Book Review The Ufo Phenomenon
"A few years back, I researched and wrote a book on the UFO phenomenon, somewhat unimaginatively titled The UFO Phenomenon. It was an intriguing project, not least because the acronym "UFO" has all but lost its original meaning - something seen in the sky that the witnesses don't happen to be able to identify - and become a strange attractor for exotic belief systems that fuse the modern myth of infinite progress with archaic religious visions of immanent evil and apocalyptic renewal.
Behind the myths, though, I noted the intriguing fact that the "alien spacecraft" of each decade had quite a bit in common with whatever secret aerospace projects the US military was testing at that time. From the round silver shapes of the late 1940s, when high-altitude balloons were the last word in strategic reconnaissance, to the black triangles of the early 1980s, when stealth planes were new and highly secret, the parallels were remarkable, as was the involvement of the US military in fostering the UFO furore. While plenty of things fed into the emergence of the UFO mythology, it seems pretty clear that this mythology was used repeatedly for the kind of strategic deception the Allies used to bamboozle the Germans before D-Day, to provide cover for secret aerospace projects in the US and elsewhere, not to mention plenty of less exotic situations where it was inconvenient to talk about who was flying what in whose airspace."(http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/01/costs-of-community.html)
Read the rest of Greer's intriguing post about trying to change what's broken in society here: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/01/costs-of-community.html
It reminded me that I did a book review of Greer's "The UFO Phenomenon":
... Greer's book is not the usual book on UFOs, instead focusing on "epistemology, logic, Jungian archetypes, occultism, pop culture and the politics of deception." Most books on UFOs generally fall into one of three paradigms:
1. UFOs are all easily explained away as hoaxes, delusions, or misperceived natural phenomena... this is the skeptics' point of view, based on dogmatic scientism.
2. UFOs are part of a government (or intergalactic) (or extradimensional) conspiracy by MIBs, Grays, Reptilians etc etc. to make us into galactic TV dinners or slaves of one kind or another.
3. UFOs are here to save us from ourselves, ET has come home and so have the angels to save us from our dastardly ways and save the planet...or at least take some of us away in an extraterrestrial Rapture.
Few of the popular UFO books fall outside these three formats, although some like "Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds" by Vallee and Keel's "The Mothman Prophecies" do bring some interesting alternatives to bear on the interaction of culture, cultural expectations, and the anomalies and unexplainable things we see in the skies...or scratching at our bedroom windows. Although one CAN find much of what Greer discusses in various sources around the Internet (and in old fashioned books!), only Greer has taken a historical view of the phenomenon, then compared the evidence to ALL THREE paradigms, in addition to a helping of sociocultural materials on such allied historical movements as the Spiritualists, and religious apparitions and laid it all right in front of the reader to look at and decide for themselves.
Basically, there is no ONE answer to the mystery of the UFO phenomenon. It is a whole -spectrum- of various phenomena (misperception, disinformation, observer's bias, psychological archetypes, geology, etc.) all lumped together into one box we call "the UFO phenomenon." And that's probably going to be why this book won't sell as well as if it were one of the BIG THREE in UFO circles, because it won't be square-pegged that way, it won't fit into one of the three paradigms, and the people who buy UFO books usually fit into one of those paradigms of skeptic, true believer, or conspiracist.
Greer does take a broad view and approach with an application of scientific methodology in this book, to the point where he even offers several predictions in the forms of Null Hypotheses, that the UFO phenomenon will eventually morph with the changes in military technology, and dwindle with the eventual passing of the "big voices" (UFO celebrities) in the debate and changes in our culture as we begin to deindustrialize (see Greer's "The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age")...although some form of the "contactee faith" will be with us for a long time to come.
My final caveat is that, while I give Greer's book five stars, and although 95% of UFO "incidents" are explainable, that leaves 5% that remain mysterious...and I think it is human to need mystery and the unknown, so let's leave that 5% alone, shall we? ;-)
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9:57 AM
