UFOs: The Regression

There is no going forward for the UFO crowd. They, almost all, are locked into the past, re-reviewing the sightings of previous years, and virtually ignoring the sightings – although admittedly few – of today [2008].

Shackled to Roswell and every other flying saucer/UFO event thereafter has gotten investigators of the phenomenon nowhere,

Looking back at Roswell but overlooking the lack of photographs by the local newspaper and area residents of the debris remnants, the debris field, or anything else that was supposedly in the hands of many “witnesses” is a gaffe that shows how inept the investigation of Roswell has been.

Yet, to keep ruminating about the 1947 event is worse than futile; it borders on an obsessive-compulsive malady that could be labeled “insane.”

Roswell is a dead issue. Trying to revive it, again and again, takes time and effort away from a legitimate examination of UFOs that appear, occasionally, in today’s skies.

(Crashed “saucers” are passé anyway. Apparently, the UFO makers have perfected their “craft.”)

And rehashing the Phoenix Lights, for example, is a silly enterprise. Nothing more can be culled from the observations that have been examined ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam.

All UFO events of the past, as we keep suggesting, present nothing than has helped or can help explain the UFO phenomenon.

The proof is in the pudding: no person is nearer to a UFO solution than they were in 1947, and this after a literal mountain of “evidence” and accumulated data.

The problem, though, lies in the attempted emulation by flying saucer buffs to emulate science, which started when the study of the phenomenon was given the sobriquet “ufology.”

(Handwriting analysis tried to credential itself similarly by tagging its efforts as “graphology” and “grapho-analysis.”)

Giving a name to a hobby doesn’t make it a science, and ufology is not science. It’s not even a discipline, as one knows from the discursive ramblings, including our own, about the subject matter.

But to carry the pretense forward, ufologists hark back to the past, feigning an archeological attempt at resolving the UFO enigma.

This is why flying disk sightings and/or landings are studied with a feeble fine-tooth comb.

The effort(s) pretend to be scientific.

But pretense doesn’t provide truth, and the truth is that UFOs are still a mystery, will remain a mystery, until a bona fide methodology is adopted, by persons who are not neurotically attached to the UFO histories.

Regression might be fine for psychoanalysis, but in the case of UFOs, regression has been and is self-defeating.

After all, as our compatriots at the UFO Iconoclast(s) put it recently, “there has not been one explanation for true UFOs.”

There is no smoking gun within previous UFO episodes, not even a warm bullet…

Strange State

An interesting blog by an interesting guy (Cullan Hudson) may be found here:

Strange State

UFO Zealots

Some UFO pursuers are zealots; that is, their interest and promotion of the UFO reality borders on fanaticism.

Jeff Rense isn’t a UFO zealot, but he is zealous about other things, such as The Holocaust. So, we can’t list him here (and don’t want to).



Stanton Friedman isn’t a zealot. His UFO pronouncements are judicious, whether one accepts his ET view(s) or not.

Jerry Clark, Kevin Randall, and Dick Hall aren’t zealots. They all, while avid in their views, rarely go off the deep-end with their UFO belief.

Now Joseph Capp at UFO Media Matters is a zealot. He believes that all UFO witnesses – all of them – are truthful and honest.

The Capp view about witness-truthfulness is rabid, not objective. Mr. Capp himself is a good guy, and projects that goodness on everyone who professes to have observed a UFO or says they were part of the Roswell incident.

Capp is not only naïve, but he “attacks” anyone who even suggests that some UFO witnesses may be flawed, or lying. That’s zealotry.

David Rudiak is a zealot, an imaginative one, but a zealot nonetheless. Let someone hint that UFOs may not be extraterrestrial in origin, and Rudiak is all over them, like a porcupine that’s been prodded by a foe.



Regan Lee is a zealot. This person’s objectivity is non-existent, and if anyone strays from the Regan Lee UFOs-Can-Be-Anything view, they’ll end up being excoriated at the Lee blogs and web-sites.

Regan Lee also defends other zealots, no matter how obtuse their views are. Lee is a zealot par excellence, and that’s not a compliment.

The “Exopoliticians” are zealous, but their zealotry is couched, usually, in temperate terms, so one isn’t likely to be offended (or shouldn’t be) by their oblique views.

(And the premise of UFO Exopolitics – to get governments to admit and accept UFO entities as already here or when they do come, to be treated ambassadorially – is so unrealistic that it is impotent, unable to rise to the level of actual zealotry.)

The Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, Paul Kimball triumvirate is not zealous. Those guys can be oblique but their views about UFOs and other strange phenomena aren’t pressed upon others nor thrust forward with biased energy or intent.



Mac Tonnies, a peripheral member of the above “clan,” is zealous, but only about new ideas. Tonnies isn’t a fanatic about UFOs, but he is zealous about new hypotheses that impinge the UFO phenomenon.

What about the British UFO hobbyists? David Clarke, Andy Roberts, Joe McGonagle, and Jenny Randles could hardly be considered zealots, with all the British reserve.



And Nick Pope is a shining example of reserve and conscientious UFO evaluation.

But are there UFO zealots elsewhere in the world, such as Canada, Russia, France, Spain, of South America?

Sure, but it’s the international temperament that causes zealotry about UFOs (and other things) outside The United States.

Such zealotry is more innocent than calculated or insane.

U.S. UFO devotees think they have carte blanche to be over-zealous about the phenomenon; it’s in the nature of the American psyche to go overboard with things, and UFOs are an easy subject to wax enthusiastically about.

But this is what has made UFOs a laughing-stock among those who’d like to ruminate about UFOs but are put off by not only the goofiness endemic to the topic but the fanaticism, the zealotry of the UFO discussion in most flying saucer quarters.

Can UFO zealotry be tamped down? Not so far as we can tell. It gets wilder and wilder as the phenomenon goes on being elusive and unexplained.

And we see no explanation – rational explanation – in sight.

Rationality among UFO zealots is as elusive as UFOs themselves…..

Ufology: Sauve qui peut (la vie)

The translation for the title (above) is “Every man for himself” from a Jean-Luc Godard film (referenced in The New Yorker, April 7th, Page 61) and pretty much sums up what is the prevalent characteristic of the UFO community nowadays.

Joe Harvat’s Department 47 web-site currently has a forum topic asking the question "Where are the UFO personalities taking us?” which addresses the cult of personality within UFO circles, show- ing that it’s every man and woman for himself or herself and has little or nothing to do with the essence of the UFO phenomenon.

And a check of the comments at UFO UpDates shows that it’s all about hubris and self-glorification, not the UFO enigma.

A perusal of the many UFO web-sites and blogs confirms that the flying saucer mystery comes in second to the bluster that writers hope will enhance their standing in the pantheon of UFO mavens.

Early on, flying saucers became a doorway to fame – a perverse kind of fame, but fame nonetheless.

A few UFO researchers – Donald Keyhoe, James McDonald, John Mack (to name a few) – didn’t give a damn about how they came off in the public/media eye just so long as the phenomenon got top billing.

Today, top billing for ufologists is what passes for UFO investigation and research.

The UFO arena is used by many to best their opponents, and even to nail their “friends.”

It’s not congenial combat, but out-and-out warfare.

Scoring points is the ne plus ultra for so-called UFO “experts.”

Determining what UFOs are (or were) has been put on the back-burners of those who follow the sightings of strange things in the skies.

The front-burners are used for self-aggrandizing rhetoric and self-promotion.

UFOs remain mired in an inconclusive milieu, where not one UFO sighting or event – not a single one -- has the clarification of finality.

UFOs are as much up-in-the-air as hey are in reality; the things remain elusive and unexplained, and this after sixty years of rumination and scrutiny.

Scientists are just as ego-bound as ufologist (maybe even more so), but the things they deal with do often come to a denouement.

UFOs, on the other hand, have not come to denouement, because those who deal with the phenomenon are more obsessed with making a mark – not with the media or public but among themselves – among their UFO peer group.

Will this change? Can it change?

We don’t think so. One’s place in society has become paramount, so even the tackiest or tawdriest behavior and thought has taken place at the head of humanity’s table.

And at the UFO table, getting one’s ego crowned – in a good or bad sense – has become what the UFO game is all about.

Meanwhile, UFOs continue to flit around the world, unencumbered by real inquiry and investigation.

UFO blogs, conferences, books, and films prefer to salute, not the phenomenon itself but those who need the phenomenon to make them look good or seem important.

It started with the 1950s contactees but has now afflicted almost everyone else in the UFO panoply.

And that’s where ufology stands today.

It would be tragic if it wasn’t so farcical.

UFOs: Remembrance of things past

Film-maker Paul Kimball keeps resurrecting old UFO sightings and events as if they prove something meaningful about the phenomenon.

He’s currently working up a Seven Wonders of the UFO World list, and has started with the Rendlesham event of 1980.

Mr. Kimball is a moderately intelligent guy. Why he keeps dredging up old UFO stories baffles us.

What’s his point? That these sightings/events are convincing evidence for a UFO reality?

UFOs exist, that’s a given, but the sightings that Mr. Kimball touts – and keeps touting – didn’t determine what UFOs were when they happened and they still haven’t provided any obvious clue(s) to the essence of the UFO mystery.

Beating the UFO dead horses isn’t counter-productive, it’s just plain stupid.

The old UFO cases have been mined by ufologists to the point of total evisceration, and nothing has been derived from the ham-handed scrutiny.

Kimball certainly knows this, or should.

But what else does he or any ufologist have to do? New sightings are without the drama or details that constructed previous flying saucer activity.

Even the recent Stephenville, Texas affair is without flamboyant detail or anecdote.

Retackling old UFO, weathered UFO events is a futile endeavor.

Mr. Kimball, and other ufologists, would do well to pursue UFOs with 2008 methodologies and ideas.

Reworking old UFO accounts is mere UFO quackery, a pretense that one is actively engaged in the pursuit of truth about the UFO enigma.

Mr. Kimball must have better ideas up his sleeve. He’s not a UFO quidnunc, or says he isn’t.

But he and his coterie keep harking back to the past, and like Marcel Proust, locked into remembrances that will avail them, or anyone else, of nothing.

God created UFOs?

Sure, if the religionists are right. For them, God created (and creates) everything!

But to what end? God does have a purpose for creation, right?

God’s a nut! The Gnostics knew that, and evidence – circumstantial and otherwise – tells any sensible human observer that if there is a Creator, that Creator is malevolent and/or psychotic.

The gods and God, even the Hebrew God that interjected Himself in Jewish affairs, show a capacity for Evil or nonsense that humankind has been trying to overcome since the beginning of time.

[When the Hebrew God, Yahweh, tries to kill Moses – Exodus 4:24 – the nature of the Divinity is exposed, and that nature is insane.]



The gods and God have always been jealous of human beings, hating their sexual prowess and creativity (sublimated or not).

So in that context, what does the creation and insertion of flying saucers or UFOs in the human experience have to do with humanity, and the purpose for being and life?

This is a question that ufologists are not equipped (for many reasons) to answer, and thus is avoided or distorted to make UFOs a mundane matter, even when they are made out to be vehicles of the unseen forces that supposedly inhabit the Earth with the species that is overt: us.

Some will contend that UFOs are not from God (or the gods) but from Satan or the angels of Lucifer (the demons) who rebelled against the Godhead.



But the Gnostics inform us that God is both Good and Evil in essence, and Aristotle stated the same thing earlier. (Even Thomas Aquinas wasn’t able to refute Aristotle’s position, although he tried.)

Therefore, if UFOs stem from an Evil/Good Divinity, what is their purpose?

Are they just foolish creations meant to tease mankind? Or are they messengers of Good? Or Evil?

Although the UFO Iconoclast(s) think UFOs are indifferent when it comes to human life, we think UFOs portend something more than indifference.

UFOs are the toys of God (or the gods): things to amuse a mad (not angry but insane) Godhead that amuses Itself by tormenting human beings, its creation.

Yes, God has tortured man in many ways, some horrific, of course, but in the delusional state that now absorbs God, the torment is of a sillier kind, a benign kind: UFOs.

And since UFOs have to come from God (or so believers say), and God is maniacal (by our premise), the various UFO configurations and activities over the years have been maniacal, without obvious meaning or sense.

How else to explain the phenomenon?

(Atheists may have another viewpoint.)