Pleasing paranoia:
Serious paranoia is of course a serious problem. One could describe it in casual terms as the belief that one is a Very Important Person and the maintenance of that belief despite evidence to the contrary. “They’re out to get me,” means I am important. “Mysterious forces need me,” is also. I suspect that this is an infantile default setting. That overcoming it is one of the tasks of a healthy mind. It takes work, even if at an unconscious level.
If it takes work, then it ought to be relaxing to indulge. Indeed many years ago when I had some trouble getting to sleep I would invent scenarios that were as paranoid as I could make them. It worked like a charm; I have never had trouble falling asleep since then.
The importance of the issue of fertility is above question, of course. And I really don’t see how any healthy mind could deny the evidence I present. But I am not an Important Person, and the rational reason for my obscurity is failure to attract attention, lack of communication skills where they really matter.
When someone proposes that there are extraterrestrial entities that have been in communication with us in the past, I sometimes respond that they cannot mean us well. They certainly would be able to attract attention, so they should have warned us. They didn’t. They would be happy to see us go extinct. And if they can travel between stars they can certainly accomplish our disappearance. In fact, they may be doing so by nudging us ever toward a more urban, socially mobile world. Seems a waste of time, but I guess that’s possible.
Well if there were indeed an alien plot to snuff us out, I’m in the way. Why don’t they kill me? At this point if I met a sufficiently sticky and bizarre end, people would ask questions and the result would be the attention that they don’t like. But they could do something to make it look like an accident. Of course the same logic would hold if there were some human organization bent on wiping out the rest of humankind. Why do they hold their hand? It can only be that I’m no threat, I mean if there were some power bent on resisting me. How humiliating.
But I had a little bit of hint a few days ago. I was leaving work and driving out toward the interstate. I was about fifty yards from the point where I was committed; there would not be another chance to pull over safely for the next mile or two. The car started handling oddly, so I stopped and looked. I had a flat right front tire. If it had blown out a few moment later it might not have been pretty, being it was rush our. I got a man to come with a tow truck. He inspected my spare, said it was good and changed the tire. Watching how hard it was, I was not sorry to have the help. Then he turned the tire over.
The inside side wall was a ruins. Rubber had vanished leaving the steel belts visible. All around the tire were big scallops of rubber missing. I asked what could have possibly done that and he said lightly that it was probably a combination of things.
It certainly wasn’t damage done by a person. The car rests at night right outside my bedroom window, where I can hear very well. At work there is a friendly fellow who sits on the sidewalk and watches over the parking lot. Anywhere else my travels are quite unpredictable.
So I’m going with the opinion of the expert. However, they just might be smarter in their own field than I. So if I come down with a sudden fatal accident, count it as a sticky end. I might be getting too close for comfort.
At least it’s the kind of thing that can lull you to sleep if you need it, which I don’t.
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