UFO Conjectures

Monday, March 05, 2018

Leslie Kean up the ante on UFOs (and the ETH also, sadly)

From my Google UFO notification feed:

https://wtop.com/government/2018/03/pentagons-mysterious-project-breathes-new-life-into-ufo-research/

http://www.ibtimes.sg/pentagons-secret-search-ufo-still-continues-says-investigative-journalist-leslie-kean-24972

RR

posted by RRRGroup at Monday, March 05, 2018

12 Comments:

  • "As the behaviour of the press is a sort of Gallup test with reference to world opinion, one must draw the conclusion that news affirming the existence of UFOs is welcome, but that scepticism seems to be undesirable. To believe that UFOs are real suits the general opinion, whereas disbelief is to be discouraged. This creates the impression that there is a tendency all over the world to believe in saucers and to want them to be real, unconsciously helped along by the press that otherwise has no sympathy with the phenomenon."

    Jung, Preface to the first English Edition of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (1958)

    By Blogger Bryan Sentes, at Monday, March 05, 2018  

  • -> This creates the impression that there is a tendency all over the world to believe in saucers and to want them to be real <-

    At least this would justify the reports world wide, from skepticism, and of course some relief from a mocking laughter of ridicule from some, leaving more at ease, those who are in a stronger position, to establish what the hell is going on up there, or out there, if it come to that..............

    By Blogger Daniel, at Tuesday, March 06, 2018  

  • Daniel you miss the point....

    UFOs are a chimera, pretty much.

    That's all we have right now, even after all the so-called investigations and ufological "research."

    No one has provided a "touch it, it's real" flying saucer and not even a good photograph or film.....nada!

    All we have, as Jung provides so well in Bryan's quote from Jung's book, is belief in flying saucers or UFOs (and an accommodating news media).

    It makes Zoam Chomsky's point.

    RR

    By Blogger RRRGroup, at Tuesday, March 06, 2018  

  • "As the behaviour of the press is a sort of Gallup test with reference to world opinion..."

    "To believe that UFOs are real suits the general opinion..."

    and the "general opinion" comes from where?

    "This creates the impression that there is a tendency all over the world to believe in saucers and to want them to be real...

    Yep. It "creates the impression..."

    Consider the subject of those sentences to be the media rather than ufos. Jung may have been unconscious of that."

    "It makes Zoam Chomsky's point."

    If it does, it makes my point that, like CDA, Zoam is naive.


    Best Regards,

    Don

    By Blogger Don, at Tuesday, March 06, 2018  

  • Don:

    You're not advocating the ETH, right? Just a UFO reality, yes?

    Jung posits (and I'm leaning heavily is his direction, that UFOs are "manifestations" of the mind, mostly; that is, with a few exceptions...in my view von Neumann probes.

    "Creating an impression" goes a long way with me (and Zoam, CDA, Lance, Fernandez, et al. too).

    This goes to my ongoing spurts about the common folk seeing UFOs and having UFO experiences.

    Jose Caravaca's new book -- which I'll be reviewing here soon -- has some relevant thought and material making Jung's point (and that of legitimate skeptics).

    RR

    By Blogger RRRGroup, at Tuesday, March 06, 2018  

  • Rich, the only response to the ETH is "It's a long shot...an extremely long shot". I just don't have the skeptics' attitude about it. I'm not part of that dispute. What I do dislike is the treatment of fiction as fact, which is what Palmer did with Shaver, and what Adamski did with his own sf story -- what all the contactees did, as far as I know, is write very bad sf. Or, to take a current example here, the discussion about Baalbek in which we see the repurposing of Mesopotamian fiction as factual history. Sitchin, Hancock, and the whole lot of them. Besides sex and violence, nothing sells like 'mystery' (or as I prefer, 'spookiness').

    I think people see what they expect to see. Most of the time it works, but sometimes its: At first I thought it was...but then...

    "But then" is where ufos emerge. Maybe that is the same as ""manifestations" of the mind".

    Skeptics. The irrational makes them angry. That's about it.

    Scientists and mathematicians have a difficult time when they have to deal with the subjective and anecdotal (I could give examples), but that is no reason to revert to Freud or Jung or Campbell.

    Best Regards,

    Don

    By Blogger Don, at Wednesday, March 07, 2018  

  • Don:

    -> to take a current example here, the discussion about Baalbek in which we see the repurposing of Mesopotamian fiction as factual history. Sitchin, Hancock, and the whole lot of them. <-

    Don, you might find it interesting, to listen "carefully" to this video, in question...


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkJakeEI62o

    By Blogger Daniel, at Wednesday, March 07, 2018  

  • Daniel, clearly you are a believer in the ETH and Ancient Astronauts, and, though I know no reasons I can marshal will dissuade you (which says something about the word 'hypothesis' in ETH and AAH...), I can't hold back.

    Every time an AA enthusiast trots out the argument "we can't figure out how the ancients did it, so it must have been done by someone with more advanced technology" three ways of thinking go awry.

    1. We sell the cleverness of our distant ancestors short by believing (and one must ask on what grounds? Which engineers can be cited in support of this perennial claim?) that just because we can't figure it out, they couldn't have figured it out.

    2. We imagine AA because WE have sent astronauts into outer space and the moon; i.e. the whole AAH and ETH is a projection of our own technoscientic culture, as if ALL intelligence in the universe is like our own and technology is likewise universal and can be said to be more or less "advanced". In the same way intelligence is relative (a chickadee is more intelligent than a human being when it comes to stashing and retrieving seeds) so technology is relative (the Australian aborigines have the oldest continuous culture on the planet, and taught Allied AF pilots how to survive in the outback when they crashed coming back to bombing runs over Japanese targets).

    3. If we don't know, that we don't know is a perfectly sound conclusion to draw; there's no need and indeed it is logically unwarranted to conclude antique megastructures MUST have been made my ancient astronauts.

    And all that is passing over in silence the wilful translations of the ancient texts (Stichin has been roundly castigated for this by better scholars, for example), and the inconsistency between UFO reports (where UFOs DON'T need landing pads) and the AAH, as well the absence of corroborating evidence (ANYTHING else that would suggest ancient sites were constructed with "advanced" technology).

    I take the UFO mythology seriously in my own way; I've written on it in both scholarly and creative manners; and I, like Jacques Vallee, am persuaded there is a hard, mysterious core, a signal amid the noise (amid the other signals), but for all that I have to agree with those that see the AAH as a kind of very poor SF.

    By Blogger Bryan Sentes, at Thursday, March 08, 2018  

  • "Skeptics. The irrational makes them angry. That's about it."

    Actually, Don, Scientific skepticism is about fact, reason, and our ability to known the world as it is. But it's also about compassion and humanity.

    There's a lot more to the skeptical movement than debunking the "UFO" MYTH.

    By Blogger zoamchomsky, at Thursday, March 08, 2018  

  • Hi, Bryan:

    Let it be understood; "I am not a believer of ufo" although I, & some witnesses with me, have had a sighting, that is known & understood to be a ufo. We understand, this does not make it a space-craft of whatever type, just a curious sighting of something that needs answers. At the same time, we can not discount ufo reports around the world, because of our own sighting called a ufo. This accounts for why I and others here, who have had there sightings, are here looking for a "confident" explanation. So far, No such joy as yet!...ALSO...

    Richs, comment above:

    -> No one has provided a "touch it, it's real" flying saucer and not even a good photograph or film.....nada! <-

    This is true, I agree! I'm sitting on the fence with this...ALSO...

    I am not a "believer or disbeliever" in the ETH and Ancient Astronauts, but I do find their; ( WHAT IF?) encouraging, or at least interesting, from the point of a, probability, to consider...

    As for the Huge stone, near Baalbek in Lebanon, does everyone miss the point, of how the stone was lifted, & moved into place!? Zoam came very close, for 400-500ton weight, but not for the crushing tonnage of over; (1000 tons)...
    Sure, it was lifted into place in ancient times, you can see that, but HOW?

    Can we do this today? Lift & move into place?...that is;...
    "in the same environment"..............?

    By Blogger Daniel, at Thursday, March 08, 2018  

  • Well, then, Daniel, I apologize for misconstruing your earlier interventions and what I took to be the gist of the YouTube video you shared and asked that it be listened to "'carefully'".

    By Blogger Bryan Sentes, at Thursday, March 08, 2018  

  • Tis OK Bryan, no need to apologize, I enjoy your comments, and only needed to clarify my stance. I am often misunderstood.............

    By Blogger Daniel, at Friday, March 09, 2018  

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