Paging Dr. Joel Fleischman - Redux
Be Curious and Skeptical, but Don't Reject Reason
I skim a lot of stuff that I read on Substack. And sometimes I don’t watch videos.
So of course, I assume others are the same with my stuff.
The Joel Fleischman video I shared the other day is important on a number of levels (emotional, spiritual, intellectual), but in terms of the intellectual component, I’m going to hit this again. I’m putting the transcript right here for those of you who don’t watch videos.
I rely on my intuition as a preliminary guide, but at the end of the day I need evidence for things.
Politics and religion are dangerous subjects but I’m going there. Because this is my space to speak my truth.
When I was about 9-10 years of age, my mom experienced a spontaneous regression of cancer. It was unexplained by medical science at the time, as most regressions are.
As a result, my family gravitated toward supernatural explanations that never sat right with my rational mind growing up, and quite frankly, created a living hell from the standpoint of basic stability children should have. My parents went from insane church to church to church in pursuit of their next experience and emotional catharsis.
Imagine the worst, except for snake handling. Holy rollers, faith healers, various scare and manipulation tactics, being sat down as a child to watch horrible movies be told my head would be cut off when Jesus came back if I happened to be a non-believer and wasn’t taken up in the rapture, the whole nine yards.
You saw the angels that night when your mom was healed, right, Monica?
No.
I didn’t.
But I had to lie to survive, because my parents continued to be too physically sick to have time to deal with any kind of real rebellion on my part. And I was too busy actually physically caring for them in my teens.
When I was 16 I stopped going to church with my parents, and I took up a job in a comparatively more sane Presbyterian church where at least I got paid to produce beautiful music as the organist.
A refuge from the insanity. Books and nature were another refuge from insanity.
I stopped having to lie to survive when I left for college and my brain finally got a taste of freedom from the living hell and prison it had been put through for 8 years.
That created a lot of conflicts with my parents.
Too bad.
I’ve come to understand and have compassion for why my family believed as they did.
I’ve stopped arguing with people about their beliefs and I don’t begrudge them their beliefs, for the most part.
But I’m not going to budge on my beliefs, either, because rescuing my sanity after years of childhood gaslighting from a bunch of cynical, opportunistic frauds has been too hard-won.
It wasn’t about hedonism. I’ve been drunk a few times. I’ve never done hard drugs.
When I went off to college, I was soon done with the gaslighting and the mystical, non-sensical beliefs that shape-shifted every five minutes like quicksand under my feet.
(Sue me, but it reminds me a lot of the snake venom theory of disease transmission.)
So here is the Joel Fleischman transcript.
It’s a metaphor that should be obvious in relation to my last post.
Have a great week-end, everybody!
TRANSCRIPT
Fleischman: Boy, you know, I hate it when you smoke. I'm gonna show you a picture of a smoker's lung sometime. If that doesn't make you stop…
O’Connell: Why are you here, Fleischman? To tell me more jokes?
Fleischman: Maggie, I'm sorry about Rick. I am. I’m sorry. I'm sorry I didn't think up a better way to tell you.
O’Connell: Now that you said what you needed to say you better get out of here before you get hit in the head with a safe or a piano or you get struck with a bolt of lightning.
Fleischman: Are you buying into that nonsense? You believe it? Hey. As a doctor, as a man of science I can tell you, there is no such thing as curses. Everything just happens as a question of probability the statistical likelihood of a specific event.
For instance, if a man falls to sleep on a glacier it is highly probable he will freeze to death.
Likewise, if a man sits on a mountainside, there's some probability now, albeit slight that he will get hit by a satellite.
Your having a relationship with those men is inconsequential.
It simply does not enter into the equation.
O’Connell: Are you done, Mr. Wizard?
Fleischman: No. To tell you the truth Move over. I don't like seeing you like this. It bothers me.
Now, don't get any ideas, but I have more than just a professional interest in your well-being.
I am not afraid of you, O’Connell.
<shouting to the entire bar> You hear that? Everyone, I am not afraid of Maggie O’Connell!! No, I am not. I do not believe in voodoo!!!
O’Connell: Fleischman, sit down.
Fleischman: Come on. Let's dance.
O’Connell: I don't wanna dance.
Fleischman: This is a great song.
O’Connell: I don't care.
Fleischman: If you don't dance with me, O'Connell, you know what you are doing? You're turning your back on reason. On mankind's struggle to pull itself out of the mire of ignorance and superstition.
You are saying YES to witch hunters and inquisitors, you are slamming the door on enlightenment, and you are… you are… you are inviting back the Dark Ages.
Now, I am not doing this for you, O'Connell.
I am doing this for civilization.
Whaddaya say?
Just as institutional science eventually falsified its object, institutional religion did the same thing.
Too much emphasis has been placed on the interpretation by primitive minds of a simple and pure teaching: God is the loving Father of each of us and we are therefore brothers and sisters.
The early Christians were eager to spread the gospel, the good news of the Fatherhood of God and the consequent Brotherhood of Man (of course including women in the general concept of Brotherhood). Primitives were responsive to magic and miracles, and consequently the message became the Gospel *about* Jesus rather than the simple and eternally true Gospel *of* Jesus because it appealed to the limited minds of two thousand years ago.
For two millennia there has been “profit” of one sort or another in trading on the superstitions that have grown up around Jesus the man. It’s a tragedy because the profound consequence of the truth of the love and the intimate relationship that the Infinite has for and with each of us has largely been overlooked, as evidenced by the sorry state of civilization.
The Age of Enlightenment was an advance in that it sought to overthrow the intellectual hegemony of institutional religion, but sadly it sold man into the bondage of scientism (and various other -isms that have contaminated the advance of civilization).
The spiritual, moral and intellectual bankruptcy of both are beginning to be understood, and I detect a trend towards a more individual, simple, and pure variety of spiritual experience that is free from the iron hand of those who would dominate others through fear and over-much sophistry.
The dawn of a new Renaissance is beginning to break, and we can hope that the errors of the past will remain in the past.
When my kids were still shockingly young, probably like you were, I had to work damn hard to get my so-called spontaneous remission from cancer, with scientifically investigated alternative and natural medicines, real food, avoiding toxins, taking the mercury fillings out, coffee enemas etc. and good old fashioned 'gettin' my mind right''. But NOT by believing in scientismal hooey. Getting the cancer reversed involved deep knowledge and courageous skepticism - refusing to dance, just like O'Connell. That clip from Northern Exposure with Fleischman doing his well-intentioned gaslighting routine kind of triggered me because of what I went through with oncologist and surgeon who would not accept that I knew what I knew about my own body and used lies and fear to try to get me to do the slash burn poison routine, including pronouncing me a death sentence within 2-5 years if I didn't follow their plan. Then they fired me. 22 years ago. When I got well I felt like I had escaped a cult and could never un-know what I had learned about mind control. Now imagine my shock and grief when my adult kids, who saw me going through this and coming out on top so they'd have a healthy mom in their life, willingly drink the Kovid Koolade and one says I poisoned their mind for all those years with my slightly bitter conspiracy-theory attitude towards vaccines, modern medicine, GMOs, public health corruption and fake democracy.