Sunday, October 16, 2011

UFO Magazine - UFO Magazine Blog - Hi Jack...You're doing it�wrong...

Erik Stitt has a good article that's a needed reminder to us all: Hi Jack...You're doing it wrong... on the UFO Magazine blog. Stitt's main idea is that no one in the paranormal field knows what's going on. Obvious and yet we need to be constantly reminded of that fact. Furthermore, as Stitt puts it, the outside world (or "real" world if you prefer) doesn't care about the "bar fight in a bubble" as Stitt quotes Bill Birnes, referring to UFO World in a BoA interview. Erik comments that to the rest of the world, it's "geeks fighting nereds" and you know, that's true.

It's for the reasons Stitt addresses: the constant in-fighting (oh yes, of which I've engaged in), the exclusions, the egos,the clashing theories, the UFO Police, --- all that brawling that goes barely undetected by the majority of the culture -- that I continue to insist that in this crowded yet tiny pond of Forteana, everyone gets to play. (Well, except skeptibunkers, they never count.)

Now, I think Stitt is kind of sort of defending Jacobs or at the least, chiding those (like myself) who call Jacobs on his stuff. To that, I'll continue to do so and while hypnosis itself isn't good or bad (and something I continue to think about in context of my own personal experiences) Jacobs behaved ludicrously as well as unethically. Stitt's point about the rest of the culture viewing all this as "...over muscled idiots and plumbers wielding misused tech and tinfoil hats with cameras on tripods in Americas Southwest Deserts rubbing crystals and waiting for an official communique from Ashtar Command" reminds us that we're in this sometimes scummy pond together, like it or not, as well as alone. Doesn't matter if you're a professor at a university or a self-made paranormal researcher; you're a fruitcake, a saucer-head geek, and it's all the same to the rest of the world.

But that reality doesn't stop me from doing what I do.

2 comments:

Erik Stitt said...

Thanks again, Ms. Regan. I'm not defending anything about Jacobs or Hopkins other than their rights as Americans to be called innocent until found guilty. That hasn't happened yet and so I feel the treatment of them as guilty until found innocent is asinine.

I don't gel with their ethics either but, due process is due process. I can think all I want, but I cannot slander and libel a persons good name, regardless of what I think until they are actually found to be wanting in this fashion in a Court of Law. Until then, we can have our opinions about his work, morals and ethics, but about the actual guilt of his processes, we should keep mum. Period.

This is America and that's why I love it.

Erik

Alfred Lehmberg said...

The truth is neither slanderous _or_ libelous. Period. Sue to lose.