Identifying meaning in enduring UFO culture
UFO sightings happen in clusters. The same is true of books about UFOs.
The 1950s saw Carl Sagan, with Gray Barker and Frank Scully, shaping our idea of flying saucers while skeptics sought to expose them as Barnum-esque bunk-peddlers. In the 1970s, Erich von Daniken and Charles Berlitz pointed to phenomena such as the carved stone heads on Easter Island as evidence that ancient astronauts influenced the development of humanity. In the 1990s, Whitley Strieber’s
Communion, first published in 1987, ushered in a host of alien abduction books. In each of these clusters, half the authors required observed phenomena to believe in extraterrestrial contact, while the skeptics worked to show that the reports were false or had alternate, more likely explanations.
We are in the midst of a new surge of UFO books that is different and more interesting. The central concern in these books is not truth but meaning.
Sarah Scoles’ They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers (Pegasus, $27.95), David J. Halperin’s
Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO (Stanford, $26) and Keith Cooper’s The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Bloomsbury, $28) take a similar approach to the question of UFOs: maybe we have been visited, maybe not (probably not), but what does it mean that so many have these experiences and beliefs?
Scoles treats UFOlogy sincerely as a religion replete with congregations and sects, holy sites, sacred texts and theological debates. A lapsed Mormon,
Scoles sees parallels between her religion and UFOlogy, both derived from American culture. They Are Already
Here presents the reader with an exploration of its leaders, schisms and followers. Scoles visits Area 51, Roswell, N.M., UFO conventions and offbeat roadside attractions. She does not get into Area 51 or provide insider information about government cover-ups or alien autopsies. She camps in the vicinity, takes sketchy private tours, gets approached by park rangers and federal agents, gets scared by trucks rumbling by during the night and chats with lots of people. Her interest is understanding the beliefs and the believers.
Scoles treats those she meets as rounded individuals full of hope and pain, not as a collection of rubes and charlatans to be mocked. Yet, she maintains her position as an outsider journalist making sense of the intricate stew of conspiracy theory, spectacle and kitsch. Scoles marries a thoughtful objectivity with a warm subjectivity as she talks to serious-minded UFO report investigators, tour guides for ET sightseers and movers and shakers in the UFOlogy community. Halperin grew up a smart but alienated child with a terminally ill mother in the early 1960s. He buried himself in the world of ETs. He became a professor of religious studies, researched Jewish mysticism and realized that his youthful fascination and professional studies were entwined.
Halperin considers extraterrestrials to be a myth. He takes the word as a technical term from a Jungian perspective. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung held that there is a universally shared portion of the unconscious mind that connects all people and shows itself in myths: deep-seated mental constructs used to make sense of the world.
UFOs, Halperin argues, are such myths that come from the human mind. This does not make them false, he contends. What they expose about us individually and collectively is a much deeper truth.
Those who seek to debunk UFO claims focus on the object of the experience (flying saucers, aliens, etc.) But whether or not the object is real, the experience itself certainly is. The experiences are held to be deeply meaningful. What do the commonalities in the experiences of those who have engaged with UFOs say about us?
The first promoted story of alien abduction involved Barney and Betty Hill, a mixedrace couple, in 1961. Shortly after an uncomfortable experience with racist ruffians, the Hills claimed they were abducted by a UFO. Halperin examines the transcripts of the Hills under hypnosis, noting language that uncannily connects to the experiences of enslaved Africans. Could such experiences be buried in the subconscious of those whose ancestors lived through them? Do our UFO experiences allow us to direct away from Earth that which we need to unearth within ourselves?
In The Contact Paradox, Cooper looks at those who are seeking aliens using our best current theories and tools. The editor of Astronomy Now and Astrobiology Magazine, Cooper examines assumptions and inferences made by professional researchers engaged in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project. The presuppositions of scientists seeking evidence of life beyond Earth tell us a lot about what we consider the essence of the life-forms doing the looking.
Searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life is trickier than it would seem. Just listen for a signal, we say. But what kind? How do we know if it is a signal? We think automatically of large radio telescopes, their concave dishes pointing skyward. But what frequency should we monitor looking for nonrandom noise?
Scientists have reasoned that you often find different kinds of life around a water hole, so we should look at the telescopic water hole. Chemical elements emit telltale frequencies when excited. Hydrogen peaks at 1420 MHz and a molecule of hydrogen and oxygen at 1666 MHz. Since the two combine to create water, the radio telescopes keep track of what they hear between those two frequencies — the water hole. It would make sense if there was someone out there like us trying to contact us.
But would the life out there be like us? What other kinds of intelligences could there be? Cooper points out that there are other sorts of intelligences right here on Earth: dolphins, octopi, elephants. We need to understand how they think to broaden our sense of what we might be looking for.
What has been the result of contact between earthly cultures? Sometimes the interactions are friendly, but often they are exploitative. Should we be afraid of extraterrestrial life? Are we better off not knowing whether there is anyone out there, lest they actually be like us? Cooper weaves together the thoughts of leading scientists, science fiction writers and social scientists to ponder these and other questions.
The great virtue of Cooper’s discussion is that it gives readers a picture of living science. Cooper shows us scientists disagreeing, presenting and supporting alternate theories and gives clear discussions of the differing views, letting the science live.
Is there intelligent life beyond Earth? These books will not answer that question. But what these three books will do is make you think much more deeply about what such questions mean. If you look into a telescope backward, it becomes a microscope. Looking from both ends can be the source of fascinating insights.
Gimbel is a professor at Gettysburg College and the author of Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion.