UFOs As Agents Of Deconstruction
Mikalojus Konstantinas: The Thought – 1904
In the Archaeus Project’s 1989 journal Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component In The UFO Contact Experience Carl Raschke wrote an essay entitled “UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents of Cultural Deconstruction.” Raschke offered the idea that the search for meaning behind the UFO enigma was caught up in cultural ideas about aliens coming from other planets in structured craft. He also proposed that whatever was behind the UFO problem was acting as a catalyst for change in cultural ideas about what was possible and even acceptable.
Raschke noted that,”…the UFO puzzle for both investigators and the public unfolds along a trajectory that Jacques Vallee terms that of ‘recursive unsolvability.’ In mathematics a recursive function is one in which the solution cannot be reached by a simple set of successive, linear operations, but is gained only by successive, partial tallies, each of which incrementally redefines the problem itself.”
The UFO debate appears to surround a concept that is continually redefined by a set of partial answers that redefine the question. The end result is that the solution bears less relevance to the original query.
Most can agree that the UFO question has not been solved conclusively by anyone, and the introduction of new concepts like the abduction engima, FOIA document searches and the recent rise of the disclosure movement have changed the focus and character of UFO study over the last 20-30 years. In the 1950s and ’60s, “occupant” cases were dismissed by the mainstream research community as embarrassing and a distraction to the important issue of popularizing the idea that sightings of UFOs were enough to make the subject worthy of respectability and serious study.
With the 1967 publication of Flying Saucer Occupants by Coral and Jim Lorenzen, the idea of “piloted” UFOs was taken more seriously. The idea of abductions was virtually ignored from 1966 (when Interrupted Journey told the strange story of Betty and Barney Hill) until 1981, when Budd Hopkins’ Missing Time was published, and got a real boost in 1987 with Whitley Strieber’s Communion.
Each time a new concept was introduced, the UFO question was redefined. Are we are simply discovering heretofore unrecognized aspects of the phenomenon, or does some symbiosis of reported observations occur, working subrosa in concert with expectations? I would argue that since we are dealing with something that is not amenable to controlled testing and repeatability at will, that expectations very likely play a role in defining the questions and any ultimate answer.
If there is an intelligence or intelligences behind the phenomenon, what it has been doing (probably for millenia) either looks like nonsense or some inscrutable attempt to change human thinking and perception. The very exposure to a UFO or occupant sighting is enough to rearrange one’s concepts of what is real, or even acceptable to our minds and senses. The issue of lasting physical or psychological changes was addressed by Jacques Vallee in his anomalies classification matrix published in his 1990 Book Confrontations.
An article by Benedict Carey from the New York Times reports on research into seemingly nonsensical events and how they are useful in deconstructing our endless search for structure and meaning, injecting helpful doses of depatterning. Participants in a study were asked to read an absurdist short story by Franz Kafka and then given a test that analyzed their ability to find hidden patterns in strings of letters:
The test is a standard measure of what researchers call implicit learning: knowledge gained without awareness. The students had no idea what patterns their brain was sensing or how well they were performing.
But perform they did. They chose about 30 percent more of the letter strings, and were almost twice as accurate in their choices, than a comparison group of 20 students who had read a different short story, a coherent one.
What this may indicate is that UFOs may exist as a mega-experiment in deconstructing our ideas of what is possible, our place in the universe, our ways of accepting what is real and even our methods of cataloging sensory input. The question remains as to who is conducting the experiment, and how much we are either subjects, equal partners, or almost wholly responsible for the experiments and the results.
Ostensibly, the UFO question is whether a non-human source is causing sightings, abductions, radar returns and flying saucer religions, but the intricacies of the problem impinge on so many other areas that we redefine them as well. Examples include reported physics of UFO movement, the question of cultural antecedents and perhaps how our society decides what is acceptable as serious study. That last one may be the most deconstructive effect of all. Changes in our mindset, and not any so-called “answers” may be the real reason behind the whole thing, or at least the most meaningful. There may indeed be “knowledge gained without awareness.”
In the end, this may all be a metaphor for something so inscrutable as to be inexplicable in language or thoughts of which we are currently capable.
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Oct 07 2009 
October 7th, 2009 at 8:53 am
“UFOs [and most paranormal phenomena in general] may exist as a mega-experiment in deconstructing our ideas of what is possible, our place in the universe, our ways of accepting what is real and even our methods of cataloging sensory input. The question remains as to who is conducting the experiment, and how much we are either subjects, equal partners, or almost wholly responsible for the experiments and the results.’
I know, it may sound like an overly-generalized, blanket explanation, but I would urge us all to re-examine the archetypal role of the “trickster” as it relates to humanity’s (most glaring blindspot?) emerging state of unconscious human development. [at this point I could spew a self-serving blurb for my new book "Stalking the Trickster" but I'll resist the temptation]
The bottom line is: when we need change, novelty and a kick in the butt to provoke us out of our complacency, IMO the trickster archetype (in its various guises) seems to always be there with a well timed sound soccer ball kicked to the side of our collective head.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I’d been contemplating writing a similar piece, but you beat me to the punch. Great job, Greg.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Good post! Look at the stages – it’s a war against ignorance: Official stance. The craft don’t exist – it’s mis-identification of known phenomena. Okay they exist but that doesn’t mean they’re manned craft. Okay, they may be manned craft but doesn’t mean they’ve come all this way to visit/ interact with us. Okay, they’ve come here as something more than space tourists on a whistle stop tour of the galaxy.
As for throwing us – isn’t that what a magician does deliberately to create an illusion and draw your attention? These are hucksters offering us a new paradigm – a new view of the universe and the rulers of this world are going to its populace ‘Please don’t leave us!We can offer you stability, a warm bed for the night and certainty about how creation works!’ It’s an existential market place as in ‘The Matrix’ and the only way we’ll learn about it is through experience (deprogramming ourselves of what we know and reprogramming ourselves with what we don’t know or brain washing if you like: Religion teaches us that the world acts on belief but once something is ‘known’ that it becomes boring and you want to move onto something else, if you can’t as a society or individual, then you die out, dissipate as energy (your attention wanders off elsewhere, to a new market stall, offering nicer sweets to tempt you – new experiences you’ve never gone through, different ways of perceiving reality). My case rests (on top of the luggage rack!).
October 7th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
What I’m trying to say in my second point above is, that the reason Christ said ‘My father’s house has many mansions’, meant that you don’t have to stay here if you don’t like it – other realities exist apart from this one. Why the reason for the interest in The Near Death Experience? Simply because it says the same thing – you can escape from this paradigm if you want. What is the difference between spirituality and materialism? A belief that this life and reality is all. People who fear death don’t want to leave and those who monopolize and manipulate this reality, don’t want you to leave either i.e. those seeking material gratification and their followers or if you prefer the proper terms – pimps, pushers and addicts. The people who don’t want you to believe in life after death or beings from other worlds, have hidden agendas and reasons for their bias despite what they tell you – believe in the mundane, keep your head down and maybe one day you too might have power, position and fortune! Just don’t forget to read the small print before you sign in blood! (Okay, red ink nowadays).
October 7th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Sorry but I’ve missed a couple of points. A UFO abductee found himself talking to the commander of the ship who said that the more people believed in aliens, the more real they became. Think about all the things that exist in our society now, that started off as just ideas – telephones, mobile phones, TVs, Cars, airplanes, submarines, personal computers etc.
Next comes negativity and materialism. If people didn’t feel bad about themselves, they’d explore beyond themselves and find new ways of being that were less defensive, more interesting and more stimulating. Also if you were not afraid of the truth coming out about yourself, you wouldn’t be open to blackmail and coercion would you? (second item – you are not a body but a being – fear of death again). Suppressed, depressed, repressed ticks all the boxes for me! You free yourself as Zen says by thinking yourself out of what you thought yourself into, in the first place – this is why religion is so positive (or meant to be) – it’s the dark side or criminality that sucks us in as a lighter attitude frees us by blowing our mind (prejudices).
October 8th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Great piece Greg. Is the Raschke essay available online?
The Valee quote resonates, I’ve long sensed the phenomenon had fractal edges that are infinitely breaking down into detectable & semi-detectable or credible & semi-credible sub-categories. As important as reconsidering “what subjects are acceptable for study”, is the need to change our methods of study. We need a new mode of inquiry that can somehow avoid or cope with infinite regresses involved. Computer science theories might offer some hope here.
Chris, if we’re being bonked in the head to develop our consciousness, what are we being prepared to comprehend?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:45 am
I have recently pondered the state of the UFO research community.
If you go to Laughlin, it appears to be a bunch of old farts (I say that lovingly) who say the same thing over and over and over.
There needs to be a fresh set of ideas. The old ones are stuck.
And this post, with Greg, Mac and Chris O’Brien commenting (and 0uterj0in too) seems to be the updated compass, pointing a new direction.
Thank you (from me) to the new vanguard.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Tricksters, huh?
Perhaps humanity has a few built-in stalls, where we idle for a spell waiting for further instructions?
Tricksters, angels… and hobgoblins, oh my!
But still and all, a far better course than assuming that nature has all the answers before they are even asked, imo, that is.
All of a sudden, Darwin becomes something of a simpleton… or then again, maybe he was one of ‘them’?
October 8th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Most excellent post. And I agree with your POV.
Be sure to check out a link I gave in today’s news briefs @ TDG, on “how nonsense sharpens the intellect”.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Gurdjieff provides the best model to me for the alchemy of occult technology. Left-brain rational thinking has a weak electromagnetic charge while the subconscious electromagnetic essence of the lower astral realms remain strong. So occult technology remains in the lower astral realm of trickster creatures. That’s why Gurdjieff despised Crowley — because modern society is controlled by the “Kundabuffer” — the energy knot in the small of the back, blocking the sublimation and ionization of life-force energy.
But the older right-brain dominant shamanic tradition was adapted to a famine-based hunter-gatherer culture and now attempts to revive such occult “mindsets” (as Greg calls it) cause the OZ EFFECT — the electromagnetic buzz as ultrasound ionizes the chemical energy of the body.
So the result of interacting with occult UFO technology and with ghosts, cryptids, trickster shamans, aliens, is that people are possessed by technology itself. Technology is “charged” — made alive — by the electromagnetic focus of human minds, so that humans are now replaced by these new super occult tech craft. Technology is the alien abduction itself.
The recursive model is a left-brain dominant reliance on symmetry whereas right-brain occult energy uses complementary opposite resonance of nonwestern language (chanting, tribal music, drumming, charged rocks and trees, etc.)
Alain Connes, the mathematician of quantum chaos geometry (where 1 + 1 does not equal 2) states that the future will be more schizotypal — more right-brain dominant. This is because as technology takes over humanity there is a cross-over from left-brain analytic skills to relying on the computers to do the math itself, without knowledge of the logic. Steve Strogatz, quantum chaos math professor, has focused on this issue — how mathematical logic is now created by computers; the proofs are no longer understood, but accepted. Computer logic is ruthless as automation drives humans out of work. This again is the real alien invasion.
Connes states that music provides the best model for the future of quantum chaos technology — just as Gurdjieff’s model relies on music. Music is the secret language for occult or inter-dimensional communication, be it in science or in shamanism.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Out town until Monday. Will respond to all the thoughtful comments then. Thanks!
October 9th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Have a save trip, Greg. (NASA may have missed the target… look out for falling debris, lol!)
October 25th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Drew, this is a good point and I don’t say that only because I’ve written a series of work books, trying to teach language as sound (music/ poetry) just mainly for that reason! No but seriously matter is ordered chaos, whether thought or material. The way I see things is that ’sight/ insight’ is the attempt to understand and control (bind) as sound leads to motion/ emotion because it is the release of matter back into energy and the chaos and confusion you get from the journey somewhere else (The airport effect): Arrival is characterized by chaos and confusion as departure starts off orderly and contained (things sent or released and things caught in the baseball mitt of reality/ settlement and pioneering or adventure (The Tao)). When I was in Scientology (8 months before they kicked me out), they had a useful term that I use differently – anchor points, by which they meant the deliberate action of grounding yourself somewhere. I use it to mean the trauma too, which holds you in the past, in chaos and confusion: Understanding frees you, mystery holds you in thrall.