UFOs As Metaphors
UFOs As Metaphors
Jan 16 2008
Someone will say: “I saw A UFO.” What is it that they saw?
They may have seen a light moving erratically in the sky, or they might have witnessed a silvery cylinder hovering outside their hotel room window in broad daylight. Most people will assume that this object is piloted by gray aliens sitting at some inscrutable control board. This is of course because we have been told to think this in differing ways for the past 50 years or more. The phenomenon has told us this, and more importantly, we have reinforced it for the sake of our psychological comfort. No one sees hairy dwarves, beer-can shaped robots, or one-eyed giants anymore, at least not very much.
By looking at the subject in this way, the majority of UFO researchers are buying into a convention. Perhaps the objects or entities seen are a representation of something else, and our minds do what they do so well and fill in the blanks.
Since we have heard countless stories of weird creatures stepping out of silvery disks, we can comfortably assume that this is what is going on whenever something strange is seen that seems to fall into the “UFO” category, but we have no objective proof of this. No one can produce this phenomenon on demand, or wait around for a few weeks, months, or years expecting a flying saucer to appear. Of course, something might turn up using this method, but let’s accept that the current methods of science and other ways that we gather objective information are not useful for the study of UFOs.
So we have a problem: When an unfamiliar image hits our awareness, we look to the reigning convention for answers or closure. The problem is, we accept the convention (which is sometimes a metaphor) for “reality.” Is it possible to escape this trap?
It’s only a trap if we assume that metaphors are objective reality. I am not original in stating that this sort of error has been the source of much pain and misunderstanding between humans. Religious and political systems are based on models and metaphors of that unattainable “objective reality,” and we have seen that when people mistake the model for an inviolate law or even a deity, there are sometimes violent clashes.
This is not to say that the metaphor is false, but we often use symbolism to objectify something which is intangible. In his most recent public interview Jacques Vallee said something very important just before he was cut off for a commercial. If I am remembering correctly, the quote was “What we are finding is that our universe may be a subset of something else.”
The UFOs may be a “subset of something else” as well. They may be a projection into our awareness of something that is immediately seized upon and molded by our expectations to become silvery disks and bug-headed aliens. Of course, the UFO enigma may be exactly what we expect and believe it to be, but we have no objective way of proving this as yet.
I always find myself going back to an explanation of conscious awareness put forth by remote viewer Joe McMoneagle in his 1993 book Mind Trek. McMoneagle’s words should resonate well for those who study the UFO enigma:
We reside and operate in a constantly fluctuating past of our own creation…By the time our processing is of any use to us, we are already dealing with past events. Our reality is one we in fact invent or make up as we go.
Processing Sequence as a Function of Time
TIME 0: We recognize incoming information about our current reality.
PLUS 00000: We begin to make sense of the input from our five senses.
PLUS .00001: We fish out additional information from our hard-wired brain memory modules.
PLUS.0001: We reason a little about the information and decide we lack certain essentials to make any decisions.
PLUS .001: We insert additional overlay, inaccurate assumptions, and prejudice in order to make it more palatable.
PLUS .01: We reach a conclusion regarding our surrounding physical reality.
PLUS .1: Assured of the accuracy of our reality understanding, we make corrections to our hard-wired memory, file the conclusions for quick reference in the next check to make sure nothing changes too drastically, and begin the process all over again.
Overlap these processing sequences and perform them at fifty times per second and you can see that not only is the accuracy somewhat questionable, but no matter how fast it operates, it will always be just a tad behind reality as it can be observed. We will always be subject to our own observations as well as our own belief systems.
If we accept this model as a good one for human awareness, it is no wonder that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined. In essence, we are dealing with something that literally changes its character in lock-step with our expectations. Therefore it may be useful to look upon the UFO as a metaphor for something or a source of information which remains hidden to us for for now.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Wake Up Down There, Eyewitness Accounts, Alien Encounters, UFOmystic Exclusive, UFOlogy, Beliefs. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
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7 Comments to “UFOs As Metaphors”
1. red pill junkie Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Brilliant post Greg. It not only applies to Ufology, but to any human endeavour in general.
Would there be a way to stop the process of constantly comparing the flow of information that we receive from reality against our own preconceptions and expectations?
To “stop the world” as Castañeda put it?
Strieber seems to think so, from what I read of his novel 2012 (almost done!)
2. euphemystic Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
“…science and other ways that we gather objective information are not useful for the study of UFO’s.”
I’m not so sure about that, but I get your point. Take Harley Rutledge’s 1981, “Project Identification The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena”. A dry read but he found UFO’s just by looking for them. Maybe researchers these days are more interested in lore.
Speaking of which, I’ve been fascinated by the persistence of the “Space Brother” story. Still alive and well after over 100 years. Even Doris Lessing’s “Canopus in Argos” series seemed inspired by it. Stranger still, western society appears to be heading slowly in the Space Brother direction just as “they” predicted.
3. The_Sage Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“If we accept this model as a good one for human awareness, it is no wonder that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined”
Models are only useful so far as they describe reality, and that is one is model that is unproven and I am not willing to accept until it is, but it is a truism that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined. That ’something’ is called the mind. The mind is not a simple thing to figure out, because if it were that simple to figure out, we would all be simple minded. Furthermore, the mind is something that cannot yet be put in a lab to be measured or examined.
The UFO metaphor reminds me of the Central American Indians when they first saw Columbus and Cortez approach them via ship. The Indians had no concept and no word for something like a ship so they could not perceive the ships — even with something obvious to us like ‘big canoe’. One second the object was over there on the horizon, and later on when they went to look at it again, it was somewhere else on the horizon. When a ship finally pulled up to dock, the Indians could see all these people come pouring out like magic from this thing sitting in the water. People living in a ship? Unheard of! When the Indians finally interacted and understood what a ship was, they suddenly were no longer oblivious of them and could even describe them as ‘big canoes’. Interesting.
And that is why I say that when reporting UFO events, do not embellish them because they are already embellished by the witnesses. Adding or repeating drama of the event will only alienate us from the mystery even further. Just objectively describe the UFO itself — not the people who ’saw’ it, not what the people said or felt when they saw it — just the UFO itself. The message behind UFOs is for everyone, not just the people who want their five minutes of fame and fortune, so make the message for everyone. Maybe then the message finally will have some meaning.
4. Greg Bishop Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
euphemystic,
I’ve heard about that study. What did Ruteledge prove? I would suspect that he guessed that UFOs represented some kind of actual phenomenon which had heretofore not been recognized as such by science, and proceeded to offer his data to support this.
The problem I think is that this was as far as he could take things with the theories and instruments available.
Wikipedia says:
Observation of the unclouded night sky often revealed “pseudostars” - stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appeared to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violated the laws of physics. The most startling discovery was that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronized with actions of the observers. They appeared to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages.
Amazing stuff, but how would science take this further?
5. Greg Bishop Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Sage,
We do have a model for the mind and how it processes things. It may be inaccurate, but we’re able to study, examine and test it, and change the model as new data and theories become available. UFOs were what I was referring to as the thing that won’t “stop by the laboratory.”
Good analogy with the Indians and their first encounters with new objects, and it does have validity in the UFO/ human equation. However, the ships were there for more than a few minutes or seconds, the Indians could board them, and they carried men just like themselves. Therefore I think it was relatively easy for them to work the new concept into their world view.
I believe that most UFO reports are filed with as much objective information as can be gathered. I still think subjective impressions should be used in addition to the objective facts, at least as close as we can get to objectivity. Unfortuantely books, movies, and other media place their own meaning on the events. The “message,” if any about UFOs may be partially embedded in our individual reactions. But I agree that this message is for all, not just UFO buffs.
6. red pill junkie Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Great comment Sage :-)
7. euphemystic Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Re: Rutledge, I don’t think he proved anything since it was only one study. Has this experiment been repeated, if not why not? It seems simple enough and if it were successfully repeated many times then there would be lots of well documented evidence, maybe proof that UFO’s exist. Nothing fancy, no aliens, but an important step.
If there’s a proactive and sensible approach to studying the phenomena who knows, maybe they will behave more sensibly, and in any case be better understood, even if only at an elementary level.
http://tinyurl.com/yrw896
Jan 16 2008
Someone will say: “I saw A UFO.” What is it that they saw?
They may have seen a light moving erratically in the sky, or they might have witnessed a silvery cylinder hovering outside their hotel room window in broad daylight. Most people will assume that this object is piloted by gray aliens sitting at some inscrutable control board. This is of course because we have been told to think this in differing ways for the past 50 years or more. The phenomenon has told us this, and more importantly, we have reinforced it for the sake of our psychological comfort. No one sees hairy dwarves, beer-can shaped robots, or one-eyed giants anymore, at least not very much.
By looking at the subject in this way, the majority of UFO researchers are buying into a convention. Perhaps the objects or entities seen are a representation of something else, and our minds do what they do so well and fill in the blanks.
Since we have heard countless stories of weird creatures stepping out of silvery disks, we can comfortably assume that this is what is going on whenever something strange is seen that seems to fall into the “UFO” category, but we have no objective proof of this. No one can produce this phenomenon on demand, or wait around for a few weeks, months, or years expecting a flying saucer to appear. Of course, something might turn up using this method, but let’s accept that the current methods of science and other ways that we gather objective information are not useful for the study of UFOs.
So we have a problem: When an unfamiliar image hits our awareness, we look to the reigning convention for answers or closure. The problem is, we accept the convention (which is sometimes a metaphor) for “reality.” Is it possible to escape this trap?
It’s only a trap if we assume that metaphors are objective reality. I am not original in stating that this sort of error has been the source of much pain and misunderstanding between humans. Religious and political systems are based on models and metaphors of that unattainable “objective reality,” and we have seen that when people mistake the model for an inviolate law or even a deity, there are sometimes violent clashes.
This is not to say that the metaphor is false, but we often use symbolism to objectify something which is intangible. In his most recent public interview Jacques Vallee said something very important just before he was cut off for a commercial. If I am remembering correctly, the quote was “What we are finding is that our universe may be a subset of something else.”
The UFOs may be a “subset of something else” as well. They may be a projection into our awareness of something that is immediately seized upon and molded by our expectations to become silvery disks and bug-headed aliens. Of course, the UFO enigma may be exactly what we expect and believe it to be, but we have no objective way of proving this as yet.
I always find myself going back to an explanation of conscious awareness put forth by remote viewer Joe McMoneagle in his 1993 book Mind Trek. McMoneagle’s words should resonate well for those who study the UFO enigma:
We reside and operate in a constantly fluctuating past of our own creation…By the time our processing is of any use to us, we are already dealing with past events. Our reality is one we in fact invent or make up as we go.
Processing Sequence as a Function of Time
TIME 0: We recognize incoming information about our current reality.
PLUS 00000: We begin to make sense of the input from our five senses.
PLUS .00001: We fish out additional information from our hard-wired brain memory modules.
PLUS.0001: We reason a little about the information and decide we lack certain essentials to make any decisions.
PLUS .001: We insert additional overlay, inaccurate assumptions, and prejudice in order to make it more palatable.
PLUS .01: We reach a conclusion regarding our surrounding physical reality.
PLUS .1: Assured of the accuracy of our reality understanding, we make corrections to our hard-wired memory, file the conclusions for quick reference in the next check to make sure nothing changes too drastically, and begin the process all over again.
Overlap these processing sequences and perform them at fifty times per second and you can see that not only is the accuracy somewhat questionable, but no matter how fast it operates, it will always be just a tad behind reality as it can be observed. We will always be subject to our own observations as well as our own belief systems.
If we accept this model as a good one for human awareness, it is no wonder that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined. In essence, we are dealing with something that literally changes its character in lock-step with our expectations. Therefore it may be useful to look upon the UFO as a metaphor for something or a source of information which remains hidden to us for for now.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Wake Up Down There, Eyewitness Accounts, Alien Encounters, UFOmystic Exclusive, UFOlogy, Beliefs. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
del.icio.us Digg Reddit Ma.gnolia Technorati Help
Related News Stories:
Defense Research Papers Online »
Intelligent Design, Or Nature? »
Carl Sagan Was A Pothead »
Alien Evolution, Alien Motivation »
Air Force Officer Photographs UFO »
click here
7 Comments to “UFOs As Metaphors”
1. red pill junkie Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Brilliant post Greg. It not only applies to Ufology, but to any human endeavour in general.
Would there be a way to stop the process of constantly comparing the flow of information that we receive from reality against our own preconceptions and expectations?
To “stop the world” as Castañeda put it?
Strieber seems to think so, from what I read of his novel 2012 (almost done!)
2. euphemystic Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
“…science and other ways that we gather objective information are not useful for the study of UFO’s.”
I’m not so sure about that, but I get your point. Take Harley Rutledge’s 1981, “Project Identification The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena”. A dry read but he found UFO’s just by looking for them. Maybe researchers these days are more interested in lore.
Speaking of which, I’ve been fascinated by the persistence of the “Space Brother” story. Still alive and well after over 100 years. Even Doris Lessing’s “Canopus in Argos” series seemed inspired by it. Stranger still, western society appears to be heading slowly in the Space Brother direction just as “they” predicted.
3. The_Sage Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“If we accept this model as a good one for human awareness, it is no wonder that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined”
Models are only useful so far as they describe reality, and that is one is model that is unproven and I am not willing to accept until it is, but it is a truism that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined. That ’something’ is called the mind. The mind is not a simple thing to figure out, because if it were that simple to figure out, we would all be simple minded. Furthermore, the mind is something that cannot yet be put in a lab to be measured or examined.
The UFO metaphor reminds me of the Central American Indians when they first saw Columbus and Cortez approach them via ship. The Indians had no concept and no word for something like a ship so they could not perceive the ships — even with something obvious to us like ‘big canoe’. One second the object was over there on the horizon, and later on when they went to look at it again, it was somewhere else on the horizon. When a ship finally pulled up to dock, the Indians could see all these people come pouring out like magic from this thing sitting in the water. People living in a ship? Unheard of! When the Indians finally interacted and understood what a ship was, they suddenly were no longer oblivious of them and could even describe them as ‘big canoes’. Interesting.
And that is why I say that when reporting UFO events, do not embellish them because they are already embellished by the witnesses. Adding or repeating drama of the event will only alienate us from the mystery even further. Just objectively describe the UFO itself — not the people who ’saw’ it, not what the people said or felt when they saw it — just the UFO itself. The message behind UFOs is for everyone, not just the people who want their five minutes of fame and fortune, so make the message for everyone. Maybe then the message finally will have some meaning.
4. Greg Bishop Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
euphemystic,
I’ve heard about that study. What did Ruteledge prove? I would suspect that he guessed that UFOs represented some kind of actual phenomenon which had heretofore not been recognized as such by science, and proceeded to offer his data to support this.
The problem I think is that this was as far as he could take things with the theories and instruments available.
Wikipedia says:
Observation of the unclouded night sky often revealed “pseudostars” - stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appeared to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violated the laws of physics. The most startling discovery was that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronized with actions of the observers. They appeared to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages.
Amazing stuff, but how would science take this further?
5. Greg Bishop Says:
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Sage,
We do have a model for the mind and how it processes things. It may be inaccurate, but we’re able to study, examine and test it, and change the model as new data and theories become available. UFOs were what I was referring to as the thing that won’t “stop by the laboratory.”
Good analogy with the Indians and their first encounters with new objects, and it does have validity in the UFO/ human equation. However, the ships were there for more than a few minutes or seconds, the Indians could board them, and they carried men just like themselves. Therefore I think it was relatively easy for them to work the new concept into their world view.
I believe that most UFO reports are filed with as much objective information as can be gathered. I still think subjective impressions should be used in addition to the objective facts, at least as close as we can get to objectivity. Unfortuantely books, movies, and other media place their own meaning on the events. The “message,” if any about UFOs may be partially embedded in our individual reactions. But I agree that this message is for all, not just UFO buffs.
6. red pill junkie Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Great comment Sage :-)
7. euphemystic Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Re: Rutledge, I don’t think he proved anything since it was only one study. Has this experiment been repeated, if not why not? It seems simple enough and if it were successfully repeated many times then there would be lots of well documented evidence, maybe proof that UFO’s exist. Nothing fancy, no aliens, but an important step.
If there’s a proactive and sensible approach to studying the phenomena who knows, maybe they will behave more sensibly, and in any case be better understood, even if only at an elementary level.
http://tinyurl.com/yrw896
bin66 - 19. Jan, 00:06
