One of the early reports conducted on the topic of first contact was the 'Brookings Report", that was the shortened title of a longer analysis of the impact on modern society with a supposed superior and advanced culture from another world.
The military minds of the day conceptualized things in broad war-derived concepts of control. These WW2 era leaders had one example of their youth upon which they placed all their expectations. It created a rule that said: The public is prone is mass hysteria. The 1939 radio program, "The War of the Worls" was cited as the fate awaiting any announcement of contact or the reality of alien life. Like all situations of the modern era it was blown wildly out of proportion.
The facts of the impact of that broadcast were very localized and were the result of many groups not realizing the power of the media. Had there been wider, more aggressive marketing to promote the radio program and its topic, even those who did not listen to it would have been made aware of its existence and its topic. Instead of large throngs of people reduced to hysteria by fear of the "this-is-real" format of the radio program, those so influenced were localized and in small pockets. Newspapers and rumor, according to many reports in newspapers and academic papers after the fact, indicate it was all sadly overblown.
Despite that, military and political leaders, believed that there was a "mass hysteria" and "mass hallucination" lurking in the populace. Headlines sell papers; this old rule was probably behind many of the tales related to the event and combined with facts to generate a false comprehension of the facts.
"Mass hysteria" is an unusual term to use because the term, used in sociology and psychology, refers to a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population and society as a result of rumors and fear. A related issue for most military, and UFO debunkers in particular, was to hammer away at that "fear" idea. An early and dedicated debunker for astronomer and sometimes employee of the NSA, was Dr. Donald H. Menzel. His book of flying saucers, draft copies of chapters were supplied to Project Blue Book and apparently served as guides in drafting replies to many sightings, is replete with assertions that people were "fearful", "terrified", "hysterical", and the like. Oddly, the group that most demonstrated that fear component appeared to be the military, guided by people like Menzel whispering in their ears.
The truth is that looking at the topic of "contact" in the early days of the 21st century is far different in many important areas than the same topic in the middle of the 20th century. When the "flying saucers" and "UFO's" first appeared education (especially scientific education) was at a low level for most American adults. A largely rural based culture where crops and herds still demanded a majority of the workforce, the educational needs were less valued. Pre-WW2 a 6th to 8th grade education was very common. The late 1950's, with the baby boom generated by the war, schools and higher education were given a prominent place in society. The government, seeing a need for skilled workers in scientific and technological fields, provided money to build and equipment schools to train this new emerging workforce.
When crowds were swayed by the techno babble of answers to alleged flying saucers in the late 1940's and early 1950's, it was because their confidence in understanding certain principles and theories was lower. In the late 1960's when sightings were taking place around college campuses, many of those sighting the objects were soon-to-be engineering, aviation experts, and scientists. The Air Force tendency to apply a "one-size-fits-all" answer to a cluster of sightings would end up leaving them with egg on their face more than once.
What is needed to prepare people for "contact" or "disclosure"?
1. Science bodies will need to speak clearly about the possibilities. As a young student it was driven into my science knowledge that there was no way for water to exist on Mars. It could never happen. Now, there is an almost daily release of news that erases decades of previously "written in stone" scientific pronouncements. In many ways, science had begun to take on the role of society's "religion" and scientists the new "high priests." Issues of infallibility often overrode the potential for some new data to mean changing long held "proofs." True science is always open to new changes, they must be proven and repeatable, and not merely accepted in a blind assumption but then they should not be rejected out of a faith-based understanding an unchanging set of scientific principles.
2. News outlets will need to accept that people who have claimed seeing things and were ridiculed for it was a failure of their discipline to search for the truth and present it objectively.
3. Religious people will need to examine their own presumptions about what their holy books say about the planet's role in the cosmos. I believe most will find that their assumptions of being the center of things is faulty and limiting. Just as out science one conceived the planet as being the center around which all the planets and the sun revolved, I think philosophies and religions will need to grow to the place that they recognize that their place in the universe may be vastly different and filled with new rich potentials.
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