Random Rants

Growling….

Trust Issues
Jack Brewer's recent posts at his The UFO Trail on the ethics of Hopkins and Jacobs has caused a lot of comments everywhere in UFO Land. Me, I say this:

The witness needs to know that trust works  both ways. Where else is the witness to go? Mainstream won't help. With rare exceptions, just try going to the media/doctor/shrink with your tales of missing time, strange craft, aliens, talking animals, floating through walls, abductions and all that goes with the mysterious realm of UFOs.

UFO researchers are rarely doctors, shrinks, and the like. They're "just" writers and investigators. They're not legally bound to honor anything. THAT DOESN'T ABSOLVE THEM OF BEHAVING UNETHICALLY! Why this is even a question is beyond me.

And to suggest that because they're not legally bound to respect any type of confidentially, no expectation of such trust should exist is very discouraging.

Stories
Oh I have mocked the alien reptilian scenario, the hybrid baby scenario, and much more. On other hand, we all know the UFO realm is rife with these kinds of tales. Let's not get on our UFO Police high horses and dismiss such tales because they're "nutty." Okay, so some of them are nutty, but that doesn't do any of us any good if we just chuck them out the porthole. With all sincerity, the witness has these tales to tell. They believe they've experienced them. We have to listen! We have to respect. We have to -- hey, anyone here remember Jacque Vallee?

Oh Those Wacky, Fanatical Researchers
David Icke is, well… and Alex Jones took a wrong turn while tumbling down the rabbit hole a long time ago. Phil Imbragno disappointed as we distanced, and Steven Greer met a talking bush and believed he was Moses.  And, often, aside from their theories and ravings, their personalities put us off. (That last bit; I've met some researchers whose work was fine and dandy but they were quite … odd, ahem,  … but this isn't a personality contest. It'd be nice if we were all nice, but we're not always.) Yet every now and then these people have something actually interesting to say. Their connections make sense, (sometimes) and they aren't entirely full of hogs slop. Slow down and listen to them now and then.

Science. Get Over It
Science can help. Sure, they can come on over. Let's play! But share nicely.

UFOs aren't strictly nuts and bolts, no matter how badly some insist on still, in 2015, that they are. Science can't help us all by themselves, they can only contribute.

Why we still haven't arrived at the place where UFOs is seen as a phenomena that requires a hugely multi-discipline approach, well, boggles my mind, it does.


Now Let's Be Reasonable!
You can't really believe that aliens from outer space are abducting earth women (and men) and collecting their ova/sperm and creating alien-human babies and that the contactees were real and hey, contactee Truman Bethurum was a just a rummy and …

Spare me. That's all beside the point!

It's Zen like, in a way. No one's arguing those things -- not on the face of it --  but go deeper, grasshopper.

After Sixty Years We Still Haven't . . . 
No, we haven't, it's true. So what? That's assuming that it only has been sixty years. (post Kevin Arnold era.)  It's really been thousands of years, but who's counting.

One reason why we haven't gotten very far "in sixty years" is because of everything mentioned so far. Refusal to recognize this whole UFO thing is vastly bizarre and needs vastly bizarre methods to delve into things. Witnesses continue to be marginalized by many a researcher; ignored if their stories are too wild for us to handle, their stories traded back and forth without permission or the respect of request. UFO Police deciding who's who and why, researchers behaving like religious cult leaders or D list celebrities. UFOlogy acting like a groveling step-child at the feet of Big Science.

The main reason however is that we still refuse to understand that we need to turn our heads inside out in order to understand what this is all about, and many are still expecting a rational response from UFOs based on our oh so very rational approach to them.