The way I see it, something is going on with all the anecdotes! It may not be what we might expect it to be, but it would be remiss to not listen. And that connection is 100% human.

Ok, now I am wondering, if/when we eventually make contact with intelligent, alien life forms, I want to ask: do they believe in ghosts?

But thinking back to your citing Mary Roach, wasn’t much of the occult spirituality about which she writes a likely consequence of post-Civil-War grief? I wonder what it is about today, that makes the proverbial host in the AI machine plausible (as they apparently exacerbate mental health issues)

yes iirc she does get into the history of american spiritualism. i'm not a scholar but i think a lot of this descent into madness is partially brought on american society's inability to cope with the grief brought on by the mass death we witnessed during the height of covid lockdown

It’s bonkers. I agree, but I also find myself forgetting that yeah, we went through this huge traumatic event starting in 2020, and that even today we are denying its ongoing nature.

America would do well to have therapy as part of its health-care infrastructure, of which we seem to have elected exactly the right people to rip it all to shreds.