UFO MEMES: Lost In Translation

 

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The UFO Phenomenon as an Informational Virus

by Iona Miller, Certified Hypnotherapist
(American Council of Hypnotist Examiners, #HT 187-206)

©March, 1995
Updated 3/2000

A report on the nature of consciousness, perception, memory, dreams, hypnosis, process-oriented therapy, paranoia, false memory syndrome, neuropsychology, geological anomalies, and the UFO-ET phenomenon.  Despite the true essence of any alien manifestation, this notion functions as an informational virus which is a psychosocial reality.  This mini-course in the complexity of interrelated issues impacting the nature of perception is meant to help sort out those phenomena, while deepening understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the universe.

UFO ART: http://zero-point.tripod.com/UFOs/UFOART.html

"Mankind is in the midst of the most profound event in history – actual contact with intelligent life from other planets. For nearly 50 years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth, and thousands of people have seen or experienced this alien presence. Yet many others still refuse to acknowledge the obvious evidence all around them. From beyond the boundaries of our perceptions, intelligent beings are beckoning mankind to join the galactic community."
  -- Walt Disney Television special on aliens and UFOs titled Alien Encounters

Dear friends,

In March of 1995, Walt Disney Television aired a most intriguing one-hour television special on UFOs titled Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland. This highly unusual UFO video special presents UFOs and alien visitation to our planet as a matter of fact. Though the film's existence is acknowledged by the respected website of the Internet Movie Database, you will not find it available anywhere for purchase.

Those who tracked this incredible production state that it was shown only once, and with no advance notice on stations in only five US cities. Thanks to a viewer who was able to roll the VCR and capture it, we have a record of the startling statements it contained. You can watch this fascinating 45-minute program at the link below.

www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/ufos_disney_alien_encounters_video

At first glance, this unique Disney television special appears to be an elaborate promotion of a scary New Tomorrowland ride on alien encounters which was about to open at Disney World. But on closer inspection, it is much more. The entire program, which opens with a short segment by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, does not even question the existence of UFOs and a major UFO cover-up. In fact, at times it has a tone of ridicule towards those who still deny the existence of UFOs.

Considering the very limited showing and audience, and the highly unusual stance on UFOs taken, many suspect that this program was a probe to measure public reaction to news of the reality of visitation and interaction with various forms of non-human intelligent life on Earth. The 10-minute section on alien abductions seems particularly designed to scare viewers. For information that the abduction phenomenon may not be as scary as presented in this film, read about the thought-provoking documentary Touched, based on the careful research of Harvard Professor John Mack at this link. Or watch it online here.

Besides watching this most amazing Disney UFO video at the above link, select excerpts from the intriguing program are also available in a partial transcript below. And at the bottom of this message you can find a box with excellent suggestions on what you can do to further educate yourself and others on this intriguing topic, and how to make a difference by spreading the word.

With best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

---

UFO Video Special Excerpts: Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland

Key excerpts from a transcript of the UFO video special Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland. All quotes were spoken by host/narrator Robert Urich unless otherwise noted. Remember, Disney CEO Michael Eisner and program narrator Robert Urich delivered these quotes with straight, matter-of-fact, totally serious cadence and inflection, as you can see in the video we've posted at the link above.

Robert Urich [Intro sequence over various UFO photos and film]: This is not swamp gas. It is not a flock of birds. This is an actual spacecraft from another world, piloted by alien intelligence – one sighting from tens of thousands made over the last fifty years on virtually every continent on the globe. Intelligent life from distant galaxies is now attempting to make open contact with the human race. And tonight, we'll show you the evidence.

Disney CEO Michael Eisner [standing in front of what looks like a military hangar, guarded by armed troops]: Tonight we celebrate the New Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World in Florida with a television special that's out of this world. Hello, I'm Michael Eisner, head of the Walt Disney Company.

At a top secret military installation somewhere in the United States, there are those who believe that the government is hiding the remains of an alien spacecraft that mysteriously crashed to earth. With more and more scientific evidence of alien encounters and UFO sightings, the idea of creatures from another planet might not be as far-fetched as we once thought. In fact, one of you out there could have the next alien encounter. Enjoy tonight's special. I'm going to walk over and see if I can sneak a peak. [soldiers raise weapons] Maybe not!

Robert Urich: Scientific verification of extraterrestrial life forms routinely arriving on earth; top secret reports from ongoing military investigations; compelling home videos of alien craft captured within the last few months; world figures who have gone public with their own extraterrestrial experiences; the shocking history of government misinformation programs designed to prevent widespread panic; and personal accounts of those who have been abducted and studied against their will.

From beyond the boundaries of our perceptions, intelligent beings are beckoning mankind to join the galactic community. It's an invitation which is both wondrous and terrifying. This is the nature of alien encounters.

Mankind has the unique ability to ignore the obvious, especially when the facts reveal a disturbing truth. We once believed the sun revolved around the Earth. When Galileo demonstrated the reverse is true in 1634, he was charged with heresy and placed under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. The charges were later dropped – 342 years later.

Now as we approach the new millennium, mankind is in the midst of the most profound event in history – actual contact with intelligent life from other planets. For nearly 50 years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth, and thousands of people have seen or experienced this alien presence.

Yet many others still refuse to acknowledge the obvious evidence all around them. What is it like to be confronted by a creature whose intelligence and skill is far beyond the comprehension of mankind? Would it be enlightening? Would it be an exercise in terror? Or perhaps both?

Here in the New Tomorrowland at the Walt Disney World resort near Orlando, Florida, these concepts are brought to life as guests experience their own alien encounter, a sensory thriller from Disney and George Lukas. We'll give you a sneak preview later in the show. But first, we must prepare you for the future with some shocking insights from the recent past.

Alien ships seem to arrive in waves, and if the last few years are any indication, planet Earth is experiencing a tsunami of sightings. For the last few months of 1994 and lately in 1995, Gulf Breeze, Florida has been ground zero for alien encounters. Especially during the day, extraterrestrial craft have become common ornaments in the uneasy skies. You would think these alien sightings would be front-page news. So why have they received almost no national attention? The answer is simple. For governments determined to maintain their authority, extraterrestrial contact is pure dynamite.

Capt. Kevin Randle (retired air force intelligence officer): There's beings from another planet. We don't know where they come from. We don't know what they're doing here. There's nothing we can do about it. Any time a technologically superior civilization comes in contact with a technologically inferior civilization, the technologically inferior civilization ceases to exist – not necessarily through conquest, not necessarily through invasion, but because the technology changes the underlying social structures of that civilization, and it disintegrates.

Urich: Those fears are reflected in a 1960 federally funded study by the Brookings Institution, which warned that public knowledge of alien life could cause civilization to collapse.

Why have aliens chosen to visit our small blue planet, hidden on the distant fringes of an insignificant star cluster? Well, we invited them here.

There have been reports of alien encounters throughout recorded history. But since the end of World War II, alien encounters have adopted a darker, more menacing demeanor. No longer just spirited lights dancing in the sky, UFOs turned more brazen, announcing themselves with surprising ferocity.

Most alien activity on earth in this century seems to have been sparked by the single most profound technological achievement in human history. The atomic bomb did more than blow away every conventional notion of combat. It also saddled mankind with the awesome responsibility of life and death for the entire planet.

But what the world didn't know in 1945 was that the atomic bomb's brilliant burst of energy would also be mankind's cosmic calling card, announcing to the universe that a technological society had evolved on a small blue planet in the backwaters of the stars. So as the world celebrated the war's end in 1945, aliens who heard man's atomic trumpet were already charting their course toward earth, responding to our open invitation.

As early as 1947, the large alien ships began to arrive, navigated by living creatures. Their advanced physics allowed them to traverse the galaxy and pierce earth's atmosphere with amazing speed. The U.S. military immediately went on the alert against the unknown menace. Sightings were perceived as threats to the security of an America still reeling from the edgy consciousness of war. And the sightings were taking place all across the country.

More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico – famous, because local officials openly admitted they had retrieved an alien ship before their commanders instructed them to keep the story confidential. What you can't explain, they reasoned, you must deny.

This is the actual site where the Roswell saucer was discovered, along with the bodies of three extraterrestrial missionaries who didn't survive the collision. The debris and the dead were impounded and taken away for top secret study, while a classified investigative committee called the Majestic Twelve was organized by President Truman, and a government cover-up was initiated with a calculated disinformation campaign.

But while the Pentagon refused to publicly admit aliens had arrived on earth, their top secret internal memos told a different story, even detailing the various ships and the creatures they had autopsied.

By the early 1960s, UFOs were having a chilling effect on our defense operations. Their tremendous speed often caused them to be misidentified as incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, putting American air bases on red alert. There needed to be some way for the U.S. and the Soviets to distinguish between nuclear attack and alien visitors.

Clifford Stone [retired army officer]: The Hot Line between Moscow and Washington was set up so that they could go ahead and make last-minute pleas, that "We're not attacking you, and you're not attacking us." The purpose of this was to insure that a nuclear war would not be touched off by a UFO appearing on the scopes and being mistaken for enemy aircraft.

Urich: The Hot Line eased some international tensions, but it didn't halt the interaction between the military and the aliens, which continues to this day.

Stone: [In] November of 1975, essentially every SAC [Strategic Air Command] base in the United States was visited by UFOs. We have reason to believe that the UFOs went ahead and had some effect on changing the codes within the missiles, within the launch control facility, to change where the missiles would hit.

1976, September, Iran, two F-4s try to intercept a UFO and shoot at one of the UFOs. The weapons systems of the planes go dead, the communications systems go dead. These are just two examples of cases which sound like they came out of science fiction, but in reality, they're from government documentation, documents released by the State Department.

Urich: Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth. Perhaps they feel it would be too embarrassing not to reveal the truth, before the truth reveals itself. But these FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act outline nearly fifty years of UFO reports investigated by federal agents all across America, overwhelming evidence that something sinister is at work.

This particular report from October of 1969 was filled out by Jimmy Carter. He was still Governor of Georgia at the time he witnessed a luminous object suspended in the twilight sky. Later, when he assumed the office of President of the United States, his staff attempted to explore the availability of official investigations into alien contact. As this internal government memo illustrates, there are some security secrets outside the jurisdiction of the White House.

Planet earth has always been a laboratory for alien life forms which can drop in from space or slowly mutate into bizarre fleshy organisms at our feet [holding a large mushroom]. Understanding the nature of these strange creatures from above, and below, is the greatest challenge of our age. We now know that our future, indeed the future of earth itself, rests in the balance of the solid and the ethereal, of common sense and the irrational, in our relationship with alien life as grotesque as a fungus, or as glorious as the heavens.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION

PART I: Abstract
Millennial Fever
The Nature of Perception
Alien Stock Is Up
An Infectious Idea
No Exit
Penetrating Dreamtime

PART II
A Classical Example
Inner and Outer Space
Self Deception
Pseudomemories
PTSD and Anxiety Disorders
Intruders
Amorphous What?
Mutant Message: UFO-ET Dreams
Waking Dreams
Save the Humans

PART III
The Skeptical Inquiry
Temporal Lobe Seizures and Earth Lights
Virtual Reality Check
Process Oriented Therapy

REFERENCES

This is the report no one wants to read.  For those skeptical of the UFO phenomenon, it is far too permissive of the possibility of a different reality than that dictated by the official reality of scientific reductionism.  For the True Believers, it won't go far enough to serve anyone's confirmatory search.

While admitting the possibility that some people may experience UFO-ET contact, this report speculates that it is a contagious notion which has invaded the collective imagination, and many individual psyches.  Therefore, it is useful in evaluating the whole scenario to take a look at both sides of the argument.

1). UFO-ET phenomenon emerge from fauly cognitive processing, folklore and pseudoscience, or

2). "They're here."

As of this writing (4-95), Disney has begun the promotion of a new experiential novelty, which will blur the distinction between fantasy and reality even further.  "Tomorrowland" is set to offer a virtual reality experience of alien abduction open to all comers.  It seems as if this "psychic implant" might have emotional repurcussions which are as yet unknown, and color or condition future "contactee" reports.

As if we have not been permeated enough with visual and auditory images of this experience, we can now partake of it recreationally, in the theoretically "safe," multisensory, full-immersion environment.  As entire generations partake of this imaginative experience and it becomes embedded in their consciousness, it can condition any subsequent dreams and experiences, real or imagined.

Disney's presentation is based on the premise that "they are here," and the government is suppressing this fact from public knowledge.  We can only speculate on why one of the most powerful forces in Hollywood would make a choice to take such a political stand in regard to this phenomenon.

The paranoid might ask "What if it is some kind of sick desensitization project?  And what about that short, humanoid "mouse" with the big cranium and slight body?" Are you ready for "Hybrid Mickey?"

MEMES

[2000 update].  Since this book was originally written there has been an increase in interest and literature about the notion of social contagions, as originally described by psychologist Carl Jung.  The books out now include Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society, by Aaron Lynch, The Meme Machine by Susan J. Blackmore, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, Richard Brodie.  These books don't specifically analyze UFO phenomena, but some of these authors, such as Blackmore, have discussed it elsewhere.  So have the scientists who support CSICOP and its organ The Skeptical Inquirer.

This literature attempts to show a predictable expansion-contraction pattern to the social spread of ideas.  A meme is a self-propagating idea, a unit of cultural imitation that, much like a biological or computer virus, effectively programs its own retransmission.  They spread through motivating their "host population," novel configurations of old ideas, and by proselytizers.  Popular beliefs spread like contagions--cognitive viruses.

But where do the original notions originate?  Does it come from our cultural paranoia about invasions ingrained from the cold war?  Does it come from a quasi-religious yearning for contact with something greater than ourselves?  Neurologist Michael Persinger has put forth a "Temporal Lobe seizure" theory based on his electromagnetic experiments with subjects at Laurentian University in Toronto, Canada.  See his hard-to-find, expensive, but excellent book, The Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs.  He also has investigated the relationship between UFO sightings and fluctuations in the local conditions of the earth's magnetic fields and their relationship to luminous bodies generated by tectonic forces, called Earth Lights or free-floating plasmas.

The hallmark of postmodern philosophy has been disbelief or skepticism of all "metanarratives," or translations of reality.  Postmodernism has even turned its profound skepticism on such important humanist concepts as "objective truth" and reason.

Yet, for a deconstructionist postmodern society, individually we are still riddled with superstition and gullibility, and open to manipulation through our belief systems as any politician, philosopher, clergy, or salesperson will attest.

Further, most people are painfully naive when it comes to even the simplest scientific understanding.  Most of us don't have a clue about the fundamental nature of physical reality or our own psychological nature, and our ability to be fooled by our senses and mind.

Physical and psychological aspects of consciousness are studied in the interdisciplinary cognitive sciences, which include philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.  The new science of consciousness is emerging from an interface with the new postquantum physics.

A maverick tack in mind science research is the quest for sentience in other dimensions, meaning we have begun using our own minds in a multidimensional way.  Perhaps psychology is more complicated than physics because inner space has more dimensions than outer space.

A major accomplishment of cognitive science has been the clear demonstration of the validity of positing a level of mental representation; a set of constructs can be invoked or the explanation of cognitive phenomena, ranging from visual perception to story comprehension.  These representational assumptions and concepts are now taken for granted and permeate the cognitive sciences.

Many vocabularies and conceptual frameworks have been used to characterize the representational level, including scripts, schemas, symbols, frames, images, mental models, etc.  Terms used to describe the operations carried our upon these mental entities include transformations, conjunctions, deletions, reversals, and so on.  There may be several varieties of representations, perhaps on a continuum from implicit to explicit, or from hard-wired to flexibly programmed.

Nature rejects the naivete that seeks absolute truth.  We are beginning to realize, individually and culturally, that "realities" are all human constructions.  The task becomes one of "catching ourselves in the act" of creating our own "reality" from the flow of events.  Human truth is always an engagement of mind with experience.

The challenge of the therapist in these times of chaotic change is to validate the concept that we don't have to fear the collapse of what we think we are.  We can embrace this dissruptive chaos, trusting that it is an emergent self-organizing process.  We don't need to fear the collapse of our personalistic belief system (the "box" we live in), nor our belief in absolute truth.

Metaphor--what an experience is like--is the structure producing coherent, ordered experiences.  "How we know what we know" is encoded within our own unique epistemological metaphors, which describe what our personal experience is like.  Narration, or storeytelling puts the general human condition into the particulars of experience.  The metaphors are usually those of physical experience.

We construct a reality based on our belief system about what is "out there" and "in here" and live within that framework, unless something or someone unpredictably disrupts that image.

Though we share some firmly held notions about reality, there is no Archimedian point from which we can compare our views of the world to the world itself.  We cannopt step out of our culturally limited perspective to see how things really are in themselves.

A strong desire to engage in the "quest for uncertainty" complements our anxiety that perhaps there is no absolute, objective ground to reality.  The warrant of Truth is ever-elusive when we deconstruct the foundational justifications of our convenient notions about the way the world works.

It is easy to confuse what is actually the creation of beliefs with the "discovery of Truth," a common goal of science and theology.

The scientific model of reason and universal rationality is evolving toward fuzzy logic, a new model of perception of reality.  "Fuzzy philosophy" is a relativistic perspective of conceptual modeling.

Fuzzy philosophy is based on acceptance of degrees of truth, the "grayness" (truth values) of most propositions.  Paradox and polarization are the results of a consciousness conditioned to think in terms of opposites, black and white thinking.

Rather than approaching UFO-ET phenomena as real-unreal, or true-untrue, we can reframe these experiences in terms of the meaning of the transformational relationships.  In this analogy, the prevalance of "the Grays" seems to point in the direction of this new paradigm.  Surety and fact meld into psychic reality.

To "fuzzy consciousness" nothing is absolute.  It frees us from having to choose one polarity over another.  It helps us accomodate conflicting concepts, keeping us open to examining the "evidence" from both sides.  Thus, we can "believe" to a limited degree without unconditional surrender of our critical faculties, and still continue to question skeptically, and evaluate each event on its own merits.

As we will see in this report with its critique of both sides of the argument, the facts usually are partially true or false.  Even the best scientific experiment only proves or disproves a particular notion.  No study can explain away all of the particulars of the UFO-ET scenario, though debunkers try to dismiss them in toto.

To the extent science has measured facts and interpreted them in all or nothing terms, it has failed to describe experiential reality.  "Truth" doesn't always match the facts.

Logic and chaos, like any pair of opposites, meet and merge at the boundary.  This boundary domain is the creative "edge of chaos," "the twilight zone," "the crack between the worlds," where the two meet and progressively meld into one another.

The surety of fact melds into psychic reality.  In this mode, there is a suspension of the tension between the opposites of the logical and natural mind.  Beyond the paradox of yoked opposites lies the realm of relative "truth."

The "Fuzzy Principle" is described and experienced as vagueness, "shades of gray."  There are an infinite number of gray values on the continuum, which spin out an infinite number of fractal solutions.

Fuzzy thinking can help us revision our perspective on the relationship of mankind and the Other -- the interrelationships of man and transpersonal forces, including God and nature, life and death, and extraterrestrial entities.  It is part of our adaptive evolution, provoking a quantum leap in our consciusness by challenging us with chaotic perturbations at the foundational level.

In terms of the UFO-ET phenomenon, fuzzy logic defines tthe degree of containment within that discrete mode of reality, which presents us with universal physical and sociological consequences.  What any ultimate consequences of this phenomenon might be are open to speculation.

Whitley Streiber, whose autobiographical novel and movie COMMUNION, probably did the most to popularize the notion of alien encounter and abduction has come to conclude that,

"This is not unconscious debris, but something above what we call consciousness.  The human mind seems to exist in some way on a hyperphysical and hyperdimensional level, perhaps even a hypercognitive level."

"What is happening is that the barriers between this hypercognition and normal cognition are falling, and we're finding that there is a physical evolution of humankind that exists at this hyperphysical and hypercognitive level."

"What I'm looking forward to, is seeing the nature of human experience change as our consciousness rises toward this hyperconsciousness, and we begin to understand this higher level of physical being...this is essentially a vast, immensely subtle, immensely complicated theatrics of hyperconsciousness trying to penetrate our level of reality.  It is like someone knocking at the door, something trying to get us to move up, to wake up and to come up in scale."

Further he states, "When the authorities try to impose themselves on the experience, all they do is narrow it to their belief system.  In other words, it gets filtered through what they expect.  It can't be like that.  It's got to be between the individual and whatever this is, so that it gets narrowed through everybody's experience, without the need for anybody telling anyone what to do."

He echoes the sentiment of others when he speculates that over the next one- or two-hundred years that "society is going to completely recast itself as a reflection of hypercognititve thought.  What that will mean, I have no idea."