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Diana Walsh Pasulka Talks UFOs, Claims Truth is Essentially Unknowable

4/25/2018

17 Comments

 
A few weeks ago, I discussed a lecture and a forthcoming book about UFOs by Prof. Diana Walsh Pasulka, and now Pasulka has given an interview to Robbie Graham of Mysterious Universe, with whom I have also expressed my differences. Their interview is interesting, but perhaps not for the reasons they imagined. So far as I can tell, the two believed they were discussing the UFO phenomenon and its profound effects on society, but beneath that surface they seemed to actually be discussing the will to believe and the efforts that humans go through in order to create meaning from ambiguous inputs. 
The nut of her analysis comes in response to a question about the role of the media in shaping perceptions of UFOs. Regular readers know that I place quite a bit of weight on the idea that pop culture shapes how people interpret unusual events. Thus, for example, the silver flying disks of Theosophy and the Shave Mystery gave shape to what people imagined lights in the sky to be in the first years of the UFO era, and The Outer Limits did as much to create the template for alien abductions as anything. Pasulka has similar thoughts:
My work reveals how media is able to create “reality,” if you will, by using specific mechanisms that, in a sense, “trick” the mind into believing certain things. So, hoaxes, documentaries that make use of computer generated imagery, etc., can create belief that has far reaching cultural effects. The creation of films that use the research of cognitive scientists to insure that every scene lights up the pleasure points in our brains is just one case where the public consumes media that might have unintended effects. We watch movies that are obviously fictional and assume that we will, on all cognitive fronts, know that they are fiction. But, contemporary media technologies pervade our minds in ways that are not expected. They can form memories of events that never happened, for example. We don’t bargain for effects like this when we watch movies, read books, play video games, etc.
​There is little to disagree with here, but for the fact that Pasulka seems to have an almost mystical view of UFOs. While claiming not to have an actual position as to whether they are physical objects, she nonetheless feel that they have a spiritual dimension: “I won’t go into this here, but, on one level I feel that UFO sightings and belief are ‘alerts.’ They alert us to pay attention to technology (because they are perceived as advanced technology) and to things we cannot understand. I think it is okay to be confused by them.” But this position says nothing because all human beliefs reflect the concerns, preoccupations, hopes, and stresses of the people who imagine them. We would not believe in something that holds no meaning for us. The problem here, as in so many UFO studies, is separating out the cloud castle of “belief” (which is really modern mythology) from whatever physical inputs give rise to it.
 
Here I like to give the example of the myth of “giants.” The ancient Greeks believed that giants existed, and so they interpreted the bones of fossil elephants as those of long-dead Heroes and Titans. They counted any large ceremonial object from the preceding Mycenaean era as archaeological proof of this vanished race’s furniture, and they claimed that only giants could erect the great walls of the Mycenaean, even though the stairs and doors were human-sized. The physical inputs—bones, bronzes, and stones—were real, but not related to giants. It was the myth that made them so.
 
Starting with the assumption that “UFO” is a single category is as big a mistake as assuming that elephant bones and Bronze Age stones are part of a single category.
 
Pasulka, however, goes beyond this. She has a postmodernist view that truth cannot be known and therefore should not be pursued. She tells Graham that she had no reason to try to find out whether there is an objective truth to UFOs because in religious studies, one explores the expression of belief and not whether the divine is objectively real. This method, she says, “leaves us in an excellent position, as we are given the keys to study the phenomena without having to make hard conclusions about it, which will inevitably be found out to be wrong, in my opinion. We can say that, when absolute truth is a moving target, we need to be flexible with our theories.”
 
No. This is wrong. Full stop.
 
Pasulka has confused methodological concerns with the question of reality itself. Yes, in studying human belief systems, adopting a methodologically agnostic viewpoint is a scholarly expedient that helps to reduce the risk of bias and preserve a veneer of objectivity by pretending that all belief systems are equal and can be studied independent of their physical foundations. But that doesn’t mean that reality is unknowable. Imagine if someone suggested in the 1400s that the western hemisphere is unknowable, and that the western continents, if any, are a moving target about which we can know nothing with certainty. But we can study what people believe about the western hemisphere, and that would be just as good as actually sailing across the ocean to find out whether any of those beliefs correlate with reality.
 
With all of that said, Graham and I agree on her final point, which is that the belief system surrounding UFOs—irrespective of whether there are any flying discs from other worlds—is essentially a “religion in formation,” an all-encompassing belief system with a spiritual hierarchy and a salvation narrative. But she treats this as a fun lark—“It’s pretty cool,” she says—whereas I see the dark side of the intentional creation of a belief system. It’s not all sweetness and light. UFO beliefs are closely aligned with political extremism, racism and Anti-Semitism, and a general paranoid hatred of government and elites. I wouldn’t really call this an “electrifying experience,” as Pasulka does.
17 Comments
Joe Scales
4/25/2018 09:54:38 am

"UFO beliefs are closely aligned with political extremism, racism and Anti-Semitism, and a general paranoid hatred of government and elites."

Yes, by you.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
4/25/2018 10:17:33 am

Not just by me. See Michael Barkun's work on political extremists' purposeful infiltration of the UFO movement. He wrote years before I ever said anything about it. But to the larger point: Earlier generations of UFO believers were also political extremists in their own way. The European UFO writers were socialists and communists and colored their books with leftist ideas. Erich von Daniken has made quite clear his radical rightwing views and that he writes his books from that perspective because he thought the first generation of UFO writers were too liberal. You can't really divorce the UFO movement from politics.

Reply
Joe Scales
4/25/2018 11:03:50 am

It's human nature to want to group things together that we don't like. Your conclusions generally trend in this regard, and are more selective opinion than fact. Sure, all sorts of kooks, nuts and misled follow the UFO bandwagon. That some orchestrating the movement might be undesirables does not the whole make.

Doc Rock
4/25/2018 08:57:45 pm

Jason,

I assume that you are familiar with the concept of cultic milieu. I think it is clear that one can find a such a process at work involving some UFOists who do find common cause with collections of right wing, anti-government, conspiracy this and conspiracy that folks.

I'm curious, though, to what extent you can see divergence in the UFOists community. That is, in addition to the right-wing folks you have another sort of cultic milieu of UFO believers who find common cause with collections of left-leaning folks. Some of the UFO people come across as touchy feely new age hippy types. Not really the kind of folks you would expect to find building bunkers in their backyards. stocking up on 5.56mm ammo, and raving about Black Lives Matter and Zionist conspiracies to stage 9/11. But still people who may perceive that there is some conspiracy to suppress the truth, they just may just have different ideas than their right wing counterparts about what the truth is in regard to UFOs and who is suppressing it.

Your thoughts?

Kid's Table
4/25/2018 09:03:20 pm

My thought is we should all drop our pants and reenact that really disturbing two part episode of Different Strokes, and Doc Rock can fill in for Gordon Jump.

Uncle Ron
4/25/2018 11:06:30 pm

Slightly off-topic, but what the hey!

Doc Rock: "Some of the UFO people come across as touchy feely new age hippy types."

That reminds me of one of my favorite movie scenes, from "Independence Day": A group of people are throwing an welcoming party for the aliens on top of a skyscraper directly under the gargantuan ship. As the ship's central weapon powers up one of the partyers says, in awe, "It's beautiful." Then a energy beam blows the building to bits.

Doc Rock
4/25/2018 11:32:04 pm

Yeah, that's kind of the image of I have in mind; people who believe that contact with ET's will usher in a new era of enlightenment and universal brotherhood. Kind of the flipside to those who think that ET's built any major monument or structure found in areas populated by folks of the wrong color and the truth is being suppressed by the same shadow agencies that engineered the JFK assassination and are responsible for all those black choppers flying about.

But I don't know the extent to which there is a actually substantial sub-group of lefty hippy UFOists or if it is more an influence of pop culture images such as in Independence Day or other pop representations where new age shaman heal all sorts of diseases with crystals powered by alien forces?

An Anonymous Nerd
4/26/2018 09:34:01 pm

Mr. Scales:

Elsewhere, as you are aware, I capably have demonstrated the connection between the Right and the fringe. Jason appears to be thinking along similar lines, presenting similar evidence.

Against this, you place the notion that we're both grouping things together that we don't like. You offer nothing on your own behalf, though, save your faith that that's what's occurring.

Not enough.

-An Anonymous Nerd

V
4/29/2018 12:58:56 am

"Some of the UFO people come across as touchy feely new age hippy types. Not really the kind of folks you would expect to find building bunkers in their backyards."

....the two types are not as different as you would think. They're two faces of the same coin, and the metal they're stamped into is, metaphorically, "the government is corrupt and the world is morally bankrupt and Secret Knowledge will save us all." They're all conspiracy theorists, they just follow different conspiracies. Remember, the hippie movement was never just "We <3 Nachur and New Age Mysticism," it was ALWAYS also a counter-government protest movement based on the idea that you can't trust anything "authorities" tell you.

Americanegro
4/25/2018 12:00:35 pm

It can't be said often enough: Barney and Betty Hill were super racist.

Reply
Americanegro
4/25/2018 05:01:47 pm

And you know who is really anti-Semitic? Stanton Friedman.

Riley V.
4/26/2018 03:19:59 am

Um, hate to break it to you, but believed by me as well.
Some people believe in Nordics, some people believe Whites were created by Evil Dr. Yakub.

Both ideas are ignorant and racist.

Reply
Joe Scales
4/26/2018 11:10:28 am

Ignorance is what we're trying to avoid here. Or should be.

V
4/29/2018 01:07:31 am

Joe, you are very dismissive of anything that you disagree with, as if you feel that your agreement is what makes something true or not true. In this particular case, you are the one clinging to ignorance, as there are several published studies that indicate that what Jason says is true--that UFO beliefs tend to be very closely aligned with paranoid racism and political extremism. It's not everyone--but it's enough of them to be a significant correspondence.

Perhaps you are a believer, and simply don't want to admit that this system of beliefs might have its flaws. Certainly that's what your verbiage suggests--that, or that you really WANT to believe, but these are exactly the doubts you already have.

...look, belief in UFOs in and of itself is not necessarily racist, anti-Semitic, politically extreme, or paranoid. But when you look at the overall dogma? If you ignore the racism, anti-Semitism, political extremism, and paranoia, then you are willfully blind, because it's there, and it's spread across the vast majority of the associated lore.

Reply
Joe Scales
4/29/2018 10:01:24 am

What I'm truly dismissive of are the fools who post here who aren't really as clever as they believe themselves to be. Sometimes it's politics that cloud their judgment. Other times, their incorrigible egos. For you V, no need to think it through. Just consider yourself dismissed.

Doc Rock
4/29/2018 12:41:00 pm

V,

There is a lot of stuff on these issues in David Robertson's book. UFOs, Conspiracy Theories, and the New Age.

Clete
4/25/2018 11:03:48 am

I once had an experience about what people believe based on something they saw on television. I once had a relative who though that the Lucile Ball character of "Lucy" was what she was in real life and was always going on about what a moron she was. In reality, Lucile Ball was a very smart, very though lady who ended up in real life owing and operating with her husband a very successful television production company, Desilu. She far away from the character she played.

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