A Wave of Weirdness.
Believe it or not, but I feel grateful living in such a bizarre, absurd reality with completely bonkers “leaders,” deepfakes, conspiracies around every damn corner, information technology going haywire, alternate digital realities, and ideological chaos. Don’t you agree? It IS interesting to live in this day and age, even if it probably will be the end of us. Sorry, I’m not going to be too gloomy; I’m just trying to see the weirdness from a positive viewpoint. There is something in all of this that might help us, at least on an individual level, to cope with our existence.
Once upon a time, we had to worry about everyone knowing who we are on the Internet; now it’s also worrying about who is really who, what’s the difference between truth and fake, information disinformation, and if social media really is reading our minds when that shoe advertisement shows up just when we had the idea to buy shoes. Instead of flying cars, space travel to Mars, and high-pitched ray guns, the future became power-hungry political clowns, alternative news, and fine-tuning the art of shifting online identities and speculating if we’re in a simulation or not. I didn’t see this twenty years ago, not in my wildest imagination, but it’s been lurking on us ever since mankind realized there’s a thin, fragile line between imagination and paranoia. Soon we don’t know who we are anymore, or maybe we’re getting closer to what we really are — and I bet that won’t be a pretty sight.
Oh, I’m sure I will always know who I am at the moment, depending on which reality I’m in, but the presence of a worldwide aggressive herd mentality is a clue how the masses work, and it’s compressed stupidity in the shape of twisted information and clueless acceptance for those in power.
From a magical point of view, these are marvelous times; trust me on that. It’s never been so easy (at least during my lifetime) to change reality according to your own will, or at least imagine vividly how a specific outcome will be. When everything is possible on the level of weirdness, magical thinking gets easier and more open to new concepts. The deal is to control it and behave, as the only way to truly change things is in your own universe. The rest is just an illusion, badly hidden by nice words and fancy logos.
I think it was the author and fringe scientist Dean Radin who wrote that being fooled by an illusionist makes one more receptive to real magic if that occurs right after the illusion itself, as it changes the mindset to tune into the impossible and heightens the acceptance for things out of the ordinary. Someone who doesn’t believe in magic will never experience it, while those, including me, will see it, feel it, and use it over and over again. What other people believe isn’t important from an individual standpoint.
This is how I see the world now; it’s one giant mindfuck, so why not surf the wave of weirdness? Accept the madness, use it for your own gain, and ride it into the eye of the hurricane.
Fred Andersson is a Swedish story producer, researcher and writer with over twenty years of experience in commercial television and the author a bunch books, most recently Northern Lights: High Strangeness in Sweden. He lives in Märsta, outside Stockholm, with his photographer husband Grzegorz and two overly active cats. Join him on Twitter and Instagram.
