This week’s links and reading cover apocalyptic trends and their cultural, psychological, and artistic/literary aspects; economic collapse in America and Europe, with attendant venality on the part of politicians and the wealthy elite; the rise of an ĂŒber-surveillance state in America; epic protests in Canada; the decline and fall (and continued decline after falling) of…
Tag: UFOs
Recommended Reading 3
Topics this week include imperial and economic collapse, the true value of a college education, our troubled shift from physical to digital media, the nature of consciousness, a mysterious marine mammal die-off, the nature and quirks of the human religious instinct, and a new UFO documentary.
Recommended Reading 2
Topics in this week’s edition of Recommended Reading include: the ongoing eating of everybody else by the wealthy elite; the crisis in America’s education system; the continued rise of online and real-world surveillance; the clash between scientistic reductionism and more humane views of human consciousness and psychology; and a recent UFO sighting.
Recommended Reading 1
In the wake of my exit from Facebook a couple of weeks ago — something I still intend to write about here in the near future, in tandem with an explanation of my reasons for leaving Google as well — I’ve taken the time, energy, and attention that I was using to post things over…
Aliens and ontology: Are abductions “not real” if they’re “just dreams”?
Note the predictable materialist-reductionist assumption that characterizes a newly reported round of research into the alien abduction phenomenon. Because people could be trained to see/experience aliens and abductions while such phenomena were clearly not physically happening, Michael Raduga of Los Angeles’ Out-of-Body Experience Research Center deemed the phenomena themselves to be, therefore, illusory products of…
Questions about the impact of extraterrestrials on religious belief are not new
A new (Oct. 2) article at Space.com reports that theologians speaking at the DARPA-sponsored 100-Year-Starship Symposium have raised questions about the possible impacts on religion, and especially on Christianity, if the existence of extraterrestrial life is ever confirmed. The symposium itself was a public event held this past weekend (Sept. 30-Oct. 2) in Orlando, Florida,…
UFOs over China and fireballs over Peru: What the Lovecraft is going on?
So, you know, sometimes we really do need to ask ourselves whether and to what extent our new Internet-created ability to piece together all kinds of events and news reports instantaneously from across space and time is encouraging us to read false patterns of meaning into things. More pointedly, is that what I’m doing below…
NASA says aliens may destroy earth over global warming. NASA says nothing of the kind.
Here’s a regrettable object lesson in the necessity of maintaining a properly skeptical attitude in today’s hype-prone mass media society, even in the face of the coolest headlines ever: Word recently surfaced of a new report from NASA that sounds like something from a science fiction film. It started on August 18 in, of all…
Beware: UFOs can blow a hole in your reality
In Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur eloquently describes the surreal, dreamlike feeling that almost always pervades paranormal experiences, including UFO encounters. He also dwells at some length on the implications for our understanding of reality itself. Although the same level of philosophical focus isn’t evident in a recent article about UFO encounters from the Union newspaper…
Our alien obsession
UFOs and aliens have been a widespread subcultural attraction for decades, but presently they’re bursting the subcultural boundaries and extending into Western society at large to reach the status of a bona fide, near-ubiquitous obsession. Even the (weird, incomprehensible, utterly Philistine) people who aren’t interested in them are now confronted by them at every turn,…