Karmic-Dragonfly

Regarding the recent release by Pentagon of UFO tapes from 2004 and 2015 encounters -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/pentagon-releases-three-ufo-videos-taken-by-us-navy-pilots -- my question is why did they release the tapes? Their explanation of "cleaning up misconceptions" about whether the tapes are real seems really weak. Why would the Pentagon want to "clear up misconceptions"? So I question that explanation.

What about belief in aliens? In general, I really don't see why anyone would NOT believe in other civilizations. Just from the vastness of the universe perspective, it makes a lot of sense that there would be other species. Isaac Asimov's book (wow, now 40+ years old!) on the subject -- https://www.amazon.com/Extraterrestrial-Civilizations-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0449900207 is a calculation of the odds of other civilizations based on the number of planets in the universe, etc. It has been a LONG TIME since I read the book, so I'm doing this from memory and really simplifying, but his probable answer was that yes, alien civilizations could exist. And he gave some thought to the reason we don't have definite contact. Due to the vastness of time, it could be that only a very few civilizations capable of interstellar flight/communication ever exist at the same time, so that no civilization ever finds another.

There have been lots of sightings over the years (although granted, most are very poor quality). But I'm not sure I would expect the videos to be good quality. Any distance or low light situation reduces video quality substantially. If you're using your phone at night trying to capture a moving image, you can generally expect it to be of bad quality. It's easy to ignore UFO videos when they are blurry and taken with someone's old VCR recorder or with someone's phone at night. But videos are harder to ignore when taken from military planes, and when the planes show unusual technological capabilities.

There also have been lots of reports of abductions, which are usually explained away as some sort of mental illness, some sort of dream paralysis, a mass psychosis(?), too much DMT in those peoples' systems, etc. I personally have never known anyone who believed they were abducted (See what I did there? I downplayed the abduction by talking about the person's 'belief' that they were abducted.), so it's hard to judge these.

I personally am going to assume other life forms could exist. And for my part, I'm even going to assume that there are civilizations in existence right now that are technologically more advanced than us. That's a pretty unfounded assumption, but there you go.

If there are other lifeforms, and they are visiting, then that calls up the question about their agenda. What could the agenda be? Here are some possibilities, and note that only a 2 or 3 of the items are "good" from our perspective.

1. Peaceful contact -- this assumes they are peaceful, and that we are sophisticated enough that they would deem us worthy of contact.
   
2. Parental good will -- maybe they are like caretakers and the fucked up situations we always seems to be finding ourselves in is causing them concern?
   
3. Making sure we don't spread our violence would be the premise of the old film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
   
4. To "serve humans....for dinner" lol would be using us for food as in that old Twilight Zone episode. There was also a Simpson's take on that, lol.
   
5. We might make decent slaves.
   
6. Maybe they need a new planet, theirs being all used up? There has been definitely been sci-fi stories about that. One example is the old War of the Worlds. Speaking of which, there have been a surprising number of remakes of that movie, some better than others. And there is a "re-imagining" series on Epix right now.
   
7. I think I have made a post about this at some point, but maybe our own lives are just part of an alien first person point of view video game, where the aliens can relax and experience primitive societies, then finish the game and go back to their normal boring lives. In that case, the UFOs would be the aliens keeping the video game running and doing some maintenance. Although interesting to think about, this idea doesn't help me make decisions or live my daily life, so this is not something I believe.
   
8. Hell, maybe we are like a zoo where the aliens can take the kids to go look at the primitives!
   
9. There is a fair amount of sci-fi about aliens being where we get our ideas of god from. An example of that is The Fourth Kind -- not a particularly good movie, but I did like the language angle.
   
10. Creating a new race of hybrid-human people. I recently read an Octavia Butler book called Lilith's Brood with a story line kind of like that.
    
11. Maybe the UFOs are our future selves time traveling to prevent a bad thing? There have been lots of sci-fi on that also, like Interstellar, Travelers, Star Trek films, etc.
    
12. Maybe the aliens are sort of species "farmers" or preservers, realizing we're headed for a tragedy and they are trying to salvage some of our species to start again.

There are theories that the aliens arrived and integrated long ago, and have been molding our cultures for a long time to suit whatever their agenda happens to be.

So what do I believe?

Do I believe in aliens? If you pushed me to take a side, I would say that yes, I do believe alien civilizations exist because it makes sense. Why wouldn't there be other civilizations based on the vastness of space, and plain-old probability (reference Asimov's book linked above)?

Do I believe the aliens are visiting us? Well the odds are against it, again given the vastness of space and the low likelihood of different species developing interstellar space flight at the same time to enable communication.

But given all the videos, I would say yes, I believe that either the aliens ARE visiting -OR- there is human flight technology/capability which is greater than is generally known. I guess militaries "could be" hiding advanced flight capability and then the UFO videos would be slip-ups. Which would also explain the release of the videos -- what better way to hide your slip up but to release it as a 'UFO' video? But again if I have to take a side, I would say, yes, I believe aliens are visiting.

Do I believe in the alien abductions? That's a harder question for me because these could be psychological trauma. I mean, if you're already messed up psychologically (and there is no shortage of that among humans), then it seems only a small step to absorb and transform the story of abduction as an explanation for your real-life trauma or mental illness. And let's talk about this -- if alien abductions are real, then aliens are to be feared. I mean, being treated in the same way that we humans treat lab rats is not a pleasant thought, right? And I have enough daily life stuff to worry about right at this moment. So on this one, I think I'm gonna fall into the 'NOT believe' camp for now -- if only for the convenience of not having another item on my list of daily worries.


I feel like there should be some epilogue, which I don't have. Generally, I find the timing (COVID anyone?) and reason for the Pentagon's tape release as odd. But definitely interesting, and something I'll keep an eye on!

And a quick aside -- the first recorded time of a European descent person seeing a UFO in North America -- 1639 baby!:

https://archive.org/details/winthropsjournal00wint/page/294/mode/2up

I've been working from home the last few days...it's such a drag to walk around downtown in the snow/slush/ice. It's not a great walk from parking to office in good weather, so when it snows I option to work from home whenever I can. Also, I'm 'between' projects right now, so not much going on anyway.

But that means I'm inside the house a lot so to get some fresh air yesterday, I walked briefly outside with the camera.

Icicle hanging from my deck --


Mounds of melting snow --





I downloaded a horror movie last night to watch, which I liked it very much. The sound track/effects matched nicely with the movie. Not very gory (which is a good thing in my opinion)...and more psychological than scary I guess.

The movie is called It Follows and is about something that follows the characters, and if it touches them they die.


There are themes of 'wrong and right side of the tracks'; themes of sexual disease, and how alone that can make you feel (although there is absolutely nothing about STDs in the movie -- the plot sort of reminds you of that); themes of trying to pass your problems onto someone else.

One thing that is interesting is that it's difficult to date the movie. It was released in 2014, but nothing in the movie exactly gives a date. The houses seem 1970s...and there is not much technology in the show. But you do see a sort of cell phone --


But if you look at this scene, the movie could just be playing at at old movie house. Again, difficult to date the movie.


It's not important to the movie to date it -- it just struck me as odd that I couldn't quite place it in time.

I downloaded and watched a Sci Fi movie tonight called Interstellar. I often have pretty low expectations for Sci-Fi -- a lot of them are just intended to be action packed movies to sell tickets (I'm looking at you, Independence Day)...

But Interstellar had some meat to it! It was pretty emotional -- I'm not one to get emotional at movies too much, but I have to admit I teared up in a few places!

The title of this post is a line from a parent -- saying that after children are born, parents' roles are to be memories for their kids. That line resonated with me! But it's not just parents -- after a certain age, I think all older peoples' roles become to be memories for the next generations!

Besides being emotional, the movie also explored sufficiently nerdy ideas (like time as a dimension and space travel) to definitely warrant the Sci-Fi category, and the movie is definitely worth a watch!