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| —The Information Void— |
The Information Void?
by Alfred Lehmberg
I'd just read some John Velez, a noted ET abductee and certainly one of the more credible ones expressing themselves (and bravely as it turns out!) on that subject. He was performing his outraged and oft-repeated, if wholly justified, jeremiad over at UFO UpDates (what was the undenied Cadillac of ufological Lists last century) regarding a certain paucity of constructive relevancy in the new SCI-FI Declassified cable series. SFD was typical of a series of programs on a very new Science Fiction Channel exploring paranormal subjects... and the ufological in particular.
Many of these programs do fail to achieve the low bar they set for themselves. This was the first program in the particular series regarded, and with but few bright spots it was pretty bad... but that's not the point!
The late Richard Hall (a very highly respected golden-age UFO researcher, still!) had uttered sentiments similar to Velez's, regarding that paucity of intelligently credible ufological relevance in the media. His was about a related subject regarding the very credible Incident At Socorro. Together, their strident invective included the expected outrage contained in an exclaimed [if paraphrased] "scurrilously distracting woo-woo detractors of [their] beloved (if parochial) Ufology, causing science to dismiss [them]." This was a position they'd taken... earnestly, with such earnest conviction... and with regularity. They'd shout that message over and over into an especially unresponsive vacuum. "Idiots and charlatans make us look bad."
Rational though that message would try to be, it is an overweening sentiment filled with off the mark if outraged passions, it is offered, misdirected angry indignations, if the reader will, but reflexive and off the mark dismissals for the "fringe loopy-ness", they angrily outline, as predominantly responsible for the aggregate disrespect (!) that the study of UFOs invariably receives from "Science," that which would, of course, give it all credibility, otherwise. Don't tell this writer that this is not the up-shot.
Self-honesty provokes the self-admission that something is underlying all the craziness otherwise decried as the "woo-woo culprit"... when this "distracting craziness" is only ever in the place of what would be there to observe... if we only HAD that self-honesty to make these self-admissions in the first place: the admissions that honest relevance and informational transparency, reader, be demanded of our officiality!
Take a moment to remember! Likely? We are NOT the "crown of all creation." We can only aspire to it. We're mistakes making mistakes.
...So let's digress momentarily to foreshadow some optimism on that assertion! We could make good on the aspiration alluded to above! How? By doing the sensible thing: embrace a sane secular gylany and don't care, overmuch, who gets the credit for a forecasted success. It's really that simple... and foreshadowing all the optimism alluded to and felt by this writer!
Back at the ranch, we observe that, as is customary with parochial worldviews, and with seeming invariability, these miss the proverbial broad side of the cosmic barn by the obligatory parsec, if I may, god bless 'em, and all respect heartily proffered [these intellectually bankable guys alluded to (Velez & Hall) are a real deal!]! Still, though, by way of example, theirs is the speech that defines an attitude missing the point and so, very sadly, in no way addressing their very legitimate concerns. Their aim is awry.
What is the point? ...Walk with me. [g]. No, really! You have to walk with me. Step carefully. First?
The much-maligned *fringe*, unfortunately, is the only "reality" seemingly available for some, and that may be this perceived societal construction in a contrived nutshell, right there! Society is not volunteering a solution to the problem! Society is only humiliated by UFOs, so they let that sleeping dog lie! That may be the point! Embarrassing stuff is hidden in plain sight and dismissable for that! Wheat judged for chaff, a result of company kept!
The fringe is inhabited by loose cannon adherents to strange beliefs and alternate philosophies (not all bad!), forgetting the bright spark of innocent veracity at the center of all of it... and fueling all the rest! This writer has been cast in that fringe!
Now, all desire truth's satisfaction. This writer does. That is what is reached for even as we might be incapable of its grasp. That spark is the desire to know ...but be secure in the knowing. Be rewarded for it. Be elevated. Be improved. Be "there."
Identifying the spade and the elephant in the room and calling same, typically, these fringe-dwellers do; however, (in the aggregate) earn every bit of the skepticism, derision, and challenged veracity they generate, facilitated and habituated as they are by slick hucksters, clever con-men, and strident scalawags! Bad hombres!
These are persons of extreme sociopathy most must decry! True, these work gleefully in a perversion even of their own psychopathy! These sin against aggregate humanity to empower themselves with the existential truth which, it is reasoned by the desperately unsatisfied, must be there! Three persons in a hundred, in NORMAL times. Stress produces more. These will bleed you out for shoelaces if they don't perceive a downside!
But, don't get that excited! These are in the vast if noisy MINORITY (actually) of those persons just pointed out! ...And, they are, still, not the issue!
More at issue (...but not there, yet!) are the rank and file *believers* or adherents to these "wacky" beliefs and "facile" philosophies! Those who (perhaps!) innocently support the hucksters, con-men, and scalawags; persons who give those scabrous raptors their power and influence, and without whom those slick-mouthed scurrilous, legitimately reviled by Hall and Velez I point out, are rendered impotent and powerless.
Even psychopaths need air. I've been there and been subjected to that! ...Even had Hall and Velez on my ass about it, once (#mortellaro), a story for another time!
Why do THESE persons [ME, too!] believe the "scabrous scurrilous"? That's the point Mr. Velez or Mr. Hall can't seem to address, put their finger on, or seemingly even admit exists.
Forget, for a moment, that the Ufology suggested by persons such as Velez and Hall does not (and cannot... will not... shall not!) exist in any real form for them as they would have it. That is the province only of the "moving"-"shakers." The man!
The rank and file will only profit where profit has already been made and there is that mythical trickle-down to the lesser from the greater, trickle-down that just couldn't be sopped up otherwise, eh? That which was necessary for them to pay out. Such is the new fascism just voted down... if NOT away...
So, the "very inappropriately revered" peer review in its present censoring form, this two-color science data avoiding, and too, the rigid... and so, not so, critical thinking they'd approach respectfully and to which their qualifying lip-service is deceptively paid... An overburdened Occam, reader, has failed them... ...because Velez and Hall are (ironically!) alone on that page of investigative music they'd wish to be seen played!
See? They, alone, are playing by the rules only presumed in use by "all," rules honorable and uncanted, consistent and inclusive... just and fair. No! There are other axes to be ground and so axes presupposing!
Verily, the scientific mainstream that these support and to which they'd otherwise give credit (adoration?) has no respect for them, shall not validate them, and is arbitrarily closed to them. It shall not credit them in any way. It cannot! To credit them is to invalidate themselves! And besides, they've already rendered their dismissive "verdict" on these wholly "uninvestigated" issues! Better for all concerned that critics and commentators pointed their rage at that, instead, but I digress.
Remember what UFOs do to Science for its temerity in their regard, though... They humiliate it as Terence McKenna and J. Vallee point out and that was alluded to earlier.
Ready examples of this aforementioned and widespread parochial "attitude," Velez and Hall consider the scientific mainstream, apparently, a possible friend or ally and in their camp... ...while it, in turn, considers them its hostile enemy, not so ironically—unwelcome in ANY camp! See Velez & Hall are about getting to the bottom of UFOs—going down that rabbit hole, come hell or high-water but aspiring to efficacy though heaven falls! Uh-oh...
...Can't have that! That rattles too many pecuniary chains on too many corporate cage doors... diminishes "contribution" to too many collection plates! Catbirds get antsy! Gold dripping billionaire Dragons SMAUG stir and fret their loathsome lamentations! ...And worse!
Self-deluded into thinking that they are on the same team with it, these gentlemen blithely pander to its supposed rationality and pursue its appreciated favor when, rationally, that favor can never be bestowed or returned... The moment that it does a mainstream ceases to be the "mainstream" that this "mainstream" is: a hijacked and therefore corrupted, immaterial, and invalidated faux-mainstream mechanism serving powerful persons able to buy into the prohibitively expensive game! ...We can observe that even institutional egos die hard.
There is nothing "main-stream" about the mainstream, honored reader. It has ALWAYS been manipulated by unelected and unaccountable elites (now more than ever where the aspiration to renewable energy and sustainable living strategies are ignored for reverse mortgages, boner pills, and "clean" coal)... through this writer's humble and undeserving lens ...to pursue the current ulterior and self-serving agenda. It has always been a fabricated lap-dog of the REAL villain in this piece, that aforementioned monied "unaccountable." A pox on 'em all and one.
Why do people believe? This is asked airily dismissing whatever Dr. Shermer (or any other noted CSIcopian) has to say on the subject. "What is proposed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence," these would propound as long as that served them? Their sneering rejection and raw reflexive denial; however, renders their contribution worse than irrelevant! Caustic and toxic! Less than convincing, the smell of ulterior and self-serving motive all over it!
Scientistic (sic) fundamentalism is actually as scurrilous and dangerous as its faux-religious cousin! Worse actually! Science can use interpretations of facts and so not have to fall back on that ever accommodating Golden-McGuffin "faith"... Rupert Shelldrake knows what I'm talkin' 'bout!
Derisively accused, once, of being a ufological believer, adjacent personage Margaret Mead (at her death in 1978 the most renowned anthropologist in the world!) countered that the only thing she *believed* about UFOs was that they remained [suspiciously!] unidentified after centuries of observation! ...And that is the crux of the matter brightly tied with an iridescent bow! We don't know and denial of that unknowing is ludicrous where it is not socially destructive. Just what is "known," reader, that so facilitates this grand and uncompromising "unknowing"?
People "believe" because they are hardwired to believe in something, something that they might believe has more substance than what's ladled out to them from the official, if unswervingly mendacious, it must seem, party line or tithe demand. Something FIRM on which to stand and build. We rank and file are such pathetic and trusting fools, waiting in line for someone to tell us what we think we want to hear...
For all the massive evidence encompassing facets of the personal, photographic, historical, physical, and quality anecdotal regarding UFOs, UFOs remain bereft of identification or the simple *mainstream* admission that they even exist even as they are readily perceived! How crazy is that? That's like being told it's not snowing while seeing the snow and feeling it melt coldly on your face! How much faith are we to take it THAT advisory? This is bald cultural treachery plain as the nose on the reader's mug! These are noses presumed of course... a good bet!
To wit! The point! This OBVIOUS denial of observable fact (not limited to just the ufological by the way!) creates the "informational void" that the aforementioned "denied" (you and me)... ...abhor and must endeavor to fill—any way we can!
Human nature is revolted by the soul-vacuum (or void) that this demonstrated and facilitated lack of quality information precipitates! Nature abhors the vacuum in turn, and all know the imperative of nature to fill a vacuum, even if the vacuum is educational, informational, or intellectual. Especially, on reflection, when it is educational, informational, or intellectual!
Into this knowledge "void" of many (otherwise earnest!) individuals pours the likes of the Heavens Gate Cult, the Urantians, the Raelians, the Unarians, and even the still jailed (?) Sean David Mortons... or Richard Boylans and Steven Greers. Christianity, Islam, and other more quasi-religious memes (Like Scientology)... cognitive baubles to distract and mollify "satisfyingly"... many others the exact same way... filling *that* which cries out to be filled: the yawning hungry sink-hole of personal ignorance!
It is culture's betrayal of its participants about their ignorance that this "informational sinkhole" is remotely allowed... consummately tolerated! ...Feels good to pack wet sand where your sensibilities could be? Maybe for some. This writer gonna pass on that wet sand, himself.
Is the *information void* created (directly) by any of the preceding? No. These groups and individuals regarded (assuming, for a moment, their lack of veracity) only take unethical ADVANTAGE, at worst, of the aforementioned "void" already there. They're there to get sucked in where quality information is not extant to do their obscenely selfish grift. From where does the information "void", then, come?
Rather predictably, I guess, I offer that the information "void" is a function of the duplicity and obfuscation busily perpetrated by a class society functioning for the benefit of the few against (and at the expense of) the "mal-legislated many." The information "void" is a toxic byproduct of a corrupt culture that cannot maintain its spurious status quo unless it arbitrarily controls (read restricts) the flow of that information it regards as threatening to its jealously patriarchal existence. One can see how that might work.
The "information void" is the poison fruit nurtured in public education (read non-education), then, and foisted on the trusting by institutions allegedly created to serve those trusting—only, even preying on them instead! The information "void" is a result, then, of a contrived system more concerned with the individuals who manipulate it (them!) than it is with the individuals who empower it (you and me)! Us and Them, again, only we're not the ones moving off from observational rationality for the convenience of an unethical pecuniary control manipulation! It's them turning the blind informative eye but putting our ignorance in their service!
No... "We," the ones seeing the very suspiciously operating UFOs, are the ignorant abandoned to our ignorance, by design, for the convenience of the manipulative and wholly uncaring! Who is it profiting so interminably on our aggregate ignorance about things?
Information that is at cross purposes to the *system's* continuance is, by definition buried, otherwise covered up, or discredited to ensure that system's survival, it would seem. Is this not becoming more and more obvious to everyone, especially given current events at the time of this piece? Observe a "center" gone hard to authoritarian starboard since Reagan, by way of example.
Clearly—the *system* (as it stands and such that it is) should not survive. If heaven can fall, good reader, then perhaps it should come down... if only for its inassessability and its illogical unreality. Its graft and corruption. Its mendacity and hypocrisy. That unrequited fondness for a beauteous afterlife needlessly making such a horrific cesspool of the current one... but we digress.
Be this as it may... that vacuous "void" of an informational imperative is finally forged in the "unofficial" but well-appreciated in unadmitted official desire for it! What the hell are those things, those things avoiding all discussion or mention in polite society? Even of needs and for a cause! What need? What cause? There's the rub. Not your need! Not your cause!
If it was all bad they could make that obvious, but these would ignore all mention of it, altogether! What can that mean but that the reveal of disclosure might be good for the individual if not for the society extant? There might be a good rational and not a low-road rationalization that rank and file humans might see more advantage to going "native..." from the status quo disserving them! This writer doesn't know, but he would bet somebody does... keeping mum to serve that status quo and not the individuals empowering that status quo.
Again, into this conjectured "void" flows the concerned individual's ardent desire to "know" and "understand", and for many, any philosophical roughage will do. At least until something better comes along—something which, at least, appears to assemble more pieces in the play-boards "big picture"... more pieces than is gotten officially from the officials of an official officialdom... who keep their cards close wearing earnest poker faces hiding mendacity and hypocrisy but smiling all the while...
The garden-variety individuals of our society are set up by that para-society, then, as easy pickings for the sociopaths this para-society too conveniently tolerates (and may even generate remembering the GOP and their support of predatory lending practices, et al!) to mask its complicity in that ignorance, an ignorance facilitating the ongoing agenda (read conspiracy... uh-huh, yes... not sorry!) to... deceive, not to pussy-foot around, but no lipstick for that pig, eh?
...Scum lining up to fleece the gullible, but scum that wouldn't even be there if it couldn't queue up profitably (if erroneously) to fill the informational "void" created by these conflicted but self-involved "culture-crafters" in the first place! Who's on the blame-line, then, for that? ...And them? We're inflicted by what we tolerate and we'd bet disserved by what's jealously disallowed.
This is why the well-justified if badly aimed attitude of Velez and Hall are off target, off the mark, and missing the broad side of the cosmic barn. Their rage and, yes, even justified anger are too poorly aimed. It is a rage that does not concern itself with the actual reasons for the aggregate ignorance but concerns itself instead with that which is created, sometimes even innocently, to abrogate the ignorance already there in the first place... ignorance which is NOT addressed! Symptoms, only! Not the disease! The disease is the accommodation of our own complacency in these matters puzzling us!
UFOs don't mean "ET" in and of themselves... we understand that with an eye-roll and an impatient exhortation. ...But what are the goddamned lights in the sky, and what is presently known in their regard! Dark projects have been watching these things for decades... or just where does 7.3 Trillion dollars evaporate (poof!)... to?
We the people believe loopy conjectures only because otherwise quality information is not forthcoming in our regard and/or is denied to us out of hand which might likely enable us to dissuade these conjectures, disabuse ourselves of them! That's the long and short of it. When all that's available is chaff, that's what you're going to eat!
If quality information was to be made available... the truth revealed... the inexplicably tolerated social criminals who advantage themselves as a result of its (unconscionable!) absence, stirring up the river bottom, and at which Velez and Hall expend their otherwise efficacious energies... could not exist! They couldn't get the oxygen!
Humanity's enlightenment would get air, instead, and even with the resulting chaos of "resettlement" we're sure to have to endure in the penance and atonement (the outraged shame!) of the lies we had been living with for so long, revealed at last... well, this writer has always entertained an optimism that we'd come out on the other side exponentially improved as a species... and dare he further entertain a conjectured worthiness, then, achieved in a community of adjacent bits of galactic intelligence, galactically? If we can think it, it could be so... what exists repeats, nothing happens once. Humanity happened... ergo... ET must abound... ...and we would have them witness us screwing each other over for a percentage!
Verily, if the mainstream actually reflected the prerequisites and the prerogatives of a legitimate *main*-*stream*, the dissembling and disingenuous fringe provoking their petulant bile would disappear in the puff of smoke it otherwise resembles! It would not even be around to cause them such "Sturm und Drang". There would be no room for it! Quality information would already be there filling the vacuum in consideration, at the start!
To recap, attitude examples of an otherwise much valued Velez and well-lauded Hall only concern themselves with the symptoms of the disease that seemingly infuriates them... and not the disease itself, at all. The *disease*, of course, is the unelected and so unaccountable leadership who practices its unending and reflexive denial handily providing for that informational "void" at the start!
The *symptom* is that which is generated to counter the obviously specious denial, as bizarre as that counter-action may be, in a pathetic effort to fill that informational void! The holistic healers and the crystal squeezers, the earnest soothsayers and impassioned truth-seekers. These non-travailed by fundy religions or societal class impositions. These with eyes open to possibilities and open to constructive serendipities. Stupid has had its run. That's becoming more clear.
Truly, more bizarre is the angst and indignation of some who indolently, complacently, fatuously, ...and even smugly... aim their articulate guns off target and then spew invective and express surprise when they don't hit same! It's a waste of their time and ours and it is a retreat from that existential non-corporeality that must concern all of us. Let's cure the disease, reader, the symptoms will then take care of themselves. Truly Seek and actually FIND!
That's the alien view! Read on.
