One of the minor benefits...

[ecosophia]

...of being a fringe intellectual is that you get to see your ideas now and again being picked up and splashed around by more respectable media. Granted, the borrowing is never acknowledged, and there's always at least a chance that whoever picks up one of your ideas might have gotten there by himself or herself, but the amusement value is still real.

Case in point?  This interesting piece in the highly respectable online periodical Asia Times, titled "Have UFOs been a cover for high-tech defense research?" It makes a case that a significant number of UFO sightings have been US military aerospace projects, which have been camouflaged by careful PR meant to make people think that anything unusual seen in the skies is either (a) an alien spacecraft or (b) not there at all.

It's an intriguing hypothesis. I certainly thought so when I wrote a book about that very subject, originally titled The UFO Phenomenon, which was published in 2009 and got met with an impressive display of dead silence. Neither the believers in extraterrestrials nor the self-proclaimed skeptics wanted to touch it with a ten-foot alien tentacle, despite which it sold quite tolerably well. So has the new, updated edition, The UFO Chronicles, which saw print in 2020. No, the believers and the skeptics still aren't talking about it, but now Asia Times is. (Not the book, no, but one of the core ideas in it.)

Of course there's a good reason for that, which the meme on the left highlights. The US government has very nearly finished the process of convincing most Americans that it can't be trusted to tell the time of day, much less any more serious subject.  There's been a vast amount of handwaving about that, and a lot of plaintive posts and articles about how to make people trust the government again. It's interesting to me, at least, to note that "maybe government officials should stop telling so many lies" hasn't appeared among the recommendations in any of the articles of this sort that I've read. I occasionally (well, all right, more than occasionally) roll my eyes at the excesses of contemporary conspiracy culture, but -- as I noted in a post a while back -- there are reasons why odd beliefs have become so common these days, and those reasons are serious and important.

Meanwhile, I'll sit here, sip tea, chuckle, and see which of my other unfashionable suggestions turns out to be accurate next...

Comments

[degringolade]

You know, it might very well be a good time to begin a discussion here on another one of your books. "Twilight's Last Gleaming", while not being completely prescient, does appear to have a bit of applicability to the present.

Just a thought

[ecosophia]

That's a conversation for another week -- but yeah, I could certainly do that.

Are there other books of mine that people would like to discuss? Just throwing this out for discussion...

[slinky_weasel]

I second the motion. Your wisdom and perspective are always welcome in uncertain times.

[(Anonymous)]

"I occasionally (well, all right, more than occasionally) roll my eyes at the excesses of contemporary conspiracy culture, but -- as I noted in a post a while back -- there are reasons why odd beliefs have become so common these days, and those reasons are serious and important."

This might be a little off topic, but is it also possible that part of what's driving them is a sense some people have of extra-human forces (gods, astrological energies, demons, etc.) driving society in certain directions? If you have an intuitive sense of these, and lack any kind of occult training, or worse, are convinced that it's complete nonsense, then that vague intuitive sense might end up making the various conspiracy theories seem to make more intuitive sense than anything the mainstream is willing to discuss.

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That seems quite plausible. Let me think about that -- yes, and meditate on it. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Or, in much more provocative and poetic terms, "Conspiracy theories are what happens when Atheists notice God's plan".

[(Anonymous)]

Aside from the recent military’s “we admit they are there, but we don’t know what they are” alleged disclosures, I’ve been noticing quite a few statements from various supposed outlier sources, eg., the videos by a Dr.Steven Greer (no relation, I’m assuming) that maintain that many of the ufo sightings are that of metaphysically-related “etheric ships”. Not a new notion, I know, but it seems to be undergoing a bit of a revival.

Thing is, I do find the idea of “etheric ships”to be credible on metaphysical grounds. However, this Dr Greer seems to go way overboard by insisting that they are (1) visitors from other planets monitoring our spiritual progress, (2) willing to give us the secrets of universal energy and the like once we straighten up, (3) the military knows about them and regards them as hostile, and therefore is impeding our full contact with them. Dr. Greer recommends a kind of populist end run around the military’s misguided obstinance, calling on people to meditate, call the ships forth, make contact, raise the spiritual vibe of earth, etc.

Again, I find Dr Greer’s image of some sightings of the evidently phasing-in-and-out-of-our-plane-of-reality ufos to be not entirely whacko - that sort of notion seems to have firmed up pretty well in the collective consciousness. But I’m wondering if the military’s relatively new tact of stating that “yes, we really do admit that they exist, but we’ve no idea what they are” - while slyly giving the impression that they know exactly what they are - is an adjustment to the new popular conception of ufos as having metaphysical origins. In other words, the military will continue to use the ufo cover while testing new aircraft which very well have a tic-tac shape.

Thx,
Will M

[ecosophia]

The etheric hypothesis has been around a good long time -- Meade Layne's The Ether Ship Mystery And Its Solution, which makes a good case for that hypothesis, was published iirc in 1950. From my perspective it explains some UFOs very well and others not at all, but then that's true of every hypothesis. (The first requirement in making sense of the phenomenon is recognizing that it isn't a single phenomenon.) It interests me that Dr. Greer is into that now. I think he's wrong about that the Etherians (Layne's term) are here to do, but if his advocacy gets people to meditate and get their heads on a little straighter, that can't hurt.

With regard to the military, my guess is that they're freaking out because so many people have figured out the role of US aerospace testing in the phenomenon, and they're trying to reframe the debate purely in terms of extraterrestrials vs. nothing there at all, the way they did in the early 1950s and then again in the the early 1980s. It doesn't seem to be working this time, though.

[(Anonymous)]

This take is something thst Joe Rogsn mentions from time to time, so it seems pretty mainstream at this point. I don't think he has the reading patience to get the idea from your blog or book, but he does listen to audiobooks so you never know. Luke Z

[ecosophia]

I'm very glad to hear this!

Your predictions

[(Anonymous)]

Twilight must be giving you some serious deja vu these days. Some of the characters switched roles, but otherwise...

Re: Your predictions

[ecosophia]

Yeah, I thought China was more likely to take the lead than Russia, and I completely missed the catastrophic own goal of economic sanctions -- those would have been even more disastrous if the US had tried to impose them on China, and would have made a great couple of scenes in the novel.

Re: Your predictions

[(Anonymous)]

I've only read the first edition of your book, "The UFO Phenomenon." Speaking of "Twilight...," I'm a bit concerned from what I heard about the second edition of "UFO", where I (think I heard) the contactees were trying to change the consciousness of the masses with the "aliens" to avoid nuclear war. In your book "Retrotopia," part of the plot is the US plunging into a savage civil war. Wouldn't "Retrotopia" also work as a work to manifest said war?

Jounalists

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Mr Greer

I remember someone once saying that the reason there are conspiracy theories is because there are no journalists anymore..

Jasmine

Re: Jounalists

[ecosophia]

That makes sense to me!

[brenainn]

I've actually shared the ideas from your book "The UFO Chronicles" with more than a handful of folks. Both online and in person. Most of the time, the response was indeed dead silence. One example is a friend who is very much into various government-centered conspiracy theories. But he simply couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that UFOs might be of terrestrial, government/military origin. It seems like a third option just scrambles the brains of both true believers and skeptics. It is fascinating to watch that kind of reaction in real life, even as it is also concerning. Very concerning, really. Oh well. Human beings are what they are, and what will happen, will happen.

It is kind of strange, but I've lately taken quite a bit of comfort in Theravada Buddhism (though I am not a Buddhist). Reflecting on various aspects of dhamma, especially impermanence and no self, seems to limit or even remove the despair and fear I used to feel over things like the common herd mentality and tendencies toward warmongering of our time. Even though I am not sure if those things are actually true.

Dead silence in the middle

[miow]

Yet another example of our contemporary problem with the Ternary? Why do we have this problem nowadays with everything being either/or?

I read your book.

[neptunesdolphins]

When I was investigating UFO religions and the religious bent regarding UFOs in general, I read your book, and took notes. I can see why no one wanted to touch your book with a ten foot pole. None of it fit the standard discussions on UFOs - pro and con. It simply was heterodox to the point that people felt uncomfortable or simply unable to understand it. I liked it since it was heterodox.

Meanwhile, in "Origins of the Gods," Greg Little and Andrew Collins theorize that maybe the Gods and UFOs come from plasma or at least another dimension. Still pondering that one.

[charlieobert]

Thoughts here on your comments about conspiracy theories - as you know, this is exactly the same power of the human mind that can put the Hebrew letter Aleph next to a picture of a juggler and find a pattern. The pattern will make sense. Then put that same picture of a juggler next to the letter Beth - and that pattern will make sense. The mind will see correlations - and if you dwell on one pattern long enough it will seem self-evident.

It's like looking up at the sky and seeing pictures in the stars - and then looking at the patterns in the sky and matching them up with patterns on earth.

Our minds are built to see patterns to make sense of the world. Given a pattern that doesn't make sense, or contradictory data - like being given false statements about "safe and effective" vaccines - the mind has to do SOMETHING to make a pattern out of the presented data to make sense.

Some of my favorite bloggers have some pretty odd conspiracy theories - I'm thinking of one particular QAnon devotee who thinks Trump is still running the US Government - and despite the fact that I find his core assumption to be batshit crazy, he still comes up with some observations and data that I find interesting - precisely because his pattern is so much different than mine, he spots things that I don't.

Our minds can't not make patterns. But, some patterns are more useful than others.

And - it can be useful to switch patterns sometimes.

[ecosophia]

Granted -- but that's one of the reasons why it's important to teach novice occultists that the planes are discrete and not continuous. The habit of pattern recognition is great when you're using it to create a meaningful symbolism for meditation, say, but it has to be reined in hard when you apply it to the material plane. (That's what the scientific method does, when it's allowed to work the way it should>)

[(Anonymous)]

I think another factor in the rise of conspiracy theories is that a lot of people are still taking the "experts" claims to knowledge and skills that the masses lack seriously, and so when things go off the rails in a way that people outside the managerial circle saw coming from a mile away, it's hard for them to wrap their head around the fact that the experts genuinely did not see it coming. A lot of people think that even if they aren't any better than the masses, they should be at least as intelligent and competent when it comes to the things they are supposedly experts in, and simply cannot fathom that the people guiding society are actually this idiotic/crazy.

[ecosophia]

That's definitely involved, and I find it baffling. Maybe it's just that I've had enough run-ins with rich people to know that most of them would have trouble wiping their own noses without help, but it baffles me that so few people notice just how feckless our current rulers have become.

Grusch Light: The Sound of Deception

[(Anonymous)]

This Grusch character who turned up out of nowhere seems rather spooky to me. I guess October is a spooky time of year.

Welcome to the home of Grusch Light, the coldest and smoothest light UFO exponent there is. Here at Grusch Light we’re serious about cracking a cold case from Hangar 18 and heading into the mysterious bunker. We get excited about packing a cooler full of grays, that feeling when you spot an alien spacecraft, supporting the intelligence "community", the first autopsy of the season and cranking up some country music. If that sounds like a good time to you, stick around and take a hike through the home of Grusch Light.

Grusch Light has stewed longer in mysterious military circles to create a lighter body and fewer calories while always delivering that classic military-industrial aftertaste.

Justin Patrick Moore

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

It's funny you should post this, as just the other day I came across a long reddit thread about alien abductions having a more terrestrial origin:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/14ueiba/alien_abduction_mind_control_programming/?rdt=43504

Could it be true? Perhaps. I guess it's about as likely as a government agency testing human pharmaceutical safety on 8 mice, or perhaps even no mice. The particularly interesting line to me was the comment that the technology and form of the 'aliens' have closely followed that of popular culture.

Anyway, I'm sure high tech human research is definitely going on under convenient cover stories. However, people have been 'abducted' from around the world for millenia. As Jacques Valee wrote about in his books, there is a lot of overlap with stories of the Fae (and whilst not in his book, other cultures such as Japan, which has the Tengu, have creatures which vanish people away and sometimes return them with missing/distorted time). And given that many abductees/contactees are told messages about how we need to preserve the Earth and stop setting off nukes, these seem like the kind of messages which nature spirits would probably give us, except nowadays we are told that it's to be let into the "League of civilised planets" or something. And I'm certain that what Fae can do, demons will also do for their own ends. So it's unlikely to be just one actor in all this phenomenon.

What's also interesting is this image I found, of the different eyewitness accounts of the 'aliens' they saw, going back to the 1940s. It seems like whoever/whatever it was tried out lots of forms before arriving at the 'grey' alien we're all now familiar with. Several are far more similar to the hairy dwarves which went by many names for centuries, but were all basically agreed upon to be fairies/nature folk.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fm52h0llhtk981.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D596e6fd3e86f267b9fd345992d27557ccab87c40

(You'd think interdimensional species would keep their form more consistent!)

Have you seen the entity which Aleistair Crowley saw as well, which he called "Lam"? (I also happened upon this last week, in an odd synchronicity):
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/40/1e/b7401ea557fafdac651860f68ee93e71.jpg

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear that you're aware of Jacques Vallee's work! His book Passport to Magonia was one of the two clue-by-fours that popped me permanently out of the extraterrestrial camp -- the other was John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies. If you're asking whether I've ever encountered Lam myself, no, but then I don't use Crowley's methods so am unlikely to get his results!

[(Anonymous)]

"There's been a vast amount of handwaving about that, and a lot of plaintive posts and articles about how to make people trust the government again. It's interesting to me, at least, to note that "maybe government officials should stop telling so many lies" hasn't appeared among the recommendations in any of the articles of this sort that I've read."

What I find so fascinating about the topic is that a ton of people don't seem to think the government can lie. It can be wrong; a rogue official might, on occasion, be lying (especially if ordered to by Trump); but it simply cannot be the case that Western governments lie on a routine basis, no matter what evidence is placed in front of the people who still believe the standard narratives of our society. This is a fascinating and fairly new development; but it's the only model I can use to make sense of the last few years.

[ecosophia]

I know. I find that habit of thought astonishingly stupid, but you're right, it's also very common.

[(Anonymous)]

I just happened upon this article..
thought i eould post it here for interest
fwiw..

UFO expert gives cryptic clue to location where crashed alien spacecraft is stored

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/ufo-expert-gives-cryptic-clue-31173914

[ecosophia]

Oh, my. That ought to start any number of people scampering all over the place...

Lies and "conspiracy theories"

[(Anonymous)]

Another reason conspiracy theories exist is because conspiracies have existed throughout history and they don't advertise themselves -- they hide in the shadows. I recommend reading material by the early PR guys like Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman and Ivy lee. Bernays' book, "Propaganda" is readily available. Lippman's book a little more expensive and rare. And then there is the somewhat notorious Leo Strauss, who taught at U. of Chicago, and who served as mentor to various neo-conservatives; I think Paul Wolfowicz, among other familiar names, was a direct student. Strauss taught a "double truth" doctrine; one truth for the masses and a different truth for the elites. Reading Strauss is tough going and it will lead you right back to Plato. Given all of this advocacy of deception, who would not be a "conspiracy theorist?

Re: Lies and "conspiracy theories"

[ecosophia]

You might find it interesting to read this post I wrote, partly about Bernays and more generally about why the elites have gone out of their way to foster conspiracy culture -- after all, it makes them look far more powerful and competent than they actually are. Now of course conspiracies exist -- I've got a book in print citing a hundred examples from history, for heaven's sake -- but one of the great lessons of the real history of conspiracies is that conspiracy is a weapon of the weak. Ruling elites that are secure in their power don't have to bother with conspiracy -- they just do what they want -- and most conspiracies, historically speaking, are launched by people outside the elites who want to seize power or simply defend themselves against the elites!

[(Anonymous)]

High risk that another idea you wrote in the past, that of an aircraft going at the bottom but not on the coast of Tanzania but maybe in the Mediterranean or on the coast of Korea.

[ecosophia]

It's just possible there could be two of them on the bottom of the eastern Mediterranean before long. The US is sending the Eisenhower to back up the Ford, and Hezbollah and Iran have both announced that if the US takes an active role in the fighting their assets -- including naval assets -- will be fair game.

Just saw this

[degringolade]

I am kinda curious about folks take on it.

Sifting through old texts to find things I can work with is harder than one thinks. I really appreciate it when folks give me their take in our current flavor of English.