Ufology: A lack of scientific protocols and nuance

It doesn’t surprise me or members of the RRRGroup that UFO “researchers” (ufologists, so-called) and their followers are unsophisticated thinkers who eschew cultured, classy thought processes when it comes to their hobby.

Persons who comment here, some, maybe most, miss the finer points of the postings, the nuances.

And when I’ve used the word forensic, some  -- I think Terry (the Censor) -- griped, not knowing the definition of the word.

Forensic thinking is nuanced thinking,

Read any UFO book or seek out any UFO venue on the internet and you’ll see that they all are rife with barbaric thinking, Neanderthalian approaches to the UFO enigma and its peripheral aspects,

The finer points, the subliminal clues and elements, are not addressed by almost all UFO hobbyists or researchers.

The clubbed-in-the-head approach is endemic to UFO reports and investigation, even (or especially) by the UFO clique or old-guard: Jerry Clark, Kevin Randle, Bruce Maccabee, Stanton Friedman, et al.) and surely by the lesser lights (David Rudiak, Don Ledger, among others).

The finer points of life and UFO accounts are cavalierly overlooked or dismissed, sometimes not understood or seen, even though they are blatant to the sophisticated follower of UFO reports..

Examples: the use of “flying disk” in the Roswell press release, the Socorro symbol, the Betty/Barney Hill associations (outside their alleged abduction experience), the food or medicines and drinks that experiencers ingest before their so-called abductions), the radar responses in the Washington D.C. sightings and the RB-47 account, the sulphur smell in the Flatwoods case and the flying objects in the Jose Caravaca “distortion” accounts, to name a few).

When I place a book or magazine article online in my postings, how many visitors here have read or subscribe to any of them? Few or none, I’m sorry to say.

Aside from Bruce Duensing who is obviously well-read and infused with insight to what he’s read, or Kandinsky, who seems to be immersed in things intellectual or cultured, not just UFO oriented, I don’t see a finely crafted mind-set among the commenters here.

That lack of nuance and refined thinking is what has kept the UFO enigma in place as an enigma.

And I’m as much as fault as the persons I’m excoriating here; I allow the superficial comments to be placed underneath some fine thinking by Anthony Bragalia or Jose Caravaca or by outside writers I’m pleased to present at this blog.

That said, I would hope that some of you will gear up your minds to cope with the finer points being made – try to see the trees and forget the forest.

That would go a long way to providing a valuable down-to-Earth experience at this truly irrelevant (in the great scheme of things) venue of ours.

RR 

Caravaca on his Distortion Theory

Jose Caravaca provides an Italian incident that he uses to clarify and expand his Distortion Theory for UFO encounters.

Click HERE to see his latest rendering...

No ET?

What we've been telling you...

http://www.rdmag.com/News/2012/04/General-Science-Expectation-Of-Extraterrestrial-Life-Built-More-On-Optimism-Than-Evidence/

Maxtrix UFOs? A UFO Stasis? Or something else?

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

The idea that UFOs are the products of an über-reality, not unlike that imagined in the Martrix franchise, cannot be dismissed out-of-hand, as far as some of us are concerned.

The idea of a separate, unique real reality, promulgated by Plato in his Cave analogy and others (philosophers, science fiction writers, physicists, film-makers, et cetera), becomes a viable thesis by virtue of its being thought by us, by humans.

You can pursue the concept yourselves by Googling transcendentalism and philosophical adjuncts, but most of you understand the idea and the Matrix films provide an easy introduction.

That we are being manipulated by a master game-player, that some of us think is God, is not hard to swallow, and allows for UFOs to be part of that game….the Game of God we’ve called it.

But if that is a bit too weird for the pragmatists among you, let me broach the UFO problem with this.

UFOs have been around, provably, since the dawn of thinking man.

The Aubeck/Vallee book, Wonders in the Sky, provides a litany of credible accounts that show the ubiquity of UFOs throughout history.

But the question to ask is why haven’t UFOs evolved in that long time period? (We’ve addressed this issue in an earlier post here.)

Pure UFOs remain pretty much as they have been witnessed over the millennia, despite the attempts to show them changing with the times, as the air-ship aficionados insist, writing that the air-ship (dirigible-like UFOs) were forerunners to the more stylized craft of the late 40s and 50s, right up to the present day.

But early UFO sightings and depictions of them are not different than today’s sightings and depictions, which means, as we see it, that UFOs are a static phenomenon, or many within the UFO genera are static.

That is, UFOs are an archetypal phenomenon – some of them anyway, maybe most of them.

The odd-UFOs are elements one can ascribe to mental aberrations (hysteria/hallucinations) or totally separate phenomena with attributes that mimic (not purposefully!) UFOs.

Jose Caravaca’s “Distortion Theory – delineated at his blog with us (http://caravaca-files.blogspot.com) -- could be put in to the Maxtrix “explanation” as his external agent as the causa essentia is not different than the machine/God of the Maxtrix hypothesis.

Then we have the multiple universe concept where UFOs are insertions from another parallel universe or adjacent, unseen world that sometime intersects with our universe, our reality.

What doesn’t make this idea valid for me is the appearance of machines or craft as part of such hypothetical intrusions.

Why would machines need to traverse the division between us and the others? Why not just step through or come into this reality as one might go from a car or plane into another geographical venue? The craft seems superfluous.

But does the machinery (the UFO artifact) act as a protective device, more than a transporting device?

As for alien visitors from galaxies far, far away, we’ve always eschewed the idea.

For some, the Earth is a Garden of Eden, a wondrous, one-of-a-kind planet which attracts aliens from other worlds because of its beauty, its flora and fauna, its minerals, or its water.

But there are so many other more ravishing places in the known universe that to think Earth is a primary stop for interstellar travelers is the quintessential ego-oriented view projected outward to life-forms who surely have seen better.

The continuing problem when it comes to UFOs is that the sightings have been lumped into a generic category: UFOs. Whereas the things represent phenomena, as we keep writing.

There is not one UFO species, but many, some real some not.

Since ufologists are generalists, no science has developed to cope with the many forms or species that make up the whole UFO panoply.

And does it matter, really?

UFOs are like insects or butterflies – many kinds with many different attributes but ultimately not important to humanity or one’s personal existence

RR

The Weekly Reader -- 1957, 1958 -- about the Final Frontier!

Jose Caravaca sent me some images of articles by J. Allen Hynek for the school publication, The Weekly Reader....1957 and 1958.

Rather than import all the pages, here's the link Jose provided, which is about space and space travel, not only Hynek's material. I thought some of you might be nostalgically interested.

Click HERE

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

Jose Caravaca has provided a few covers from the Italian weekly newspaper supplement, La Domenica del Corriere, which published for 90 years -- 1899 to 1989.

The covers and stories were always sensationalized.

If only the UFOs drawn by the supplement were as depicted....

Click HERE to see the covers.

Ufologers' Mind-sets

Not surprised or stunned by the lack of intellectual or creative thought in the UFO community but greatly disappointed, I wondered why some notable and no-so-notable UFO mavens behaved and/or thought the way they have and do.

In our small circle of regulars we have the brilliant Kandinsky and the creative genius Jose Caravaca mingling with the significantly well-read and erudite Bruce Duensing.

But that’s about it when it comes to deep thought.

Outside our immediate circle we find Patrick Huyghe, Tim Printy, and Cathy Reason, who is a UFO Update habitué, unfamiliar to me, except for what I read by her at UpDates; each of these persons evoking signs of deep cogitation and eminent reasoning.

In the noted category, but not representing anything close to intellectual brilliance is Jerome (Jerry) Clark, Kevin Randle, and Stanton Friedman, among a few others you can name.

Now I ask, what make Stanton Friedman think as he does – gullible at times (the MJ-12 papers) and a believer in a vast armada of extraterrestrials visiting Earth (and crashing near Roswell)?

And what gives Jerry Clark the patina of an elderly curmudgeon who has a vast knowledge of UFO sightings but hasn’t provided an hypothesis or theory about what they are; that is, he hasn’t conjured up any scenario to explain sightings as he mounts them in a raft of books, only as a chronicler (not a historian surely, like Toynbee or Tuchman).

Why was Philip Klass so viciously anti-UFO?

What allows Bruce Maccabee or Don Ledger to think they have cachet about UFOs; neither has made a mark that counts.

Richard Hall was brilliant but marked by an image of grump. Why?

Let me provide and over-arching opinion about why or how Ufologists think the way they do or did…

Stanton Friedman appears to be a happily married man who loves his wife and family, which creates for him a mind-set that is comfortable and cushy. This makes for an optimistic view of life. Even as Mr. Friedman stokes the UFO filed with complaints of a Cosmic Watergate, the epithet itself tells us that he is locked into the halcyon days of UFOs (1970s) and political life when dramatic incidents were benign actually, only serious to those personally involved.

The UFO topic was moribund in the 1970s or, at least, not riled by major UFO events. (No, The Travis Walton or Pascagoula episodes didn’t ring the public bell as did the Arnold 1947 sighting or the concoctions of Adamski in the 50s and the Betty/Barney Hill story of the 1960s.)

The 1970s were a blissful time as far as UFOs go and Mr. Friedman was at the beginning of his fame as a “ufologist” – capitalizing on that “fame” with his Roswell splurge.

This modicum of fame, coming from a quiet decade, created the mind-set that engulfs Mr. Friedman today. His mental configurations were established by the pleasant vicissitudes of an era where he, free of a real job, was able to grow and sustain himself as a ufologist, thus formulating his movement along the UFO spectrum in the 80s, 90s, right up to now (2012).

His mind-set has been concretized by this euphoric, personal time-line.

Jerry Clark, who wrote callow pieces about UFOs early on for Fate magazine and others, thought he had cemented a worthwhile legacy. But in the 21st Century he realized that he has no real legacy and this has made him bitter and condescending toward others. (His divorce, it seems, embittered him further.)

Clark is a non-entity among today’s younger UFO set. He is a no-show, without cachet about anything, although he’s tried his hand at a plethora of non-UFO activities and interests – to no avail, which exacerbates his bitterness and spiteful remonstrances at UFO UpDates where he is still seen by that site’s aging moderator as a UFO notable.

Richard Hall is all but unknown by today’s UFO aficionados. He was grump for not being able to capitalize on his UFO acumen, retiring near poverty and dying alone and destitute. But his legacy is cemented by his two-volume The UFO Evidence, which contains his pithy approach to UFO sightings with merit.

Philip Klass, long dead but still influencing today’s UFO skeptics, developed a mind-set aggravated by his need to be an expert about aircraft, which was usurped by things purported to be flying all over the Earth’s skies and followed by energetic believers in the idea that the things were highly advanced aircraft from outside the Earth.

Klass couldn’t abide the thought that aircraft, outside his desired expertise, was being exploited by men he saw as inferior to himself, in the intellectual area, especially about flying machines.

Klass took the rode that persons often take when their career toes are stepped upon – the rode of attack, take no hostages, and to hell with truth or civility.

Personages Randle, Maccabee, Ledger – Ledger the lesser known among any of the so-called ufologists – are settling into old-age, without garnering any public adulation for their extended UFO “research” and losing recognition among youthful UFO hobbyists.

Looking back to noteworthy UFO sightings and events, we do not see any person who stands out as worthy of our admiration for intellectual thought or creative interpretation of UFO sightings and events.

The UFO matter is not a deep well. It remains a pond (or puddle even) that hasn’t been dredged nearly deep enough to see what is at the bottom.

The mind-sets of ufologists is just that “mind-sets” – not reservoirs of elaborate thought or cogitation; ruminations without depth or creative imagination.

This is why the UFO enigma continues to "enig"….

RR