Flying Saucer Kooks, and A Look Into Colin Bennett’s Looking for Orthon
by: reganlee
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by R. Lee
George Adamski, Contactee extraordanie, is considered a “kook” by many both within and without UFOlogy. I admit that, if I did consider Adamski at all, it was with a mild mannered acceptance of the ‘fact’ that everyone knows he was a kook.
At the same time, I’ve always held an intrigue and desire to understand these “kooks” - past and present - dissatisfied with simply accepting them as face value kooks.
I have affection for flying saucer kooks. And while that phrase “flying saucer kooks” sounds, at best, patronizing, believe me when I say I am not treating the so-called kooks of UFO Land with disrespect or condescension. I’m convinced we need them, and not because the rest of us may find some release in mocking them, but because we really do need them on deeper, and more serious levels as well. After all, cultural history tells us so; our shamans, tricksters, pranksters, jokers, hoaxers, clowns, jesters, fools, The Trickster, The Fool, the high priests,the New Age channeler, the lazy and faux psychics, the medicine men,the occultists and so many others operate as conduits and messengers, go-fers and wanna bes to the Other World.
Some do it inadvertently, some don’t have a clue, others spend their lives refining their skills in order to teach us, trick us, lie to us, keep the truth from us, bedazzle us, bewilder and enchant us.
Some share the same wonder and amazement as we do. Surprised yet pleased at finding themselves in their position of Contactee, abductee, experiencer, witness, telepathic communicator or what you have, they seem oblivious to their critics, to the skeptics and debunkers, as well as those seemingly on their side but aren’t: the UFO researcher. (I don’t mean to say all UFO researchers feel that way; they don’t. I only mean the ones who do.)
Whenever I am offended by those really far out UFO people, I remind myself of context. Within things UFO, the Trickster (I’m just using the term as a giant catch all here) is ever present. Chronic skeptics don’t see this (won’t and can’t) many UFO researchers won’t acknowledge it. Both these groups attack UFOs and its players in prosaic ways. The chronic skeptics -- always irritated -- file the George Adamskis, Pamela Stonebrooks, Billy Meirs, etc. into stiff files: yes-no, truthful-liar, reality-fanatasy. That’s that.
The UFOlogist who prefers the mundane for all UFO answers moves in circles, because of the failure to accept this innate characteristic of the UFO phenomena.
This core trait of UFO (and Fortean) phenomena needs to be openly acknowledged, and understood for what it is.
Well, what it is, exactly, is a mystery. Where, what, why; all that good stuff, are questions that have intrigued and possessed humankind for thousands of years. But it’s here, it is and it hasn’t gone away yet. And it won’t.
Every time we witness some goofy aspect of the UFO phenomenon come along, we need to stretch our minds a little and look around. It’s not enough to dismiss it outright, or diligently search for nuts and bolts clues while ignoring, or being embarrassed by, the noisy parade going by.
Colin Bennett writes about this global, cultural, time spanning trickster force in his book on George Adamski. (Looking for Orthon.) Instead of laughing at the “kooks” before rejecting and moving on, Bennett reminds us we need to enter into a relationship. (If at times I’m leery of this relationship, because of the partners, I just need to remind myself of context, my search for truth, the process, my journey, and the American way, and carry on.)
Those characters within UFO Land who we’d call clowns, or kooks, are considered worse than mere jokers by Authority. (And the chronically irritated skeptics see themselves as part of that authority. ) Bennett writes:
"Odd folk trouble Authority if only because it doesn’t understand them. Weird views are not directly criminal, yet they subvert society in a much more subtle way. . . "
And:
"Conformists are left alone; they are effectively dead matter to systems of Authority, and actual criminals are finite, their actions and motives fully comprehensible." (Bennett: p 141)
We can handle the criminals, no matter how heinous, we can accept -- we expect -- people to both behave badly and to conform. We understand both. But we can’t understand those that emerge from an unseen place, a realm where the unbelievable has happened. We get really nervous when these experiencers want to talk about it, tell us all about it, have the chutzpah to write books about it, and worse, make a little money off it. How dare they?
Deeper than this however is the unconscious knowledge that such unseen, “unreal,” fantastic realms could break loose from their world and come whirling in, like some horrific, catastrophic storm we can’t possibly stop.
When people like Adamski, or Stonebrook (even is she isn’t really telling her truth as she see it) (which, yes, can be said of them all) Strieber, et all, share their incredible stories with the world, we get nervous not only because of some vague discomfort, but because, as Bennett says:
That last part is very important. (Not to sound trite, but that’s one of the reasons marijuana will never be legalized in the United States: Authority does not want its citizenry to be creative, laughing, questioning, and, imagining.)
Bennett continues, pointing to George Adamski’s role:
"Adamski certainly made seemingly nonsensical statements, such as saying Venus is inhabited by human-like forms. though this might indeed appear to be nonsense, it certainly brings the picture of such an absurdity into a mind, though momentarily. Though the mind may reject immediately such rubbish, nevertheless, for a fleeting instant, it has created a picture o fan inhabited Venus, if only to reject the image immediately. This fleeting act of imagination is the very first minute building block of a possible universe in which Venus might indeed be populated in the manner describes by Adamski."(Bennett: pp141-142)
While I am always going on about how the Infrastructure, with its five cornerstones: Science, Academia, Politics, Media, and Religion (and five is an unbalanced number) will never allow UFOlogy and related fields to enter, I am not pessimistic, or cynical. Just as the innate trait of the Trickster lies within all Fortean phenomeana, including UFOs, the Infrastructure has its own innate trait. It isn’t that it won’t, it can’t let the Other World in. There are some within that are more attentive, more aware of this other worldly realm than others, but that’s beside the point. Two opposing forces:
Just can’t integrate.
If I were completely cynical or pessimistic and believed that this were entirely the case, I wouldn’t be passionate about UFOs and Fortean events. I wouldn’t waste my time writing every day. No, the truth is that these two forces are opposed, but they are not dead. They are in a constant state of charged; a static dance, where things do, as Bennett said, shift, no matter how subtle that shift may be.
That is why I urge all of us to ignore the irritated, the Authority, the outright trollish thugs and the more subtle decoys like the hill hoppers (those who cannot discern between so-called believer and skepti-troll, blithely entertaining both with equal hospitality)and tell our stories.
Because, as cliché as this will sound; the paradigm does shift. Slowly, at times invisibly, but shift it does.
About the Author
Regan Lee is author of The OrangeOrb UFO blog. She also writes for UFO Digest, American Chronicle, and the Binnall of America website, where she writes her Trickster's Realm column twice a month. She also occasionally contributes to her blog on The Daily Grail.
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