The Imposition of ET on the Human Mind

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica Inc.

Most ufologists (UFO buffs) believe or think that the ET (extraterrestrial) notion that UFOs are ET vehicles derives, in part, from the influx of sci-fi materials – fiction, books, magazines, movies and eventually television shows.

And there is little doubt that very early writers (Abu Yahya Zakariya' ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini), and especially H.G. W ells (War of the Worlds), along with later sci-fi writers (Hugo Gernsback, et al.) and producers of movies (The Thing From Another World and The Day the Earth Stood Still, et al.) and TV shows (The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, et. al) established a meme for extraterrestrials, but a selective meme at best (if a meme can be selective).

But one has to go back to Neolithic times to understand that the idea of ET comes to the mind of primitive man, in the form of deities or gods.

The concept of God, for early man, is delineated by the maverick psychologist Julian Jaynes, and outlined in his seminal work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

I’ve mentioned Jaynes several times here and find his work and thought essential for an intellectual overview of consciousness and human evolution, even as his ideas are disruptive for many in the psychological/philosophical disciplines.

Jaynes idea that the ancestral bicamerality of early man “is essentially similar to the reported auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia” [Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind, edited by Marcel Kuijsten, Julian Jaynes Society, 2016, Page 19] actually provides support for Jose Caravaca’s “external agent” as outlined in his (Caravaca’s) Distortion Theory, covered amply here.

But that aside, the idea of “voices” intruding on early man, and even exampled in Homer’s The Iliad (and early religious works) is ruminated in other works, some mentioned here previously:

The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams [Thames & Hudson, London, 2002]

Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion by David Lewis-Williams [Thames & Hudson, 2010]

Inside the Neolithic Mind by David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce [Thames & Hudson, 2005]

My point here is that the gods, found in early religious tomes and fictive texts is the seed from which sprouted the eventual idea that extraterrestrials exist and now intrude on mankind (especially for UFO and sci-fi buffs).

The thinking is metaphorical, if I understand Jaynes correctly, but the metaphor is steeped in hallucinatory underpinnings that were intrinsic to Neolithic (and early) man.

As mankind evolved into conscious beings – Jaynes theories and hypotheses here cause psychologists, philosophers (such as Dennis Dennett), and anthropologists intellectual fits – the metaphor (the voices that inserted themselves in the mind of early humans) became altered (evidenced by the many gods of religion), and I’m proposing evolved into the concept of ET that many UFO buffs accept as real.

The meme of ET (extraterrestrials) in UFOs is embedded in the psyche of many who read or visit here and are surely the bedrock of belief for most ufologists, whether they admit it or not.

Skeptics of the ET/UFO proposals fit into the traditions of religious agnostics or atheists so they can’t be chastised for their anti-beliefs; they have support from mankind’s history of thought.

But the idea that ETs created mankind and provided aid in man’s early days of existence, as the Ancient Astronaut theorists have it, is an extrapolation that is undercut by the works mentioned above and especially the thoughts of Jaynes, whose proposals bolster the themes of madness that writers and thinkers such as Foucault and Andrew Scull elucidate, which is that “madness” (a kind of besotted insanity) is and has been rife within humanity since time immemorial.

Jaynes “voices” that the Neolithic mind – the bicameral mind – experienced remain ready, willing, and able to intrude upon, to impose upon, modern man.

And UFO buffs advocating ET visitations are open to the intrusions.

RR

Happy Thanksgiving

RR