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David McElroy

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How do we intuitively see truth through the fog of perception?

By David McElroy · January 16, 2021

Sara didn’t like to talk about it, because she knew most people wouldn’t believe her.

She was a college student and going through a difficult semester. Her finals were about to start and she was spending all of her time studying. But she suddenly knew that something terrible had happened.

Sara had no idea what was wrong, but she associated it with her family, who lived a couple hundred miles away. She called her mother and asked if there was anything wrong, but her mother told her all was well.

In her heart, Sara was certain something was wrong, even if there was no rational reason to believe so. She went back to studying and made it through finals, but she never could shake the certainty that something was wrong.

After her last final, she drove home. When she arrived, her mother had some bad news. Her grandmother had died. The family had kept the news from her to avoid ruining her performance on finals. It turns out that the grandmother had died on the same day that Sara knew something was wrong and had called to ask about it.

But she has no idea how she knew something was wrong.

How do we sometimes know things that we have no rational way of knowing?

You’ve probably experienced it. Even if you don’t have a story as dramatic as Sara’s, it happens to you, too. There are times when you simply know something is true — even if the rational part of your brain says you’re crazy.

Sometimes it’s tiny things.

Something tells me to check on Steve today.

I don’t need to turn here today. I need to go the other way.

Even though this job sounds great, my gut tells me to take the other one.

I don’t know this woman, but something tells me that I should pursue her.

It can take a million different forms. Sometimes we absent-mindedly listen to those little whispers in our gut. Other times we ignore them. Sometimes they’re specific. Sometimes they’re fairly vague.

As long as there’s no real price to be paid, we typically follow our instincts. It won’t hurt anything to call Steve. It won’t hurt anything to turn here. But there are times when our gut instincts and our rational judgment collide. What do we do then?

I like to see myself as a rational person. A lot of the people I’ve known have considered me too rational and too willing to allow known data to make decisions for me. But there are times when I am willing to ignore everything I rationally know — when I’m willing to bet my life on wisps of intuition.

I can’t tell you why. I can’t justify my actions when I make such decisions. I can’t explain why I sometimes believe things which seem to totally contradict the known facts. I admit all of that. I simply know that there are times when I just know something in my gut — so I jump off a cliff and hope there’s a net — when my intuition is certain.

I used to be close friends with a woman who had a phrase for this. She used to say, “Sometimes you just know that you know that you know…” It didn’t quite make sense, but I understood it. I experience that at times. And there are times when it causes me conflict — when what I know conflicts with what I rationally believe.

I grew up believing that facts and rationality should rule everything, including what we believed about God and nature. When I was young, I heard a preacher argue — based on specific Hebrew scripture which I don’t recall anymore — that the Bible teaches us that truth is known to all of us through nature. He argued that we had access to all truth in our hearts — through nature — if we just listened.

I thought this was outrageous. I wanted my theology to be completely rational. I wanted a clear, systematic theology that could be deduced from specific rules and principles. (This is why I eagerly embraced the philosophy of theologian Francis Schaeffer when I discovered him during college.) I wanted my theology to be more like physics or geometry, so I rejected the preacher’s argument.

I now think he was right and I was wrong.

I’ve come to realize that if I were to live completely alone and if I had never had access to any religious scripture of any kind, I would have come to conclusions that are very similar to what I believe today. That’s because what I believe is based on what my heart and mind have experienced in the natural world.

I know God is there. I know certain things about that God. A lot of the specifics are fuzzy. I know certain things about the nature of reality — things that I have absolutely no rational way of knowing. I simply know that I know that I know.

The things we know are a bit like the objects around us when we’re walking through a heavy fog. A few nights ago, I took the photo above after midnight on a very foggy night. I couldn’t see far ahead of myself.

I could see the trees up close to me with certainty. There were other things that were too covered with fog for me to see at all. But some things were in a middle ground. They were shrouded in fog, but were still clear enough for me to know what they were.

My knowledge of the world seems similar. There are some things which I know with enough certainty to say they’re facts. Other things are completely covered with fog and I simply have no idea. But there are some things which I somehow perceive through the heavy fog of perception — and I have to decide for myself whether I really know this truth or if my mind is playing tricks on me.

There are things which I know are true — in my gut — but which I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want to look like a fool. I’m still afraid that I might be wrong. I’m even scared at times that I’m fooling myself because of wishful thinking or some trick my mind is playing on me because of less-than-perfect emotional health.

At times, I fight with myself over those things. There are things which I know are true, but which my rational mind says are nonsense. Those are the times which leave me frustrated, especially when the choice can change the direction of my life — and when other people will think I’m being foolish.

There are times, though, when we have to be willing to be foolish and stupid — by other people’s standards — if we are going to be what we were created to be. As the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.”

But it’s hard not to worry that others are going to think I’m foolish and stupid.

I’ve been having a serious inner conflict for months now because my intuitive knowing telling me something entirely different than my rational judgment about something which really matters. Some days, I drag myself toward acting as I rationally believe I should about this issue. Other days, some irrational intuitive force pulls me toward something which defies all reason.

I’m a big believer in the ideas of the Enlightenment. The broad set of ideas and philosophies which came out of that great move forward set humanity up for progress which often seems to have known no bounds.

But…

There are some things I simply know. Even if I can’t explain them. Even if I can’t justify them. There are some times when I simply know that I know that I know.

When that happens, I have little choice but to trust my perception of what I’m dimly seeing through the heavy fog of metaphysical reality.

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As far as I know, there were no nuclear devices se As far as I know, there were no nuclear devices set off anywhere near Birmingham this evening, but this cloud formation looked very much like a mushroom cloud rising in the west as I went through downtown Birmingham on I-65 around 6:30 tonight. #nature #naturephotography #sky #clouds #birmingham #alabama
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I didn’t have a lens wide enough to capture this I didn’t have a lens wide enough to capture this with my “real” camera, so this is just an iPhone panorama. It was beautiful to see in person. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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My favorite photos of Merlin tend to be those — My favorite photos of Merlin tend to be those — such as this one — in which he seems to be contemplating difficult issues. Feline philosophy or quantum physics or something else that he figures I wouldn’t understand. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #merlin2024 #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama #caturday
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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