Are UFOs a serious matter or not?

Early on in flying saucer era, the things seen in the sky (and on the ground) were considered a potential threat, of some kind.

But the United States government stepped in and discounted, almost from the beginning (1947), that threat by stating the “objects” had nothing to do with national security.



And while the U.S. government, and other governments around the world (The U.S.S.R., Britain, France, et cetera) played down the idea that flying saucers, and eventually UFOs, were dangerous to humanity, benign even, UFO aficionados started out to contest that view but have, it seems evolved to the point where UFOs are today seen as a reason to socialize, have celebratory conferences, and party.



The UFO community, in some quarters, has taken a cavalier stance about UFOs.

One self-promoting blogger thinks that UFOs are a means to his ends, which are to self-congratulate his rather feeble UFO investigations and to gather a gaggle of amigos with which to drink and back-slap their less-than-mediocre pursuit of the UFO truth.



This is fine, when one’s existential position is encrusted by a mid-life crisis and lack of meaningful purpose.

But does it do justice to the UFO mystery?

Are UFOs a serious matter, as some abductees (experiencers) contend, and the militaries of the world still consider, despite their public disavowals of UFO interest?

The seriousness of the UFO phenomenon was blatant when the great Donald Keyhoe was around.



But since his heyday, UFOs have devolved into laughing stock for the intelligentsia, and vehicles about which one (or many) can gather to eat, drink, and be merry.

Some do not like the fact that we excoriate the party-gatherers, but the UFO work they do is secondary (or less) than the primary work that Keyhoe and his followers, most of them dead or dying, engendered.

Sure, there are many web-sites, blogs, and organizations that take UFOs seriously, but a vocal group of middle-agers (40 or so) have taken control of some UFO dialogue, hoping to censor (and censure) by mockery any view that their efforts are frivolous, even detrimental to the UFO cause.



Persons we respect, and there are many in the UFO community, have even been seduced by the idea of censorship that the party-goers promote.



It’s somewhat reminiscent, although not as malevolent perhaps, of the French Terror of 1793-1794 when the rabble took control of France and lopped off the heads of those who protested their barbarisms, ultimately killing off each other by the way.



For us, here in the Provocateur camp, UFOs are serious, even though some of our compatriots (the Iconoclasts) pretend to think otherwise.

UFOs are a clue to something. What that something is cannot be discerned easily, and getting drunk while listening to rock and roll music is not the way to find out just what the UFO enigma means.

But that’s just our opinion....

Teilhard de Chardin and UFOs

Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West posits that western civilization will eventually die, much in the way that human’s die.



Spenger suggests that cities, countries, societies, and other civilized constructs are “biological” in essence, and live a life-cycle that is little different than that of a human being.

Theologian Teilhard de Chardin takes the concept even further. He posits that the Universe – total reality actually – is the “Mystical Body of Christ” – a physical entity that is biological in form and essence. [The Divine Milieu]

Setting aside the theological aspects of Teilhard’s conjecture, we think the concept is interesting as far as UFOs are concerned.

If we human beings are molecule or atoms, cells, in the actual body of the Christ, then what are UFOs – viruses, bacteria, antibodies, nano-probes?

If UFOs are cellular intrusions, what is their purpose? To destroy the entity they are invading? To cure it? To stymie a broad societal cancer, or to accelerate the demise of the body they have been and are invading?

Is there an array of “biological” entities invading human civilization, or the whole Mystical Body of Christ?



What are the antidotes for the invasions? There have been none; that is, ufologists haven’t been able to counter the UFO “attacks.” And ufologists seem unable to do so.

A new medical corp is needed. Or a new theological paradigm is necessary, one that addresses the UFO enigma as if it were (and is) something foreign but tangible, and capable of being thwarted or understood in non-abstract terms.

Spengler and Tielhard were on to something. Now it’s time for the UFO community to latch on to the possibility that they may have been right.

Mircea Eliade and UFOs

Religious scholar Mircea Eliade relates an allegory of UFOs in Chapter 38 of his “A History of Religious Ideas” [Volume 3, From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms, University of Chicago Press, 1985, Page Page 235].

The UFOs are called zîne, are “white, invisible by day, provided with wings, they move about in the air, especially at night…wherever they dance the grasses of the fields look as if they were scorched by fire. They bring sickness upon those who see them dance or who infringe upon certain interdictions.”

Eliade’s account is duplicated in dozens of other mythological or religious tracts and provide a clue as to what UFOs may be or are.

One can rehash old flying saucer and UFO sightings, but the Jacques Vallee approach to UFO antecedents might prove more amenable to a solution of the UFO mystery.

The intangible aspects of Vallee’s arcane hypotheses are anathema to many in the UFO community but more than acceptable to those wishing to resolve the UFO enigma.

There is a foolishness in ufology that turns away serious thinkers and researchers. Jerry Clark, Stanton Friedman, Isaac Koi, and several other ufologists are not part of the inane UFO crowd, but their serious study of UFOs is undercut by the quidnuncs who use UFOs to provide a camaraderie that can’t be obtained elsewhere. (UFOs often provide a focal point for those who are incapable of bonhomie in the real world.)



Those who use UFOs for self-aggrandizement besmirch the phenomenon for academics and scientists, or serious UFO researchers.

UFOs may be used as a means to an end, but not as vehicles to assuage those whose end is self-glorification rather than a truth of significant import.

This is what Eliade means when he states that UFOs (zînes) bring sickness on those who see them dance.

The sickness is psychical, and demeaning to the human purpose of life, which is not rock and roll, beer swilling, or the constant ogling of females.

The pleasures of the flesh do not, in our opinion, have anything to do with the meaning of UFOs.

Eliade goes on to explicate his account, and provides an exegesis that belittles the kind of ufological activity that has been ruinous to the real study of UFOs.

Presenting various hypotheses about UFOs is endemic to ufology, but a few would have it otherwise, sloughing off UFOs by a desire to self-glorify and party rather than settle down to serious UFO investigation.

We recommend the Edward de Bono method of “New Think” for UFO evaluation.



We do not recommend those methodologies (or people) that advocate another way to get at the truth…

Tarski's Theorem and UFOs

Mathematical theorist Alfred Tarski stated that “arithmetic truth cannot be defined in arithmetic” – a statement that corroborates Gödel’s “proof” that mathematical truth cannot be verified from within mathematics.

Tarski’s theorem (which is stated more explicitly by his mathematical formulae) can be applied to the UFO problem; that is, the UFO truth cannot be determined by the UFO mystery itself.



The UFO phenomenon can only be scrutinized satisfactorily by methodologies outside the phenomenon, methodologies not directly related to the phenomenon or even tangentially connected to it.

Ufologists have been kept from arriving at the truth of what UFOs are (or are not) by attacking the enigma from inside it rather than looking at the phenomenon from outside itself.

But how does a ufologist go about studying UFOs without using UFOs for their inquiry? By inferences from other disciplines, such as mythology, religion, psychology, sociology, astronomy, physics (especially quantum mechanics), historical and anthropological exegeses, and yes, math, among others.

Tackling UFOs by anecdotal ruminations and circumstantial evidence, such as photos and videos, merely confuses the analysis of UFOs. Witness reports end up being red-herrings, and image gathering is beset by hoaxes and fraud generally.



The problem is compounded by the dire incompetence of ufologists, who’ve kidnapped the phenomenon, and tainted it for scientific and academic scrutiny.

(For example, one ballyhooed ufologist states in a TV UFO documentary that some sightings have “collaborated” others. He should have said “corroborated” but intelligence and wit are sorely lacking in the UFO community, so his gaffe is not atypical.)

The venerated computer scientist Jacques Vallee approaches (and has approached) the UFO phenomenon much in the way suggested here, but his reclusiveness (out of a need to avoid the insane and nasty machinations of those ufologists who have assumed ownership of the whole UFO panoply) hasn’t allowed an evolution in the UFO solution.

One would think that “open-source” in UFO investigation, much as it does in software development, would endear Mr. Vallee to that methodology but, again, the madmen of ufology dissuade him, and others, from sharing insight and knowledge across the board, or in a public venue.



Nonetheless, as one mid-life critical ufologist and filmmaker suggests, the kids are alright [sic], so perhaps they will open the UFO mystery to new scrutinizes, if and when the old guard passes away, and UFOs become viable to genial dialogue and study.