Bookmarker is a personal project by @dellsystem to help with retaining reading material. Source on GitHub.

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1 year, 11 months ago

only in a society deformed by individualism

Maybe it’s true, as the NDEers claim, that physical death unites us in the next life. It’s certainly true that it unites us in this one, though largely against our will. At the conference, I was perplexed by Alexander’s dazzled insistence that “we are all deeply connected” in the glittering web of …

—p.24 The Baffler Issue no. 55: Psychopomp Back from the Afterlife (14) missing author
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1 year, 11 months ago

nearness to death changes you

The IANDS may exist to give scientific legitimacy to the claims of near-death experiencers, but I suspect most of its members would believe in Heaven even if it didn’t. Their belief isn’t predicated on scientific research but on the essential strangeness of life and death; I thought again of Chris …

—p.23 Back from the Afterlife (14) missing author
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1 year, 11 months ago

Americans have discarded the idea of paradise

I don’t recognize the Mayses in Wolfe’s analysis of the 1970s. They might have been New Agers, but they certainly weren’t narcissists; Suzanne spent years playing therapeutic music for people in palliative care[*]. I did, however, recognize a familiar brand of cynicism. Permeating Wolfe’s assessmen…

—p.22 Back from the Afterlife (14) missing author
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1 year, 11 months ago

I would not submit my divine revelation for peer review

If I, like Raymond Moody, had learned to my own satisfaction that the soul is real and life is eternal, would I really rush to convene an association of “interested researchers”? I didn’t think so. I’d take up skydiving or scripture. I would not submit my divine revelation for peer review. After al…

—p.22 Back from the Afterlife (14) missing author
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1 year, 11 months ago