Moving past the UFO taboo
There’s a stigma on Capitol Hill. I mean some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kind of, you know, giggle when you bring it up. But I don’t think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.
I want us to take this seriously and have a process to take it seriously. I want us to have a process to analyse the data. Every time it comes in that there be a place where this is catalogued and constantly analysed until we get some answers.
Senator Marco Rubio
Our governments, our scientists, and - until recently - our journalists have not been doing their jobs properly, specifically in one particular area. In short, they have been neglectful.
One of the basic aims of any government is to protect their country against potential adversarial threats. This responsibility is usually shared amongst a range of military and intelligence branches. Yet there are credible cases of unidentified craft or objects repeatedly penetrating a nation’s airspace - going unchallenged and unacknowledged. Let’s be clear from the start: we’re not talking here about the many instances of misidentifications and hoaxes that the gullible happily digest.
Our website’s first article on this subject is titled Too real to ignore. It includes a lengthy interview on YouTube with Commander David Fravor - a former US Navy pilot who engaged with an unidentified craft for approximately five minutes. Fravor is a real-life Top Gun; only the very best 1% of Navy and Marine Corps aircrew are permitted to train in the program. He has stated: “I think it was not from this world. I have never seen anything in my life, in my history of flying, that has the performance, the acceleration - keep in mind this thing had no wings.” This is just one incident which is too real to ignore.
A Super Hornet taking off from USS Nimitz Credit: US Navy
After decades of institutional inertia and avoidance towards reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), a few US government officials began listening to their military pilots, such as Commander Fravor, as well as looking at accompanying video and radar data. The proverbial ball, at last, had possibly started to roll - or, at least, wobble.
Senior US officials have recently said that these UFOs - now rebranded as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) - are not American military or other US government advanced technology. This leaves just two other options. The first is that Russia, China, or another country have somehow developed advanced technology - despite spending less on their military budgets than the US, and at odds with China’s known tendency to steal knowledge from the US. Furthermore, they have the audacity to repeatedly fly it in restricted US airspace, in view of US Navy military training exercises. The second option is that these unidentified craft are being piloted or otherwise controlled by some intelligence from beyond Earth. Either way, the US military and intelligence organisations have clearly been found lacking because these UAP have been reported for the past 75 years.
In China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are now investigating what they are calling unidentified air conditions (UAC). The South China Morning Post quoted Chen Li of the PLA’s Air Force Early Warning Academy: “The frequent occurrence of unidentified air conditions in recent years brings severe challenges to air defence security of our country.” Russian military generals have previously shared information showing they have also been perplexed by unidentified craft flying around in their airspace. Whereas there’s always the consideration of disinformation and other forms of subterfuge, plus spy planes and drones, it would nevertheless seem likely that the main superpowers are at last starting to acknowledge there might be real “unknowns”.
China’s PLA are also reporting “unidentified” air defence breaches Credit: China PLA
Our scientists have the basic task of explaining how the world works. The aim is to build and organise reliable, predictable knowledge. Scientists are motivated by curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems - or that’s the theory. But when it comes to UFOs or UAP, the vast majority of scientists are suddenly nowhere to be seen. Some do briefly speak out, dismissively, ignorant of pertinent credible facts, exacerbating the taboo or stigma.
Then we get to the journalists who investigate and then factually report news stories. (Yes, we know that some journos merely churn out gossip and can be loose with the truth - but their readership doesn’t help elevate the topics of interest, or encourage journalistic rigour, do they?) In recent decades, alleged UFO stories have usually been treated with the giggle factor - often as a filler during the “silly season” when politicians are away on their summer holidays, leaving a shortage of “real” news.
However, the journalists are now redeeming themselves. After the New York Times broke the story of the US Navy pilots and three accompanying videos in 2017, many other print, television, and online outlets have followed suit. Over the past few months, there has been widespread coverage of the subject - as we get closer to the release of the anticipated UAP Task Force report later this month. Journalists are recognising a good ongoing storyline - and they know there’s a lot of public interest.
A significant percentage of the general public is fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. However, there’s a tendency to want to “believe”, with a hole left vacant after religion lost its widespread appeal. Little green men - or the more popular grey variety - fill the gap. Conspiracy theories, many verging on the ridiculous, have emerged. Some even believe they are repeatedly “abducted by aliens” at nighttime, when the explanation is obviously hypnagogic hallucinations which occur between wakefulness and sleep; these experiences can seem “real”, but aren’t. Misidentifications of “lights in the sky” etc are commonplace. Hoaxes less so, but they do happen. (Think crop circles.)
Debunkers are no better than the believers. Whereas healthy scepticism should be part of any investigator’s toolbox, it shouldn’t be anything like the fixed mindset of debunkers, who think they “know better”. The reality is they look silly and arrogant to anyone who is better informed or more capable. A recent example of this is Mick West, who thinks he knows what Commander Fravor and others encountered - “misidentified” - despite not being there, and not having had the training or experience of a military fighter pilot. Claims of debunkers can be as embarrassing as those of the conspiracy theory believers. The waters quickly get muddied by crap from all sides.
Cognitive bias doesn’t help either. You adopt a position on this or that - politics being an obvious example - and rarely budge. You see what you want to see, and hear what you want to hear. You’re constantly looking for “facts and statistics” to justify your fixed viewpoint. Genuine open-mindedness is comparatively rare.
A key consideration - or sticking point - pivots around how you think about, and respond to, the questions of “Are we alone in the universe?” and “Could advanced extraterrestrials be taking an interest in what’s happening on Earth?” And this is where dismissiveness can easily kick in. Traditionally, the default position has been “We’re alone in the universe”. Whereas some academics still rigidly stick to this idea of life existing nowhere else, it’s sounding a bit desperate now we know that a huge number of exoplanets exist beyond our own solar system, many potentially habitable. The next common dismissal is “They can’t get here”. Despite the vast distances involved between star systems, it’s probably foolish or premature to categorically state what might or might not be achievable in terms of progressive space travel. After all, we’re just beginners. Another arrogant brush-off is “They would land on the White House lawn” - and we’ve provided a compelling answer elsewhere on our website, explaining why this wouldn’t happen. Sadly, even Elon Musk of SpaceX demonstrated his avoidance of the current UAP discussion during an interview with Joe Rogan, as you can see in the video clip below.
How we process information and think about it all - or not - depends on our level of psychological health and maturity. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of normalised dysfunction that conveniently goes under the radar. And it’s nothing less than astonishing that psychological avoidance remains largely ignored, with distractions galore. The majority of people are content to merely fit in, be socially accepted, and get by. They cling to their limitations in the mistaken hope that these mental barriers will keep them “safe” from excessive emotional pain and disappointment.
Psychological avoidance, which is currently ubiquitous, is a juvenile strategy. The resulting untold suffering should have prompted a fundamental re-think and revolution a long time ago, but all attempts have been ultimately sabotaged by the entrenched avoidance. The aim of being the best you can be - of genuinely developing human potential - is therefore largely overlooked, as well as being buried under a pile of nonsense.
The stigmatisation of the UFO/UAP topic produces resistance and inertia. Most of those who are in positions of authority just want to avoid being tarnished by any association with “little green men”, choosing to shrug off the “unknowns” as there isn’t a blatantly obvious security threat. Harry Reid, former US Senate Majority Leader who secured funding for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), commented:
They did everything they could to stop the program from going forward. They gave the person that came to me initially such a bad time. He’s fortunate to have hung onto his job because people tried to get rid of him, because they wanted nothing to do with this. The defence intelligence agency was one of the worst. They dragged their feet, even though one of their senior scientists thought they should look at this.
Ryan Graves, a former F-18 US Navy pilot, has summarised the UFO taboo this way:
I think it’s the same kind of attitude we had in the squadron where we didn’t want to look at it in the face because it’s much easier to go about your day instead of really looking at reality. I think people had more important things to do. In the military we have a lot of very important threats that we’re dealing with, so something that may or may not even be real - and some officers behind - it might not be high on their priority. And the social stigma - there was no re-branding at this point, it was just UFOs - and the social baggage that comes with that term is something that people do not want to engage with.
Many in the US are devout Christians, including some who hold powerful positions within the Pentagon. Luis Elizondo, who headed the AATIP program, was told to stop investigating UFOs/UAP by one senior official, who asked “Have you read your Bible lately?” According to Elizondo, the official then said: “Well, then you would know that these things are demonic and we should not be pursuing them.” So, in addition to the regular taboo, there’s an additional theological belief obstacle. It’s not that these Christian officials think what’s going on isn’t real, but rather that it’s satanic and studying UFOs/UAP would give “energy” to “attention-seeking demons”. (And, yes, this is the 21st century.)
Human behaviour is a reflection of psychology. It’s like a mirror. Sadly, there’s little evidence that people are going to face their psychological immaturity anytime soon. Avoidance is deeply embedded, with the “cancel culture” amongst the latest versions to emerge so someone doesn’t need to face their own inadequacies. So it would be naive to expect any radical change to suddenly occur from what we’ve seen before.
What, therefore, can we realistically hope to happen next? The military and intelligence branches of governments are best placed to properly investigate and evaluate what’s going on. The minimum they need to do is enable better scrutiny and oversight of their airspace. Scientists should be adding their expertise, when and as necessary. Journalists have a role in demanding answers and as much transparency as possible.
We might not have long to wait until the UAP Task Force report is released. There probably won’t be any conclusions, which is fine. But there does need to be commitment to serious investigation and analysis. If the typical nasty Hollywood aliens were here to invade us, we’d undoubtedly be toast. Thankfully, this obviously isn’t the case - and it’s just our own ignorance we need to fear and defeat.
Written by Iain Scott & Callum Cushen, 20th June 2021