An interesting episode of TV's 'UFO Hunters' described the trouble and 'blocking' Ufologists received from Aurora, Texas residents when trying to exhume an alleged 100+ year old little Martian body from the local cemetery. The researchers even detected radio active metal under the ground by the grave, which was allegedly removed in the night through some tubing (?) by the locals or CIA, so that the next day the detectors detected nothing.
All this intrigue made me think of Lovecraft stories like "The Shadow over Innsmouth," wherein the few non-sea monster-hybrid-townsfolk are tight lipped and standoffish to curious visitors, lest they find themselves washed up against the docks the next morning, apparently drowned, their lungs filled with seaweed.
So what real life version of a Lovecraftian elder god's threat could the Aurora townsfolk's have for refusing the Ufologists? Is it that the locals are afraid there's some truth to the legend, that hellfire will rain down if the tomb is disturbed? Where does thrill-seeking disrespect end and the legit quest for understanding begin? It's a bit like those old 'tests' to prove witchcraft, throwing the suspect in the lake and if she sank and died, she was innocent. The ufologists want to prove 'the truth' and help write a new history of tomorrow with physical evidence. Meanwhile, the evidence is already in and overwhelming if you're willing to accept it, to make the connections. What good is one more smoking gun going to do? What's wrong with the smoking gun of Dr. Leir's alien implants? What more do you want?
Another analogy on hand is a recent short film I saw recently on TCM, wherein a journalist is sent to cover a magic act, and ordered to get photos explaining how each trick is done. It doesn't occur to him or his editor that they'd be destroying the magician's livelihood. Who cares? It's the old western compulsion to cut everything open and see how it works, to loot the foreboding mystery from every still-dark corner of the world.
The end issue in all this is, what does it take to make you/us switch our paradigm to accommodate the truth of extraterrestrial visitors? Or to let some things remain a mystery? Or to heal the wound between science and supernatural? To stop trying to do the math, to see the ancient astronaut writing on the wall, and stop waiting around to learn 'how the trick is done'? Imagine the average layman being told the earth is not flat like we thought, does he instantly demand evidence? What good would lectures on magnetic fields and revolution matter to an illiterate 17th century peasant?
Another last example of the importance of mystery is the spiritualist's use of props and intentional fakery--projections, crystal balls, plastic skulls, etc.--to create illusions as kind of a perception-enhancing booster to real magic, the suspension of disbelief creating a rift where genuine strangeness may seep through. Or at any rate, its sometimes easier to hear the ugly truth if it comes from Tarot cards and not a 'worried' friend - if she told you straight up you need to quit drinking you may just run out of the room, but if the cards hint at a grave danger approaching through drugs or alcohol, that's different.
In AA speaking engagements I'm always using the analogy of coming to believe in a higher power in terms of a dog trying to understand physics by chewing up a math book. Not only can't the dog understand physics that way, but in chewing it up destroys the book that might have illuminated others. The dog must take it on faith physics exists, and not chew up its master's math book. Mainstream scientists refuse to believe something can ever exist that can't be proven by chewing on a text book.
That's why I support the Aurora choice to let their demon stay buried, in other words, rather than let the dogs of research chew up their graveyard math book. And as far as Ufology goes, I understand the need for it, and I believe we're all indebted to researchers and cutting edge thinkers on the subject... but at a certain point each seeker needs to stop searching for more evidence and ask him or herself on an individual basis: how much is enough? What does it take for YOU believe? And in the end, do you really need everyone else to believe it first? Are you afraid to pick a truth and make the jump, to just answer your own multiple choice rather than spying on all your neighbor's papers?
In the end, the universe is subjective, and as it gets closer and closer to this realization science itself starts to disintegrate. Once this happens it quickly backs up, like a polar bear on a melting ice floe trying to make it back to firmer ground.
Similarly, the more Ufologists bicker over their own hypotheses the more they sound like regular bullshit scientists... the Ufologist becomes like Uncle Tom in the ghetto of para-science, trying vainly to impress the mainstream by being rigorous and empirical. But alas, this is one butterfly that can't be pinned to any board. In examining the alien issue clearly one must first throw away the pin, the board, the jar, the net, the math book, and even one's own two eyes (open the third one)... transcend space and time through meditation, lack of sleep, entheogens, madness, whatever, and you can get a horrifying glimpse of it - the terrible void around which all the spiderweb illusions are spun as bedeviled protection and the only thing that can possibly float us past the mandibles of the Other is love and complete surrender.
On that note, my last metaphor involves waking up in the middle of the night to find a giant tiger on top of you in bed, licking your cheek. If your first move upon coming to your sleepy senses is to scream in terror and try to push it off yourself, you will be instantly ripped to shreds, but if your first instinctive move is to rub it behind the ears and go "aww pretty kitty" you will gain a fuzzy ally. Can you go do the same when moving in your astral body past the demonic gatekeepers of the eternal moment? It's hate and fear that make us dense enough to be eaten, that gut level response of fear or love is what determines what gate we go through. Not even the hungriest of tigers can eat a sunbeam.
The airship flap in of itself is a fascinating subject. My understanding is that there was a photograph taken in it's flight over Chicago that was subsequently lost. One interests is early industrial technology, and I looked over various forms of motive power and the most likely being reciprocating steam generated by caustic soda, coal or wood, and the heavy weights involved with the boiler, cylinders as well as the enormous amount of fuel, water, it's short range, the lack of a good spark arrestor, the weight of the vessel itself ( wood being combustible) makes this a flying brick, regardless of the steam punk visions some may have. One aspect that is interesting is the "crew" coming down for resupply rather than the ship itself landing. They would have been running out of water long before they used up the fuel.Short cycle battery technology was in it's infancy and there would be nowhere to recharge them. To lift all this would have made for one enormous, unwieldy balloon, let alone a fabric coating technology that would have to be flameproof. All of this is well and good but I think an interesting point in this was, that in less than two decades, this craft flew in a much more practical form due to the leaps in technology, as a hydrogen filled Zeppelin outfitted with outboard motors. The concept in 1897 was there, but not the technology, and yet there it is, or was..a mimic of expectations and equally what was anticipated in 1897..which appears to be a clue, a hint left hidden in plain sight translated to an image of an advanced aerial vehicle transcribed and produced tailor made by their contemporary envisioning of leading edge possibilities..which then came true later. It's like a space time hybrid of the present and future transposed to an "impossible hybrid" much like the stream styled art deco saucers of the 40 and 50's ferociously glowing with assumed future application of nuclear power to be replaced by dark, delta winged craft based on a gravity wave powered B1 hybrid of the potential in both the present and future as a projection. What nest?
ReplyDeleteBest Wishes
Bruce D
I don't live terribly far from Aurora, and while I'm not too familiar with that immediate area, I *know* Small Town, Texas, USA, very well.
ReplyDeleteTribalism runs deep. Real deep. The cultural resistance to opening up to outsiders - like, say, condescending, pointy-headed Yankees with little or no regard for the people who live in the region - isn't exactly unreasonable.
UFO stigma remains very real, and stigma in a small town is, like everything in a small town, amplified considerably. Cultural influences on this case cannot be overstated and should be considered very, very carefully. You can bet locals have some interesting stories about the researchers who have periodically visited Aurora for the last several decades. I doubt they reflect well on ufology, much less human behavior, generally. If I ever get up that way, I'll let you all know.
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Great post. I'd like to write more, but I'm flat on back post lumbar fusion. Keep up the great work here.