Flying Saucers/UFOs devolve into a bad mythology

Flying Saucers/UFOs devolve into a bad mythology

The flying saucer heyday ended in the early sixties, and UFOs have moved into that ephemeral realm of do they exist/did they exist.

The early flying saucer tales had meat on the bone. After the Hill’s “abduction” and a few other abduction accounts (Pascagoula, Walton), UFOs entered the fringe arena, morphing into things that assumed a quasi-malevolence or bizarre interaction that made no sense to rational minds.

Today UFOs show up as news particles without substance (meat or otherwise) so UFO buffs are left with reminiscing about the golden days of flying saucer/UFO lore.

The phenomenon (or phenomena) has come to rest in the literature created by it and about it.

There are no teeth in current UFO reports. The things cited today as UFOs are mere shadows of the former reported upon and elucidated objects (or, rather, things) seen and sometimes touched.

Events like those enumerated by Spanish UFO researcher Jose Antonio Caravaca no longer happen (or are not reported if they do).

What UFO buffs are left with are the stories of old, the patina of extraterrestrial visitation or a phenomenon with substance.

A mythology has ensued but it is a bad mythology, because the germ of the mythology was besmirched by bad story-tellers from the outset of the flying saucer/UFO era, when writers and chroniclers of the phenomenon hacked away at it, destroying the mystique.

The shards of past UFO tales have become encrusted by interpretations that are sour and devoid of mystery.

Those trying to create a scientific mantle are without acumen to do so. And those who wish to imbue UFOs with something uncharacteristically Earthian – an alien overlay, as it were, are not able to pull off the transformation.

UFOs as they were are no more.

They are remnants of a past enigma that once had intriguing cachet.

And that past intrigue is muddied by the regurgitation of sloppy interpretation and evaluation.

It’s not the reports that are remiss but the handling of them by government, militaries, and bad, unthinking, non-creative writers (researchers).

The mythology, like the saucer and UFO reports themselves, has been botched beyond any kind of redemption.

And so, UFOs sink into a kind of collective remission or calcified memory, at least for those who recognize when a fad (or mystery) has run its course…

RR

UFOs of the Mind

Excerpts from Integration of the Cognitive and the Psychodynamic Unconscious by Seymour Epstein

Superstitious Thinking

The widespread prevalence of superstitious thinking provides compelling evidence that the human mind does not process information by reason alone. In a recent Gallup poll ("Behavior," 1991), 1,236 U.S. adults were interviewed about their superstitions. One in 4 reported that he or she believed in ghosts, one in 6 that she or he had communicated with someone deceased, one in 4 that he or she had telepathically communicated with someone, one in 10 that she or he had been in the presence of a ghost, one in 7 that he or she had seen a UFO, one in 4 that they believed in astrology, and about one half said they believed in extrasensory perception. It is evident from such data that even extreme forms of nonrational thinking are common.

Explanations of the traumatic neurosis and the repetition compulsion follow simply and directly from basic

assumptions in CEST [Cognitive-experiential self-theory]. The nature of a trauma is that a person experiences something of such great significance to his or her perceived well-being that it cannot be ignored, and is so discrepant with fundamental schemata in his or her conceptual system that it cannot be assimilated.

The compulsive repetitions in memory are abortive attempts at assimilation (for elaboration of this view, see

S. Epstein, 1991a; for similar views influenced by CEST, see Janoff-Bulman, 1992, and McCann & Pearlman, 1990. Also see Horowitz, 1976).

The experiential system is assumed to be intimately associated with the experience of affect, including vibes,

which refer to subtle feelings of which people are often unaware. When a person responds to an emotionally significant event, the sequence of reactions is assumed to be as follows: The experiential system automatically searches its memory banks for related events, including their emotional accompaniments. The recalled feelings influence the course of further processing and reactions, which in subhuman animals are actions and in humans are conscious and unconscious thoughts as well as actions. If the activated feelings are pleasant, they motivate actions and thoughts anticipated to reproduce the feelings. If the feelings are unpleasant, they motivate actions and thoughts anticipated to avoid the feelings. 

According to CEST, material is dissociated when it cannot be assimilated. There are two kinds of dissociation: that between the experiential and rational systems, which corresponds to repression, and dissociation within the experiential system itself. If dissociated material is activated to the extent that a dissociation cannot be maintained, the unassimilable material can threaten the stability of the entire experiential system. The striving for expression of the dissociated material is not because it has an energy of its own that seeks expression, as proposed by Freud, but because there is a fundamental motive to

assimilate representations of emotionally significant experiences into a unified, coherent conceptual system.

Material that can neither be ignored nor assimilated keeps reemerging in abortive attempts at assimilation. 

This process continues until (if ever) assimilation is accomplished. The process is essentially adaptive, as it promotes assimilation and therefore the construction of a coherent model of the world that is consistent with experience.

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N.B. The above, from the paper cited, gives an overview of how Jose Antonio Caravaca's Distortion Theory should be addressed, in part.

The "external agent" of Senor Caravaca's hypothesis may be considered, in my view, as a mental construct with a psychical or psychological reality, and I'll provide more material, upcoming, to example that view.

RR

Jose Caravaca and The Laxton sighting: Distortion!

Jose Antonio Caravaca uses a previously delineated sighting to help explain his Distortion Theory.

Click HERE for the new posting

The source of the Travis Walton abduction tale?

This comic book was published in February 1974:

Travis Walton, twenty-two years old at the time, was allegedly abducted in November 1975.

Is it possible that young man Walton was inspired by the comic book?

Or did he have a Caravaca-distortion event, sparked by the comic book?

RR