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Ray Stanford — May 18, 2014 Episode

Ray Stanford has sent me another message for his mailing list that he asked me to post here. But he says he doesn't have immediate plans to post directly in these forums, and probably won't be sending anything else for a while.

Note: If you already receive mailings from Ray, this version is simplified, with fewer illustrations:

Hello mailing list:

Ever since the death of the principal Socorro witness, Lonnie Zamora, after which I could then (without embarrassing Lonnie) tell of his agreement with Captain Richard T. Holder to substitute a fake red 'insignia' for what he actually saw, I have been accused by certain internet loudmouths of anything from being an outright liar trying for unexplained reasons to conceal what Zamora actually saw, to being totally deluded either by my own mind or by unnamed covert operatives out to deceive me and the world. But, if one looks closely as their statements and totally baseless claims, it should not surprise any intelligent, objective person that unfounded speculation and even paranoia is rampant among some internet persons pretending to make UFO-related revelations without due research, while using the internet as a playground.

You learned in my mass-mailed letter of yesterday, that Captain Holder's son was often told by his father that he obtained Zamora's agreement to not divulge the real 'insignia' he saw in red on the observed vehicle, so a bogus one was substituted.

My purpose today is NOT to tell you that I know exactly what Zamora really saw in red on the side of the ellipsoidal object he saw. I cannot accomplish that simply because I don't know for sure exactly what he saw in red on the object's side. So let me be clear what my purpose is. I intend to simply show that the alleged red 'insignia' Zamora began describing only after his talk with Captain Richard T. Holder on the evening of Friday, April 24, 1964, an arc with an arrow under it, and an underline, was NOT what he really saw, but is the substitution he decided to describe after talking with Captain Holder.

As to how the red 'insignia' Zamora actually saw might have looked, David Rudiak's totally objective and honest search for the reality contrasts beautifully against the internet 'rif-raf-rattle' of those who had rather publish unfounded speculation instead of doing due research on this matter.

There was even one internet-published speculation that I made up the story of the inverted V with three lines beneath it . Ignorant people can be awfully ridiculous at times.

Rather that rewrite all I have written years ago about that matter, let me provide you the assemblage of facts David Rudiak very kindly sent me recently, with the links he provided attached.

He very accurately reported:

The inverted V with three bars through it was being reported in the media before Ray even got to Socorro four days later and finally questioned Zamora (as I recall) on day 5. So despite some nonsense on the Net, Ray certainly did NOT invent that insignia, somehow getting Zamora to change his story. Examples of the media mentioning the symbol in the days immediately following:

1. Zamora interviewed by Walter Shrode on KSRC, I think the day after the incident. Transcript at my website and link to recording:

Socorro_Zamora_interview

SHRODE: And someone said that the markings that you saw was an upside down “V” with three lines running through it.

ZAMORA: No sir, I couldn’t tell you that, because they still don’t want me to say nothing about the markings.

2. Walter Shrode interviewing Hynek had him saying it (maybe April 29, after Hynek arrived at about the same time as Ray the evening of April 28), my transcript and link to recording:Socorro_Hynek_interview

SHRODE: Well, about this marking, can you tell us how he described this marking and what the marking was?

HYNEK: Yes, I see no reason why not. He described it to me as an inverted “V” with a sort of a bar across it...

3. AP quoted Hynek saying it:

AP Story, April 30 (e.g. Frederick MD News)
“The scientist [Hynek] also discussed the markings that Zamora said he saw on the side of the object, a red, inverted V with bars through it.”

4. First responder and Zamora's friend Sgt. Sam Chavez was quoted saying it:

Hobbs NM Daily News, April 28, front page
“State Police Sgt. Sam Chavez said he was told by Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora that the UFO he saw Friday… had red markings on its silvery side. Chavez said Zamora told him the design was an inverted V with three bars crossing it, but that the Air Force had told him not to discuss the markings.”

5. AP attributed the description directly to Zamora himself:

AP Story, April 29 (e.g., San Antonio TX Light, Danville VA Bee)

“Officer Lonnie Zamora said the object he saw last Friday was a brilliant white. He said there was a red marking on it like an upside down V with three lines across the top, through the middle and at the bottom.” (San Antonio paper also showed a drawing of the object with the symbol, said to be based on "newspaper accounts")

6. Ray has a recording of Socorro police dispatcher Mike Martinez saying it. As Ray notes in his book: "Martinez quoted Zamora in Spanish, "...un 'V' invertido, con tres líneas debajo," meaning exactly what it says, "an inverted 'V' with three lines beneath it"

In fact, I haven't been able to find a similar description of what became known as the real symbol in this early reporting. That seems to have appeared later.

Thank you Dave Rudiak.

In the National Archive's files on the Socorro case, one sees contradictory drawings of the red 'insignia' Zamora allegedly saw, but there may be several rational explanations for those, including the fact that at least two of them look as though they conceivably might have been drawing experiments made by Captain Holder and/or Zamora. That might have been done either with Zamora just trying, by drawing it, to figure out what he saw in those rushed moments of observation, or maybe drawings made when he and Holder were trying to decide on the substitute 'insignia' Zamora would, thereafter, publicly claim he saw. It seems conceivable that Holder mistakenly left them in the report, and that slip-up might have been induced by the long interview that went on into the night.

As you will see below, when movie producer James Fox and I were at the National Archive on August 3, 2013, just as James had predicted in coaxing me to go back to the Archive with him for a second day, I made a discovery that thrilled me and filled me with great satisfaction, because the document basically confirms what I had been saying for fifty years, and it should show any realistic person that an arc with an arrow under it, and an underline which Zamora began (on the April 25, 1964) drawing (in any of its slight variations) and telling the media and independent investigators he saw, was a bogus substitute instead of what he really observed.

Look below: James Fox asked to take that photo of me holding an important Hynek letter I had just discovered in the Archive's Socorro files, because he wanted to record for posterity the satisfaction on my face, that was a obvious as it could be. I've set into James' photo, below, another document found in the Archive's Socorro files. It's Allen Hynek's Polaroid photo (and its enlargement, at upper-left) of me standing beside the SW Socorro object landing pad imprint. Lonnie Zamora is at left, and N.M. State Police Sergeant Samuel Chavez, stands between Lonnie and me at age 25 on the morning of Wednesday, April 29, 1964. Thankfully, Hynek, who had known me since 1959 insisted -- over Sergeant Chavez's objections -- that the Socorro police dispatcher Mike Martinez tell me I would be welcome to join them at the landing site during Hynek's on-site investigation. (See my Socorro book for details, pages 49 - 63.)

Proudly, the 'slide' below illustrates my fifty years and early involvement in the Socorro case. THANK YOU, James Fox, for the wonderful opportunity that the situation be photo documented in my 50th year on the case.

PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE WRITTEN TEXT IN EACH IMAGE THAT FOLLOWS.

Unknown.jpeg

O.K., now that you've seen in James fox's photo of my unconcealed satisfaction, look closer at the letter I uncovered, as shown below. You can now understand my satisfaction, because it contains, in Allen Hynek's hand-written letter (while he was enjoying a badly needed vacation) to Major Hector Quintanilla at the United States Air Force's Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB, Hynek's own drawing of the 'insignia' Lonnie Zamora reported

Was there a stamp thief at the National Archive or at the Air Force's FTD? ;o) We noticed immediately that the postage stamp Hynek had affixed had been cut out.:

Unknown-1.jpeg

The second page of Hynek's letter to the FTD contains only trivia, and is unrelated to the Socorro case, so although it's available on request, I don't want to cause this letter to be rejected by some systems because of large data content..
A closer look at Hynek's drawing of the 'insignia' he reports Zamora saw is included in the slide below, with its color changed to the red in which Zamora said he saw the 'insignia'. What you see as the background of that red enlargement is the advertisement which Hynek enclosed with his letter to FTD, for a very new company seeking employees, that used a logo somewhat resembling what Zamora had described. Notice, too, that their logo was black and NOT RED. The FTD was hoping to find a company on earth that might have created the Socorro vehicle, but as major Hector Quintanilla told the CIA later, they never did.

Please notice what I tell in the blue area of the slide about that company's status.:

Unknown-2.jpeg

The USAF tried so desperately to locate a research facility that they hoped would explain what Zamora (and the other witnesses) saw, that they convened a highly classified conference at Holloman AFB, trying to find some terrestrial source for the high-performance object Zamora had seen within about 35 feet, with his glasses still ON, but they could find no source for the vehicle, and FTD's Major Hector Quintanilla told the CIA that despite all efforts, it was unexplained and unidentified. A copy of a declassified document concerning the secret Holloman meeting is in my files, from the National Archive visit with James Fox.

In closing, let me stress that I'm not trying to present the exact shape of the red 'insignia' Zamora saw on the side of the object. If you read my book, you know that all the persons to whom I spoke (including several law officers) told me the same thing, describing an inverted V with three lines across it. I have no doubt that the persons who described that to me were actually told that before Lonnie had his interview with Captain Holder.

Well, Hynek drew what you saw above, for the Foreign Technology division. In Hynek's drawing we plainly see that it is also an inverted V with three lines, but with some change in their lengths and placement. So whether Hynek's version was more accurate, or what first-arrivers at the landing site who talked to Zamora before he talked with Captain Holder said Zamora told them (and in at least one case drew) is more accurate, we can reasonably deduce that whatever the little variations might have been, it was the inverted V with three lines that Zamora saw. It absolutely was NOT an arc with an arrow under it, and an underline, which Zamora described to all media persons and other investigators after his agreement with Holder to provide a substitute 'insignia'.

My point here, again, is simply that, for example, the arc with an arrow and a single horizontal line under it, which Richard Hall of NICAP insisted on publishing for NICAP and asserted was what Zamora saw (despite my protests as their only on-site investigator) absolutely was NOT what he saw. it's only what he and Captain Holder agreed he would tell people after their meeting on the night of Friday, April 24, 1964.

I don't know whether Zamora saw the simple inverted with three lines across it, or the slightly different version of the same basic thing, which Hynek drew , or even if it was perhaps some variation from either of those as, if I understand him correctly, Richard T. Holder, Jr. feels he recalls his dad showing him. However, as the only on-site-with-Hynek, Zamora, and Chavez investigator of the Socorro case, and the only living person who has studied the case in-depth for fifty years, and as the one who wrote the 211-page 1976 book of the case, I strongly recommend that the 'UFO community' realize the arc with a vertical arrow under it and an underline was purposeful fiction, and that the red 'insignia' was actually some version of an inverted V with three lines.

There is more on the Socorro case which I hope to be sharing, and an important part of it is a video James Fox says will be in his forthcoming UFO movie, showing Hynek admitting to me something very significant about the Socorro case. And, by the way, if what Hynek tells me (in the interview) that the U.S. Air Force told him is true, it proves that a certain guy's pretense that the Socorro event was a student hoax is utter bilge (foolish or worthless claim).

The central proponent of the silly idea that the Socorro, multi-witness case was the result of a student hoax, has made numerous flimsy excuses for not debating me or others about his Nth-degree fictional extrapolation from one man's closed-minded fantasy about the case. Well, I've heard enough of his fiction which misrepresents a highly observant and intelligent man, Lonnie Zamora, as a blundering fool. Such misrepresentation of Lonnie Zamora are disgusting to anyone who really knew him, to his wife and children, and such claims are indefensible.

I CHALLENGE THE PRIMARY PROPONENT OF THE CLAIM THAT THE SOCORRO EVENT WAS TO RESULT OF A STUDENT HOAX TO DEBATE ME.

But, once again the primary proponent of that foolishness will surely not dare debate me, and likely (if he's still behaving as in the past) will hurl insulting excuses at me, as he did when I challenged him to debate me on Coast-to-Coast, and he chickened out.

I'm sick and tired of anyone trying to misrepresent the quiet but, intelligent, and highly observant Lonnie Zamora as some stupid, unobservant fool.

Well, back to my main purpose of this letter. Now you have Hynek's hitherto unpublished letter confirming the inverted V with three lines. I hope future illustrators will not show the fictional, substituted 'insignia' on the object's side when the Socorro object is illustrated. It was only because 'researchers' everywhere, including NICAP, had by 1976 convinced the public that the fictional 'insignia' was the real one, that, at my Socorro book editor's virtual insistence, we used the fictional 'insignia' on the side of the object on page 25 of the Socorro book. He said that, otherwise, people under the influence of organizations like NICAP and APRO would come across the book and reject it, saying that the author didn't even know what was really seen on the object. ;) For that reason, I wrote Appendix A: An Obfuscated Red "Insignia"?, pages 206 - 211, in the Socorro book's original Blueapple Books edition.

Now, fifty years after the Socorro event, I am happy to be able to set the record straight, yesterday with Richard T. Holder's important revelation, and, today, with J. Allen Hynek's letter to his employer, the Foreign Technology Division of the U.S. Air Force.

Still at it, after fifty years investigating what actually happened at Socorro on April 24, 1964,

Ray Stanford
 
Thanks to Ray Stanford for corresponding to you Gene, and thank you for posting this.

I have to admit though, I'm baffled why this insignia is of such great import compared to what Mr. Stanford claims to know about the object's propulsion system and flight capabilities are... these could lead to both reproducing the effect for humanity's gain, and also bring some of these things down that are invading our airspace.
 
Thanks to Ray Stanford for corresponding to you Gene, and thank you for posting this.

I have to admit though, I'm baffled why this insignia is of such great import compared to what Mr. Stanford claims to know about the object's propulsion system and flight capabilities are... these could lead to both reproducing the effect for humanity's gain, and also bring some of these things down that are invading our airspace.

Maybe the import lies in the fact that this phenomenon 'communicates' to us through symbols, which transmit information beyond the rational part of our psyche, directly into the unconscious mind.
 
Maybe the import lies in the fact that this phenomenon 'communicates' to us through symbols, which transmit information beyond the rational part of our psyche, directly into the unconscious mind.
Could be.

This would imply a really poor understanding of our subconscious then, given that they've been here for at least 80 years and we're still not getting the message...

Plus, symbols are uncommon. Except for the "Ummo" nonsense, of course.

Only the Vilas Boas case comes to mind, and only then on the uniform, not the craft.
 
Regarding UFO propulsion, the one method I am pretty sure that is not on the table, is any form of pushing, like a jet or helicopter blades. If reports of ridiculous g-force turns and instant acceleration are correct, there has to be something very novel going on which is fundamentally changing the inertia of the craft. I don't know details but if we think of gravity as being a field in the way magnetism is, there might be a way of inverting the crafts response to the gravity field of the earth. Tweaking it directionally would allow for moving laterally in addition to hovering or rising. I've heard it explained like the craft would be 'going downhill' - it's just that because the field has been manipulated, 'downhill' is the whatever desired direction is wanted.

As I said, no details and I don't know if it's correctly related here, nor if it is valid, but it is interesting and to me, more sensible than to expect UFOs to be using our current kind of propulsion that involves shoving one thing very fast in one direction to be able to go in the opposite direction.
 
Regarding UFO propulsion, the one method I am pretty sure that is not on the table, is any form of pushing, like a jet or helicopter blades. If reports of ridiculous g-force turns and instant acceleration are correct, there has to be something very novel going on which is fundamentally changing the inertia of the craft. I don't know details but if we think of gravity as being a field in the way magnetism is, there might be a way of inverting the crafts response to the gravity field of the earth. Tweaking it directionally would allow for moving laterally in addition to hovering or rising. I've heard it explained like the craft would be 'going downhill' - it's just that because the field has been manipulated, 'downhill' is the whatever desired direction is wanted.

As I said, no details and I don't know if it's correctly related here, nor if it is valid, but it is interesting and to me, more sensible than to expect UFOs to be using our current kind of propulsion that involves shoving one thing very fast in one direction to be able to go in the opposite direction.
I agree, and I spent half the damn night awake last night thinking about this. Well, this, and the dog freaking out because of the spectacular lightning storm.

Ok, let's say you can manipulate the curvature of space-time so that whatever direction you want to go in is "downhill." You'd still have to expend a spectacular amount of energy to do so, and you still wouldn't get rid of inertia -- if the Earth spontaneously changed direction dramatically, we may still be stuck to it's surface but would still be chunky salsa because of the rapid change in momentum.

You'd have to either get rid of "mass" completely and therefore inertia (like in the Heechee universe), get rid of the inertial frame of reference, or create a space/time bubble around you that has it's own frame of reference. Or some damn thing.

The problem with that of course is that I think you'd technically not be a part of the universe any more.

Hmm...

According the holy of holies, wikipedia, inertial mass and gravitational mass may not be the same thing:

Inertial vs. gravitational mass[edit]
Although inertial mass, passive gravitational mass and active gravitational mass are conceptually distinct, no experiment has ever unambiguously demonstrated any difference between them. In classical mechanics, Newton's third law implies that active and passive gravitational mass must always be identical (or at least proportional), but the classical theory offers no compelling reason why the gravitational mass has to equal the inertial mass. That it does is merely an empirical fact.

Albert Einstein developed his general theory of relativity starting from the assumption that this correspondence between inertial and (passive) gravitational mass is not accidental: that no experiment will ever detect a difference between them (the weak version of the equivalence principle). However, in the resulting theory, gravitation is not a force and thus not subject to Newton's third law, so "the equality of inertial and active gravitational mass [...] remains as puzzling as ever".[5]

The equivalence of inertial and gravitational masses is sometimes referred to as the "Galilean equivalence principle" or the "weak equivalence principle". The most important consequence of this equivalence principle applies to freely falling objects. Suppose we have an object with inertial and gravitational masses m and M, respectively. If the only force acting on the object comes from a gravitational field g, combining Newton's second law and the gravitational law yields the acceleration...

This says that the ratio of gravitational to inertial mass of any object is equal to some constant K if and only if all objects fall at the same rate in a given gravitational field. This phenomenon is referred to as the "universality of free-fall". (In addition, the constant K can be taken to be 1 by defining our units appropriately.
Mass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I wonder if you could manipulate an objects inertial mass (it's resistance to change in momentum) independently of it's gravitational mass (how it creates and responds to gravity)?

I actually didn't know these might be different things.
 
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Could be.

This would imply a really poor understanding of our subconscious then, given that they've been here for at least 80 years and we're still not getting the message...

Plus, symbols are uncommon. Except for the "Ummo" nonsense, of course.

Only the Vilas Boas case comes to mind, and only then on the uniform, not the craft.

This is not the time nor the place, but I've always been of the opinion that not ALL of the UMMO affair is 'nonsense.' Not when the same symbol appeared in one of the most intriguing close encounter of the last 25 years —the Voronezh landing of 1989

VoronezhSketches.jpg


Also, I think you're taking the 'symbolic' aspect of the phenomenon a bit too literally. I'm not just talking about the pictograms that are sometimes associated with the phenomenon, but I'm referring to symbols in a much broader, 'semiotic' kind of way —any type of non-verbal form of communication.

Even the very shapes commonly found in the sightings are of a profound symbolic significance according to Jungian psychology. We could conceive UFOs as 'mandalas' in the sky, visual 'Zen koans' meant to trigger certain aspects of our psyche.

mandala-jung-profile.jpg


PS: In evolutionary terms, 80, 800 or even 8000 years is nothing ;)
 
Even the very shapes commonly found in the sightings are of a profound symbolic significance according to Jungian psychology. We could conceive UFOs as 'mandalas' in the sky, visual 'Zen koans' meant to trigger certain aspects of our psyche.
Why do this?

What would the incentive be?

If they are mandala-type imagery... then why aren't they mandala-like, in that they actually invoke introspection rather than (in my last experience) "holy MFing crap!"

I've done a lot of meditation, and I don't see a connection there...

I guess I see the possibility, I just don't see the point. Especially given what must take a tremendous amount of energy and resources to accomplish that which at the end of the day doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. If they're accomplishing anything there, they must be really, really terrible at it.

Oh, and the replication of the UMMO symbol I chalk up to either the "trickster" aspect of this phenomena, or the "Philip" kind of experience. But that's me personally.

In the half dozen or so experiences I've had, one or two relatively close up, I've never seen any symbol. And they are very, very infrequently reported.

And 800,000 years to accomplish something we could do with equivalent technology on another inferior species in probably 10-100 years?

Wow, they really suck at this.
 
Thanks to Ray Stanford for corresponding to you Gene, and thank you for posting this.

I have to admit though, I'm baffled why this insignia is of such great import compared to what Mr. Stanford claims to know about the object's propulsion system and flight capabilities are... these could lead to both reproducing the effect for humanity's gain, and also bring some of these things down that are invading our airspace.
It appears one or more of Stanford's critics are trying to make hay of this issue, as opposed to the issues of propulsion and maneuverability. The most vocal critic, however, runs and hides when he is asked to come on the show and debate the issues. That's why we choose not to mention his name on the air anymore and I ask that you listeners don't mention his name here either. He doesn't deserve the publicity.
 
marduk said:
Why do this?

What would the incentive be?

If they are mandala-type imagery... then why aren't they mandala-like, in that they actually invoke introspection rather than (in my last experience) "holy MFing crap!"

I've done a lot of meditation, and I don't see a connection there...

I guess I see the possibility, I just don't see the point. Especially given what must take a tremendous amount of energy and resources to accomplish that which at the end of the day doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. If they're accomplishing anything there, they must be really, really terrible at it.

Maybe they do it for fun, who knows? An alien intelligence is, by the very definition of the term, crazy. Meaning their intentions & rationality would be incomprehensible to an outsider.

And I always tend to chuckle when the idea of "all the energy they spend to" [insert here] is brought up. It makes me think of what someone like Leonardo da Vinci would think if he saw a modern computer: Here's one of the most complex & intricate machines ever created by the human species, composed of thousand of different parts, some of which you can't even see without a microscope, and some made of rare metals & chemical elements that were mined or synthesized in far away regions of our planet; furthermore, the computer is run by an electric current produced by a massive grid involving a ginormous infrastructure of wired installations, cables, and power plants exploiting diverse forms of energy, from coal & hydraulic currents, to wind & even nuclear fission (And let's not even go into the details of the world wide web!)

If only Leonardo could see what this pinnacle of human ingenuity was being used by a large majority of the population, maybe he'd conclude we've all gone bonkers :p

f6f.gif




And 800,000 years to accomplish something we could do with equivalent technology on another inferior species in probably 10-100 years?

Wow, they really suck at this.

I think there was this TV program from the BBC or something that brought some members of a hunter-gatherer tribe to London. When one of them asked the person they were staying with where he was going, he replied he needed to go to work; he further had to explain the reason he had to spend so many hours working was because he had to pay the mortgage for his house, and later when he explained said mortgage took YEARS to pay the members of the tribe couldn't wrap their heads around that. To them it was totally insane, you see! Back when they came from, you asked your friends to build a new house, and it would take them just a couple of hours; at the most ;)

Bottomline: Time is relative. Maybe they don't share your sense of urgency ;)

the_time_you_enjoy_wasting4.jpg
 
I LOVE where you're going with this RPJ.

I fully kind of expect them to be insane as a culture, as I consider ours to be.

But economics is what it is and here's where your metaphor breaks down: I would expect Leonardo to laugh his ass off at what we do with our technology. But I couldn't see us going back in time just to show him how we wank.

There would HAVE to be a better, more self-interested reason to bother.

I mean, they're rational enough to get from wherever they come from to here... so they have to have some kind of internal logic driving their behaviour.
 
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I LOVE where you're going with this RPJ.

I fully kind of expect them to be insane as a culture, as I consider ours to be.

But economics is what it is and here's where your metaphor breaks down: I would expect Leonardo to laugh his ass off at what we do with our technology. But I couldn't see us going back in time just to show him how we wank.

There would HAVE to be a better, more self-interested reason to bother.

I mean, they're rational enough to get from wherever they come from to here... so they have to have some kind of internal logic driving their behaviour.

Wot, you can't consider how, if time travel was eventually invented, that 200 or 300 years from now the top-rating reality chronovision show would involve punking famous historical figures??

henry-viii-troll-face.jpg



Economics deals with the managing of resources. Who knows how that would work with what Michio Kaku would call a 'class 3 civilization'. Boredom might just be the ultimate driving force in the Multiverse, vato ;)

And re. internal logic... well, serial killers are about the most dedicated, laborious & methodical people you can ever imagine. So there...
 
Maybe signs or symbols occasionally observed on ufos are not intended to have any significance for us other than to indicate that the species involved knows that we use signs and languages and that they do so as well. A sign of intelligence and a suggestion of purpose, then, but without carrying any other meaning intended to affect us. It's also possible that some of the species passing through or visiting here merely mark their craft with insignia to identify themselves to one another.
 
There would HAVE to be a better, more self-interested reason to bother.
We've been reminded many times on the forum of the motives of self-preservation as a basic motivation for species. But you would have to think that in every puppy species's life there comes a time where issues of replication, longevity, preservation and the perpetuation of culture have been entirely solved. At some point exploration, curiosity, and altruism may become new themes in a species' evolution. Who know? These are all human concepts.

The communication themes of the UFO experience are well documented in the contactee texts with spiritual, ecological, and mostly indifferent strains of weirdness to them. If you count the abductee probings we appear to be as wild mammal is to biologist. Communicating with symbols is interesting as an idea as it is ubiquitous to our species. It's what we do best: representation. But again, this is all human guesswork up against something so impossibly different than us it may appear as 'insane' but I prefer impossibly different, as in _extremely_alien_.

This could all just be art or humor to THEM. The trickster piece, which is so well woven into the history of all human cultures, seems to be something much closer to us. Perhaps it's nearby in that leprechaun little people elves sprites kappa, what have you, everywhere elsewhere, in the forest caves underwater or near soccoro.

There's a definite plurality to what we're talking about, but I don't think we're currently capable of comprehending any motive. We have yet to accurately confirm, describe or define this phenomenon. Our human frames of reference and comprehension appear to be inadequate in this area.
 
Re the official withholding from the public media of the actual insignia observed by Zamora makes sense to me as an effort to prevent copycat hoaxing of ufo events involving that insignia which could only muddy the investigative waters in the future.
 
There's a definite plurality to what we're talking about, but I don't think we're currently capable of comprehending any motive. We have yet to accurately confirm, describe or define this phenomenon. Our human frames of reference and comprehension appear to be inadequate in this area.

Which is the thing I love the most about this phenomenon: it keeps inviting to expand those frames of reference, further & further :)

50 years ago we were trying to deduce which planet in the solar system the flying saucers were coming from. Now we're discussing things like the Multiverse & parallel dimensions & their probable implications with the phenomenon; oh, and we're slowly but surely moving away from the current materialistic paradigm with regards to things like Consciousness.

Imagine what we'll be discussing 50 years from now!

(And we probably will be nowhere closer to solving the reality of UFOs)
 
Wot, you can't consider how, if time travel was eventually invented, that 200 or 300 years from now the top-rating reality chronovision show would involve punking famous historical figures??
What, you mean like this:

'Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I indended',
said Ford. 'I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years.'

'But how did you get there in the first place then?'

'Easy, I got a lift with a teaser.'

'A teaser?'

'Yeah.'

'Er, what is...'

'A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around
looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.'

'Buzz them?' Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult
for him.

'Yeah,' said Ford, 'they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few
people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's ever
going to believe and them strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae
on their head and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really.'

- Douglas Adams
I don't buy it for a second. But I freely admit it's partly because I don't want to.
 
The communication themes of the UFO experience are well documented in the contactee texts with spiritual, ecological, and mostly indifferent strains of weirdness to them. If you count the abductee probings we appear to be as wild mammal is to biologist. Communicating with symbols is interesting as an idea as it is ubiquitous to our species. It's what we do best: representation. But again, this is all human guesswork up against something so impossibly different than us it may appear as 'insane' but I prefer impossibly different, as in _extremely_alien_.

I doubt that they are all 'impossibly different' from us. Indeed, our species might have been engineered by one or more of those species at points in our evolution, which might account for the extreme contrasts and contradictions in values and behavior among members of the species we have become at this point.

There's a definite plurality to what we're talking about, but I don't think we're currently capable of comprehending any motive. We have yet to accurately confirm, describe or define this phenomenon. Our human frames of reference and comprehension appear to be inadequate in this area.

I think we're able by now to rule out some motives, such as destruction of our species or planet, at least by the variety of species that have interacted with humans over the last 65 years. If we rule out destruction of ourselves and usurpation of 'our' planet (at least by species that have so far shown up), I think we can narrow down the possible motives to a manageable number of rational ones.
 
I doubt that they are all 'impossibly different' from us. Indeed, our species might have been engineered by one or more of those species at points in our evolution, which might account for the extreme contrasts and contradictions in values and behavior among members of the species we have become at this point.



I think we're able by now to rule out some motives, such as destruction of our species or planet, at least by the variety of species that have interacted with humans over the last 65 years. If we rule out destruction of ourselves and usurpation of 'our' planet (at least by species that have so far shown up), I think we can narrow down the possible motives to a manageable number of rational ones.
Yes!

One could rationalize:

1. Either they're not here to take over or they're doing a crappy job at it.
2. Either they're not here to help us or they're doing a crappy job at it.
3. Either they're not here to give us membership in the federation or they're doing a crappy job at it.
4. Either they're not here to give us any message at all or they're doing a crappy job at it.

This is why the only thing I can rationally come up with is that they're here for their own selfish motives. We may or may not be part of it at all.
 
Yes!

One could rationalize:

1. Either they're not here to take over or they're doing a crappy job at it.

Seems to me that if they wanted the planet for themselves they'd have taken it sooner, before the damage we've done to it.

2. Either they're not here to help us or they're doing a crappy job at it.

Some of them might have helped us by preventing nuclear exchanges leading to full-scale nuclear war during and since the Cold War. Possibly they also remediate environmental crises in ways we cannot see or comprehend, for example in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster..

3. Either they're not here to give us membership in the federation or they're doing a crappy job at it.

Or we don't merit it.

4. Either they're not here to give us any message at all or they're doing a crappy job at it.

The message they've given us to date is that they're here or nearby and not going away, that they are more powerful than us and smarter (not only technologically but in terms of rationality and restraint in their conduct, with one or two exceptions), and that we are part of a larger world in which we have to earn the right to be considered citizens.

This is why the only thing I can rationally come up with is that they're here for their own selfish motives. We may or may not be part of it at all.

They may not 'love' us, but it looks as if they value the perpetuation of life.

.
 
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