Clarifying the UFO landscape?

Copyright 2021, InterAmerica, Inc.

My son, Josh, who a few of you met recently, would appreciate it if I’d make clear what my view(s) is (or are) on schizophrenics, UFO visions, and psychopathologies among the UFO fringe; the topic that took up a portion of the July 4th weekend.

When I write that schizophrenics actually see what they say they see, and sometimes present those visions in art and scribblings, I’m saying that they are not making up their visions. They really see what they report, sometimes incoherently but “reliably.”

Yes, some visions (many perhaps) come from neural creations that aren’t actually in front of the observers’ eyes but are what they are seeing.

Are the images real, in a material way? Yes and/or No. Some are material and perceived by sensory vision. Others are contrived from neural memory or creative delusions.

Two papers consider the issue(s):

An integrated network model of psychotic symptoms Jasper Looijestijn a, Jan Dirk Bloma,b, André Alemanc, Hans W. Hoeka,b,d, Rutger Goekoopa,∗ a Parnassia Psychiatric Institute, Kiwistraat 43, The Hague 2552

Are persistent delusions in schizophrenia associated with aberrant salience? Rafeef Abboud a,1, Jonathan P. Roiser a,⁎,1, Hind Khalifeh b,c,d, Sheila Ali a, Isobel Harrison b,c, Helen T. Killaspy b,c, Eileen M. Joyce ea Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London

As you see, the matter is couched in psychiatric jargon; the persons afflicted are psychotic or delusional. 

But are they? Not necessarily. What they see or experience can be real and is often real in a material way. That is when a persons says they see something or saw something, they did. Material reality and intangible reality need not be odd-fellows. They are often bed-fellows – observations as “real” as anything “normal” persons experience daily.

So, how can we discount – or why do we discount -- these rapacious ravings or wildly offered renderings out of hand?

No one is pressing the confluence, while some are trying to juxtapose psychedelic and pharmacological into the mix, a wrong-headed approach to reality as I see it. Contrived intrusions into a brain bombards that brain’s mechanisms with biologic flotsam, which adds one more side-bar to what is happening, that side-bar flooded with non-real information.

The problem – one of many – for ufologists is separating the sociopath’s rendering of a UFO event from normal AND schizophrenic accounts.

Psychopaths abound in the UFO community. I have recently seen, among the offerings in the Facebook UFO groups, some of the most tawdry forms of UFO chicanery, stories of abductions and observations that make schizophrenic accounts pale by comparison.

How can any serious UFO researcher cope with such nonsense? They can’t. There are few, if any, qualified UFO enthusiasts with the credentials and training to ferret out the fraudulent reports from the credible reports.

Facebook remains the fount from which sociopaths spring forth, and they overwhelm, making the social media site and those within partners in a social insanity” not unlike that experienced by the nuns of Loudon or the Dutch during the tulip craze of 1637:

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

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

RR