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Your Paracast Newsletter — June 11, 2017


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
June 11, 2017
www.theparacast.com


The Paracast Explores Whether It’s Time to Take a New Look at UFOs

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This Week's Episode: Continuing an ongoing discussion, Gene and Chris present two of the people responsible for a fascinating and insightful book, “UFOs: Reframing the Debate.” Featured guests include Robbie Graham, the books editor, and one of the authors, Robert Brandstter, known in The Paracast Forums as Burnt State. From the description of the book: “If ever we are to further our understanding of the UFO enigma, we must fundamentally reframe our debate. We must wipe the board clean and fill it with new ideas, new theories, even new language. We must be willing to start from scratch when the field stagnates. We must be critical, sober, and free of dogma—ready to rinse away the residue of our own beliefs.”

Chris O’Brien’s Blog: Our Strange Planet

Robbie Graham’s Site: http://www.robbiegraham.uk

After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on June 11: Gene and Chris are joined by paranormal blogger Red Pill Junkie, who talks about the Dark Knight/Joker connection of his essay for “UFOs: Reframing the Debate.” And there are examples of synchronicity as Gene points out that, when the episode was recorded, the news came about that actor Adam West, one of the most famous actors to play Batman, had died. Gene reveals his own Batman connection. and RPG brings up the absurdity and the chaos factor that is pervasive in many UFO sightings and other strange events, such as the trickster elements that occasionally surrounded the Mothman case. He also explores whether government intelligence agencies influenced alleged UFO contactees during the early days of the UFO myth. There’s also a discussion about Project Serpo, a silly story about an alleged human/extraterrestrial exchange program. But did it have any genuine intelligence connections?

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.

The Failed Promises Rant
By Gene Steinberg

While there are some people out there who claim to have mystical powers that allow them to forecast the future, making real predictions is certainly a mixed bag, a very mixed bag. The results are mostly big fails, except for the occasional fluke.

While it may be that some possess precognitive abilities, it’s not consistent enough to depend on.

But I’m not writing about people with alleged mystical powers. I’m focusing, instead, on people who expect things to happen for one reason or another, and thus tell you about it, and about what we ought to be looking for.

Now over the past seven-odd years, this newsletter has focused heavily on the problems with UFO research. My basic argument, which few attempt to refute, is that very little progress has been made towards figuring out what’s going on. Most of the time, the same old theories are just repeated ad infinitum.

So the flying objects, or whatever they are, are spaceships from other planets, perhaps originating from other star systems. Despite government denials that anything weird is going on, the authorities supposedly know some or all of the truth behind these visitations. Maybe they are even complicit with the aliens to further a secret agenda, or just to protect regular Earthlings from something or other by not telling them what’s really going on.

Rather than try to search for the answers, some people would rather cede control of the quest, and demand that the government — or Silence Group — disclose what’s really going on. Since they must know, we want the truth. We can handle the truth. You can take that to the bank!

Over the years, people involved in the field have assured us that the mystery will soon be solved, or the authorities will reveal what they know. Maybe both.

As far back as the 1950s, UFO legend Major Donald Keyhoe led a lobbying organization, NICAP, which fought for Congressional hearings on the subject. Although one might have expected that a retired military figure would be more savvy about such matters, Keyhoe long believed that, if Congress considered the evidence fairly, they’d come to the same conclusions he did. UFOs were real physical aircraft, intelligently controlled, and without doubt extraterrestrial.

When such hearings came to be in the 1960s — and not due to anything NICAP did — the investigation was handed off to the Condon Committee. Despite evaluating scores of amazing UFO cases, the group concluded there was nothing to it.

While Keyhoe long claimed it wouldn’t take very long for the truth to be out there, his efforts were unsuccessful.

Over the years, other UFO personalities have made efforts to bring about disclosure. Yet another lobbyist, Stephen Bassett, claimed year after year that it would really happen. One of his more recent failed predictions had it that President Obama would reveal the truth about the saucers before the end of his term. He certainly touted the fact that Secretary Hillary Clinton promised to get to the bottom of the mystery if she became President.

With the surprise election of Donald Trump as President, however, the question is no longer being asked.

So how many times do people have to cry wolf before they are no longer believed?

Now I got involved in researching the UFO mess at the tender age of 11. I was an avid reader of Major Keyhoe’s books in the early days, and I believed him, that there would be disclosure before long. Over the years, when nothing ever happened, I became jaded. After a few years, I came to the sad conclusion that we’ll never know the truth, or even what that truth might be.

As much as UFO organizations continue to sing the same old song about what it’s all about, it may well be that we aren’t meant to know the truth. The presence of what were originally known as flying saucers may be about showing us the future, our future, a future that requires that humankind leave this planet and become a spacefaring people.

Over the years, I’ve continue to recall those oft-quoted words from writer/editor Ray Palmer that the flying saucers were here to make us think.

If that’s the case, it really doesn’t matter what they look like, because their appearance is subjective. It may well be that our deep-seated cultural conditioning dictates how we interpret the phenomenon. So long as we’re steeped in a sci-fi culture, they will continue to take on the form of spaceships.

What is often missed is the inconsistency in the types of aircraft being reported. It’s almost as if each individual is creating his or her personal variant of what they might look like. Is there even an objective reality, a UFO that would look relatively the same to anyone who sees it within the limitations of human perception?

While so-called UFO research organizations continue to focus on UFOs as an separate phenomenon, and sighting reports as little more than people watching an external event, maybe it’s not that simple. If what we see is, in part, generated by our consensus reality, the witness cannot be separated from what is being witnessed.

In fact, how much does our cultural baggage — and we have plenty of it — influence the strange events that we sometimes experience?

It is clear that the existing research methods haven’t worked. I won’t speak of what doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result means. Instead, I’d rather suggest that we try something different.

Back in the 1960s, anomalist Allen Greenfield and I speculated about flying saucers and the multiverse, that they might be coming here from other dimensions. But that was a simple way of looking at alternate solutions. We felt then, at the tender age of 20 years, that existing theories just didn’t account for all of the inconsistencies in the phenomenon.

That approach eventually led to an examination of our concept of reality. As we continue to realize that the witnesses of strange events can be remarkably inconsistent in their testimony, how can we possibly separate what they see from who and what they are?

Is it even possible that we each live in totally separate realities, constructs created by our own minds, our own consciousness, somehow integrating with a sort of universal consciousness or life force? If there is no single objective reality, how can we be certain that the things we experience are even real?

Maybe everything is an illusion, and both our pleasures and nightmares are equally subjective. If that’s true, is it at all possible to change that reality to something that is more enjoyable, more fulfilling? What about the reality that we share with others? Can we do something that’ll change things for the better for everyone?

I wonder.

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