Adam Blatner

Linus in the comic strip “Peanuts” is talking to Patty, Charlie Brown’s little sister: “This is what I believe: I believe that the Great Pumpkin rises out of the Pumpkin patch on Halloween night, and flies through the air bringing with him toys for all the children in the world. That’s what I believe. What do you think?”
Patty: “I think you have very nice eyes and you are completely out of your mind!”

Patty is as tactful as she can be, given her age and the circumstances. Whether it’s the Great Pumpkin or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the secret cabal of the Jews or other conspiracy theories, people feel empowered by having a belief system, and drawing other people into believing with them. It justifies the blurring of belief and truth so that one becomes the other.

The problem is that I, too, have un-prove-able and perhaps to some similarly far-out beliefs about dimensionality. They comfort me. I don’t expect anyone else to buy into these beliefs, though. Some few may find these “maps” of metaphysics valid for them, but most will not. (By the way, around 2009-10, twice, I played the character of Linus in our community drama club’s production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” created out of many various Peanuts’ comic strips.)

Let me now confess that I really don’t know! I harbor a deep unknowing that I can tolerate—because I went through my young adult years when “not believing” and existential angst was the dominant ethos (or so it seemed) among my peers in the 1960s. I have since chosen to indulge in a fictitious and more interesting belief system that I’ve been constructing and re-constructing for several decades, a sort of mish-mash of Jung and Alfred North Whitehead, Ken Wilber and others.

I know it’s not “true” in any fully-worked-out philosophical way, but my belief in higher dimensions cannot allow for knowledge of the way it “really” is. So my belief seems plausible to me, at least.