UFO Conjectures: Jan 13, 2018

The word, writing, and visuals: which predominate (in UFO circles)?

The great Jacques Derrida provides intellectual sustenance to those interested in words and writing.

I’m scouring his difficult oeuvre for clarification(s) about writing. (It’s a task.)

Why am I doing this?

I saw, again, Saturday night, on the Retro movie channel, The Day the Earth Stood Still, which I dealt with, here, a short while ago.

I noticed that my dismissal of conversation in the movie about atomic power and its use by humans to travel spaceward was broached by Klaatu when he met Professor Barnhardt for the first time, the topic centering about humans bringing atomic violence with them when they finally conquer space and travel to other planets.

(I concentrated on Klaatu’s speech, to the assembled scientists at the end of the movie, about human aggression and violence.)

The short dialogue, about atomic space travel and human violence using it, has become a meme for many in the UFO community, but not all.

I subverted the brief conversation myself, although it is the motivating purpose of Klaatu’s visit.

Why?

More interesting, perhaps, is the flying saucer meme that derives from Klaatu’s space ship, and that in the 1956 film, Earth vs the Flying Saucers or the perceived shape of The Thing From Another World’s ice-encased spaceship in that 1951 movie.

Do images supersede words in importance – something Derrida seems to eschew?

This from a commercial blog:

“It is believed that human communication has existed for over 30,000 years, but text-based communication has only been around for 3,700 years. So for the vast majority of human history, people have had to communicate without written word, meaning our brains had plenty of time to brush up on visual message.”

What messages have we mentally encapsulated about flying saucers or UFOs from the written word or movies?

Have the images of flying saucers in films taken hold more prominently than words about them in films and other media?

RR

Kenneth Arnold’s iconic “flying saucer” sighting was a hoax?

I’m slogging through Bruce Maccabee’s Three Minutes in June, Bruce’s “proof” that Ken Arnold’s 1947 sighting of nine flying saucers near Mt. Rainier was of extraterrestrial craft.

My slogging has nothing to do with Bruce’s concise, readable text. I’m also “reviewing” two other books for online blogs: The First Artists: In Search of the World’s Oldest Art by Michel Lorblanchet and Paul Bahn [Thames & Hudson Ltd, London, 2017] and God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker [Sterling, NY, 2016/2017]

Mr. Maccabee’s work was written, as I noted here the other day, to show that Ken Arnold’s iconic sighting showed that we (humans) are not alone in the universe and the nine objects he saw in June 1947 were space ships from off the Earth.

I’m midway through the book and admire Bruce’s step-by-step exegesis of the 1947 observation. However….

What hit me at Page 40 was this:

“In Arnold’s book, he wrote that after this sighting, he considered continuing the search for the downed C-46, but somehow the $5,000 (reward) didn’t seem important. I wanted to get on to Yakima and tell some of the boys (other pilots) what I had seen.”

Then this on Page 42:

(Arnold’s letter, to the FBI) “When I landed at Yakima, Washington Airport I described what I had seen to my very good friend Al Baxter, who listened very patiently and was very courteous but in a joking way didn’t believe me.” [Italics by Bruce]

Bruce continues:

"The discussion of his sighting presumably would have ended in Yakima if it hadn’t been for the fact that someone at the airport contacted the press to report that some new, high speed aircraft had been sighted.” [Bold italics, mine]

Now, who could have contacted the press? Not Arnold’s friend Baxter I presume.

You see, Arnold was hoping to obtain $5,000 for spotting a missing airplane, but when that wasn’t in the cards, he spotted James Easton’s pelicans and made up a story about the nine objects, hoping to cash in on a tale.

How he would do that is open to debate, surely, but Arnold was not above seeking publicity after his sighting, as we all know from the Ray Palmer association. Why not from the outset of his (non-productive) sighting of a downed airplane and the subsequent wished for reward?

The Easton Pelican explanation was that Arnold saw a flock of pelicans flying (back) from their winter sojourn and that was what Arnold saw.

Now the pelican “theory” has been lambasted by almost everyone in the UFO community, even though it has coherence, as I (and a few others) see it.

Jerome Clark touted the term “pelicanist” for those who resort to obtuse explanations for UFO sightings, the word rampant among UFO Updaters when that site was extant.

Robert Sheaffer provides juicy commentary on the Pelican theory:

http://badufos.blogspot.com/2016/08/kenneth-arnold-and-pelicans.html

While I can barely imagine Ken Arnold mistaking white pelicans for strange, advanced aircraft, I can see how he might find an observation of a flock of birds grist for a tale that might bring him publicity and a little dough.

But, I’m not finished reading Bruce’s book so his “proof” of Arnold’s alien aircraft may allow me to drop the hoax epithet in my title to this blog post.

We’ll see.

RR

The compulsion for secrecy (in ufology and everywhere else)

Many in the UFO crowd seek “disclosure” of what governments allegedly know about UFOs, but that’s not going to happen, not now anyway.

There is a human compulsion to keep secrets, no matter how pathetic those secrets may be.

The compulsion goes back to the dawn of mankind and stems, as Freud postulated, from the inherent desire to keep hidden from others our most intimate thoughts and behavior.

The problem is that this psychological “need” has overtaken collective groups as a part of their modus operandi, their purpose for being.

The Neolithic peoples had shamans who supposedly had access to the secrets of the hidden “divinities” that existed in some hidden realm.

The Old Testament prophets and priests pretended to have knowledge garnered from God, knowledge that couldn’t be shared with the common peoples.

Secret societies abounded in the medieval era, the Templars for one.

Then there were the Masonic enterprises and the so-called illuminati.

In today’s society, governments have and keep secrets in various ways, and government shadow groups operate clandestinely, even keeping information (secrets) from those they serve, the public and those elected to represent the public.

But even within the UFO community loiter persons who think they have secrets, secrets better kept from their peers and associates.

This kind of secrecy morphed from that need to keep hidden personal, psychological secrets to the desire to make others think that one has, like the shamans and priests of old, information that only the elite has access to, private stuff that can’t be shared with the hoi polloi.

I’m from the Wikileaks/Edward Snowden school of thought: all government information (aside from military operations) should be made public.

I’m not desirous of knowing the personal peccadilloes of my fellow UFO pals but if someone in the UFO community has something that pertains to the phenomenon, they should share it…..and not on The Dark Web, where scoundrels congregate.

Holding little-known information close to the vest as if it’s akin to one’s sexual preference(s) is anathema to me.

(I’ve had a number of newspapers stories and a slam-bang piece about me in Stuart Miller’s short-lived Alien Worlds magazine that presented flattering information and some not so flattering and I couldn’t care less that my “secrets” were disclosed.)

Government “disclosure” is not forthcoming. Those that have UFO information, if any that really counts, will not give it up.

The “secrets” keep them in the shamanic/priestly class.

RR