About Those UAPs/UFOs over New Jersey

 

I think I know what’s going on with ll the drones being spotted over New Jersey.

The clue is that they are over New Jersey. Why New Jersey?

I say this is a promotion stunt for a new movie (or possibly a series) based on HG Wells’s War of the Worlds.

In Orson Welles’s famous radio adaptation in 1938, the aliens landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

That play was done as a mock series of news reports. It was so realistic many thought Martians were really landing.

So a fleet of mysterious drones might recreate the moment and stimulate the sme level of interest again.

It is a good time to do a remake, too. The last was in 2005; twenty years ago. But between then and now, we have had the Covid pandemic, making the ultimate defeat of the aliens by a terrestrial virus topical. And there are current anxieties over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza, the same sort of tensions that helped the 1938 broadcast go viral.

This makes more sense to me that it being UFOs/UAP of the usual sort. These drones do not look like the usual UFOs, and do not seem to have the same ability to defy the laws of physics. If it were a government operation, why would they do it over a highly populated area like New Jersey, with flashing lights? Hardly the way to ensure secrecy; this looks more as though designed to ensure publicity. Iran or China? Same objection. What would they have accomplished? Revealing a new capability so the US can figure out how to defend against it?

I say it is a Hollywood stunt. I expect the government is in on it. This is why they can say there is no security threat or threat to the population, while also saying they don’t know where the drones are coming from.

Tucker Carlson on UFOs

 

Why Are Pigs Sprouting Wings?

 

There is apocalypse in the air. Governments are doing unaccountable things, as though they know something we don’t. Snow falls in Mecca; lightning strikes the Vatican; maybe such things happen in normal times, but people are now in the mood to notice. And then there are the growing claims about UFOs. Tucker Carlson says he knows things about UFOs so dark he will not even tell his wife, and “there is a spiritual aspect to it.”

Which last comment gets me thinking: here’s one explanation for what is going on.

Christopher Hitchens, seeking to debunk Christianity, argued the improbability that God would let mankind subsist on Earth for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, right up until 1 AD, before revealing himself. What about all those previous generations? And why then did he do it in such a backwater, in Palestine?

Hitchens is exactly wrong. The early years of the Roman Empire were probably the first time in history that God could have sent a message to mankind, and expect it to reach from Britain in the West, to China in the East, and down to Ethiopia. The Roman Empire had, for the first time, secured those trade routes. And Christianity did quickly extend this far.

No doubt God was sending local revelations all along—which is why so many of the world’s myths seem to contain elements of the Gospel story, with avatars, virgin births, and the like. But until 1 AD, they inevitably stayed local. 

And Palestine was not a backwater. Jerusalem is actually, literally, the centre of the populated world, now as it was then—the one spot from which it is easiest to get everywhere else. This is why Middle Eastern airlines have been so successful: their headquarters and stopover point is most efficiently located for everywhere else.

And this is true not only by air. Palestine is a land bridge, a funnel, that joins three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and their trade routes. It is at the crossroads of the three great ancient civilizations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece-Rome.

And this is true by sea as well: it is roughly the meeting point of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, the necessary point of portage to go by sea from Europe to East Asia and vice versa. All lines of communication and travel met here. This was God’s megaphone.

Now… if either God or perhaps some alien civilization wants to send all of mankind a further message, we have just now reached a similar, but greater, inflection point. Now, with the internet, with smart phones, is the first time in history he/they could appear to all of us, all at once, without filter by government or earthly authority with their own self-interests. 

We might now be getting the preparatory attention-getting signs; like the herald’s trumpet or the town crier’s bell. Or like John the Baptist in the New Testament. And the panic of Herod at the birth of a more legitimate ruler, or the mind-frame of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, may explain the current actions of governments. 

I don’t jump immediately to the idea that these are the End Times. Perhaps; perhaps the beginning of the thousand-year just reign predicted in Revelations. Yet, more simply, revelation is ongoing, as it is throughout the Bible: there are repeated calls from God to return to faith and fealty, reminders that he is there, new and renewed covenants. In more recent years, we have seen apparitions of Mary calling us back to faith. She has even appeared on Egyptian TV. Now may be the time for an emphatic reminder, a visit from the boss himself, perhaps a renewed covenant. 

Or, alternatively, now may be the opportunity for some more advanced civilization to make itself known and tell us what it feels we need to know.

I think, in the end, aliens are less likely. That hypothesis requires too many assumptions.

Advanced Alien Cilvilizations

 

I have no insight on the recent claims of alien craft in the possession of governments. I have always thought that, because of the extreme distances, travel from another solar system was improbable. To make it possible, almost necessarily, an alien civilization would have to know how to travel not just through space, but through time. This would also explain the “impossible” maneuvers the craft are reported to make.

But if the critical factor is time travel, there is no need to assume space travel as well. These uncanny visitors could be from our own future; Occam’s Razor.

But whether or not they are alien visitors, commentators on UFOs are shockingly ready to assume the possibility of civilizations “more advanced” than ours on other planets. Shockingly, because in any other context, claiming that one civilization is more advanced than another is rank heresy. It is racism, and will come, quite possibly, in Canada, with criminal penalties. We cannot, for instance, suggest that the European culture that appeared on American shores in 1492 was more advanced than that of the natives, or that contact was likely to be a boon to them on balance. No; such an idea is “cultural genocide.”

Worse, the government scientists are reputedly trying to "reverse-engineer" the acquired crafts, to learn from them. This is blasphemy. Necessarily, as all civilizations are equally advanced, we can have nothing to learn from any aliens. This is all blatant alien supremacy.

Yet it is obvious that one civilization, or culture, can be more advanced than another. Advanced not just in this way or that, but even overall. It may, as is theorized about the UFOs, have had more time to work out the various kinks of mortal existence; less time preoccupied with mere material survival in a state of nature.

A culture or a civilization is a tool for achieving the best life. Not all tools are equal. 

Some tools are even harmful. One thinks of the need to wipe out Nazism in Germany, or the cult of the divine emperor in Japan. The ancient Israelites, Greeks, and Romans similarly saw a need to wipe out the Canaanite and Punic practice of child sacrifice. The British felt justified in wiping out the Thug cult or human sacrifice in India, and the practice of widow-burning, suttee.

An immigrant society like Canada, the US, or Singapore, can take advantage of this fact of cultures living cheek by jowl by choosing the best from each. A wise workman chooses the best tool for the job, not the one manufactured closest to his home. It is no accident that immigrant and outward-looking trading societies have been the main sources of culture and technological improvements over the centuries. 

Tragically, more recently, we have instead deliberately tried to halt the progress of civilization, with concepts like “multiculturalism,” “cultural appropriation,” “affirmative action” and “equity.” In the natural course of things it is likely that different ethnic groups will dominate in different spheres, in which their culture gives them expertise, and which their ethnic culture most values: Irish in policing, say; Dutch in luxury trades; blacks in preaching; aboriginals in the military; English in accounting; Italians in the food industry. It is cruel and artificial to try to prevent this, barring people from their dreams, and we all lose as a result.

We’ll never achieve time travel with this approach. 

So it may indeed be aliens.

60 Minutes on UFOs

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/ufo-military-intelligence-video-60-minutes-2021-05-16/#x

Aliens!

Some years ago, Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Defense Minister and perennial leadership contender, made a bit of a splash by declaring UFOs to be real, and claiming an international coverup. I took little notice; sounded like a guy used to being in the public eye trying to attract attention one last time. In fact, Hellyer has always been like that.

A friend turned out to be a UFO buff. Again, I took little notice. He spoke of multiverses. My problem with that was Occam’s razor: it is the worst possible violation of Occam’s razor. It is much simpler to assume the existence of a spirit world.

Now Tucker Carlson on Fox News has apparently been won over to the idea that UFOs are real.

They might be. Certainly there are UFOs in the literal sense: unidentified flying objects. The only question is, what are they? Are they alien visitors?

I am skeptical for several reasons. First, the vast distances of space. The nearest planet with possible life, let alone intelligent life, let alone intelligent life with such advanced technology, has to be light-years away. I am under the impression that the laws of physics prohibit travel at faster than the speed of light. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps our present physics is wrong. But if not, that means it would have to take anyone years to get here. More likely hundred or thousands of years.

The obvious next question is, why would it be worth their while? What could be here for them that they could not get at home, and needed so badly?

I could see visiting out of curiosity, to have a look around. Fine; but then they surely would send robot craft, not come themselves. There would be no need for that, and it would be a big sacrifice. So perhaps that is what we are seeing.

I am also more skeptical than most about the inevitability of an intelligent life form developing such advanced technology. The fundamental belief that the physical world is real, and so worth paying much attention to, is rare among human cultures. It is pretty much a Judeo-Christian thing. You need that before you get very interested in physical technology. It seems to me that a non-human civilization could be highly intelligent, and last for many centuries, but concentrate more on issues of spiritual and emotional, not physical, well-being. And then, if they decide to concentrate on physical, I can see them focusing on things like eliminating disease and poverty rather than exploring space. The number of even highly intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations, if any exist, who would think it worthwhile to have a space program might be quite small.

If what we are seeing is robot visitors coming to look and study, it is not really an alarming or earth-threatening event. It is not as if, as Tucker Carlson or Paul Hellyer suggest, we need to develop some plan for defense against alien attack. The logic still holds that there is very unlikely to be anything here worth their while to come and get. If there were, somebody somewhere would have probably come and gotten it centuries ago, when we could only defend with longbows or assegais and were easy pickings.

Might it be possible for someone to invent a device like the old transporter in Star Trek, that immediately beams something to any distant place, by dissolving and re-forming them at a molecular level? There are a few problems with that concept. In Star Trek, the thing or person always dissolves at the point of departure, as it or he reforms at the destination. But that would obviously not be necessary: one could just as well create an exact duplicate while leaving the original intact.

Now we have a problem, if we are transporting sentient beings. Where would the consciousness reside, in the original or in the duplicate?

I think it has to be in the original. There is logically nothing in the act of recreation at the molecular level that would unplug the consciousness connection from one body, and insert in in the other. And if in the original when there are two, then also in the original if there is one. The consciousness would not be transferred. If conscious, the transported body would be a new and separate person. Meaning that any such transportation would mean death for the subject, subjectively speaking. Kind of unattractive.

Those who are religious have a possible alternative explanation: these lights in the sky are angels, or demons, or sprites. Yes, they are visible to the eye and to radar; but according to our ancient sources, angels and demons can be too, if they choose to be. And these craft do, after all, violate the known laws of physics. That might after all suggest something.