Motivations For Our Fortean Interests

[AnonyJ]

After musing a while on my contributions here since joining, I noticed a common theme emerging. It seems I'm not hugely interested in classifying, solving or 'believing' in much Fortean phenomena. What motivates me is our reactions to, and behaviour around the Fortean.

For some, various Forteana seems to be a quasi-belief system, for others it's the enjoyable thrill of being spooked. For others it's the chance to classify and document and collect. All are valid if they're positive for the individual.

I quite like to exercise critical thinking around Forteana and examining "why" as much as the "what". I have a big penchant for forgotten events, ephemeral history and QI-type small snippets of related interest or generally unknown stuff. I'm a fan of comparative reasoning, uncritical acceptance or lazy thinking is my bugbear. I think we can learn a lot if we expand our knowledge base outside of western, European contexts.

Unsolvable mysteries like The Flannan Isles or DB Cooper are like a pleasurable mental itch that probably can't ever be scratched!

What are your motivations and areas of interest?

 

[Comfortably Numb]

After musing a while on my contributions here since joining...

...What are your motivations and areas of interest?

I've been on about this, since I first joined as well!

What, *precisely*, is, 'Fortean'?

Personal, ultimate conclusion?

It's arguably, 'evolved' over the years and I don't really care (kinda like trying to, 'unscramble an omelette'!)

In essence... we often seek answers here!

There are folks here who worked tirelessly and passionately, to still make our wee chat both possible and delightfully amicable.

That's never forgotten.

...and there you go...

If hadn't spotted the enabled, 'autosuggestion' in software, this was going to read, at some point, 'Welcome to Namibia'...

 

[Yithian]

After musing a while on my contributions here since joining, I noticed a common theme emerging. It seems I'm not hugely interested in classifying, solving or 'believing' in much Fortean phenomena. What motivates me is our reactions to, and behaviour around the Fortean.

For some, various Forteana seems to be a quasi-belief system, for others it's the enjoyable thrill of being spooked. For others it's the chance to classify and document and collect. All are valid if they're positive for the individual.

I quite like to exercise critical thinking around Forteana and examining "why" as much as the "what". I have a big penchant for forgotten events, ephemeral history and QI-type small snippets of related interest or generally unknown stuff. I'm a fan of comparative reasoning, uncritical acceptance or lazy thinking is my bugbear. I think we can learn a lot if we expand our knowledge base outside of western, European contexts.

Unsolvable mysteries like The Flannan Isles or DB Cooper are like a pleasurable mental itch that probably can't ever be scratched!

What are your motivations and areas of interest?

For me, it's not about the destination but the journey.

I have no faith that any save a few of the genuine mysteries we discuss will be 'solved' to general satisfaction, but my belief in the universe as a unified whole causes me to think that the 'meaning' of that whole (such as one that is intelligible to us exists) will be accessible via the thorough scrutiny of any individual aspect: an attempt to fully explain the whys and wherefores of any constituent part will, eventually, spider-web outward, requiring ever broader explanations, until one finds oneself at the key questions to which all enquiries lead in the end.

Why Forteana and not something else?

Well, firstly (as I've suggested), Forteana includes pretty much all else in the end, but also it's the old chestnut: a return to childhood. I have very vivid memories, not of time-stamped events, but of the moods that coloured my young life, most notably the almost physical sensation of being suspended betwixt fear and curiosity. When the stars (the conjunction of subject and mood?) are right and the heady cocktail of chemicals is mixed in correct measure, I'm transported back there.

An example: at school we were forbidden to play in the long grass at the end of the (very large) playing fields that abutted our playground, but one afternoon I wandered off and began poking around. I may have picked up a stick to prod about inquisitively--you get the picture. Anyway, after a few minutes I came across some kind of terracotta storage container, about the size of a small bath but taller, open at one side with a hole cut in the top and weeds growing up through it. In hindsight I think it might have been some kind of abandoned coal scuttle (this was the early to mid-80s). Being considerably smaller than now, I tried what every right-thinking child would: I hunched down to squeeze myself inside, but then, suspended in front of me, I was confronted by a large (as I then thought) yellow and black spider, swaying on her web, inches from my face. Suddenly aware of my intrusion, she scuttled, and as she did so a dozen baby spiders were revealed beneath her, and they scuttled, too. Then as now, I dislike spiders and particularly their movements, but I was transfixed, rapt and wide-eyed, unwilling as much as unable to move. I felt at once a sense of horrified wonder at this little family I had discovered as well as also a growing awareness that there might be other such curiosities to uncover down there in the grass. And then, after a few moments, the normal world resumed and I beat a hasty retreat, glancing back to see whether the mood would return. It didn't--at least not at once.

I returned there half a dozen times but never found the mummy spider, yet the mood remains in the back of my mind, like your first taste of gin. And when it takes a hold of me, reading this board or walking a country lane at dusk with an iodine sky, I'm back in the grass, full of wonder.

 

[Mythopoeika]

An example: at school we were forbidden to play in the long grass at the end of the (very large) playing fields that abutted our playground, but one afternoon I wandered off and began poking around. I may have picked up a stick to prod around inquisitively--you get the picture. Anyway, after a few minutes I came across some kind of terracotta storage container, about the size of a small bath but taller, open at one side with a hole cut in the top and weeds growing up through it. In hindsight I think it might have been some kind of abandoned coal scuttle (this was the mid-80s). Being considerably smaller than now, I tried what every right-thinking child would: I hunched down to squeeze myself inside, but then, suspended in front of me, I was confronted by a large (as I then thought) yellow and black spider, swaying on her web, inches from my face. Suddenly aware of my intrusion, she scuttled, and as she did so a dozen baby spiders were revealed beneath her, and they scuttled, too. Then as now, I dislike spiders and particularly their movements, but I was transfixed, rapt and wide-eyed, unwilling as much as unable to move. I felt at once a sense of horrified wonder at this little family I had discovered as well as also a growing awareness that there might be other such curiosities to uncover down there in the grass. And then after a few moments the normal world resumed and I beat a hasty retreat, glancing back to see whether the mood would return.

Sounds a lot like the implanted memory that all replicants receive in Blade Runner...

 

[escargot]

Sounds a lot like the implanted memory that all replicants receive in Blade Runner...

Postulation that we're all actually inside the Matrix in 3, 2, 1...

 

[EnolaGaia]

The most concise response I can offer comes from J. B. S. Haldane:

[M]y own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

(Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286)

By the time I entered elementary school, I was already convinced things were stranger than the adults had led me to believe. It wouldn't be until I finished my first pass through university that I finally concluded the strangeness exceeded any human ability to encompass or encapsulate it (at least for the time being ... ).

I was eagerly reading Fortean and Fortean-related materials as soon as I could read (the late 1950's). I absorbed reports of the weird with a combination of wistful incredulity and an attentiveness to assessing how credible such tales could reasonably be taken to be.

By the time I was in high school I'd personally witnessed Fortean-style phenomena which I've never managed to explain away to this day. Examples included multiple unexplained aerial phenomena observations, two phantom figure encounters, a floating orb / earthlight, and lots of coincidental incidents that defied explanation without invoking some sort of cosmic connectedness. Some of these involved one or more witnesses besides myself.

A significant proportion of these and subsequent experiences have withstood the critical thinking and rational analysis skills developed in parallel and for which I'd be known in my later professional life.

Meanwhile, I came to understand that humans are suboptimal observers, unreliable witnesses, heavily biased by their own presumptions, easily steered by interpersonal / social pressures, and generally far less trustworthy than they would like to believe.

Balancing the wonder witnessed against rational reflection is the burden of positioning oneself in the middle ground between extremes of dogmatic true belief and equally dogmatic skepticism.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Postulation that we're all actually inside the Matrix in 3, 2, 1...

We're all actually inside the Matrix...

 

[brownmane]

Postulation that we're all actually inside the Matrix in 3, 2, 1...

Funny, a woman I'd worked with had seen the movie and enjoyed it. She was surprised by its premise. I asked her (in surprise) "What? Have you never thought of that before?" Meaning the thought that what we see or believe to be real, is not.

I have always been interested in unexplained things or entertaining ideas such as The Matrix. I am often surprised that others don't even have these ideas to ponder. Imagination and curiosity for their own sake are obviously not common to everyone.

And, yes, when I am presented with a gadget, I do often try to take it apart and see how it goes back together, though I am definitely not mechanically inclined.

 

[kamalktk]

Mine is curiousity. I'm very curious about science and history and how things work.

 

[Mikefule]

What are your motivations and areas of interest?

I like to think and speculate. I also have a natural tendency to analyse things, sometimes too much. (This is for 3 main reasons, each of which I typically divide into 3 categories comprising 3 subcategories...)

As a lonely teenager in the 1970s, I spent too much time in the local library* reading boyish books: war games, model making, monsters, space ships, planets, dinosaurs. I fell under the spell of writers like Von Daniken and T Lobsang Rampa before I was old enough to understand that "non fiction" is often fiction on the wrong shelf.

Ever since then, I have had a passing interest in unusual and quirky things.

I see Forteana as pretty much anything that two people in this forum might discuss, but which would be of little or no interest to the wider public. It may be weird science, unsolved mysteries, or just unusual news stories: anything that makes us either wonder, or feel a sense of wonder.

I am fairly selective in my Fortean subjects. I won't give a comprehensive list, but I'll give 3 broad categories to illustrate the way I tend to react:

1. Broadly speaking plausible phenomena: Alien Big Cats, Loch Ness phenomena (but not a plesiosaur), SHC, conventional explanations for mysterious events like the recent discussion of Amelia Earhart's disappearance. I like to discuss these, and to analyse reports, and to identify and weed out hoaxes and misidentifications in the hope that what is left may be useful evidence.
2. What I regard as inherently implausible: all the various inter-dimensional ape men, Mothman, lizard people, flat Earth, hollow Earth, and so on. I have no time for this except insofar as it comes under heading 3 below.
3. The psychology of peoples' attitudes to the absurd stuff: people who persist in believing in discredited mediums, people who persist in believing in Uri Geller's supposed powers, habitual conspiracy theorists who can never accept the simple explanation however clear the facts, and so on. I try not to get drawn into discussion of the alleged phenomena (or conspiracies) but I do find the psychology of the believers interesting.

A clarification: a person who believes in one or more conspiracies is not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. It is a known fact that conspiracies exist. Sometimes, there will be intellectually sound reasons for suspecting a conspiracy although later it may turn out that there was none. These people do not fall within 3 above. A conspiracy theorist, to me, is someone who natural seeks the conspiracy in preference to the simple explanation, who ignores the evidence, and would rather believe that 10,000 people trusted each other to lie consistently, than that 10 people consistently told the truth.

*Library: a publicly funded building full of books that were free to read or borrow. A place where people could go to read in near silence without being disturbed. The public library is such a strange and alien concept now that it is almost a Fortean subject in its own right!

 

[INT21]

For me it's simple.

I have experienced strange things that, by normal standards, should not happen.

But it appears that they do.

And I want to know why.

Because, if they are happening in the way I have perceived them, then something very strange is going on.

INT21.

 

[Frideswide]

To find, or at least search for, 'What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women' (Thomas Browne)

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Balancing the wonder witnessed against rational reflection is the burden of positioning oneself in the middle ground between extremes of dogmatic true belief and equally dogmatic skepticism.

Wondrously insightful thoughts from your good self and others.

Reminded of my own conclusion re life, the universe, et al, so many years ago now and how nothing much has possibly changed.

It was, 'I'm happy to sit on the fence at present, giving due consideration and respect to alternative theories. Sure, it's often a pain in the @rse sitting up here... I can see both sides though...'.

 

[Iris]

I love reading about new and different things that happen and theories about them.
I have always had an interest in the different beginning about 15 months of age when I heard the voice saying my father was coming home from the war.
There have been periods when nothing happens and others and others when it intensifies.
I have a vast collection of books which are interesting in that it makes me think of alternate theories.

 

[Victory]

I have also experienced things that cannot be explained by science as it currently stands.

Religion has explained some of these experiences.

But some remained unexplained,.
Or with rival suggested explanations, but no conclusions.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

To put it as simply as I can, the way I see it is this: If 10 billion people reckon they've seen a ghost, or believe in ghosts, then there MUST be something in it. That's interesting to me. If it turns out that 'something' is a just a tendency for the human mind to fool itself, then that's still interesting. Either way it's win-win...

Thought provoking and brings to mind, how our ancestors, from many, diverse cultures, perceived their understanding, of an explanation re surrounding, celestial, events - the sun, moon and stars...

Tried their best, under the circumstances...

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Addendum... If they were somehow now made aware of the facts concerning celestial reality, they might conclude...

'Fair enough, it all seems to make sense now... how, though, were we supposed to understand this, considering our, given, intellectual capacity at that time?

Just wondered if anyone contemplated, contemporary, correlations...

'Well, it all makes infinitely more sense now, having been explained...'.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Just a wee thought?

Does this count?

With assembled company and having watched the football earlier. Suggestion evolves... the online, fun, website for generation your name if you played for Brazil (Brasil).

Who/what is responsible for our earthy existence and how/why is this, as an example, equated with same?

 

[Comfortably Numb]

P.S.

Anyway I can change my username to Neiro?

 

[maximus otter]

I like to think and speculate.

As a lonely teenager in the 1970s, I spent too much time in the local library* reading boyish books: war games, model making, monsters, space ships, planets, dinosaurs. I fell under the spell of writers like Von Daniken...

Close to my own experience.

l spent a large chunk of my life in having to peer up society’s rear end; l was left with a wistful need to believe that there is something beyond the prosaic, the quotidian, the routine.

Then l found FT...

maximus otter

 

[AnonyJ]

P.S.

Anyway I can change my username to Neiro?

Nope, you are in fact Lobby Lud and I claim my £5!

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Nope, you are in fact Lobby Lud and I claim my £5!

Aye, ye can whistle for that pal!

This has brought to mind... when that fun online site first came up, it was on a football forum.

One subscriber noted, 'No way my eight year old boy is ever wearing this to school!'...

Young lad's suggested Brazilian name was, 'ADILDO'...

 

[Bad Bungle]

A return to childhood said Yithian.
This is Venus Hill, I was barely 4 years old when I first aware of passing it on the small twisty lanes in my parent's van. I knew it didn't lead to Venus, but I thought that on a still night you could get a really good view of the planet from the top of the hill. I remember a couple of vivid dreams of reaching out and getting caught in its gravitational pull.
Time and time again I passed Venus Hill, but I couldn't go up the lane - it was far too far to walk from home, I had no bicycle, there were no buses, the roads were so dangerous (more so now as cars got bigger), I was reliant on my parents for transport and they had no reason to go there.
Eventually 15 years on I got a motorbike and went exploring. There was nothing up Venus hill except a farm and a lot of high hedgerow. I'd left it too late and the moment and the magic had gone (and I missed it).
Nearly 40 years later I went back again (a pull like in The Ocean at the End of the Lane), the Farm was now a private house, the hedgerows had been cut down, the lane was just a link-road, it had been greatly widened at the junction - even the road sign had been replaced by a new one (bearing the name of the Borough Council). It was just a road.
I am a rational adult and yet deep down *I know* that the view of Venus would have been glorious if only I could have got to the Hill 50 years ago. Nonsense maybe, just trying to recapture the wonderment of childhood - but I am a damn sight quicker these days in fulfilling plans and getting things done, rather than leaving them for later. And if some-one says a place has an 'atmosphere' or even 'a magic' I give a mental nod, yeah I know what you mean, anything else you've found odd or intriguing you want to talk about ?

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Just simply thanks for posting that.

 

[Bad Bungle]

Just simply thanks for posting that.

Thank you. I didn't realise or intend the post to be carthartic but .. (time for bed)

 

[AnonyJ]

A return to childhood said Yithian.
This is Venus Hill, I was barely 4 years old when I first aware of passing it on the small twisty lanes in my parent's van. I knew it didn't lead to Venus, but I thought that on a still night you could get a really good view of the planet from the top of the hill. I remember a couple of vivid dreams of reaching out and getting caught in its gravitational pull.
Time and time again I passed Venus Hill, but I couldn't go up the lane - it was far too far to walk from home, I had no bicycle, there were no buses, the roads were so dangerous (more so now as cars got bigger), I was reliant on my parents for transport and they had no reason to go there.
Eventually 15 years on I got a motorbike and went exploring. There was nothing up Venus hill except a farm and a lot of high hedgerow. I'd left it too late and the moment and the magic had gone (and I missed it).
Nearly 40 years later I went back again (a pull like in The Ocean at the End of the Lane), the Farm was now a private house, the hedgerows had been cut down, the lane was just a link-road, it had been greatly widened at the junction - even the road sign had been replaced by a new one (bearing the name of the Borough Council). It was just a road.
I am a rational adult and yet deep down *I know* that the view of Venus would have been glorious if only I could have got to the Hill 50 years ago. Nonsense maybe, just trying to recapture the wonderment of childhood - but I am a damn sight quicker these days in fulfilling plans and getting things done, rather than leaving them for later. And if some-one says a place has an 'atmosphere' or even 'a magic' I give a mental nod, yeah I know what you mean, anything else you've found odd or intriguing you want to talk about ?

View attachment 15165View attachment 15166

I was once on a (with hindsight) beautiful journey with a beautiful man almost 25 years ago and we stopped to take photos of ourselves by a derelict house next to a street sign named 'Cosmic Avenue'. It felt significant then and still is, for different reasons. The pull of 'what might have been' can feel mightier than planets. I hear you.

 

[Sharon Hill]

For some, various Forteana seems to be a quasi-belief system, for others it's the enjoyable thrill of being spooked. For others it's the chance to classify and document and collect. All are valid if they're positive for the individual.

I quite like to exercise critical thinking around Forteana and examining "why" as much as the "what". I have a big penchant for forgotten events, ephemeral history and QI-type small snippets of related interest or generally unknown stuff. I'm a fan of comparative reasoning, uncritical acceptance or lazy thinking is my bugbear. I think we can learn a lot if we expand our knowledge base outside of western, European contexts.

Unsolvable mysteries like The Flannan Isles or DB Cooper are like a pleasurable mental itch that probably can't ever be scratched!

What are your motivations and areas of interest?

Interesting that you note "classify and document and collect". I always have seen Fort (and many Forteans) as simply collectors of the strange. Like stamp-collecting. There was no analysis or point to it other than to piss off orthodox science, which, to me, is an ugly excuse. I'm like you and find uncritical acceptance (which Fort and many paranormalists on the internet today are especially good at) highly annoying. As a scientist, I try to be careful and more critical and I want to know what's going on. (I tried the Skeptics community. That was just as bad but at the other end of the believer spectrum.)

I like that Fortean phenomenon hints at things we have yet to discover. Yet, we must learn to accept that there are things we don't or can't know in our lifetime. Most people hate that, it seems. I don't exactly know why I love thinking about anomalous natural phenomena, Black dogs, haunted houses, and cryptids. But after 40-some years, I know the interest isn't ever going to go away.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Yet, we must learn to accept that there are things we don't or can't know in our lifetime. Most people hate that, it seems.

Sharon, precisely my perspective, expressed in related discussions.

For sure, 'Most people hate that'...

Passing thought now, is that why we have religion?

 

[Sharon Hill]

Sharon, precisely my perspective, expressed in related discussions.

For sure, 'Most people hate that'...

Passing thought now, is that why we have religion?

I expect that's one reason; it's a great comfort to "know".

I admit I do not understand those who cling to a comforting fantasy.

 

[Sharon Hill]

A sidenote: I've been kicked off several "Fortean" websites - Mysterious Universe, the Bigfoot Forum, and more than one Facebook page - for being critical (not rude, just pointing out logical flaws or uncritical points). Funny, that. Some of these circles are for ardent believers only.