Comment by shadowprofile77 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shadowprofile77 | Hacker News Reader

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shadowprofile77

I happen to have almost all of his ufology books including "Passport to Magonia" and you're right that he covers those subjects, but he doesn't claim it's a collective psyche phenomenon. Instead he argues that it has elements of this but guided by an external control system, which is itself part of some, for lack of a better word coming to my mind right now, extradimensional intelligence (he never makes this specific word use) that manipulates human beliefs by manifesting entities in a way that corresponds with the more general belief tendencies of any era. Thus, in ancient times, what we now call UFOs manifested as "fairy folk" and such while today the tendency is more towards temporarily physical apparitions that are made up to be "aliens", presumably because it fits better with the psychological tendencies of our current technological, space-exploring civilization. His core point though is that in both cases, we're really seeing the same extremely ancient phenomenon recur in different guises. Many nuts and bolts UFOlogists really dug into Vallee's ideas because of this, but to me at least, it actually makes a lot more sense than UFO's being aliens in the classical Hollywood, scifi sense of the word. Their behavior makes no discernible sense in that context.

I still think it's very interesting how he found the tales of UFO sightings stereotypical and tried to explain the patterns in an original fashion.

I mean it's a nice way to look at things that makes me curious of the other book.

Take him with a grain of salt, since he's just a single researcher in a big field laden with quackery and crackpots but I thought his approach and reasoning were refreshingly clear headed. I recommend his other UFOlogy books very much at least for the sake of entertaining curiosity about something many people don't read about often.

How does he come to the conclusion that it's an external controlling system rather than just cultural iconography and individual psychology?

Essnetially (and i'm really boiling it down here) he argues two main points and connects them to form that conclusion: First, that the wider phenomenon clearly shows evidence of being a tangible thing with highly varied but in certain ways similar physical manifestations across an enormous span of human history. This is a thing which weakens the probability of it merely being iconography based on individual psychology or myth making.

Secondly, this being the case, those widespread, long-running physical manifestations indicate something more subtle than mere UFO visits that only began during recent history.

Ergo, we're looking at something external, at least partially physical and because it has affected our belief systems and legends, and thus quite possibly a sort of control system. (This last one is a bit more of a leap but the first two main arguments are covered fairly well in his books).

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