Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Dr. Steven Greer and the New UFO Religion


Aside from the re-emergence of the abductee material in the media, the big news in the world of UFOlogy recently was the heated debate between Dr. Steven Greer and Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot over Greer's remarks to the Barcelona Disclosure conference that all alien races in contact with Earth were benevolent. 

I'll admit I've never been nearly as impressed with Project Camelot as they seem to be with themselves. They lost me during their interview with Richard Hoagland, for which neither Cassidy nor her partner Bill Ryan seemed even remotely prepared (and you could tell Hoagland wasn't happy either). And it's a bit rich to see Cassidy going after Greer with hammer-and-tongs when she treated Clifford Stone with such kid gloves, who seems every bit as starry-eyed as she accuses Greer of being. 

 That being said, I just listened to Tim Binnall's interview with the always-engaging Timothy Good, and I get the feeling he's not terribly impressed with Dr. Greer either. He was his usual diplomatic self, but he did make some dismissive remarks about people talking about benevolent aliens and free energy, so it's not hard to guess who he's talking about. Good - who's been pretty scathing about Stone in the past as well - himself talks about things that a lot of people might find ridiculous, but always qualifies his information as being what he has been told, and not necessarily what he knows or believes. 

Good puts forth a scenario of alien races jousting over the ultimate fate of this planet, a theory which you will see Greer attack in Barcelona talk as being part of a "Project Blue Beam" kind of scenario on the part of what he identifies as a "cabal" within the government. Greer doesn't name Blue Beam (there's no evidence that any program by that name ever existed) but it's obvious that he feels that kind of scenario is plausible, and mentions Von Braun's theories of a staged series of ET provocations meant to turn people against the aliens and/or weaponize space. 

From my understanding space is pretty well weaponized, so I don't much see the need for further provocation. But what the hell do I know? 

Greer's talk is very interesting because it presents a kind of quasi-religious take on UFO/ETs that I thought went out with Bo and Peep. Not only that, but Greer is obviously well-connected, well-off and presents an extremely seductive view of ETs as our psychic space brothers, standing by and waiting to welcome us all into the great Galactic community in the sky. With people becoming more and more disgusted with traditional religions, 

I could very easily see a charismatic speaker like Greer quickly attracting followers, particularly as our would-be messiah Barackobamun shrivels to irrelevance before our very eyes. Judging from the barrage of criticism PC took for their Greer interview, maybe he already has. 

 Now, I have no reason not to believe Greer isn't sincere and well-meaning, but I've watched one too many episodes of The X-Files not to find all of this a bit troubling. In fact, I'm almost tempted to whip up some XF fan fiction with a character loosely based on Greer who's actually an alien supersoldier (which the muscular Greer certainly resembles) lulling us all to sleep before the big invasion. Again, no judgment at all on the man himself, but any sci-fi fan can see where I'm coming from. 

 As for Good, his work interests me since I'm not necessarily looking to "believe" in UFOs (they either exist or they don't), but to find out what others believe about them, specifically those in positions of power. It's that information that I look for in order to plug into this entire matrix of symbolism, parapolitics, and Synchronicity which in turn is used to interpret all of the weirdness we're seeing in pop culture, especially this year.

In that regard, Good's claims of warring alien races certainly lines up with what we're seeing with films like Star Trek, Terminator 2 and GI Joe, as well as this constant theme of alien identification in films like District 9. Not to mention some of the anomalous sightings of flaming debris falling from the sky, or ships disappearing or colliding or planes being snatched from the sky. 

All of this could very well be part of the show Greer warns about, but all we can do is speculate at this point in time. 

Where do I stand on all of this? I stand on the sidelines, scratching my chin in contemplation. I've not seen truly compelling evidence for either Good's or Greer's theories. I find both gentlemen intelligent and fascinating (unlike PC), but as I said before ETs are just part of my overall constellation of interest. As to Greer's warnings, I do think that any kind of fakery would have to be pretty damn grand to impress jaded folks these days, and I also think that people will quickly lose interest in this latest wave of UFOmania unless someone starts putting some good, solid proof on the table.

I'm old enough now to have been through all of this before and while I find this wave of daytime photos emerging pretty compelling, the problem is that there never seems anything much you can do about it. 

Greer seems to anticipate that, and is making audience participation a big part of his pitch. His presentation ends with some rituals that his group has held, allegedly summoning UFOs. 

 Which, of course, makes me a bit nervous.