"'What they're doing is engaging in a decades long psychological preparation process whereby slowly but surely people on earth understand this is real, they're here,' he said."
Which may not be far from the truth. But as attractive as it is, the "psychological conditioning" hypothesis is not without its problems. For example, Jacques Vallee's study of the UFO phenomenon demonstrates that it's anything but modern; if UFOs are conditioning us to their presence, their time-scale seems thousands of years too long. Maybe the phenomenon is keeping us on a kind of psychodynamic standby, just in case "they" decide to reveal themselves at any given moment.
Disclosure of alien visitation is eagerly awaited -- even expected -- by many. But folklore advises us not to get too excited. It's always been like this, with Fortean forces hovering at the fringes of our perception. I don't think the UFOs -- whatever they are -- are waiting at all. I think when we observe them flitting across a city skyline, virtually unnoted, we're seeing them in their natural habitat. Somehow, they appear to thrive on remaining essentially liminal, the subject of endless controversy. Vallee thinks we're being manipulated. Even Whitley Strieber, who claims personal contact with apparent ETs, has conceded that we may never meet them openly.
Perhaps their raison d'etre is to challenge us. Early witnesses described fanciful airships and "ghost rockets." Now we hear descriptions of futuristic spacecraft and diminutive occupants who seem to have stepped out of our own speculation on posthuman evolution and genetic engineering. I think the UFO enigma is both trickster and trigger -- indisputably real, but real in a way that transcends conventional use of the word.
Perhaps if we wait and watch, the phenomenon itself will provide us with the psychological vocabulary with which to understand it. Or maybe it won't, remaining content to let us project our own unspoken cosmic desires.
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