Is reality structured on perceptions of fear and uncertainty? Research into strange events in past years have lead to some curious explanations by debunkers as well as whole belief systems by people who become leaders and prophets of social cults and groupings. Are these 'strange' events purposely made interjected into consciousness to manifest focus points for social structures?

Currently, I am ferociously rereading some of the older books written on various subjects: UFOs, extra-terrestrials, alien-abductions and related topics. These books include writers like Jacques Vallee, Charles Fort, John Keel, Erich van Daniken, Whitley Strieber and others.

These are fearful times, much of it self-induced. We are at a moment in history when many, in the hope for salvation of some kind, are committed to the 'realness' of extra-terrestrials, conspiracy-theories, other dimensions, etc., while others are in total commitment to reductionism or scientism - thus ultimate nothingness, and yet another large group is totally involved in some fundamentalist religion of some kind. What they seem to have in common, with some minor exceptions, is the belief of the ultimate demise of us all. An unending stream of books, audio and visual media is currently flooding the world (and the internet.) These are authored and manufactured by specialists, experts and those privy to 'secret knowledge' - authorities on the various domains of, what to me seems to be pseudo-intellectual 'speculation' and 'opinion.'

How refreshing it is then to read informative material by writers, who do not assume that they have the answers to everything but who are wise and intelligent enough to admit that, having looked at the evidence, they essentially have virtually nothing but questions.

In Jacque Vallee?s book, Dimensions - A Casebook of Alien Contact, (1988) he describes a whole range of 'curious' phenomena. Without reaching any authoritative conclusion, he then makes the point that many have contributed to the misconstruction of these events by forcing conclusions on their public:

"It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs are craft from a superior space civilization, [...] Unfortunately, however, the theory that flying saucers are material objects from outer space manned by a race originating on some other planet is not a good answer. However strong the current belief in UFOs from space, it cannot be stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the medieval belief in lutins, or the fear throughout the Christian lands, in the first centuries of our era, of demons and satyrs and fauns. Certainly, it cannot be stronger than the faith that inspired the early contributions to the Bible - a faith that seems rooted in personal experiences regarded as angelic visitation.

Those who assume that modern UFO sightings must be the result of alien experiments - of a 'scientific' or even 'superscientific' nature - conducted by a race of space travelers [sic.] may be the victims of their ignorance of the old folklore. The academic pedants, through a common bias that psychologists could perhaps explain if they were not its first victims, have covered the fairy-faith with the same ridicule as other pedants now cover the UFO phenomenon. Such tales set in motion powerful mental mechanisms making acceptance of the facts very difficult. The facts in question ignore frontiers, creeds, and races, defy rational statement, and turn around the most logical expectations as if they were mere toys.

It is difficult to come to grips with the UFO phenomenon. Although it clearly evolves through phases, its effects are diffuse." (pp. 46 - 7)

Vallee's observations seem to imply, rather eloquently, my own suspicions of a fear-based reality in continuous progress. It seems to start with an event or events that are extraordinary to a current norm. Because of the strangeness or unusualness of the event, insecurity ? fear is the result. The uncertainty needs to be subdued by incorporating the experience in an explanation of some kind. Fairies, angels, aliens and an assortment of weirdoes have resulted in the past and have been made to fit into the then current perception and nature of things. The feared strangeness then comes to serve as hooks on which a reality is suspended, bringing a sense of stability. Let's face it, if that strange little green guy refuses to go away, but continues to behave more or less consistently, then we are fine with it, and call it Mr Gnome. But, that is merely the beginning.Then enters the guywith the god-persona - who communicates with old greenie, and becomes a specialist -  an interface between the fearful, and the human psyche. We have different names for this go-between, depending on the period in history and our social outlook: the magi, prophet, sacred being, channeler and the channeled, disciple, psychologist, scientist, etc. Being the specialist, the interceder is free to spin his own version of events and reality and thereby control those that voluntary seek his/her/its guidance. Now we have a system, a web suspended from unexplainable (in reality) phenomena, and like individual fish in a school of fishes, we swim hither and dither where the guy before us swims.

Whitley Strieber writes in his introduction to the above book:

"If we come to a correct understanding of the UFO phenomenon, we may well in the process destroy the whole basis of our present beliefs about reality. Sensing this on an almost instinctive level, scientists hide behind the facile posturing of self-styled 'debunkers' who can be counted on to distort or suppress unsettling data in order to leave our current ideas intact."

Strieber here refers to UFOs and scientists, but these are by no means exclusive examples in which debunking is fear-based and at the same time fear-inducing. Another example that we encounter everyday is in the medical/healing field and I have a whole section of this blog devoted to just that, simultaneously overt and covert, street brawl.

As I have stated elsewhere in this blog, this is not a stagnant process, but an on-going one in which strangeness continuously and persistently presents itself to the awareness, thereby allowing the continuous creation of belief-systems and social structures under the supervision of one or more god-personae selected from society or inherited from a previous fear-induced structure.

I have no idea where or when it all started, but I do believe that the bible's Genesis points at some kind of imaginary starting point, where Adam and Eve suddenly encounter the serpentine strangeness in their otherwise blissful state in paradise - can you imagine that: never ending fineness. Whoops! Satan introduces uncertainty - choices - and they get expelled from bliss. Now we have the beginning of a seemingly interminable and laborious process of dealing with 'evilness,' persistently created by naughty Satan so that we have to continuously create that maelstrom of, what we superficially call, a sense of 'reality' and 'security.' Ever since... we have been wearing fig leaves - as soon as one becomes brown and wilted, we pick ourselves new ones.

A beauty of this kind I found serendipitously on the Internet yesterday:  Is the universe eternal, or did it have a beginning? World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking gave his answer to a large audience in Beijing on Monday. (if all is well, you can click on the link and find out what the answer is.) I will blog more on the creative prowess of Hawkins at some stage.