the timboucher experience

I was reading Mythologist Maggie Macary’s blog, and found a particular post about narcissism, nihilism & suicide bombing, which I thought was interesting and commented on. She wrote:

I had a curious experience checking out my groceries the other day. The checker was a nice-looking young man who was talking to the bagger about his fantasies. He said, “I often believe that I’m in a dream and that everyone around me is there to play a role in my fantasy, that they have no lives of their own”. I was taken about and questioned him - do you mean like The Matrix?. “No, no,” he replied, “more like A Beautiful Mind”. “That’s rather narcissistic”, I remarked, “don’t you think?” He paused and got dreamy eyed and said, “Oh yes and it is wonderful!”

She then goes on to talk about narcissistic and nihilistic attitudes, and a feeling of powerlessness kind of come together in people who want to martyr themselves in suicide bombings. There certainly may be an element of truth to that, but I thought maybe she was overlooking a much more positive alternate interpretation of what the cashier was actually referring to.

i think i understand what the cashier meant. i dont think he was trying to say that other people didn’t exist or that there was no hope or value in anybody else or in anything they did. i think he means quite the opposite. that he feels like everything which exists communicates with him on a personal mystical level… that people come out of the blue and deliver to him important messages and coincidences which they couldn’t possibly understand… that the universe is conspiring on his behalf to enhance his welfare. which is, what i think it does for all of us, if we are open to receiving the communiques. from this perspective, it in fact IS completely wonderful.

If I might go ahead and plug Philip K. Dick’s writings again for probably the millionth time, he pretty expertly weaves together both the positive and negative interpretations of all this. It’s really one of his major themes.

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