#paranoia

Shaver’s worldview was a deeply paranoid one in which pretty much everything of importance was traced back to evil deros and sinister machines in the hollow earth. He did not believe in God, an afterlife, a spiritual world, or paranormal powers: all such htings were the purely physical and totally illusory effects of the ray machines of the deros. We have all been duped, and we are constantly being zapped in our dreams, diseases, and disasters. “The unseen world beneath our feet, malignant and horrible, is complete in its mastery of Earth,” he declared with not a doubt or qualification in sight. So, too, there is no such thing as astral travel or spirits. The spirits seen in séances are in fact projections of the machines controlled again by entirely physical creatures seething and scheming below us. Like other hollow earthers before him, Richard Shaver was what Palmer called “an extreme materialist.” He knew nothing of the psychology of projection, and he seemed completely incapable of thinking symbolically or metaphorically, which I take as a fairly clear symptom of whatever psychological condition he suffered. ↗

— Jeffrey J. Kripal

#paranoid #dreams

God is always trying to give blessings to us, but our minds are usually too full to receive them. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#blessings #clouded-thoughts #confusion #delusions #doubt

Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials. ↗

— Mordecai Richler

#canada #coming #credentials #i #impeccable

Bitter people are not interested in what you say, but what you hide. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#controversy #enemies #fools #issues #motives

People can get obsessed with romance, they can get obsessed with political paranoia, they can get obsessed with horror. It's isn't the fault of the subject matter that creates the obsession, I don't think. ↗

— Adam Arkin

#fault #get #horror #i #matter

There is no literature and art without paranoia. Probably there would be even civilization. Paranoia is the world. It is the attempt to make sense of what has not. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#writers-on-writing #art

This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault. ↗

— Robert M. Hutchins

#do-it-yourself #fault #got #know #paranoia

Who's they?" He wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I haven't any idea." "Then how do you know they aren't?" "Because..." Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration. Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all. ↗

— Joseph Heller

#murder #paranoia #funny

I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you. ↗

— Henry Rollins

#believe #degrees #destiny #does #fate

There's a deep-seated paranoia that Americans have about not being Americans or something. ↗

— Billy Joel

#being #deep-seated #paranoia #something