah to Yaweh and a throng of Jesuses thrown in for good measure, Vishnu and a lot of individually crafted deities who reign in some alternate dimension with implied dictatorial powers over the lowly beings of Earth. In between we have vampires, possession, E.S.P., clairvoyance and so on.
For lack of a better word, I’ve always thought the supernatural world is neat. I’ve always been envious of those who claim paranormal experiences, for I’ve never seen a single ghost train, been abducted by aliens or seen a ghastly wraith rise from it’s rain-dampened grave. (I’ll take a pass on the demonic possession, body-probing or thousand-year old curses from departed pharoahs, if you don’t mind). I’ll also pass on the glassy eyed accounts of having Jesus/Allah/Satan/Buddha/Flying Spaghetti Monster/The Ghost of Ed McMahon etc. filling my soul on account of my desire and intepretation that Jesus/Allah/Satan/Buddha/Flying Spaghetti Monster/The Ghost of Ed McMahon is out there presenting themselves in vague expressions such as using their divine powers to let me hit the winning free throw with 1 tick left on the clock.
I mention the magical, mystical beings of imagination because I’ve been reflecting on an essay by David Quammen from his book The Boilerplate Rhino that’s got me thinking: with all the absurdly beautiful and amazing offerings in the natural world, why do humans crave there to be more? Isn’t the jaw-dropping imagery from something like Planet Earth enough to appreciate in its own glory without ascribing it to some dude in robes (gods tend to favor robes for some reason, maybe because cargo shorts and converse don’t inspire the proper awe and reverence, unless of course you’re Tony Hawk).
The obvious trigger in our wandering thoughts seems to be that proverbial elephant in the room, that one day like the fabled Norweigan Blue, we’ll all be stone dead. Most of us have come to fancy this whole being alive thing. It eats away at our intellect that we can’t figure out the details in the contract of life, who signed the other end and if death is truly the end of all those feelings, thoughts and emotions banging around in our inner being. Somewhere between our desire to be immortal and connecting this world with an apres life, we’ve concocted a dizzying array of explanations: Belinda Carlisle asserts “heaven is a place on Earth” while David Byrne insists heaven is a place “where nothing ever, ever happens”. There’s Zeus on his throne on a cloud reigning thunderbolts and trying to pick up assorted earthly women, or the traditional God with his long, itchy beard or old squid-face himself, Cthulhu. Some faiths have boring white guys in the mix too, say Joseph Smith or Jesus, who is oddly characterized as a pale skinned, blue-eyed, fair-haired dude despite being born in the middle-east. Artistic license I suppose.
With all that in mind, I can’t help but think that the end is irrelevant but by nature (and not supernature), if the clock wasn’t ticking, we’d be a species of professional loafers. That’s what makes evolution such an appealing concept. Doubters say that what’s the point of passing down genes to continue the species when an immortal species would save a lot of trouble, though probably not be quite as much fun? Evolution brings into the mix the wild card of improved genes and the daring notion from the minute we pop out of momma screaming and squinting to the time we’re on the menu for the local worm population, we can actually develop and improve ourselves and our world.
Perhaps we’ll learn encode something practical into our genes, like a music skill or the ability to whistle really loudly at sporting events by sticking our fingers in our mouth. Our perhaps our contribution need not be genetic at all. Maybe we’ll write a great book or walk on the moon or partake in some endeavor that moves the whole of mankind in a positive direction.
My point is– the supernatural is a really fun concept to play with and perhaps shouldn’t be excluded from our interests, but until we’ve explored all that’s laid before us in the natural world, maybe it’s best to hold off on relying on the mystical and magical to define our world when we have many more lifetimes of wonder at our feet.
