September 17, 2004

• Damn, I was hoping for more edu-muh-cated Mofites to post on this topic. :} Terribly interesting essay, though I don't know enough of PKD to know if he was winding up the Xians, agreeing with them, or just sitting back and laughing at everyone.
• Interesting post although my gut says that he's going a bit senile and his Episcopalean faith and his novels are getting a little mixed up for him; time for him is indeed not quite real.
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• I have not read the PKD book in question, but I see no eerie biblical resemblances based on what's in that story. A man named Philip meets a black man on the road, but the stories are different afterwards. (Acts 8). His story about the old man is very weak in correspondences. I think there were some striking coincidences, which he enlarged and improved upon in his mind. (We all do this, but paranoids like PKD have it worse. They can't stop seeing connections, even where none exist). Hate to be a spoilsport. I kind of wanted to believe in it since I had a prescient dream recently.
• Yeah, I didn't find the coincidences compelling either. (I have the reverse problem -- I've read the PKD book but not the Bible.) The thing that intrigues me most about religion is how eagerly humans engage in mythmaking. It seems to me that people feel better if they have some framework to answer the complex questions ("Why are we here?" "Where is the universe?"). They are not particularly interested in showing that the framework is validated by reality, or even that it is sound. (Science is, of course, a more rigorous and less ambitious version of this drive.)
• I seem to remember that PKD spent several periods of his life convinced he was actually living in 50 A.D. or so. I would question the fine line between creative genius and insanity. That is, if there is such a line. Fascinating guy.
• More PKD essays in The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick, edited by Lawrence Sutin; also the Articles page at philipkdickfans.com is highly recommended.