Dr. Dean Edell on his radio show last Sunday cited a study that shows that people who believe in the supernatural—demonic possession, haunted houses, ghosts, etc.—have lower IQs than those who are skeptical of such phenomena. As my wife and I listened to the study, I turned to her and said that if I had a spouse who started professing a belief in ghosts, aliens, or Sasquatch, I would be overcome with panic that the relationship was on the brink for I would have to assume that such a person, emotionally unstable to say the least, had fallen ill of Dale Gribble Syndrome. Featured in the animated satire King of the Hill, Dale Gribble is a true believer in the paranormal and supernatural—he buys alien urine, most likely as a libido enhancer.
Gullibility is the least of character flaws I associate with those who preoccupy themselves with paranormal tabloid fodder. Such people spend too much time living inside their heads. They are annoying in that they see themselves as possessing hidden truths that the rest of us are too dense to comprehend. Slothful and narcissistic, they see themselves as experts on human origins, spirituality, medicine, and the secrets of longevity for they believe their connection to the supernatural and alien world affords them insights that the rest of us are denied. Thus they arch their eyes at us with a look of a smug know-it-all.
In short, the Dale Gribbles of the world are not ignorant in the benign passive sense. Rather they are ignroant in an aggressive, belligerent manner in which they proselytize their tomfoolery on the rest of us. The irony is that they have never exerted rigorous research in anything to arrive at their conclusions. Instead, they are dilettantes who read a few Internet websites and then fancy themselves sages of the supernatural. Their vain delusions compensate for the fact that they are incurable ciphers who, discontent with their lowly place in the world, must forever chafe the rest of us with their endless imbecilities.
Worse, in this age of blogging, in which all voices great and small enjoy a sort of democratization, the slew of frantically-typing Dale Gribbles pour their toxic hallucinations with great profligacy into the Internet landscape.
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