"If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true."
--John Keats

War! Famine! Pestilence! Earthquakes! Crime! Scandal! The ubiquity of headlines like these suggests that nihilism is the pet philosophy of the storytellers known as "journalists." But they're not the only fabulists to thrive on dread and despair. A majority of the prophets down through the ages have been allergic to the possibility that the future might hold anything besides endlessly messy complications.

The 16th century's creepy horror-meister Nostradamus wasn't the first, but he has been one of the most enduring. "In the year 1999 and seven months," he bellowed back in 1555, "a king of terror will come from the sky." Nope. Didn't happen. Nor have all but a handful of his myriad predictions, and even those require a would-be interpreter to make extravagant use of the art of free association.

Ghoulish modern soothsayers have refined and expanded the "scare the crap out of 'em" tradition. By my count, 322 notorious New Age mystics over the past 30 years have foreseen cataclysmic "Earth changes" that will flush away the left coast and create beachfront property in Nebraska. A multitude of their colleagues agree that most of humanity will be wiped out any minute now, but they see the death blow coming via other means. Lethal solar flares, nuclear war and fresh plagues are old standbys, though newcomers worm their way onto the list periodically, including my personal favorite: an evil artificial intelligence that achieves sentience on the Internet.

As entertaining as modern prognosticators' curses can be, however, their track record is as abysmal as Nostradamus'. The fact that Nebraska is still without a seacoast should be enough evidence to send many of them into disgraced hiding. In the past year alone, we've survived three specifically dated doomsday forecasts. The first hatched in response to a striking cross-shaped array of planets in August 1999. Expect a cosmic Crucifixion, astrologers mused darkly. When nothing unsettling happened other than the usual late-summer exodus of Manhattan's stockbrokers and psychotherapists to Long Island, perplexed prognosticators theorized that the Crucifixion must have occurred "on the inner planes."

Next up was Y2K, the mother of all fortune-telling flops. This spring, we lived through a rare pileup of heavenly bodies in Taurus, which hordes of psychics warned would bring not only the reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles, with resulting earthquakes, tidal waves and 250-mph winds, but also the collapse of the stock market.

Amazingly, the ineptitude of the frightful omen slingers has not diminished their appeal. Their newsletters and Web sites proliferate. The runaway popularity of Art Bell's syndicated radio show, rooted in its edge-of-the-seat invocations of imminent global disasters, has spawned numerous imitators. Tally up the New Age devotees of spooky woo-woo and the Christian fundamentalist worshippers of divine uh-oh and you've got a cast of millions.

Cultured, rational folks like you and me chuckle. How can so many people believe in so much nonsense? And yet as the tears of ridicule splash down from my cheeks onto today's New York Times, a heretical theory bubbles up into view. Maybe the boogeyman prophets captivate so many imaginations because there are far more influential minds constantly at work nurturing the conditions necessary for apocalyptic thinking to bloom.

In our culture, cynicism has come to be regarded as a sign of intellectual vigor. It's smart to expect and look for the worst in everything. Optimism is thought to be the province of sentimental fools with no talent for critical thinking. Entropy and disintegration are inherently more interesting subjects to explore than redemption and renewal, availing greater opportunities to show off one's acumen.

And soothsayers are really just bit players in the spreading of these memes. The most potent disseminators are the storytellers known as journalists. They constitute the engine of the mythmaking machinery. "The universe is not made of molecules," said poet Muriel Rukyser. "It is made of stories." Subtly and relentlessly, the journalists weave our universe from narratives of turbulence, loss, decay and corruption. John Keats said that if something was not beautiful, it was probably not true, but our chief storytellers suggest the opposite: If something is not ugly, it is probably not true.

The Nostradamus wannabes are easy to dismiss. Their spectacularly idiotic fantasies are laughable. But journalists churn out measured, believable doses of doom and gloom. No single mini-Armageddon is too much to swallow, but the sum total of their agitated drone adds up in the long run to a far more powerful prophetic vision than the silly New Age and fundamentalist seers.
~Rob Brezsny

Unabashed Pronoia Therapy
-Rob Beszny

1. Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know—a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame—and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth, and love.

Here are some suggestions about what to put in your shrine: a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you’ve inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon; a music CD you love; a photo of your hero; a votive candle carved with your word of power; a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

2. Late at night when there’s no traffic, stride down the middle of an empty road that by day is crawling with cars. Dance, careen, and sing songs that fill you with pleasurable emotions. Splay your arms triumphantly as you extemporize prayers in which you make extravagant demands and promises. Give pet names to the trees you pass, declare your admiration for the workers who made the road, and celebrate your sovereignty over a territory that usually belongs to heavy machines and their operators.

3. Where exactly does happiness come from? That’s the riddle posed by David Meyers and Ed Diener in their article, "The Science of Happiness," published in The Futurist magazine.

Write your answers to their question. Map out the foundations of your own science of happiness. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good. What specific experiences arouse your deepest gratification? Physical pleasure? Seeking the truth? Being a good person? Contemplating the meaning of life? Enjoying the fruits of your accomplishments? Purging pent-up emotion?

4. Have you ever seen the game called "Playing the Dozens?" Participants compete in the exercise of hurling witty insults at each other. Here are some examples: "You’re so dumb, if you spoke your mind you’d be speechless." "Your mother is so old, she was a waitress at the Last Supper." "You’re so ugly, you couldn’t get laid if you were a brick."

I invite you to rebel against any impulse in you that resonates with the spirit of "Playing the Dozens." Instead, try a new game, "Paying the Tributes." Choose worthy targets and ransack your imagination to come up with smart, true, and amusing praise about them. The best stuff will be specific to the person you’re addressing, not generic, but here are some prototypes: "You’re so far-seeing, you can probably catch a glimpse of the back of your own head." "You’re so ingenious, you could use your nightmares to get rich and famous." "Your mastery of pronoia is so artful, you could convince me to love my worst enemy."

5. Salvador Dali once staged a party in which guests were told to come disguised as characters from their nightmares. Do the reverse. Throw a bash in which everyone is invited to arrive dressed as a character from the best dream they remember.

6. "The messiah will come when we don't need him any more," wrote Franz Kafka. Give your interpretation of his remark.

7. On a big piece of cardboard, make a sign that says, "I love to help; I need to give; please take some money." Then go out and stand on a traffic island while wearing your best clothes, and give away money to passing motorists. Offer a little more to drivers in rusty brown Pinto station wagons and 1976 El Camino Classics than those in a late-model Lexus or Jaguar.

8. In response to our culture’s ever-rising levels of noise and frenzy, rites of purification have become more popular. Many people now recognize the value of taking periodic retreats. Withdrawing from their usual compulsions, they go on fasts, avoid mass media, practice celibacy, or even abstain from speaking. While we applaud cleansing ceremonies like this, we recommend balancing them with periodic outbreaks of an equal and opposite custom: the Bliss Blitz.

During this celebration, you tune out the numbing banality of the daily grind. But instead of shrinking into asceticism, you indulge in uninhibited explorations of joy, release, and expansion. Turning away from the mildly stimulating distractions you seek out when you’re bored or worried, you become inexhaustibly resourceful as you search for unsurpassable sources of cathartic pleasure. Try it for a day or a week: the Bliss Blitz.

9. When many people talk about their childhoods, they emphasize the alienating, traumatic experiences they had. It has become fashionable to avoid reporting memories of the good times in one’s past. This seems dishonest—a testament to the popularity of cynicism rather than a reflection of objective truth.

I don’t mean to downplay the way your early encounters with pain demoralized your spirit. But as you reconnoiter the promise of pronoia, it’s crucial for you to extol the gifts you were given in your early years: all the helpful encounters, kind teachings, and simple acts of grace that helped you bloom.

In Homer’s epic tale, The Odyssey, he described nepenthe, a mythical drug that induced the forgetfulness of pain and trouble. Modern culture has turned the myth into reality: There are now many stimuli serving that purpose.

If Homer were alive today, we wonder if he’d write about a potion that stirs up memories of delight, serenity, and fulfillment? Imagine that you have taken such a tonic. Spend an hour or two remembering the glorious moments from your past.

10. Become a rapturist, which is the opposite of a terrorist: Conspire to unleash blessings on unsuspecting recipients, causing them to feel good.

Before bringing your work as a rapturist to strangers, practice with two close companions. Offer them each a gift that fires up their ambitions. It should not be a practical necessity or consumer fetish, but rather a provocative tool or toy. Give them an imaginative boon they’ve been hesitant to ask for, a beautiful thing that expands their self-image, a surprising intervention that says, "I love the way you move me."

11. "There are two ways for a person to look for adventure," said the Lone Ranger, a TV character. "By tearing everything down, or building everything up." Give an example of each from your own life.

12. To many people, "sacrifice" is a demoralizing word that connotes deprivation. Is that how you feel? Do you make sacrifices because you’re forced to, or maybe because your generosity prompts you to incur a loss in order to further a good cause?

Originally, "sacrifice" had a different meaning: to give up something valuable in order that something even more valuable might be obtained. Carry out an action that embodies this definition. For instance, sacrifice a mediocre pleasure so as to free yourself to pursue a more exalted pleasure.

13. Are other people luckier than you? If so, psychologist Richard Wiseman says you can do something about it. His book The Luck Factor presents research that proves you can learn to be lucky. It’s not a mystical force you’re born with, he says, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities.

Name three specific actions you’d like to try in order to improve your luck.

14. Conjure up an imaginary friend and have an intimate conversation with him and her for at least 10 minutes. Bear in mind that this talk can be a rational creative act, not an excursion into lunacy. Composer Robert Schuman had long dialogues with his imaginary friends, Florestan and Eusebius, who provided valuable ideas for his musical scores. W.S. Merwyn wrote a poem in which he recounted the surprising counsel of his teacher John Berryman: "He suggested I pray to the Muse/ get down on my knees and pray/ right there in the corner and he/ said he meant it literally."

15. Some scholars believe the original Garden of Eden was where Iraq stands today. Though remnants of that ancient paradise survived into modern times, many were obliterated during the American war on Iraq in 2003. A Beauty and Truth Laboratory researcher who lives near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers kept us posted on the fate of the most famous remnant: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Until the invasion, it was a gnarled stump near Nasiriyah. But today it’s gone; only a crater remains.

Let this serve as an evocative symbol for you as you demolish your old ideas about paradise, freeing you up to conjure a fresh vision of your ideal realm.

16. The primary meaning of the word "healing" is "to cure what’s diseased or broken." Medical practitioners focus on sick people. Psychotherapists wrestle with their clients’ traumas and neuroses. Philanthropists donate their money and social workers contribute their time to helping the underprivileged. I am in awe of them all. The level of one’s spiritual enlightenment, I believe, is more accurately measured by helping people in need than by meditation skills, shamanic shapeshifting, supernatural powers, or religious knowledge.

But I also believe in a second kind of healing that is largely unrecognized: to supercharge what is already healthy; to lift up what’s merely sufficient to a sublime state. Using this definition, describe two acts of healing: one you would enjoy performing on yourself and another you’d like to provide for someone you love.

17. Is the world a dangerous, chaotic place with no inherent purpose, running on automatic like a malfunctioning machine and fundamentally inimical to your happiness? Or are you surrounded by helpers in a friendly universe that gives you challenges in order to make you smarter and wilder and kinder? Trick questions! The answers may depend, at least to some degree, on what you believe is true.

Formulate a series of experiments that will allow you to objectively test the hypothesis that the universe is conspiring to help you.

18. Those who explore pronoia often find they have a growing capacity to help people laugh at themselves. While few arbiters of morality recognize this skill as a mark of high character, I put it near the top of my list. In my view, inducing people to take themselves less seriously is a supreme virtue. Do you have any interest in cultivating it? How might you go about it?

19. "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Take which you please; you can never have both." Give an example from your own life that refutes or proves Emerson’s assertion.

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Possibility is as wide as the space we create to hold it."
~Alixa and Naima
www.myspace.com/climbingpoetree

"Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy.
Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright.
Receptivity is a superpower."
~Rob Breszny

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Tinctoria Soy/cotton stretch. Palazzo pants
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