Thank you for the great comments. I agree with you that all too often people who are exploring these issues get lumped into either camp (believer/skeptic) simply because they’ve exposed a Ufology hoax, or on the flip side because they’re willing to entertain the notion that the UFO phenomenon has something real to it that can’t be entirely explained by the experimental craft hypothesis alone. Dale Graff described it best when he mentioned over the phone that the majority of the truly “interesting” UFO cases were more spiritual in nature than they were related to ET life or physical alien craft. That fact alone is significant if you consider the social effects that the phenomenon has on both individuals and groups. The question that we’re trying to explore here, however, isn’t the ultimate truth regarding Aliens and UFO’s (although we certainly would like to get there some day!) However, what we’re exploring here, right now, is a much smaller phenomenon – the actions of a group of humans who’ve decided to manipulate and influence the UFO community in an effort to understand it themselves. As we all look at the stars, they are watching us.

Thanks again for your comments.

My question is why would they?

You read many of the cases in Blue Book and you find that they are just as perplexed and puzzled by actual UFOs as anyone else.

There is also this interesting linkage that has been made between psychic phenomena, ie. Remote Viewing and UFOs that I believe is unwarranted because they are mutually exclusive.

Aside from that, there is a tendency to create this false dialectic known as “believers” and “skeptics”. A black and white ying and yang world where no shades of gray exist.

The above make it difficult to view any new data or information objectively, because of the tendency to take sides.

Whoa be it to any one who crosses the battle lines drawn.

Take the controversy over MJ 12.

Many have been tossed out of the “believers” camp because they didn’t have faith in their validity.

On the other hand there are many “skeptics” who have been expatriated because they’ve merely entertained the possibility of the unexplained.

The “core story” to me is like one of those ancient myths or legends. The fact is that many of these stories were based on to some degree on actual facts which have since the progress of time have become embellished with fiction.

So one could ask how much of the “core story” is fact and how much of it is fiction.

Thank you for allowing me to comment on this subject.

Hi Steve,
Thank you for this fascinating collection of view and opinions concerning the Core Story. Here some thoughts on this subject.

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With Objectivity, you have not done what you have just done

The trouble with such remarkable researchers of justified repute as Stanton Friedman and Bruce Maccabee is that they are trying to sort out the UFO problem purely mechanistically, as is their wont. They are trying to cast the received information in the standard Cartesian frame of reference.

The reason why these gentlemen (and almost every other UFO party) are getting into difficulties is because the Cartesian frame in a media-soaked society no longer works as an absolute system of reference – or rather, it partly works, which adds to the confusion. Ed Mitchell, in a recent e-mail to me (and I quote) said that he believed “that Cartesian dualism is dead.” Therefore in the frame of a media-soaked society, absolute facts versus absolute fictions is replaced by a cosmology of media systems trying to out-advertise each other. Instead of a “hard” structure (metaphor) we have a tangled story-technology, as Reality Uncovered gives witness. In this sense, hoaxes and deliberate deceptions (such as SERPO) are low-energy memes, rather like rejected Darwinian forms, or like the strange forms of viral life that can be created by popular game SPORE now available over the counter.

There is not time here to go into this in detail, but a typical cultural analogy would be that Newton’s pre-electric mechanical system continued (and continues) to work alongside quantum theory and the electrical atom. Truth, as always, works in different frames of reference simultaneously. If we see, say, Marilyn Monroe in terms of her molecules alone, then perhaps we are in as much trouble as the Cartesian “objective” mechanists. The problem with objectivity (a wonderful psycho-social conspiracy in itself), is that it cuts out the chattering sub-texts operating below the levels of the so-called mechanical “real.” Both Stanton and Bruce (who by the way, wrote a most remarkable post-modern novel), would no doubt call this mythological level “noise in the system.”

But if we continue to try and focus the UFO story as a Holmes-type investigation, we must remember that the age of Victorian Station Masters running the trains on time in a clock-work universe is long gone.
I have written of these matters in Did a Fishmonger Do It? my latest essay for (US) UFO Magazine out in late February, 2009, I do believe. I shall make this available to Reality Uncovered to see if they would like to run it. This feature expresses the idea that the Core Story is an active meme-generator. This perhaps might give us the smallest of hints as to how an “advanced” alien consciousness might work. One thing is certain: the alien mentality if and when encountered will be a super media-animal whose flesh and bones will be almost irrelevant, and even a deception in themselves.

This means that should the hatch of a landed saucer open to reveal a human form with a row of pens in his top pocket ready to give us the “facts of the situation,” we should run for our very lives.

Colin Bennett
The New Fortean Times
http://www.combat-diaries.co.uk