According to Jim Meskimen, son of Marian Ross of Happy Days fame, people are prejudiced against ghosts.
Stop grinning like that.
This is serious.
In fact, antipathy towards the disembodied is so egregious that “It’s a planet-wide epidemic against anyone who happens to have committed the crime of being alive.”
Meskimen states “Antipathy, fear or hatred of a general class of things is usually evidence of prejudice, misinformation or at least some fixed ideas.”
As an aside, this might well be applied to the Scientology attitude towards “Wogs” but as usual, the irony of the comment is obviously wasted on him.
Jim’s post appears to both be an attempt to reassure everyone that ghosts are people too and a teachable moment, displaying the Scientology superiority that they’ve always known spirits, Thetans, are not to be feared.
“What’s the Deal With Ghosts?” goes on to explain that Americans are particularly “bloodthirsty” towards the eradication of ghosts. The author uses the movie Ghostbusters to illustrate the overall societal opinion towards those on the other side. Coincidentally it’s much like Scientology’s own attitude of “get them before they get you”.
Meskimen points to the Latin American celebration of Dia de los Muertos as an example of inclusion and tolerance for those who have passed on before us. During this festival loved ones welcome back the souls of deceased family members with revels, merriment and feasting.
Jim describes it “In Mexico, the Day of the Dead holiday is one in which people go and spend quality time in cemeteries with departed loved ones. They don’t rush in, plasma guns blazing, to entrap and subdue the spirits there—they recognize that they are still ‘people.’”
In spite of his admiration for this brilliant example of paranormal inclusion and non judgment of the dearly departed, he seems to have forgotten one small but pertinent bit of information.
He fails to take into account that in 2015 high ranking Scientology Spokeswoman Karen Pouw clearly and unequivocally asserted that anyone who claimed they communicated with the dead was “delusional” and “certifiably insane”.
Way to insult an entire culture, Karen.
In an effort to reassure his readers that there is no basis for all the fear and prejudice Meskimen explains; “A ghost is just a being without a body—the identity of a person without all the baggage, you might say.”
At this point it has become obvious that Jim never saw Poltergeist.
Ghosts who find their final resting places paved over with a subdivision can develop some serious baggage. Stacking the kitchen chairs on top of the table might be considered a harmless bit of attention seeking.
Sucking a little girl into the TV in retaliation for finding oneself part of a cul de sac results in bad feelings all around.
This article was posted on Halloween, but it was not meant to be satire.
Jeffrey Augustine writes satire like a boss, Jim Meskimen’s got no time for that.
No, Meskimen is quite serious about his content, he obviously has deep concerns about Mankind’s prejudice towards ghosts. For him there is a real connection between intolerance for the dead and intolerance for the living. In his mind ghostly bigotry only leads to worse behaviors.
“In death, a person leaves the body behind, but that’s not the end of that individual. We share that understanding with many of the world’s religions. But antagonism about the disembodied could slop over into a general antagonism toward the living spiritual beings that we are. ‘Spirits without bodies are bad’ can change into ‘ALL spirits, with or without bodies are bad’ pretty easily.”
Ghostbusters is just the beginning of a long, downward spiral of hate and prejudice.
This article is a serious cautionary tale, warning all of us of the dangers of psychic segregation, of the perils of phantasmic antagonism. Despite the fact that like Xenu, Vigo the Carpathian was a genocidal madman bent upon global destruction which was why Venkman and his crew were battling to stop him, the hostility towards the undead must end.
That even Xenu’s own crew ended up exiling him to a cave on a remote planet rather than admitting he was as human as the next alien is beside the point. The immediate instinct to make ghosts “GO AWAY” is just the first symptom of hate and bigotry towards all and it needs addressing before life as we know it implodes.
“Mankind’s attitude about its own kind is sometimes not much better than its position about ghosts; get rid of them—the sooner the better. This attitude is behind many of the worst catastrophes in history: the World Wars, the pogroms, the ‘ethnic cleansing.’”
We’ve been warned.
https://www.standleague.org/blog/whats-the-deal-with-ghosts.html
Confront And Shatter 