Literature

8/24

-Passport To Magonia
Jacques Vallee

Still seeking truth? Are you sure you’ve been…listening?

Mr. Vallee has always been at the forefront. Sometime around the year 1969 he penned the excerpt below. If he were thinking, and seeing, certain elevated truths about humanity and therefore the dreaded UFO, so many decades ago, it would seem your own struggle to perceive beyond the science-fiction narrative of “space visitors” is solely out of an inability to stop and listen to what learned and resourceful minds have already discovered and uncovered.

Mr. Vallee has, whether he agrees or not, devoted his entire life to researching the greater reality, the “bigger story”, of our own humanity. This, perhaps is his as well as the UFO’s greatest lesson and message:

Give me your awareness for but a moment, and I shall return it to you threefold.

“Let us come to the point now. It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs are craft from a superior space-civilization, [because this is a hypothesis science fiction has made widely acceptable], and [because we are not altogether unprepared, scientifically and even, perhaps, militarily, to deal with such visitors].

Unfortunately, however, the theory that flying saucers are material objects from outer space manned by a race originating on some other planet is not a complete answer.

However strong the current belief in saucers from space, it cannot be stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the medieval belief in lutins, or the fear throughout the Christian lands, in the first centuries of our era, of demons and satyrs and fauns. Certainly, it cannot be stronger than the faith that inspired the writers of the Bible—a faith rooted in daily experiences with angelic visitation.

In short, by suggesting that modern UFO sightings might be the result of experiments—of a “scientific” or even “super-scientific” nature—conducted by a race of space-travelers, we may be the victims of our ignorance, an ignorance that finds its cause in the fact that idiots and pedants alike, through a common reaction that psychologists could perhaps explain if they were not its first victims, have covered the fairy-faith with the same ridicule as other idiots and pedants cover the UFO phenomenon.”

…that is surely a “mic-drop” moment, and yet he continues…now, listen:

“Much can be accomplished, however, once it is realized that the observational material on hand since World War II—the twenty thousand or so clear-cut, dated reports of UFOs in official and private files—is nothing but a resurgence

-of a deep stream in human culture

-known in older times

-under various other names.”

Essentially, the UFO, so-called, is as much Mankind as Mankind is UFO.

That The Phenomenon is…elegantly…simply, Man himself. The paradox of it all arises naturally when we attempt to separate ourselves from the UFO. As the story of The UFO comes into closer alignment with the story of The Man, the less pronounced the shadow of ignorance beclouding our understanding.

Still curious? Start here: Prologue … and then read this: The Conversation

“To let UFO speculation grow unchecked would only make the public an easy and defenseless prey to charlatans of all kind. It would mean that any organized group bent upon the destruction of our society could undermine it by skillful use of the saucer mythology…”

When you begin to grasp the cosmic speed, timing, and precision required to bring about true self-awareness on this planet…you stop questioning all the other “out there” rumored and supposed-to-be like us.

You sit quietly alone in a dark corner to contemplate that exact dark truth: that we are absolutely alone in a dark cosmic corner, with our phenomenal, potential awareness.

Man, sees naught but a shimmer of his own future: Mankind, empowered sovereign fruit of the Earth, charged to go-forth and multiply…colonize…shall.

“A good researcher should not be afraid to change his mind; he should not feel desperate because his comforting beliefs leave him as soon as he begins to think critically. If he applies these rules, he may not solve all the problems he attacks, but at least he will be less likely to fall victim of every delusion or fad that is associated with them.

Just as some cheap magazines are deliberately written to generate fear in the public and to capitalize on that fear, some scientific reports are deliberate hoaxes designed to reinforce the credibility of our scientific, political, or military establishments. This is a fact of life, and it should not discourage one from the study of science.” Says Mr. Vallee so very wisely.

He continues:

“A young researcher should keep in mind that he will never make a serious contribution to the study of this problem, or of any problem, unless he first develops his own competence to the point where he can select an aspect of it and cover it by himself, without relying on the emotional form of thinking which characterizes the enthusiast.”

And finally:

“Perhaps what we search for is no more than a dream that, becoming part of our lives, never existed in reality. We cannot be sure that we study something real, because we do not know what reality is; we can only be sure that our study will help us understand more, far more, about ourselves.”

More?

Read this: The Conversation

—//—

Next up:

4/24

-The Medium is the Massage
Marshall McLuhan

Notes:

"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." - A. N. Whitehead

Civilization in the middle of advancement, growth and evolution…means this same civilization, [which is at the cusp of greatness], appears to all our externally focused senses, [in all areas that make civilization what and why it is], to be rapidly crumbling.

Civilization without chaos, would be one without movement: boring and stagnated.

"There’s a time, when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop." -Wretches and Kings

—//—

"Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement." -M. McLuhan

I hear whispers and shouts that “…the internet divides…”…and yet, going unnoticed is that Man is united in his divisiveness, and together in agreement that the internet, a ‘new medium’ for Mankind, a new technology and therefore reality, may at times bring out the worst, and best, of us all. [What else is new?]

—//—

"The older training of observation has become quite irrelevant in this new time, because it is based on psychological responses and concepts conditioned by the former technology—mechanization." -M. McLuhan

How robotic are you in your awareness of life…of yourself…of it all? Are you truly here…and, now…? Do you just, mechanically, go through the motions, or are you the motion…the reason for whatever season?

Do you observe the world today, as you always have? Are you still a child, peeking out from aged and adulted eyes…or, do you see the world anew?

You hear of “trained observers”, and trained they are, to see…what though?…more importantly, trained how? In what old, preconceived, established manner? Military generally, and Professions in aviation especially, are very-much patterned and established: founded by, encouraged by, and learn lessons primarily from, experiences of the past: the old ways.

Can a Military Aviator from western culture, truly, fully and actually observe anything other than what they have been literally programmed to observe? Do trained observers today see dimly yet chiefly through, hindsight?

Can the new smart machines, built to fit this same established pattern and programming, see any more clearly than their naive creators?

How relevant are any modern, supposed-to-be “trained observers”?

Are “trained observers” of the modern world naught but weather reporters who forecast cloudy conditions a month after the storm?

—//—

"Our 'Age of Anxiety' is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterdays tools—with yesterday’s concepts." -M. McLuhan

Does the world today feel, faulty? Perhaps it is your idea of the world today, which may be faulty…

Are you attempting to fit the reality of life as an adult today, into an old rusted container handed to you by your aging parents while still a preschooler yesterday?

As a child, perhaps you playfully put on the eyeglasses of your grandmother to be cute and fun…yet you forgot to take them off, and now see all through the perspective of one who came long before and required those corrective lenses.

You can see only as well as you can imagine.

This time we now live requires a tireless and boundless imagination to see and appreciate the fullness of this reality we have constructed.

—//—

"Our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categories—for probing around. When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised, put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result." -M. McLuhan

Our time…startling discoveries…

What barriers have you crossed? What old categories have you erased? To what extreme have you probed around? Have you united any old ideas into…something new?

"Survival is not possible if one approaches his environment, the social drama, with a fixed, unchangeable point of view—the witless repetitive response to the unperceived." -M. McLuhan

—//—

"Visual space is uniform, continuous, and connected. The rational man in our Western culture is a visual man. The fact that most conscious experience has little 'visuality' in it is lost on him." -M. McLuhan

Feeling lost?

—//—

"Whence did the wond’rous mystic art arise,
Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes?
That we by tracing magic lines are taught,
How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?" -M. McLuhan

—//—

"Electric circuitry is recreating in us the multi-dimensional space orientation of the 'primitive'." -M. McLuhan

…[in us]…

Embrace your evolution, and become boundless.

"We now live in a global village…a simultaneous happening. We are back in acoustic space. We have begun again to structure the primordial feeling, the tribal emotions from which a few centuries of literacy divorced us…Unhappily, we confront this new situation with an enormous backlog of outdated mental and psychological responses. We have been left d-a-n-g-l-i-n-g. Our most impressive words and thoughts betray us—they refer us only to the past, not to the present." -M. McLuhan

—//—

"Art is anything you can get away with." -M. McLuhan

And I say, "You…are anything you can get away with."

What greater Art, what more grand a production than, your damned Self?

—//—

"Real, total war has become information war." -M. McLuhan

What are you doing, daily, to arm yourself? Do you prefer to wage war with weapons manufactured by the hands of your ancients…or…would you prefer to use the latest and greatest gadgetry our technology can provide?

What of your informational weapons then?

Are your blades dull? Are your bullets impotent?

"It is the business of the future to be dangerous." -A.N. Whitehead