Our dinner table, last night, was the scene of a lively discussion about UFOs.
The current term used is UAP–Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena–but I prefer the term UFO, as UAP makes me think of the upper peninsula of Michigan, rather than mysterious objects in the sky.
At any rate, I bet a large number of people these days are talking about UFOs due to the information recently released by the Department of War (one collection of documents on May 8, and a second collection on May 22). The DoW further stated that they will release more information in the future as “they are discovered and declassified, with tranches posted every few weeks.” I wonder if a lot of the conversations are similar to the one at our dinner table?
Our conversation, conducted by three sons and two parents over a dinner of spaghetti and salad which yours truly made, centered on what the possible explanations are for the UFOs. Fairly standard question, I would imagine.
Philosophical Boundaries?
If you set aside all philosophical preconceptions of the entire gamut, from atheism to various forms of spirituality, there are only four possible answers to the question: unexplained natural/weather phenomena, secret human/government technology, extra-terrestrials, spiritual activity. I might be missing an additional potential answer but I can’t think of anything else.
We didn’t spend any time on options 1 and 2. You could build a case for drone-pranks as part of option 2, but that answer doesn’t work too well with some of the sightings over mid-ocean by naval aviators, etc.
Instead, we focused on options 3 and 4. The argument careened into ad hominems from time to time, but it basically revolved around whether or not the behavior of the UFOs broke the laws of physics in any way (such as lack of observable friction), whether or not this simply means human understanding of physics still has a long way to go, and whether or not spiritual activity would have any reason to mess about creating UFO behavior.
In terms of spiritual activity, most of our conversation–which really had turned into a raging argument about halfway through–assumed malicious spiritual activity. Demons.
Mayans, Aztecs and…
One of the more interesting perspectives on the demons-as-UFOs argument is the parallel between sky activity now and sky activity back during the time of the Aztecs and Mayans. The Mayans, for example, had several sky gods they revered, such as Itzamna and Kukulcan. These gods were nasty pieces of work for the most part, despite the occasional good they were supposedly responsible for (such as Itzamna teaching people how to farm). The descriptions of human sacrifice common to both those civilizations are extremely unsettling. Not exactly the church you want down the street.
If I put on my story hat, it’s pretty easy to see a narrative of some dark god playing a long game. Get the natives running around several thousands of years ago, and then come back in the modern era and see about resurrecting the same behavior.
On the extra-terrestrial side of the equation, we can argue that human knowledge is quite limited, the universe is quite large, and it’s certainly presumptuous to think homo sapiens of Earth are the only sentient beings in the multi-galactic neighborhood.
Enter the Steven
In a timely fashion, Steven Spielberg is about to release a UFO conspiracy thriller movie called Disclosure Day. A rather fitting production for the same director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The two films almost serve as book-ends for his career. I’m not entirely certain, but it sounds like Spielberg’s new film will contain the theme of Concept Normalization (I think I just made that term up): that is, how do you introduce an extraordinary concept to a society in a way that does not alarm the general populace?
Angels, demons, extra-terrestrials… whatever the source of UFOs is, they all intersect with Concept Normalization. Or Mainstreaming Madness. Frog-in-Boiling-Pot. Or whatever you want to call it.
Regardless of the answer, I think we still have some interesting things to learn. I’m pretty convinced the answer is not Leroy and his buddies stringing Christmas lights on drones and then flying them around at night.