May 23, 2000
Stephen Bassett
Washington, DC – The human race is a walking, breathing irony. It’s biosphere home is a low-entropy island amidst a sea of chaos (high entropy) – a tiny pocket of order that owes its existence to the energy it draws out from the vast, less ordered cosmos over incomprehensible periods of time.
Gaia jumps out at you like a sudden spike on a cosmic lie detector test. At the top of this spike rests the most complex entity the human brain is capable of discerning – the human brain.
So naturally the owners of these brains are religiously devoted to rending the world asunder. Not merely content to just peek inside each other’s medicine cabinets, their curiosity drives them to deconstruction. Humans like to break things up – marriages, monopolies, double plays – they’ll even break a pair to draw to a flush.
But that’s child’s play to the turbo brained, SAT torching, white-frocked atomists who want nothing less then to shatter reality itself to smithereens. If you have ever seen Letterman drop a television off the roof, you understand. Smash stuff together at higher and higher energies and more stuff, smaller stuff appears. Whatever does turn up is not enough – protons, photons, gluons, leptons – that don’t impress you much.
Humans want more and even tried to build a supersmasher in the Texas desert until the red ants started eating it (broke it down) and the money ran out. Now they eye quarks with deepening frustration, knees bouncing as they wait for the first opportunity to pop those suckers good and find out what’s inside.
Another matter all together is the moral/ethical universe, about which this author, in Robert Pirsigian fashion, has contemplated a possible law of indivisibility almost to the point of brain breaking obsession. Almost, because nervous breakdowns, very chic in the 60’s and 70’s, are out of fashion since selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors were first discovered inside a Martian meteorite (a likely violation of the Prime Directive). It can be stated thusly:
- All knowledge (information) comes with an equal measure of moral responsibility which is inseparable.
- There are no exceptions and this pairing is universal to all sentient beings everywhere.
Can you find an exception? If so, please pass it along. Seriously, it could come in handy.
Some quick examples: you’re talking on your 900 MHz cordless when another conversation bleeds in just on your end. Two guys are yakking about the bomb they put on such and such flight, the airline, the time. They fade out, you hang up. Some new information. You can ignore it, head for the beach. No one is ever going to come around making nasty accusations. No finger will point your way. If the next day’s newspaper has an article about the crash, so what?
Break it down further to less and less significant pieces of information. You take an evening walk and notice your neighbor’s car has a flat tire – more new information. You can do nothing. Your neighbor will leave for work, one-hour delay, kids late for school, so what?
The what, of course, is a fundamental responsibility that every human being would immediately recognize except one – the sociopath. However, the sociopath is not an exception to the law, just an exception to its perception.
No amount of energy in the physical universe can separate responsibility from information. Don’t like it? Tough. If you were a potted plant, you could claim an exemption. You’re sentient, deal with it.
Which, of course, brings us to UFOlogy. One way to look at this field, movement, community, whatever, is a group of people, now numbering in the tens of millions, who have come into some new information. Whether they eagerly sought this knowledge or it was thrust upon them, the result is the same. They get the equal measure of responsibility. And what a measure it is!
They know about an extraterrestrial presence, government propaganda and subversion, sequestered technology, wasted money and opportunity, uninvited encounters, violations of law, disenfranchised employees, distortion of the constitutional checks and balances, weakening of the American presidency, abuses of power, etc.
When the information is this heavy, the attached responsibility, if accepted, can usually only be carried out through political action. If UFOlogy has stumbled, it has been in its slowness to convert the information it acquired into the political expression of the responsibility that came with it.
The reasons for this would fill ten columns. Here is the one this author believes to be the most important.
There have always been two competing protocols affecting this transition. The metaphor for the first would be the “wheat from the chaff.” If it were only possible to separate out from the field those who are not sufficiently credible, credentialed, educated, honest, and worthy of our esteem. We don’t like their style, their claims, their face. = If they would just retire, move to Greenland, or die, ah, then the remaining crème de la crème, now composed solely of PhD’s, Pulitzer/Nobel winners, and right thinking researchers with books that weren’t published by a vanity press, would be granted the keys to the kingdom.
The career intelligence officers at the NSA, the mainstream editors at the Times, the NASA guys, would rush forward to greet this pristine amalgam of UFO/ET purists, pat them on the back, hand out security badges, and all would walk together to the labs and conference rooms to discuss the global strategies for dealing with the new paradigm.
Of course, some person or organization would have to apply a fair measure of subjective criteria in order to get the chaff shipped out. Few would go quietly. Enraged e-mails would be launched, old hatreds reinvigorated, death threats in abundance. Well, you have to break a few egg.
There is another protocol in play. The individuals who now find themselves in possession of knowledge of the UFO/ET reality and all its sub-themes must become a mutual admiration society (MAS).
Much of the division in the field is between the old guard researchers, many military, with decades of involvement, and the political activists, many new to the fray.
Nevertheless, everyone has contributed in their own way. There were no guidebooks, no instructions. People did the best they could with what they had, and what they did was extraordinary. The common interests have always transcended the disagreements, hatreds, and grievances. Hate the person’s guts if you must, but admire what they contributed.
Recently, this author was reminded of the power of this protocol. A colleague attended a conference and happened to speak with a well-known presenter who sincerely proffered great admiration for my activist efforts. As it happened, I thought the opposite to be true and remained on a cloud for a week. Suddenly the frustrations of the work and the irritations that arise from the lack of funds lifted. New energy and commitment sprung up, new focus.
If everyone in the UFO/ET research/activist field sent 5 e-mails tomorrow acknowledging the contributions of 5 others, and made sure two of those e-mails went to people that irritated them to no end, the impact would be immediate and potent.
Whether we wanted it or not, we have a responsibility to the human race and our planet to ensure a truthful, peaceful and constructive transition to a new paradigm. If we form a mutual admiration society, we will be able to carry out that responsibility by whatever means we find appropriate.
If we do not, history will neither remember nor care. But we will know, because we had the information, the opportunity to act, and the means to do so. We can make history together as regards an event that will never come again – the galactic coming out party of our planet – the moral/ethical/political birth of a sentient world.