Are UFO a gateway drug

[callmesnake]

I don't buy into conspiracy s#%t. But does anyone think that it leads people down a dark path. Where they can't trust anything that's said to them.

 

[Angel of Ioren]

Not necessarily. A lot of people find UFOs interesting but are far from conspiracy nuts... myself included.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Totally. I just wanted to hang with the cool kids so I read a couple of UFO books. 2 years later I was destitute at Billy Meier's Swiss cottage, selling Youtube 'clicks' to get a fix of Pleiadian Brown.

 

[Burnt State]

there are many hours, so many hours that can never be returned, because of the UFO addiction. i'm not too sure about it as a gateway drug unless you are talking about a gateway to the end of your reality, as it easily allows you to travel down a pathway in the woods that will end with you meeting the aliens, and then before you know it, you're an abductee - so in that way there is some danger, Will Robinson.

But as far as leading to other belief systems, i think that's about personality types. Some go for the "reptilians are taking over the world" conspiracy, and when i talk with those folk i'm surprised at how well they can still interact in the world, pay their taxes, feed their children etc. given that they believe what they believe. But I don't blame UFO's for that, as i think anything could have taken them there: Donald Trump's hair takes them there, Bigfoot, Nessie, earthlights...

UFO's though, are their own special kind of drug, a little like DMT on rare occasions, but usually they are something soft and subtle, always in the background, seeping into the corners of thoughts as they linger on the tongue electrically, like cigarette smoking on acid.

 

[ChrisJohnsen]

I don't buy into conspiracy s#%t. But does anyone think that it leads people down a dark path. Where they can't trust anything that's said to them.

Yes. Some.

 

[Sue]

I don't buy into conspiracy s#%t. But does anyone think that it leads people down a dark path. Where they can't trust anything that's said to them.

The thread title is are UFOs a gateway drug and then the post mentions conspiracies. My understanding is that UFOs, originally, in the US, were not folded into the rhetoric of conspiracy the same way they are today. (For that matter, the rhetoric of conspiracy itself has evolved and expanded.) It's an interesting question either way. I remember Greg Bishop saying in a podcast or maybe in writing somewhere that for about a year when he was researching Project Beta he was really paranoid and that at a certain point he more or less said "f*ck it" and that was that.

One of the things I found really interesting about Jonathan Kay's book Among the Truthers is how high-profile 9/11 Truthers easily maintained a boundary between the world of their conspiracy beliefs and the world in which they successfully functioned (which implied negation of their conspiracy beliefs). This is similar to what Burnt State says above. In addition to personality types being involved like State says, I will put on my Annoying Sociologist hat and say that going down a reptilian or alien DNA black rabbit hole, e.g., is a way to express/grapple with cultural and historical changes that threaten established social identities when no alternatives seem available.

You could also take Jerome Clark's stance. I think it is in one of his appearances in an episode here (and on one of the transcripts on the Paracast+) where he says studying UFOs is a valid intellectual exercise even if you've never seen one. On the other extreme are the folks trying to find out the truth about themselves via regressive hypnosis. Others have had really unusual experiences that freak them out, and still others suffer from one or another kind of mental illness, either short or long term. There is no single gateway and no one dark path.

 

[Mulvaney]

The thread title is are UFOs a gateway drug and then the post mentions conspiracies. My understanding is that UFOs, originally, in the US, were not folded into the rhetoric of conspiracy the same way they are today. (For that matter, the rhetoric of conspiracy itself has evolved and expanded.) It's an interesting question either way.

UFOs have always been on the edges of Conspiracy. Donald Keyhoe thinking that the government was covering up the truth. The men in black. Fred Crisman taking us from Maury Island to JFK and Dallas. Antarctica and Nazi UFOs. George Adamski - whether it be the mysterious people trying to prevent his mission or the belief that he was an agent.

Without conspiracy, Roswell would be just another town in New Mexico. And it is just a short step from the Majestic-12 to the Bilderberg Group or the Illuminatti. Area 51. Secret governments. Abductions. Reptilians. Insect Aliens. Messengers of Deception. If they are hiding the truth about UFOs, what else are they hiding?

If disclosure will not happen, then maybe the next person with inside information will tell us the truth. Lazar. William Rutledge. "Captain" Mark Richards. Someone must know. And then you discover lunar bases, faces on Mars, trips to Mars with Obama.

And if you stumble upon the truth, which must surely be out there, you might know more than the President about what really is going on. You might enter on a quest for secret knowledge, arcane wisdom that is timeless. Like Ancient Aliens. Or you might be baptized into a technological religion with technological angels. Somewhere beyond the intersection of science and faith.

Even if you begin to find the truth, there must be something around the next corner. Layers upon layers. But what if it turns out to be disinformation? All the conspiracies cannot be right. Or can they? And you delve deeper. You stop sleeping because you listen to radio shows into the early morning hours about mysterious holes. You join a militia and stockpile food. You try out wearing funny hats.

So start out with an innocent enough picture. A flying saucer over McMinnville. Read a story of a kid who went missing for five days. Look up in the sky and see something just outside of normal. Then the magic carpet ride begins. Take it as far as you want. There really is no end. Believe what you want. Just because it's a conspiracy does not mean it's not true. And just because it's true does not mean that it's not a discordian dream, an apple thrown by Eris that we feel compelled to chase.

It is easy to follow a path and end up in an unknown land. If you do not validate your position, you could end up on the ceiling looking down and wonder where it began.

But I am not sure if UFOs are the gateway drug, or if it is something deeper in our psychology. If UFOs are an archetypal force, what is it about us that taps into it? If there is an objective reality to UFOs, what is it that we are hoping to find and why are we looking so hard to find it?

We live in a world where UFOs are an ingrained part of our existence. Whether we believe or not, the image of a Gray has become part of our cultural identity. Perhaps the gateway occurs far earlier than when we start to think about the phenomenon.

Be careful not to fall into the rabbit hole. But maybe the rabbit hole is where the real journey begins. Or maybe it's something just to pass the time away.

 

[Burnt State]

You could also take Jerome Clark's stance. I think it is in one of his appearances in an episode here (and on one of the transcripts on the Paracast+) where he says studying UFOs is a valid intellectual exercise even if you've never seen one. On the other extreme are the folks trying to find out the truth about themselves via regressive hypnosis. Others have had really unusual experiences that freak them out, and still others suffer from one or another kind of mental illness, either short or long term. There is no single gateway and no one dark path.

Agreed on UFO's as a valid intellectual exercise. The mystery is so unique, with so many different facets to the phenomena that it affords the opportunity to use the imagination and engage in intellectual pursuits from a wide range of perspectives and fields of study. It is extremely flexible this way hence the many comparisons to ghosts, religious experiences, dreams, medical experiments, rites of passage, alternate dimensions, ancient astronauts, mythic teachings and so on. Really, whatever thinking cap you want to put on the UFO lends itself nicely to such investigations and allows for many, many permutations as the history of ufology is filled with such pursuits. This often makes me wonder whether or not the whole ball of wax is simply a symbol for our times, one that communicates not too much differently than our age old beliefs about gods coming down from the skies and our ongoing promethean relationship to technology. Is this the archetypal force that Mulvaney is talking about above?

Yes there are many paths to darkness and personal deconstruction, but I must say the UFO, and encounters with their occupants, lend themselves most nicely to mental unrest. Thinking creatively and curiously about them can be very enjoyable and may not necessarily alter the mind, but taking them into your reality, and making their reality a part of your own frame of reference for how to know the world leads to parts unknown, to undiscovered countries and I question how sane such pursuits are, both for the practitioner and for any followers such thinking may accumulate. UFO's can be anything; can do anything, and that makes them subject to no real laws or groundings at all; whereas, Bigfoot you rarely see flying about or sneaking into your closet at night - same with other cryptos - they tend to stick to their habitats. But the UFO occupant comes into our bedrooms and takes us away at night, are suddenly lurking around the corner in the forest path and could even be behind you right this moment. Whatever you do, don't look behind you.

 

[Sue]

Yes there are many paths to darkness and personal deconstruction, but I must say the UFO, and encounters with their occupants, lend themselves most nicely to mental unrest. Thinking creatively and curiously about them can be very enjoyable and may not necessarily alter the mind, but taking them into your reality, and making their reality a part of your own frame of reference for how to know the world leads to parts unknown, to undiscovered countries and I question how sane such pursuits are, both for the practitioner and for any followers such thinking may accumulate.

You are right, and I don't necessarily mean to completely reduce being unhorsed by a UFO experience to being unhorsed by something more mundane, like the death of a child, the sudden loss of your career or being diagnosed with a glioma. In the latter cases, other people will hopefully rally around you and sympathize. With a UFO experience, people will be more questioning because fewer can relate to that experience and the ones who do rally around you seem to be at best sob siblings who will inflate the story for their own reasons and at worst story predators waiting to suck up your experiences to regurgitate them in some future book or podcast as their own narrative about discovering the truth.

I would like to wrap up with a conclusion but I am not done thinking it through.