LESSONS FROM A PASSERBY: AI ATLAS COMET AND UFOS; Is it real or maybe make believe?

Today the interstellar visitor, Ai- Atlas Comet is closest to the Earth's Sun.

For months, videos, articles, podcasts, and reels have been buzzing with ideas of what the strange object "really" was.  Some portrayed the visitor as a horrible advancing alien attack force, some as an ancient relic of a long deep culture now in an endless loop through the cosmos.  Still others, freely manipulated data, images, and personalities to present - for some unknown reason to date - chilling, frightening, and conflicting opinions. 

Stepping back to look at the furor, brings some things into clear perspective. The panorama of social media are both comedic and terrifying. 

Yeats wrote in his poem about history, The Second Coming, these most evocative words - "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity...." [emphasis added]

It is apparent the globe is currently in that time of "things falling apart".  

Once traveling the wilderness of the old west, I happened upon a bleached and ancient wooden wagon wheel.  It' hub cracked and rotted away, the spokes broken and splintered.  In my mind I could envision the fracture of that crucial central hub that held the wagon together and allowed it to roll onward mile after mile. Once it, or one of the spokes was compromised, the result was inevitable.  The center could no longer support the weight and action of the wheel. It collapsed and broke apart. 

Surveying some of the sources commenting about the strange visitor, and viewing some of the images, reveals more about the occupants of planet Earth than anything about any potential aliens. 

First, it is clear that it is very simple for undocumented, unsourced, and unvetted stories and videos to flood social media as alleged news.

Second, it is very easy for these stories to manipulate public thinking.

Third, this manipulation is the produce of several factors: a) a lack of authoritative trusted news sources, b) a low level of critical thinking skills among all levels of society, b) an absence of strong information literacy skills across all levels of society, c) multiple voices heard without discrimination and being perceived as having equal quality or value ("The Age of the Amateur" from  Jean M Twenge's, Generation Me - Revised and Updated: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before)

Fourth, it is increasingly simple for artificial intelligence to mimic images and audio to duplicate authoritative persons (government leaders, scientists, and others) and thereby potentially control the narrative of any event, generate fear and anxiety, create false divisions and controversy.  The level of reality in current technology is the stuff of horror films.

Fifth, the voices emerging via comments are also interesting.  They appear to fall into some distinct groups that are largely vague in definition, leadership, or guiding beliefs. 

 (a) a wide, diverse voice expressing a broad spectrum religious-spiritual-metaphysical message. Ultra conservative traditional views to the most extreme mystical beliefs.  Comments range from "The Lord is coming back", "Consciousness is shifting", "New frequencies are in process," "I believe..." and others.

(b) a wide and diverse voice expressing deeply held beliefs in alleged programs, conspiracy theories, and alternative concepts such as "Project Blue Beam", a Fake Moon Landing, and a Flat Earth.

(c) a die-hard response of all things seen or heard are the product of our own (government and military) secret projects, or projects of some clandestine agency, and similar assertions.  These tend to use a similar rhetoric as that used in the 1940s through the 1960's.  Sometimes tweaked to update them but always similar in being so secret no proof can be found and what is found is always taken at face value despite its lack of historical context or additional evidence. 

Sixth, a widespread lack of basic science, nature, mathematics, and environmental realities exists.  Society is increasingly tunnel visioned to the actions of a digital display. Social face-to-face interactions are disappearing, conversational skills, listening skills, comprehension skills, and emotional intelligence skills are decaying.  This results in believing everything seen, said, and argued.  Everything. No filters, no balance, no evaluations, and no standards of measurement.  This does not bode well.

All of these set against the backdrop of a push for disclosure, punctuated with international and national conflict and unrest, and a steady dollop of distraction in every form and shape.  

The bottom line seems to be someone - or some group - is playing fast and loose with human minds about the very nature of reality.  The center is cracked, the spokes of the wheel are crumbling...

Things fall apart...our challenge may be...can we put it back together again?

Competition in the World of the UAP

 A lot of discussion in today's world of UAP investigations is very competitive and money based. Witnesses haggle for the highest price for their photo, story, or video. Groups woo the big donors, at whatever the cost, to scientific principles or objectivity.  Everyone stumbles to be first in line for the guest slot of a new podcast or to be a documentary guest. 

The five minutes of fame seems to be the goal. 

The results:

• Dogged research is too boring.
• Statistics too hard to wrestle with or understand.
• Controls or procedures too rigid.
• Expertise is old hat. Everyone is an expert. 

Today is also the time of AI run amuck until the very fabric of reality appears to be an issue in every video and image floating through cyberspace. If Fox Mulder was certain the "truth is out there" he needs to remember the warning.  He was told "trust no one."

For the first time in history the topic is drawing attention by scientists, the government, and the general populations of the globe.

If ever there was a time for a united global process to call for disclosure it is now. What we see, however, is competition instead of collaboration. The in-fighting that was created in the waning days of NICAP seems to be stalking every group or individual interested in seeking answers. Some believed that collapse was engineered to silence the noise of calls for answers.

Is it mere coincidence that in a day and age were disclosure is gaining steam that "competition" seems to also be poisoning the wells of truth seekers?

The goal should be putting all our energies in working together to achieve the goal of total transparency and full disclosure. 

Why isn't that happening?

The Travis Walton Case in Historical Context

 November 5 will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1975 "Travis Walton Incident."  It is one of the best and most controversial abduction cases on the books. It is a case that seems to polarize people into strict "It is real" or "It is a hoax" camps.  In my research into UFO cases, I have found that the context is key.  Sightings of import are seldom seen in isolation - but they can be reported that way. It is important to dig wider and search for what was being seen, reported, and experienced in those same time periods.

In those first 5 days of November 1975 there was a global experience going on. NICAP's Chronology of UFO Cases gives insight:

• Nov. 1, 1975; Monarch, MT / Time not given. UFO hovered 75' away, one foot off ground. (NIDS UFO 92).  November 3, 1975, Received call from AAC/IN (Alaskan Air Command/Intelligence). They had sent message 012224, Subject: Unidentified Foreign Object to INYSA and wanted to know if INYSA had received it. They wanted guidance from INYSA.
• Nov. 4, 1975; Ross, OH/  Cylinder hovering at treetop level, windows, body lights visible. Skylook, MUFON, January 1976, p. 6 (E,L) car
• Nov. 4, 1975; near Lussault-sur-Loire, France / At 6:50 p.m. a red disc-shaped object flanked by two nocturnal lights stopped in place, then descended slowly into some woods near Lussault-sur-Loire, France. (Source: Lumieres dans la Nuit, February 1977).
• Nov. 5, 1975; N. of Redwater, Alta, Canada / At 12:30 a.m. MST, Mr. Jim Divall while driving his vehicle 11 miles north of the town of Redwater saw a large black round rotating object and he had to drive into the ditch to avoid hitting the object. The object was approximately 40 feet long and in the shape of a circle. When Divall got out of his vehicle he heard a rushing sound and saw the object disappear. Duration of the sighting was approximately 3 minutes. RCMP REPORT (National Research Council of Canada Record Group 77, Vol. 308, reel number 1742 N75/150)
• Nov. 5, 1975; Nr. Raynesford, MT / 4:10 a.m. At least six UFOs near ground. (NIDS UFO 14)
• Nov. 5, 1975; 10 miles south of Bowden, Alberta, Canada / 9:50 p.m. (Approximate) Mr. Wayne Morrow, observed an unidentified object flying 10 miles south of Bowden, Alberta. Mr. Morrow was proceeding northbound on NBR 2 Highway at the time of the sighting. The object was described as bullet shaped with a constant amount of orange colored flame at the rear of the object. The object was approximately 50 feet above the ground traveling in a southerly direction at 100 mph. The object was sighted for approximately 5 to 10 seconds. (National Research Council of Canada Record Group 77, Vol. 308, reel number 1742 N75/149) An interesting aspect to the famous over flights and NORAD incidents is the close proximity, both in time and location, of two famous abduction cases:  Travis Walton & David Stephens. See next case entry.
• Nov. 5, 1975; Snowflake (Heber), AZ / Travis Walton abduction case. One of the more persistently controversial UFO events in history took place in northeastern Arizona. A work team consisting of seven individuals reported encountering a reflective, luminous object the shape of a flattened disc hovering close to their truck on a remote dirt road in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. According to the crew, one of their members, Travis Walton, exited the truck and approached the object on foot, at which time he was allegedly struck by a brilliant bluish light or flash and hurled to the ground some distance away. In fear, the other crew members fled the scene, returning after a short period of time to find no trace of the UFO, or of Walton. The driver of the truck was Mike Rogers, the crew foreman and a personal friend of Walton's. While fleeing the scene, Rogers reported looking back and seeing a luminous object lift out of the forest and speed rapidly toward the horizon. He, along with the other five witnesses, would eventually be subjected to polygraph (lie detection) examinations regarding the event, the successful outcomes of which catapulted the case into the national spotlight. Walton turned up five days later, confused and distraught but with fleeting memories of alien and exotic human entities. He was also subsequently subjected to a number of controversial polygraph examinations (Image caption: Travis Walton). (NICAP UFO Evidence II, Section XIII).
• Nov. 6, 1975; Merxheim, France / 10:00 p.m.  (Note this would be about 1 am in Arizona) A domed disc landed on three legs. The dome on the craft opened, and the head and shoulders of an occupant was seen partially emerging from it. The dome closed and the UFO rose up into the air, then took off toward the east-southeast (Source: Larry Hatch, U computer database, case #11518).