Commercialism In Our Midst

Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Bens.... My friends all have Porsches I must make amends" Janis

Images from the Street

Commercialism hurts the UFO researcher more than anything else. The books that keep researchers writing need to get sold, those same books keep researchers and fans going to conferences, and the Grand Theories of Everything keep the lecture circuit and radio shows humming so researchers can promote more books…And then there’s the inevitable mistakes even the great ufologists will not admit to making, as they invest years and plenty of money pursuing the Grand Theory they inevitably get locked into, mistakes and controversies and all…

Isn’t that how it works? All these facets of ufology --especially the books and the controversies-- turn out to be ways to continue a lifestyle.

If you really want to learn the secret of intimacy, I can say after thousands of mistakes, I know the answer. You think I’m going way off topic here? Stay with me. When you get intimate, when you really get to know someone and the walls come down, you learn the vast majority has some Light inside…and you learn, too, These same people have a little bit of the black. Look deeper and you will see yourself. People are gray.


So, the secret: people are gray. That’s right, gray. UFO researchers --most of them-- start out as shining knights on a Truth Quest, but sooner or later, the gray seeps in. And I don’t mean the little guys with bug eyes. I mean the gray of essential self-interest.

Even ufologists have to pay the bills.



And most scientists are gray, too --neither saint nor sinner. They have to have an approved line of research to secure funding, so the bills get paid. Even if they began their careers chasing Pure Science, chasing Truth.

DVD-
Dr. J. Vallee the father of modern UFOs research quotes from Allen Hyneck who made an interesting statement about UFOs, ethics and religion and "how to make a million bucks"





Same with the rest of us: brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, sons, fathers, and presidents. Wait! Not mothers. Mothers are true believers, 100% Mom. No gray there, because Mom was never about self-interest.

But back to the rest of us. When the rank and file of scientists and witnesses are not a little gray, maybe that’s when you have to worry. Do we have more to fear from that little bit of gray, or from the true believers? Maybe that’s another blog.

When there is a perfect UFO research investigational system in place, I’ll just go there for my information. But at this point, all we have is the streets and the gray people.

I found in the Sixties, the streets had some pretty damn smart people around and some of them could con the brightest minds I ever met.

Today we have the same thing happening in the UFO field. We of the street are armed and dangerous: handi-cams and double-digit megapixel cameras and cell phone videos of the everyday people out in the streets, all the grey people with their digital imaging arsenal who happen to be looking up at the sky to capture the strange craft. It’s a dangerous thing because it’s a sure thing. In the cheap digital cam age, real images of real craft are going to be captured. Often.

According to the professional debunkers, the people of the street can’t be trusted. Debunkers claim these hoaxing villagers in Mexico are just pumping out the photos, selling to the highest bidder, say a 500 pesos bid from Maussan. Do I hear 1,000 from Garza?

Or could it be a little more complicated than Mexican villagers trying to hoax the millions of us Nortenos?

What if the South of the Border villagers are pumping out dozens, hundreds, thousands of real images of real craft --because many of those instances of craft sightings are really happening?

But what if, salted in among those real ufo images by everyday people--people just like us, but living in Mexico-- are some carefully hoaxed products, multiple faked image products planted among the massive numbers of authentic images? What if in that constant stream of real videos and snapshots taken by villagers and everyday people of the streets are fakes that almost look like the real thing but which will be somehow proven to have been staged, or altered and carefully distributed in order to be outed as fakes?

With the mass of digital images captured in Mexico, particularly, it would be so easy to insert and then spotlight a fake…or mount a big campaign spotlighting multiple fakes. But for every fake there are a 50 that are not and of great importance to the UFO enigma.

Wouldn’t a couple of highly publicized provable fakes make it easy to put a gigantic dent in, or even destroy the growing popular support for images from the street --both North and South of the Border? In fact for me, that is exactly what has happened. So when anyone in the UFO community tries and make you think in black and white, think gray because the person telling you how to think is probably gray themselves.

Joe Capp
UFO Media Matters
A Non-Commercial Blog