One of the minor benefits...
Oct. 12th, 2023 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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...
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-12 05:24 pm (UTC)Just a thought
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-12 06:13 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-12 10:17 pm (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-12 10:55 pm (UTC)Your predictions
Date: 2023-10-12 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 12:34 am (UTC)Are there other books of mine that people would like to discuss? Just throwing this out for discussion...
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 12:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 12:45 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 12:45 am (UTC)Retrotopia
Date: 2023-10-13 12:48 am (UTC)- V.O.G
Re: Your predictions
Date: 2023-10-13 12:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 03:16 am (UTC)Re: Your predictions
Date: 2023-10-13 04:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 05:52 am (UTC)Jounalists
Date: 2023-10-13 11:52 am (UTC)I remember someone once saying that the reason there are conspiracy theories is because there are no journalists anymore..
Jasmine
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 01:10 pm (UTC)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.
I read your book.
Date: 2023-10-13 01:45 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 02:26 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Retrotopia
Date: 2023-10-13 03:34 pm (UTC)In Northeast Oho, you can hear the Lakeland Republic arriving on the padded paws of unicorns - if you know how to listen.
Many thanks for teaching me how.
Rhydlyd
Yes please!
Date: 2023-10-13 04:46 pm (UTC)Dead silence in the middle
Date: 2023-10-13 04:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 05:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-13 05:07 pm (UTC)Re: Jounalists
Date: 2023-10-13 05:40 pm (UTC)Re: Dead silence in the middle
Date: 2023-10-13 05:41 pm (UTC)