Imaginary monsters: Why Bigfoot hunters are better people than Republican senators

Also, these guys sitting in a lab pretending to sequence Bigfoot DNA aren’t hurting anyone.

Fred’s explanation for the UN-bashing is probably the right one. The mainstream media’s WTF reactions have been somewhat amusing. Many of the reporters might not be familiar with Left Behind and its unholy union of eschatology and Bircherism. A good percentage of the senators voting no probably have LaHaye books on their shelves. Especially saddening was the cowardice by the others, shaking Bob Dole’s hand before casting ballots against the treaty.

It was a victory for absolutely no one, because of a worldview hinged upon things that don’t exist.

Charles Pierce discusses this distinction at length in his book Idiot America (which I recommend reading if you want to). He discusses America’s tradition of harmless kooks like Ignatius Donnelly, who wrote a huge “scholarly” work on Atlantis (which totes exists, guys), as compared to America’s parallel tradition of incredibly harmful kooks who incite violence against minorities and pass laws restricting womens’ control over their own bodies based on their kookiness.

Another important distinction he made between the two groups is that the harmless ones don’t care if nobody believes them. Sure, they’ll have an animated discussion with you about UFOs if you’re game, but they don’t have a burning, driving need to make everyone either agree with them or agree to pretend they agree with them. If you don’t want to listen to their theories, they’ll find someone who does, or they’ll just keep to themselves, scouring Google Maps for glimpses of Bigfoot or aliens.

Whereas the harmful kooks want our entire society and legal system to be shaped according to their kookiness, and while you don’t *have* to believe their kooky beliefs, you do have to live as if you do (so no gay stuff or abortions, got it?).

For whatever reason, both groups have found their lives in need of fantastic embellishment.

Neither group has any concept of imagination, its value and necessity. Therefore they end up being forced to pretend their imaginations are grounded in fact. It’s an immense tragedy. The Bigfoot kooks at least don’t visit the tragedy on the rest of us.

When those actions are motivated by fear of the monstrous and the marginalized, then real people wind up getting hurt.

When actions are motivated by fear, people wind up getting hurt. Period. Sometimes fear may be a necessity, but it is also at the root of most evil in the world — the reason powerful, evil people are able to maintain and increase their power, the reason people don’t learn what they easily could, the reason people believe lies.

Indeed. There’s a good reason humans have imaginations. If you see the results of an act of violence (whether against people, property, animals, whatever), it makes sense to imagine what kind of creature might have done it, so that you can be prepared for possible threats. And it makes sense to imagine the consequences of a decision to help us make those decisions.

It does not make sense to confuse that imagination with reality. Both are important, but both are distinct.

Who ISN’T a better person than a Republican senator?

And it’s sad to become obsessed with battling imaginary evils when the world is overflowing with so many actual injustices.

It’s also so much more convenient.  How much easier it is to do battle with the evil empire that is attempting to eliminate Christmas by forcing their minions to say, “Happy Holidays.”  How much easier it is to do battle with the evils of the one-worldism UN and their desire to strip away the rights of every true American.  How much easier it is to do battle with the Satanic desire to convert everyone to homosexuality and depopulate the world.

All of these imaginary evils are so much easier to fight than to fight the very real evils of hunger, homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, sex trafficking, racism, affordable health care . . . and on and on and on.  And not only that, but after fighting all of those oh-so-important battles of the imagination, you don’t need to worry about going home dirty or smelly or contaminated by the presence of the Other.

Reactions to the unicorn lair story annoy me.  I see pictures of sparkly-poo Western style unicorns, and people laughing because when they think “unicorn” they’re thinking the My Little Pony Western-style beast.  Kirins, from what I know of them, are very different beasts – sometimes more dragonish – and typically seen as a portentous creature that accompanies the rise of emperiors and is associated with power.  At least go to a Chinese resturant and order a Kirin beer or look at adverts on the wall for it – that critter isn’t a western unicorn. About the only thing they have in common is “magical beast with a single horn on its head.”

Then again, I think people are a little too harsh to the cryptozoologists and paranomralists.  Myths and legends don’t develop in a vaccum. Scientists have found fossils of a giant ape that our early ancestors may have interacted with – sure, finding one today would be like finding a live mastadon, but it’s a possiblity of where the stories may have come from.  I used to work at a zoo that housed “unicorns” (oryx).  People tend to enjoy a good ghost story because they’re fun (if well-told), and, of course, people grieve their dead - some feel a need for “proof” that their dead son or mother is ”okay” in some way… a deep emotional need.  There are legit scientists (Stephen Hawking *cough* ) who have postulated potential for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe given how vast it is alone (not that them being interested in us is anything but our thinking so highly of ourselves as to think we would be interesting)…

I’m in favor of wonder, in other words. 

That said, when people get ridiculous about it, it can be funny - my guy and I were watching something on TV not long about about UFO sightings in Bucks County (where we live) and he noted (having lived here longer than I have) that reports of mysterious UFO sightings on the news around here had an upshot about when the local airport changed the lights on their planes.  I talked about how my family regularly saw “UFOs” in the Arizona desert because we happened to live near one official military base and one unofficial/off the books military testing range…

And I agree that chasing after what people think is silly is better done when it’s out of a sense of wonder than a sense of threat, fear, hate.     

All of these imaginary evils are so much easier to fight than to fight the very real evils of hunger, homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, sex trafficking, racism, affordable health care . . .

Um, the last of these is not like the other… 

And Megapods don’t range as far south as Texas.  Too hot. They’re cold-climate arboreal semi-sentients.

FWIW, the genetic sequencing was being done in Texas, but the samples were collected elsewhere, including I think Michigan.

 S0me fungal molds are used to produce life-saving drugs. Don’t insult them by implying that they’re worse than some politicians.

 They have seen the leopard, and they want us to see it too.

In some lower-primate societies, there may be squabbles among the Alpha Leader and the next few in line who are jockeying for the position. But when a leopard shows up, all internecine disagreement stops and everyone falls in behind the Alpha Leader and focuses on the leopard! Humans don’t have real leopards to provoke this response, but it’s easy to invent one, and then try to convince everyone in your tribe that it’s really there.

*snerk*

Fair point. :P

I guess I just was confused when you mentioned them in the same paragraph as people who believe in Bigfoots, unicorns, and ghosts and stated that they all seemed to come from the same impulse.  For me, alien life is certainly a wonderous concept, but my belief in its existence is grounded in science and logic. I did astrobiology in school, so I guess I’m extra sensitive to implications that “there is probably life in the universe” = “I believe UFOs visit us all the time, and also all these other things for which there is a distinct lack of evidence for (like Bigfoot)”. 

You can name a species if you put some work into it–my lab partner named two.  But you have to pick something inconspicuous and not well studied.  Insects are good, as are other small invertebrates.  If you want to name a mammal or bird you do have a tough road ahead of you.

A student at a workshop of mine once showed me a National Geographic photo.  It was a very nice photo of a beaked whale, her animal of interest,  clear enough that she was certain it wasn’t one of the known species.  But the animal jumped into sight and vanished again, and you cannot name a species based on a photo.  So there is at least one mammal waiting for a name, but good luck finding it.  Apparently they can hear ships miles away, and actively avoid them.  (Smart whales, if you ask me.)

There are probably unnamed birds in Borneo, maybe mammals too.  Or if you get really lucky (not!) maybe an unnamed species of malaria….

“While chronic leukemia was reportedly worried about how its association with the Republican Party would affect its public image…”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/republicans-leukemia-team-up-to-repeal-health-care,17215/

that sleep paralysis is a common explaination for alien abduction stories is one thing

One of the theories that I like about alien abduction is that the abduction may also be memories of surgery, or even of being born. Certainly the appearance of the “grays” lends itself to that theory.  They have no hair and only the suggestion of a mouth.  People in the operating room, of course, cover their hair and mouths during surgery, so filtered through, say, a very vivid dream, that could easily translate into a species with just a pair of eyes in the middle of their faces.

I’ve encountered the genetic imprint theory as well. I would be curious to know how many people who claim to have been abducted have actually had surgeries.

I thought it was required that any skeptical mentions of alien abductions had to include Eric Cartman.

Agreed. Slime molds are useful. 

Even for things I don’t believe in, I was often annoyed by the huge condescension in statements like, “It sure is a sad tragedy that these people believe things I don’t believe in”. Then I realized that Bigfoot searchers see sceptics the same way most scientists see global warming deniers and can be just as condescending. That mutual almost-contempt made me feel slightly better.

It’s still bad to see articles asking why people believe in the paranormal or cryptozoology. By the way, the answer is never something simple like “These people interpret data differently than me” or even “These people have lower standards of proof than me”. No, it OF COURSE must be a juvenile or subconscious desire to inject more wonder into the world that doesn’t provide enough. *sigh*

The problem may be that no one sees themselves as superstitious people following illogical beliefs. No, everyone sees their own beliefs as founded on logic and rationality, while everyone else is stupid. As a guy once said: everyone has an idea that they find obvious, while people who don’t find it obvious are just being silly for no reason. Makes it very hard for these groups of people to communicate with each other.

 Well a slime mold isn’t a better person than a Republican since it’s not a person at all.  However, I have been fascinated by slime molds since 7th grade when I first learned about them, and when else will I ever get the chance to talk about them?  The amazing thing is how some species reproduce.  They’ll reproduce the cell nucleus many many times just as any cell would, but then they all just hang out in basically one giant cell instead of going farther to split into individual cells.  It really makes an interesting philosophical question of what counts as one unit of organism for the slime mold.  Does each nucleus get counted as an individual “life” like with unicellular but communal organisms, or is the whole lump just one “life”?  And if the latter is the case, that means you can basically make one organism into two just by physically separating a scoop of it.  Life is fascinating when you get into the details that aren’t obvious on the surface.  Incidentally, I also like diatoms but mostly because they look cool.

I have but one “like” for your comment, which I regret since it was very likable. :)

For that matter, I’ve sometimes debated just how much intelligence could be considered to exist within the individual cell. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to make a poor joke about personhood and slime molds though.