Living in UFO Land: Call Me a Hippy, But . . .

So many researchers, investigators, organizations, pundits, witnesses, UFO television programs, books, theories, speculations, …

So many categories of experience. Genres of aliens and contact.

And an equal amount of disagreement about all of the above. "Disagreement" ranging from mild difference of opinion to out and out attacks of the most vile nature, verging on the illegal.

Then there is the Drawing Of Lines In The Sand. UFO groups (Gatekeepers, UFO Police, Scientific Organizations) get together and make damn sure they keep out any person or theory they don't like. They insist their take is the right take. They insist that "we'll never get anywhere" unless… unless their theory is accepted, unless the rest of us agree that such and such -- take your pick; contactees, abductions, ET, disclosure, -- is ridiculous. But more to the point, not just ridiculous but not to be entertained. Not to be included.

I'd like to see, not a "rigid scientific" UFO organization, or one that keeps all but one or two ideas within, but one that includes a diverse bunch. Call me a hippy, (which wouldn't be wrong) but the only way to begin to maybe get at It All is to look at the UFO phenomena/phenomenon with compassion, respect, and patience. That does not mean agreement. 

Regan Lee with friend, Venice Beach CA 1971, photo by John Lee

Instead, the majority of UFO people are running around fighting, attacking, sneering at others within. In other words, as had been said many times by others, the inhabitants of UFO Land are eating our young. With friends like that who needs enemies?

I think part of the problem is the crazy need to be accepted by mainstream society, by the institutions considered respectable (Big Science, academia, politics even) and main stream media. If only, think many UFO Land residents, we stick to …. pick your favorite: rigid scientific methods, and so on. Then we'd be accepted and taken seriously and everything will be cool and oh yeah, we'll also find out what it's all about.

Not one bit likely. All that will happen if we stay on that road is the continual fighting amongst ourselves, as well as the hoaxes, attention seekers and cheesy carny-like creeps that infest our fringes. Which is a part of the whole thing anyway, so not much use in bemoaning that reality.

This is what happens in UFO Land. An individual, or often enough, a few individuals who get together, find a little plot of land that has a sign on it: "ET", "Disclosure," "Abductions", "MILABS," "Fairies", "Mind Control", "Nazis" -- you know. Then a barbed wire fence is erected around this little bit of land. Often, rocks are thrown at the neighboring plots of land. No one shares, everyone fights, and the Big Answer is still a long ways off. Which brings us to . . .

The Big Answer. Expecting there is a Big Answer is equally futile. There might be one, I'm optimistic, but that's not my priority. It's the process, the quest, the journey, the effect of these still unexplained encounters upon not just the individual but the culture surrounding the individual, that is the issue. For now.

Of course, there is much more beyond that, but baby steps, baby steps. Such as agreeing to disagree while working together, not apart.

It's Been Quiet Around Here, But Not So in UFO Land...

It's Been Quiet Around Here, But Not So in UFO Land...
So we go:

Persistent Denial of UFO Activity
As usual, James Carlson responds, over and over, to anything pro-UFO activity a la Salas, Hastings, etc. The latest responses to UFO writers, like Alfred Lehmberg, and Robert Hastings himself,  here at the UFO Magazine blog. Carlson also left a long comment at The Orange Orb (same one twice) but I decided to no longer give him any attention. Well, other than pointing out his pathological denial of UFOs.

Paola Harris
I thought about not saying anything at all, but then said to myself "to hell with it, people need to know" so I wrote about my reaction to the Paola Harris presentation comedy act at the McMinnville UFO Festival in Oregon this past May.
Speaking of the McMinnville conference, Robert Salas was one of the presenters, and he was very good. (So was Stan Gordon.)

Crop Circle Makers and Fakers
Colin Andrews has agreed to speak with crop circle artist (or faker, depending on one's view) Matthew Williams. Looking forward to this. Williams creates crop circles, and I've always had issues with that. Yet Williams has had many unique and proound experiences, and my lesson learned is: don't judge so quickly. There's a lot more here than just someone having a joke...

Reagan, Spielberg and ET 
Speilberg on what Ronald Reagan said after the White House screening of E.T.:

"It was in the White House screening room and Reagan got up to thank me for bringing the film to show the President, the First Lady and all of their guests, which included Sandra Day O’Connor in her first week of as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and it included some astronauts… I think Neil Armstrong was there, I’m not 100% certain, but it was an amazing, amazing evening.

He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, 'I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,' and then he looked around the room and said, 'And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.'

And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling as he said it." 

Richard Dolan at X-Conference 2010 (A.D. Disclosure)

James Carion's New UFO/NOT UFO Organization

Ex-director MUFON director James Carion announces a brand new UFO organization: CUT. CUT stands for Center for UFO Truth.

Here’s what I wrote on Facebook:

Oh dear. Not "affiliated in any way with UFology" yet "CUT" (there's an interesting Fortean twilight language kind of word to use)  studies "early days of UFOs ... answering the question long ignored by historians -- was the UFO subject purposely created by the United States. .. part of a cold war operation?" That's been asked before. But anyway, how is this NOT to do with UFology?! It'll be interesting for sure but how far is one willing to go in trusting government sources? Der.  And this gem: "CUT will work outside of the three ring circus that is Ufology and will not accept the contributions of anonymous individuals or alleged whistleblowers nor will it examine alleged leaked documents." So he's distancing himself yet once again from the unwashed masses and "...circus" of UFology, going so far as to call what he's doing - studying an aspect of UFOs --- not UFology.  Newsflash Mr. Carion, you ARE part of the "circus," -- we all are. How an ex-director of MUFON, who is currently involved in a new organization exploring an aspect of UFOs, say with a straight face he is not part of the "circus" is a deliciously ironic, er, circus like, stance to take.

I’ll add that the word UFO is in the name of the group! UFO is part of the acronym, yet, Carion insists, this new enterprise (heh, talk about twilight language) contains the word UFO in its very title. The title is also fun, in its ironic pot/kettle black way, for its word "truth." What a display of arrogance and self important stuff shirted puffery!

Carion never did like saucer heads. He reiterates his distaste for the distasteful and bothersome UFO witnesses and UFO explorers of various kinds:

CUT will work outside of the three ring circus that is Ufology and will not accept the contributions of anonymous individuals or alleged whistleblowers nor will it examine alleged leaked documents.

Yes, why bother with interviewing witnesses to see if they are credible or do the work involved to determine authenticity of documents? 

This is the problem with would be UFO Police; they set up their own little paradigm, decide to reject a good portion of what’s out there, and all the time, they’re congratulating each other on finally getting to the “truth.”

When you combine a systems like that with a dismissive attitude that reeks of classism and an obvious distaste for 90% of the thing you’re studying, you cannot possibly get to any “truth.” 

The Big Lie
Recently, the cyclic meme that “UFOlogy is dead” has been making the rounds, and I wonder: is this thing we loosely call UFOlogy really dead? Or is it just something people say out of frustration? I think the latter. UFOlogy is constantly shifting, and in fact, some big shakeups have been happening recently (David Jacobs, Cherry, and, um,  Carion. . . ) but that doesn't make it dead.

Do some think UFOlogy is “dead” because of the oft bemoaned statement that, “after such and such many years, we don’t have any answers?”

Carion remarks:

Ufology has nothing to show for more than 60 years of amateur investigation and research. By not establishing professional evidentiary standards, Ufology will neither join the halls of academic "ologies" nor will it discover the truth of what lies behind the subject of UFOs.

The us of the qualifier “amateur” is unfair. It’s snide. We’re all amateurs. Does he mean amateur in the popular sense: meaning, less than? Or in the true sense, meaning not paid for one’s work? Amateur has come to mean the former, more often than not, but being “amateur” does not always mean inferior. You cannot take away the study of UFOs from “the people” no matter how much you want to. And if you do, why do you want to? What's the intent?

We don’t have the Big Final Answer That Fits All to the UFO phenomenon. Carion’s mistake, as with many others: thinking there is one.

I don’t know what halls of “ologies” he means, probably the institutions of science, academia, and ironically, the very governmental agencies he plans on getting all this information from, but the reality is: CUT, too, is just another UFO group in the eyes of those “ologies.”

But back to the meme that “after sixty years we haven’t found the answer” -- I wonder if that’s true. No, we don’t have full disclosure, or the Beyond a Doubt UFO From Outer Space craft or an alien body. Well, not one revealed to the world on CNN anyway.

The UFO phenomenon has layers upon shadowy layers upon deeper darker layers. It’s a given UFOs and aliens are “real” and here,  We’ve moved way beyond that. We know they are; we don't’ know what they are.

Parsing the UFO experience down to a small segment --   U.S. government agencies intentionally creating false UFO scenarios to distract  -- is not a new idea, nor a surprise. And finding further proof that was the case at times won’t definitively provide an answer to what UFOs are.

Report, Damn It! And Do It Like This!

At the  McMinnville UFO Festival in Oregon last spring, the Bales brothers gave a simple, yet on the edge of your seat presentation about their giant triangle sighting in Idaho. During the Q & A one man chided the brothers for not being more involved in UFO research. He expected them to be sudden experts, with a mission and message of spiritual alien based insight. An astoundingly arrogant and condescending comment to make. After a slight pause, one of the brothers, who looked a bit confused at the comment, simply said "We're here, aren't we?"


Peter Davenport, who provides us with a much needed database of UFO reports, is perennially irritated at people who won't "take ten minutes" to write a UFO report in "black ink on white paper." His frustration is understandable, but not everyone feels comfortable putting such experiences down on paper. Treating UFO witnesses like stupid school children discourages people from making UFO reports.


I've been involved in a few local UFO minded groups through the years. The seeds of such gatherings are simple: people getting together to talk about UFOs. The purpose of these groups is  to have people with experiences to share with others,  but I've found there isn't much honesty happening in these groups. Because as soon as you have the "leaders" of such groups state what will, and what will not, be accepted, you are being dishonest. Telling witnesses to keep things positive -- in other words, don't talk about the scary, negative parts of your experience -- is a type of control. Creating a forum of only what you want to hear, in the form you want to hear it, is being dishonest. It sets up false forums of data; if you are continuously rejecting accounts you don't like based on your biases, you're not after genuine UFO experiences.


None of these methods consider the individual's experience. We listen and decide they're too negative, or not spiritual enough, or not literate enough, or are too lazy because they won't write something down, or . . .


And maybe they are some of those things, sometimes. Maybe some witnesses are too lazy or incompetent to write a report. Maybe the witness is still experiencing trauma from their encounter and are stuck, for the time being, in a dark place. Maybe their paranoia and fears, their nervousness and confusion, is part of the process and where they need to be for awhile. Making witnesses feel bad, lazy or stupid -- or crazy because they're depressed or anxious -- pushes them away.


All we can expect from people who have decided to come forward in whatever small way with their UFO experience is honesty. Negative, positive, spiritual, literate, sloppy, bad spellers, -- doesn't much matter, if they are being honest.

Notes
BOA interview: Tim Binnall interviews Peter Davenport
http://www.binnallofamerica.com/boaa12.9.9.html

Peter Davenport: National UFO Reporting Center
http://www.nuforc.org

McMinnville, Oregon's UFO Fest.com: annual UFO Festival in May
http://www.ufofest.com/ufofest07/

Of Gatekeepers and Decoder Rings . . .

Lesley at Debris Field has a few comments on Michael Salla's article, which is about the UFO Police. (Salla's article:
Hysteria drives UFO gatekeepers debunking exopolitics pioneers.) Of UFO Gatekeeprs or the UFO Police in general, Lesley comments:

They even attack people that have had experiences that don't fit into their box. They try to cloak it as some noble mission to save Ufology, but anyone that listens to them for more than 5 minutes realizes it is really a mission to try to make themselves look far superior to anyone else. They are the only ones that "get it" and the rest of us (except those that totally agree with them) are a stupid mass of people in need of a leader -- them.

And Bruce Duensing of Intangible Materiality writes, as always, so eloquently about UFO Gatekeepers in Secret Decoder Rings:

Outside of truth in the imaginal realm posed as a franchise, a exclusionary divisor that is not prone to uncertainty, the adapted postures of those who claim to possess the secret decoder ring,there is a certain instinctual desire of ourselves as fish within this atmospheric ocean to be lured, compelled and strike a pose in the reflected glory of exclusivity, designed in earnest by a franchised cabal, an inner circle of humanity as opposed to dim candle flickering by the lowest common denominator carried by an unwashed rabble of sheep. A carrier of secrets which in of themselves are perhaps default settings, a backstop in a competitive game, a consensus set against ambiguity, a self executing warning concerning pawns, boosters and the appetites that stir for satiation. ~ Bruce Duensing

Alfred Lehmberg has a piece up right now at UFO Magazine that relates to this theme of the would be overseers of UFOlogy: Traces and "Stuff" Alfred is mainly addressing the pathological skeptic but a lot of what he writes can be applied to those that deny someone else's perspective on things:

Whose call? The call of my muse, you biliously sneering skeptibunker of small imagination, smaller intelligence and sub-microscopic, even concave, courage! Something could be said regarding meager scrotum size. The reader knows who's addressed...

Whose voice? Why, the inner one of course — the only one of which I'm sure! I can't hear it in the clutter of your media's exhortations to burn and consume. I can't hear it in the frothing of your Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell... ...that UFO's are agents of Satan…