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I do think, having been like most of you very interested in flying saucers from the time I was a kid and I grew up when it was all happening-- A couple of years ago I accepted an invitation for the first time to go to a flying saucers' conference. If you've never been to one and you're interested in flying saucers, go. You'll have more insights into the phenomenon in a conference like that than in ten years of studying it because what's perfectly clear is that these people are self-selected for gullibility.
It's not their fault, it's just that the ticket through the front door is, you know, "would you believe this? would you believe that?"
I think probably what happened, historically speaking, is that, you know, in 1947 when the first UFOs were seen-- it was a weird world... The explosion of the atom bomb, the work toward the hydrogen bomb-- People didn't know-- Einstein and Truman and all those, they didn't know what it really meant. They thought it was conceivable the solar system is monitored. And it is conceivable that this is the switch that turns on the monitor and brings attention. I mean they were in awe of the atom bomb and they realised they were tampering with cosmic forces.
And then, at this moment of cosmic awe and realisation of tampering, there began to be reports of spacecrafts entering the skies of Earth and interacting with human beings. Well, what they did-- The CIA had just been funded in 1948-- what they did, is they put a lot of time and effort into infiltrating all these groups that claimed knowledge of what was going on. And as a survivor of the New Left I can tell you, when the government gets interested in infiltrating-- I mean, 2 out of every 3 members of SDS was a government informant at the height of his membership.
So I believe that what happened was these flying saucers' groups were massively infiltrated by the government in the course of its... persuing its constitutional obligation to mantain the public welfare. And by '54 or '55 the government was perfectly convinced that whatever flying saucers were, they did not pose a threat to the integrity of the Air Defences of North America. That was their real concern.
But bureaucracies are weird creatures, they really exist only to perpetuate themselfs. So at some point inside these agencies, they must of had to face the fact that they had massively infiltrated a bunch of very flaky people, and now their choice was to either end the program (tell the budget people that no, they wouldn't be needing those 10 million dollars this year), or keep going with it, because they now had a group of people self-selected for gullibility. And that group of people became the victims of every chemical experiment, weird technology, propaganda experiment and so forth. Because their friends and relatives had already written them off as completely untrustworthy. Who would believe them no matter what story they told?
So I really felt I was among severely damaged people. And it wasn't their fault, it's that they had become part of something that had become part of something that had become part of something, and they never really had a fighting chance. Do strage lights haunt the skies of Earth? You bet they do, but the flying saucer cult is a social phenomenon, largely unrelated to whatever this anomaly is.
Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by Radiobuzz
For some of these reasons, I don't tend to agree that 'saucer groups' were selected for gullibility. I strongly believe that the groups contain a large population of folk who are *self-selected* through their own incredible gullibility. Their 'will-to-believe' is stronger than their critical thinking skills.
Originally posted by Druscilla
I'm straying. If you have not been to one of the meetings or whatever local UFO club there is around, please, go take a look. The people are mostly harmless, but, in some ways, it's spooky how spooky and self marginalizing a number of the personalities that show up at these meetings are from my own experience.
As far as marginalization goes in leading saucer clubs astray, I'm sure things were a little different back in the early days during the big Red Scare, McArthy-ism and such. Now, from personal observation, these groups don't need any help at all in going down any number of different colored and shaped rabbit holes as they're quite capable of leading their own selves astray.
Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by Radiobuzz
For some of these reasons, I don't tend to agree that 'saucer groups' were selected for gullibility. I strongly believe that the groups contain a large population of folk who are *self-selected* through their own incredible gullibility. Their 'will-to-believe' is stronger than their critical thinking skills.
In part, I think this also applies to McKenna because he is more attracted to the idea of a conspiracy of government officials creating an environment to attract the gullible instead of accepting that they have always existed.
Originally posted by Imtor
If this McKenna is saying that there aren't any real highly advanced flying craft, then this one is an IDIOT,