Tell me about it. I have a pretty good "dangerous people" radar. Pretty sure it's nothing whatever to do with body language or social signaling, because I'm epically terrible at reading those things. Just some people-- get an instant horrible vibe from them, all the internal alarm bells go off, for no reason that I've ever been able to pin down or explain to others. Often find out much, much later *why* I needed to stay far far away from them (like, after the arrest). In the meantime, I avoid them, keep my kids away from them. Other people don't seem to see it, and any time I've even *mentioned* it I get shot down for being judgmental or irrational. So I don't try anymore, I just do what I can to keep myself and my kids safe. It's an animal-level danger instinct, and I think most people have it, but they suppress it in order to fit in socially.
In Orthodoxy we have terms for stuff like this. There are different kinds of knowledge. There's the kind you can know by proxy, through your senses, and then there's the kind you can know directly, through your nous.
I think a lot of us sensed that there was something going on with covid and the shots, beyond what was available to the five senses, the rational information. And as modern western industrial people, we have a really hard time describing, integrating, or sharing that knowledge. But if anything, that knowledge is more real than the sensory kind, which is just a proxy. I *think* other religions have some descriptions of this. It's not something I've studied. But at least in our understanding, the more humble you are, the more repentant, and the more devoted to God, the more receptive you become to direct knowledge, and the better you can become at discerning the difference between your own thoughts and biases, the physical surface world, and what's really *real* on other levels. Being human, and all made in the image of God, we are all *capable* of perception on that level. So it stands to reason that anything with a huge spiritual component moving it, is going to be perceived by a lot of people, on *some* level. The hard part is being able to resist it, when you've been trained and socialized to ignore information that comes through that channel.
It is almost like... clocks. We all have them. We use them to tell how much of the day has elapsed, and we're so used to them, that we often fail to pay attention to other ways of knowing what time it is: light levels, the position of the sun, moon, stars, shadows, the songs of birds, insects, and frogs. In addition, we let the clock impose a certain regimented perception of time on us, that our forbears did not have. The clock stunts our ability to *wait* and rushes us through the day. What happens when the clock is wrong? We don't notice until things go very wrong! We are late! We are early! But it's rare to first question the clock! Is the clock telling you the truth, or pushing you away from truth? You'd need to have a sense of time formed outside the use of clocks, to be able to tell, no? But we all have access to that, if we care to exercise it.
no subject
In Orthodoxy we have terms for stuff like this. There are different kinds of knowledge. There's the kind you can know by proxy, through your senses, and then there's the kind you can know directly, through your nous.
I think a lot of us sensed that there was something going on with covid and the shots, beyond what was available to the five senses, the rational information. And as modern western industrial people, we have a really hard time describing, integrating, or sharing that knowledge. But if anything, that knowledge is more real than the sensory kind, which is just a proxy. I *think* other religions have some descriptions of this. It's not something I've studied. But at least in our understanding, the more humble you are, the more repentant, and the more devoted to God, the more receptive you become to direct knowledge, and the better you can become at discerning the difference between your own thoughts and biases, the physical surface world, and what's really *real* on other levels. Being human, and all made in the image of God, we are all *capable* of perception on that level. So it stands to reason that anything with a huge spiritual component moving it, is going to be perceived by a lot of people, on *some* level. The hard part is being able to resist it, when you've been trained and socialized to ignore information that comes through that channel.
It is almost like... clocks. We all have them. We use them to tell how much of the day has elapsed, and we're so used to them, that we often fail to pay attention to other ways of knowing what time it is: light levels, the position of the sun, moon, stars, shadows, the songs of birds, insects, and frogs. In addition, we let the clock impose a certain regimented perception of time on us, that our forbears did not have. The clock stunts our ability to *wait* and rushes us through the day. What happens when the clock is wrong? We don't notice until things go very wrong! We are late! We are early! But it's rare to first question the clock! Is the clock telling you the truth, or pushing you away from truth? You'd need to have a sense of time formed outside the use of clocks, to be able to tell, no? But we all have access to that, if we care to exercise it.