Friday, November 12, 2010

Alien Conspiracies and the Varieties of Belief


As people who follow my twitter  probably already know, I've been on a "thing" the past day or two looking into some of the conspiracies that I tend to avoid. Why have I been doing this? Maybe it's a bit of self distraction. But since I at least ostensibly study modern mythology, and take a pretty damn broad view of what that is, it starts to seem that this topic does fall into my oeuvre, much as I'm loathe to admit it. Alien lore is a form of modern mythology. So are conspiracy theories. And they are subject to many of the points I have brought up before about ancient myths. Like many "believers" of all creeds today, a lot of these people have missed a crucial distinction between internal experience and scientifically verified theory, or even, dare I say it? Fact. (Don't get me started on "facts" today, though. That'd totally throw me off track.)

Rather than really get into what I mean by "missing a crucial distinction," just watch the video above, where this woman calls out Obama and the other Reptilians / Draco's, and Reticulans to let them know that she is the representative of the Pleiadian people, who according to her are about to show up and open up a whole bottle of whoop-ass for getting their asses trashed back in some war that, believe it or not, does get alluded to in a lot of the "literature" you can find through Google searching these terms.

I'll let you do the Googling if you care to. It's pretty fucking funny, until you realize just how many people believe this stuff in a way that can get dangerous, or manipulative. Not to mention the fact that offering threats to the President of the United States is probably not a good idea. But that's her problem.

This demands some xkcd:



As anyone with half a brain will point out: anything is possible. (I'm told Stephan Hawking has also said "anything is possible," and we all admit that he's not exactly dumb. Right?)

This does not mean, however, that anything is probable. If we're actually looking for cause the best route is to expel the most probable answers before even considering less probable ones. Occams Razor doesn't provide solutions but it does tend to keep us from making total asses of ourselves. For instance, 9/11: the result of almost criminal negligible on the part of the government mixed with inter-bureau jealousy... not sharing intel, an "inside job," or the first step of a Reptilian invasion plan? It can be very hard to determine the relative probabilities of many things in life- is it more dangerous for me to walk to the corner store in North Philly to buy a carton of milk, or to drive several blocks in a suburban neighborhood? But can we all at least get together in saying that it is more probable that humans are dumb and greedy, rather than that - without any further evidence to the point - that there is a global conspiracy in place which would require an almost absurd amount of intelligence? And that this is itself more probable than that eight foot tall lizard people are manipulating terrorists and governments alike?

Let me bring this veering train back to my initial point. If we are willing to accept the psychological and mythological perspective as valid on its own grounds, as I have discussed on this blog many times before, then if you have an experience of talking to an alien species through your crystal necklace than I say go with it. Have fun talking to your giant Pleiadian lover. I won't even call you crazy, because so long as you don't pretend you actually know the source of this message, that experience is valid. (Though her story really sounds like a classic schizophrenic breakdown.) Maybe the message is coming from inside you. Maybe it is something you just need to experience emotionally to maintain some kind of equilibrium, say, after a catastrophic loss. Maybe it is fucking telepathic aliens. (Though I doubt it more than my ability to fly.) If you approach it with a certain skepticism but also an openness to the fact that we simply don't know, with any real certainty, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE, then you may at least learn something about yourself. The fact that these things take on an increasing amount of reality, the more attention you give them, is something that is fairly well documented and it is certainly a curious thing. It is almost like that common motif in fairy tales, that the "fey folk" depend in some part on our belief to exist at all. That they feed upon our dreams.

But we'll save that for another day. What if your telepathic alien lover tells you to kill everyone. If you listen, then you're crazy. And a lot of other things, to boot. Put another way, the moment you take the leap and think that the aliens are teaching you Science, that you must spread the Good Word, and everyone must stock up on weapons before the Reticulans arrive... Well, we may as well all just get out our aluminum foil hats. Some people don't know this, but the psychologist Carl Jung wrote a book on UFO phenomena that deals with this.

I'd like to point out that if you look at what I just said, and swap out a few words, we could just as easily be talking about Religious fundamentalists. It is exactly the same principle at work. And the distinction between what is potentially a new and even valuable mythology, and what is a dangerous one, or what can be used to control people, is simply in the subtle distinction I've been trying to get at - possibly poorly - throughout this post.

By the way I recently read a meta-blog, you know one of those high traffic "blogs about blogging," which claims that if your posts go over 650 words that you're going to bore your readers, and another said that if you can't read a blog post in 90 seconds then no one is going to read it. Because no one has an attention span of more than 90 seconds these days. Is that true? Are you still reading? If that is indeed true, I had best stop writing fucking books, huh?

11 comments:

  1. I read through the post. So you've got at least one fan with attention span above your average MTV video watcher. :)

    I basically agree with most of what you've written. The line between sanity and craziness among would-be mystics/magi/new age alien watchers seems to come down to maintaining a certain sense of skepticism or distance from one's perceptions, however distinctive and peculiar they might be, and (more importantly in the eyes of society) not making too much of a ruckus about them. I suspect that having some awareness that such experiences are linked to non-ordinary states of consciousness about which there can be no consensus helps in this.

    Other than what you've written, the one thing I'll add (and I mentioned this on your facebook) is that the very few people I've met with bona fide siddhis - real, honest-to-God/Pleiades psychic powers - either pretty much literally believe this stuff, or else they believe equally crazy-house stuff, like that they get information from extradimensional vampire-witch lovers and the like.

    I suspect - well, actually, I sort of blindly guess, that there are more-or-less objectively real otherworldly realities, and that accessing them can be empowering (albeit sanity threatening) in very uncanny ways, but that human perception is too limited to draw many conclusions beyond that.

    That's what I tell myself anyway. So maybe that's my personal mythology.

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  2. I'm reminded of how RAW picked up the Harvey thing, in an attempt to give himself a model of his experiences that he would be incapable of taking seriously. Unfortunately, it seems like being ridiculous is not really a factor in whether or not someone is willing to take seriously something they personally experience (the exceptions prove the rule here).

    There's a book from the 50s or 60s on a doomsday cult that shed some light on this. I forget the name. It underlined how after the prophecy of apocalypse didn't come true, most of the cultists became more dedicated rather than less. The cognitive dissonance involved in having a completely ridiculous belief may cause a similar kind of spiral.

    As for Matt's comment here -- I'm not sure it much matters if the entities involved are independent or just autonomous. It doesn't much matter in the context of prediction or foresight whether the thing you are talking to is part of yourself, some element of the society-superorganism, or cosmic space vampires from the eleventh dimension. This might matter for something like psychokinesis, though that's arguable (if you are capable of a direct dialogue with some collective superorganism and you can induce a mass hallucination, even presumably physical traces can be forged without anyone knowing). Power, sure, and danger to sanity, yes, and maybe the belief that this is outside of themselves is necessary or helpful, but I'm not sure that I'd make the argument that there's any good evidence one way or another.

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  3. @Enki - After making my post about my "process" I feel kind of amused in saying this, but I completely agree with you.

    EXCEPT - " It doesn't much matter in the context of prediction or foresight whether the thing you are talking to is part of yourself, some element of the society-superorganism, or cosmic space vampires from the eleventh dimension."

    It only matters within the context of your own belief, in other words, it starts to matter when and to the extent that you think it matters. That's part of what I was getting at in this post. Because you're going to interact differently with something - and make different behavioral choices - if you approach it as "beings from another dimension" "another part of my psyche" or "literal physical aliens about to invade planet earth."

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  4. Thinking about all this a bit, I'd say it matters whether or not one believes one's encounters with the other are inner or outer to the extent one hopes to integrate one's personal mythology with that of one's tribe. I watched a bit of the video starring the Pleiadian spokesperson (I'll admit to not having gotten very far) and I couldn't help but think that if she talked about a war between heaven and hell, with the Lord's righteous angels ready to strike Obama down, she'd probably have a nice speaking gig somewhere in the Bible belt.

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  5. If you look into her background (which I did because, you know, I clearly have no life), she was a "member of a Christian cult for 20 years." One of the points I was making- it's actually more or less the same thing.

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  6. You deserve plaudits for having the courage to research her background.

    I've heard friends solemnly discuss the dangers of archetypal inflation when doing inner work, and for the most part I'd agree with them, but it's probably true that a lot of historical notables were as grounded and reserved in their beliefs as our Pleiadian spokeswoman.

    @Enki - I can truly say, from first-hand experience (which admittedly carries very little real weight in these matters) that, if anything, the more ridiculous a belief system is (i.e. the further removed from consensus reality it's tenets are) the more real spiritual power it will have - so long as (and this is a big if) it's mythology was rooted in someone's actual revelation or inner experience.

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  7. Bad timing on this post. A little more perseverance (I admit it is hard keeping an open mind given the nutters it attracts) and you would have been rewarded with being on the right side of history. Instead there's no need for me to elaborate because history will unfold in a year or so.

    The weakness of Jungian analysis of these events (and I consider myself a Jungian) is the absence of knowledge of multi dimensional phenomena. There's plenty of 11 dimensional science around but without say the use of entheogens it's pretty much elusive to grasp.

    Much like UFO's

    You're more than welcome to come back to me in due course and laugh or ask how did I knowl.

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  8. Considering that I didn't come out on any "side," I've just got to ask - what are you smoking and where can I get some? This shit is good but DAMN.

    :)


    I just called for some perspective.

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  9. The book ENKI-2 refers to above is called "When Prophecy Fails". Can't recall the authors right now, but it's considered something of a classic sociological text.

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  10. If the earth was conquered by Alien reptilians in the past and these reptilians are using humanity as cattle and the earth as their own personal sewer in the present, it is Possible and Probable. In addition, it also probable there are other beings that are benevolent that are attempting to help humanity but they cannot due to our own fear.

    First, we all must let go of our pride and arrogance and realize from a knowledge and science perspective Humans have just started! Imagine what a civilization 100,000 to 500,000 year more advanced than us would be like. I am sure many of there abilities would seem like magic or fairy tales or straight sci-fi to us.

    What I am saying the problem with humanity is our dis-association from one another our lack of care concern and love for one another. The majority of the population live their lives in fear. Fear in their homes, fear fed to them by the news media, fear in their relationships, fear in the work place.
    We must make a commitment to destroy our own fears and stop living like lower based animals just surviving a game.
    Can you look around your community this nation and this world and say yep humans are supposed to live like this? If you say yes then you are an enemy to the Human Condition. The solution to our problems must begin with LOVE then you add compassion, kindness, the question should also be why are people brain washed to associate weakness with these noble attributes? Whether aliens exist or not whether you believe in aliens or not. FACT: there is not enough care in the world racism, haves and have nots, christians and muslims, either we overcome these division and come together in unity or our future will sure be destructions as cold selfish arrogant greed filled individuals no matter what you believe about aliens we must have more love in our lives and in or world and I'm not talking about love that corresponds to possesiveness or sex/lust I am talking about love that binds communities and nations.
    There is no Fear there is only Love!

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  11. @charles frith FIY I STILL have absolutely no idea what you were talking about. So apparently your attempt at future telling didn't work out.

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