In what is surely one of the most ironic posts at UFO Updates in some time, as well as one of the most pretentious (which is saying something), Jerry Clark pounds away on Mac Tonnies' "cryptoterrestrial hypothesis". In doing so, he says very little about Mac's theories, but an awful lot about himself - none of it good.
Could Clark be protesting too much? Your call.
Mac:
ReplyDeleteSome interesting reading:
http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/90/tenuous.htm
And a little about Clark's history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Clark
Paul
for Clarke i imagine this is just more needless stirring of the pot interfering with the noble quest of "serious" (read: humorless) pro-ETH UFOlogy.
ReplyDeleteas a former acolyte of john keel who abandoned his "youthful indiscretions" for "saner" lines of fortean inquiry (ha!), i wouldn't be surprised if theories such as the CT hypothesis rub Clarke the wrong way, having espoused similarly "out-there" (by mainstream UFOlogy) ideas in his earlier career, which as a convert to "serious" UFOlogy he has renounced.
catty armchair psychoanalysis aside, i don't really buy into the ct hypothesis myself, though i like it as a thought-experiment. it does leave a lot of questions, but so does the ETH!
ha, paul beat me to the punch
ReplyDeleteW:
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious - defend Jerry Clark, who has made a fair bit of change and earned his rep from writing book after book about a subject which most people think is pretty kooky, i.e. UFOs and the ETH, by attacking Mac as a guy just on the make to score some quid off a book deal.
Puh-lease.
Paul Kimball
ME:
ReplyDeleteas a former acolyte of john keel who abandoned his "youthful indiscretions" for "saner" lines of fortean inquiry (ha!), i wouldn't be surprised if theories such as the CT hypothesis rub Clarke the wrong way, having espoused similarly "out-there" (by mainstream UFOlogy) ideas in his earlier career, which as a convert to "serious" UFOlogy he has renounced.
I normally eschew "catty psychoanalysis", but...
Bingo.
Paul
yeah but he's dismissing it without giving mac a chance to fully elaborate on his theories. now, based on what mac's speculated so far, i don't personally find the ct hypothesis very credible, but i find a lot of the other competing theories lacking as well. it's no worse than the idea that humanoid aliens regularly visit earth, and at least gives a rationale for the alleged ufo occupants secrecy and interest in human reproduction.
ReplyDeleteeventually, yes, it does come down to evidence. but most UFO evidence is anecdotal at best to begin with!
muddying the waters can be so much fun, though! if it wasn't, ufology most likely wouldn't be around at all!
ReplyDeletewe're dealing with a phenomenon that is by its very nature confusing and elusive. i doubt that "pruning through" everything is going to get us closer. the "bullshit" is essential to how the phenoenon is experienced, in my opinion. the "noise" might very well be essential to understanding the "signal".
i do agree with you on the vallee/jung line, though.
When someone starts off with "Over the course of my long career", they've lost me from the get-go. I don't respond well to arguments from authority. Looking forward to the book!
ReplyDeleteI've been really saddened by Jerry Clark's bullying and personal attacks on you at UFO Updates recently. He's one of the few posters there whose postings I always open. My overall impression of him from that forum (I don't have any of his books) has generally been that he is articulate, objective, and thoughtful.
ReplyDeleteThis sour and bitchy series of tirades from him is quite out of line. I wonder if something is happening in his life that's throwing him off balance like this and affecting his judgement.
"It helped, of course, that my involvement in anomalistics stretches back to the 1950s." [SNIP] "One path is for grown-ups, the other for perpetual adolescents."
I thought this meant he was some really, really old geezer, so I was stunned to see from the Wikipedia article that he is only six years older than I am. So he was at most 14 himself in the fifties. Having been a young researcher himself, you'd think he might have some empathy to spare for people who weren't even conceived until a couple of decades after he got his head start.
Carol Maltby
Is there even one single solitary piece of evidence for the crytoterrestrial hippopotamus?
ReplyDeleteEvery bit as much evidence as there is for the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, Vallee's "multiverse" or Keel's "superspectrum." Take your pick.
Chris--
ReplyDeleteWhen someone starts off with "Over the course of my long career", they've lost me from the get-go.
My first reaction is either to roll my eyes or vomit. Maybe both.
Looking forward to the book!
That makes two of us! :-)
Carol--
This sour and bitchy series of tirades from him is quite out of line. I wonder if something is happening in his life that's throwing him off balance like this and affecting his judgement.
Yeah, but in the end who cares? I certainly don't.
I care, because he's another human being.
ReplyDeleteI care, because flame wars don't help anything or anyone online, least of all subjects which are already highly contentious.
If there is any incontrovertible evidence for thinking that UFO and alien phenomena come from somewhere off-planet, and that this evidence clearly rules out any beings coming from on or below the earth's surface, I'd sure like him to get on with it. I think we'd all prefer that to the hatchet job he's presenting.
Your presence on that list is usually inobtrusive, somewhat reserved, and focused on information. There's zero reason to blow up at you. As Paul says, it seems to be more about Jerry than it is about you.
Metron--
ReplyDeleteOK, how's this? You work on a book all about your own ideas and I'll heckle you on *your* blog. Does that work? :-)
Carol--
ReplyDeleteI care, because he's another human being.
I've always been -- gasp! -- a Jerry Clark fan. He's an eminent Fortean historian and not a dumb guy by any means.
So while his snobbish attitude is indeed disconcerting, I don't think he's going through any sort of crisis in the conventional sense. My perception is that, for whatever reason, he simply doesn't like his beliefs challenged by (relatively) young upstarts.
Mac, could you do a little recap?
ReplyDeleteHow do you perceive "cryptoterrestrials" as differing from "ultra-terrestrials"? And ETs, while we're at it?
In what ways do your speculations on this diverge from Jacques Vallee and Keith Thompson (in his Angels and Aliens phase)?
Metron--
ReplyDeleteThe irony here is that I've already blogged a significant bit of the manuscript. Reading it is, of course, totally free. (Thanks to Google Books, even the completed product can be read online; the same goes for my Mars book.)
I picked up a copy of Illumined Black at a thrift shop up here in the mountains last week!
ReplyDeleteCarol--
ReplyDeleteOh no. Any good things you might think of me will certainly wither once you're finished reading it.
The good news is that a comic artist is in the process of adapting one of the stories into graphic form, so it's enjoying some new life.
wearethemetrons: that's why it's called the CTH (as in hypothesis, Tonnies isn't even calling it a theory) --
ReplyDeleteI think it's a fresh idea. True, it's based on "old" ideas that others have also theorized about, but it's not mere rehashing, which makes it interesting and worth considering.
And anything in this field, with the exception of cold hard bits of machinery and the like to "prove" the existence of UFOs, is all some form of speculation. Which is perfectly fine.