American Cosmic
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(Saint Januarius or Holy January). I knew that Nietzsche was
referring to the miracle of St. Januarius, whose dried blood
is preserved in a capsule and every year on New Year’s Day
is taken out and miraculously liquifies. Nietzsche used this
miracle as a metaphor for his own experience of having his
life transformed, apparently on New Year’s Eve, from dead
and dry to profoundly alive. The next aphorism was about
how on New Year’s Eve Nietzsche declared that he would
affirm life, no matter what it would bring him— amore fati,
the love of fate. So here I was, on New Year’s Eve, and I had
randomly opened the book to aphorisms about New Year’s
Eve. This struck me as a meaningful event. Indeed, it was a
synchronicity! As my friends had predicted, I was sucked
into Nietzsche’s philosophy. I eagerly turned the page to find
out what more he would say. What would I find next?
The next aphorism stopped me cold. It was about
synchronicities, an instance of which I was currently
experiencing. The feeling was uncanny. The book had sud-
denly become a scary book. This aphorism, I knew, would
now speak to me personal y. And it did. I took a breath and
proceeded to read the entire thing:
Personal providence – There is a certain high point in life: once
we have reached that, we are, for all our freedom, once more in
the greatest danger of spiritual unfreedom, and no matter how
much we have faced up to the beautiful chaos of existence and
denied it all providential reason and goodness, we still have to
pass our hardest test. For it is only now that the idea of a per-
sonal providence confronts us with the most penetrating force,
and the best advocate for it, the evidence of our eyes speaks for
it, now when it is obvious that all and everything that happens
to us always turns out for the best. The life of every day and
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of every hour seems to be anxious for nothing else but always
to prove this proposition anew; let it be what it wil , bad or
good weather, the loss of a friend, a sickness, a calumny, the
non- receipt of a letter, the spraining of one’s foot, a glance into
a shop- window, a counterargument, the opening of a book, a
dream, a deception— it shows itself immediately, or very soon
afterwards, as something “not permitted to be absent,”— it is
full of profound significance and utility precisely for us! Is
there a more dangerous temptation to rid ourselves of the be-
lief in the Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods,
and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity, who knows
personal y every little hair on our heads, and feels no dis-
gust in rendering the most wretched services? Well— I mean
in spite of all this! we want to leave the Gods alone (and the
serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content ourselves with
the assumption that our own practical and theoretical skil -
fulness in explaining and suitably arranging events has now
reached its highest point. We do not want either to think too
highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when the wonderful
harmony which results from playing on our instrument some-
times surprises us too much: a harmony which sounds too well
for us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In fact, now and then
there is one who plays with us— beloved Chance: he leads our
hand occasional y, and even the all- wisest Providence could
not devise any finer music than that of which our foolish hand
is then capable.12
The irony of the aphorism stung. While having a syn-
chronistic event, Nietzsche explained that one should not as-
cribe to it any deep or profound meaning. If I did, I would be
ignoring my freedom and would be in danger of embracing
dogmas or, worse, believing in an anxious Divinity that
knows how many hairs I possess on my head (obviously a ref-
erence to the God of the New Testament). The cognitive dis-
sonance of the event was so great that I have never forgotten
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it, and here was David Stinnett reminding me that there are
people who are steeped in meaningful coincidences and
synchronicities yet refrain from drinking the Kool- Aid and
believing that they might indicate deep, profound meaning.
David does not draw any overarching conclusions about
the UFO phenomenon— other than that it is real and that it
deceives— but he believes it is real. After years of studying
it, he knows it when he sees it. After seeing some of Alison’s
videos posted online, he took a trip to her house and
witnessed it for himself.
“Oh yeah, Alison’s phenomenon is the real deal. When
I was out there, so was Homeland Security. She’s got all kinds
of people visiting her and seeing the orbs and other things
out in the skies above the woods near her house.”
After my interview with David, he sent me a quote
from Carl Jung about synchronicity. I took it to clarify his
position, that synchronicity is not such a big deal, and in
fact, if you’re doing things correctly, it is how the world
functions: “Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those
with eyes to see.”
A N E W T Y P E O F R E A L
When my research shifted from Catholic history to UFO
phenomena, I presented my initial conclusions about its
objective “reality” to Jacques Vallee, Jeff Kripal, and a few
other academics who were engaged in the research. It proved
to be an utterly foolish move. As I know now, one cannot
just “conclude” about a phenomenon like this. That’s akin
to concluding things about something as complicated as
gravity or light. Scientists still don’t know what makes up
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gravity or light. The astronomer and director of the Vatican
Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno, reminds us, “Truth
is a moving target,” and scientists try their best to identify it.
But knowledge is acquired in time and is therefore incom-
plete. In my foolish attempt to think through the ontological
status of UFOs, I had argued that they were real only in a vir-
tual sense. That was my conclusion, and I quoted the French
scholar Jean Baudril ard as if that would somehow support
my point. Jacques’s gentle chastisement was swift: “It is un-
wise to ignore the ontological aspects of the UFO.” My point
about its virtual reality was a good one, but, he was subtly
saying, ignoring its status as a real, albeit incomprehensible,
object was foolish. And as I came to see, Tyler’s and James’s
research suggested that its strange reality produced revolu-
tionary, and very real, products.
Eventual y I knew that my task was to document the
formation of a new religious form— not to reach ultimate
conclusions about the ontological status of its mystery.
I worked with communities of people who, like Tyler and
James, believed they interfaced with the pheno
menon di-
rectly. What they were doing was genuinely incredible and
led me to seriously consider the realism of their research.
I assumed that their work would spawn rumors, as Jung
cal s them— shoots of information or just hints of informa-
tion that others would then interpret and spin into stories
and narratives that would then constitute the UFO narrative,
story, and, ultimately, religion. And indeed, this did and does
happen.
But Tyler and James are invisible. Their work, and the
fruits of their work, will not appear on Facebook. Scott and
Alison are public. They are known. My work with them fur-
ther helped me see how those who are most involved with the
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phenomenon, and who are known, work furiously to try to
correct the great variety of its virtual lives. This task is noble,
but ultimately futile. Just as Teresa of Avila’s representations
in art and sculpture tell a story but don’t tell the story, Scott
tries doggedly to correct the story, even as he knows it is a
losing battle.
Toward the end of my interview with Scott, he got silent.
I could tell he wanted to say something, and whatever it was
pained him.
“The problem,” he said, “is that it is now almost impos-
sible to do my job. The technology that is out there makes
it impossible to tell the difference between what is real and
what is fake. My videographers and I find it harder to make
the distinction if the tools the fakers use are sophisticated
enough.”
We stared at each other in silence.
I was reminded of a recent incident on social media
in which Scott had exposed a series of images of supposed
UFOs. The original photographs had garnered a large
following. The images were of a distant object that was cir-
cular and did not look like an airplane or anything conven-
tional y seen in the sky. Scott took the images, blew them
up, and posted them side by side, showing what they real y
were, which were different types of oddly shaped balloons.
He posted these on the forums. Scott knew the phenomenon,
and this was not it. These were simply balloons (Figure 3.2).
Scott’s intervention prompted an interesting reaction
from those who had posted the images. They promoted the
photographs as real UFOs, and they also accepted the truth
of Scott’s exposé. Instead of reaching the conclusion that
they had misidentified balloons as UFOs, they said that the
UFOs had disguised themselves as balloons. For them, the
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Figure 3.2. Scott Browne’s balloon/ UFO exposé.
objects real y were UFOs, but UFOs ingeniously disguised as
simple balloons. (They must have read Jacques Vallee’s book,
Messengers of Deception. ) This response, though perhaps
surprising, is not unprecedented. In the 1950s three Stanford
University sociologists infiltrated a small UFO group whose
leader, Marian Keech, predicted the arrival of UFOs amid a
global cataclysm. Faced with the fact that Keech’s predictions
did not come true, members of the group concluded that
they had avoided the global cataclysm by placing their
faith in Keech and her contacts with extraterrestrials. The
sociologists had assumed that they would come to disbelieve
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Keech, but that didn’t exactly happen. Instead, some of her
followers reinterpreted the meaning of the events in a
way that supported their faith in Keech, and their original
beliefs.13
Scott told me about another example of how faked UFO
photos inform the cultural narrative about UFOs. Early in
his research Scott came across a website challenging anyone
to fake a believable UFO in a photo and explain in detail how
it was done. He used a simple method to show how an “ex-
periencer” was able to create realistic- looking UFOs using
ordinary household items (Figure 3.3). In the years following
this educational attempt, Scott endured the reappearance of
his faked UFO photos in many guises, always represented as
a real UFO. Some posters went so far as to identify the places
where it was allegedly photographed— all fake, of course.
Like the balloon- UFOs, Scott’s own faked images garnered a
large following. The irony of this was not lost on Scott. He saw
how the world of virtual reality eats up the conventional y
Figure 3.3. Scott Browne’s fabricated UFO.
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real and spits it out as something entirely alien— alien, that
is, to his original intent and purpose.
Scott and I said our goodbyes, and I returned reluctantly
to the sweltering heat and humidity of North Carolina. Based
on my work with Tyler, James, Scott, Alison, and David, as
well as others, I knew that there was an unexplained phe-
nomenon. I also knew that the cultural narratives about it
had nothing— or at least very little— to do with the phenom-
enon they captured and experienced. The cultural narratives
were formed through processes anticipated by Jung with his
concept of amplificatory interpretation. Seventy years on,
interpretations of the phenomenon were being amplified ex-
ponential y through a new social medium that included bots
and computer algorithms, not just people. I found myself
returning to my original, discarded claim, the one that had
humiliated me within the group of researchers: the “reality”
of the phenomenon is virtual. But this time, I wasn’t implying
that this meant it wasn’t “real.” I had given up the dualism of
real and virtual.
T H E M O N O L I T H R E T U R N S
During our trip to New Mexico, James told me that he
thought the artifact we had found in the desert was a “dona-
tion,” most likely from nonhuman intelligence.
“You mean like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey?”
I asked him at the time.
“Yes.”
“Is it good, James? Is the donation for our benefit?”
James was silent as he considered the question.
“It’s too early to tell.”
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As I thought through the objective nature of the UFO
phenomenon, I kept returning to Kubrick’s film and the
monolith. The monolith appears in key scenes throughout
the movie, leaving viewers and critics wondering about its
message. According to James, a fan of science fiction and of
the original book by Arthur C. Clarke on which the movie
was based, the monolith is a donation, supposedly from
a more advanced species, but its meaning remains mys-
terious. A clue is given in the beginning scene with the
proto- hominids who use it to establish dominance over
another tribe. The monolith is perhaps a tool of control. It
accompanies humans throughout their evolution, and even
on their journeys, through the creation of the artificial intel-
ligence (the computer Hal, in t
he movie) that eventual y leads
them off Earth and into the frontier of space. As I watched
scenes with the monolith, I realized that it resembled a larger
version of my iPhone.
The interpretation of the monolith as a screen, and par-
ticularly a movie screen, was first advanced by Rob Ager
on his website Col ativeLearning.com.14 Ager studies and
creates films and has published an extensive analysis of the
symbols of the films of Stanley Kubrick, as well as those of
many other filmmakers. In a series of videos, Ager provides
in- depth analysis of the visual aspects of the monolith,
taking the viewer through each of the varied scenes in which
it appears. Ager notes that at one point the monolith even
col apses into the movie screen. The monolith, according
to Ager, is the cinema screen. I find Ager’s interpretation
convincing. He argues that this interpretation of the mon-
olith excludes reading it as a donation from an alien race.
For Ager, the monolith has nothing to do with alien tech-
nology. I am convinced by Ager’s analysis that the monolith
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is the cinema screen, but I believe that the monolith can be
both the cinema screen and the alien. And it is both on many
different levels. These two interpretations are not mutual y
exclusive.
Scott’s group exists to erect and sustain a boundary be-
tween what they believe to be the real representation of the
UFO phenomenon and its clearly faked representations
(Figure 3.4). Scott’s fear is that advanced media and com-
puter technologies are erasing this boundary altogether.
Scott’s intuitions are correct, but the problem is intrinsic to
the UFO. If one situates the phenomenon within the context
of media studies and media ecology, it appears that the dig-
ital infrastructure determines and provides an environment
ripe for this now- pervasive belief system.
Figure 3.4. Scott Browne displays phone UFO apps.
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Within a digital landscape, the distinction between the
real and the unreal ceases to be meaningful. The loss of this
modernist framework gives way to a transcendent one with
qualities that appear to col apse or, more accurately, ex-
ceed the modern constructions of real and not real. As Jean