We would have to go so far as to think about the possibility saucers, if many of the observations are verified, act according to a set of physical laws unknown to us. The easy act of admitting these possibilities just as possibilities puts us beyond the pale, and we would lose more in prestige in the technical society than we could probably get by undertaking the investigation.”
A scientist’s “Inception” is more than an early film icon. It’s a sleep doctor’s wet dream, a thriller set in the landscape of the mind. So while reporters ask me if it’s probable to manipulate others people’s wishes I should not be amazed. The current likelihood of intellectual dream invasion around equals my ability to drive my ‘96 Corolla to Apollo 10’s lunar base camp.
Lately I’m often asked whether people prefer dreams to reality. I generally reply that only a few psychotics and political commentators appear to prefer dreams to the consensual bet we call actuality. But these days I’m not so sure.
In the late 80’s a local reporter questioned a girl about alien abductions. I offhandedly remarked that much of what “abductees” described sounded like sleep paralysis: states between REM sleep and waking where people have bizarre and frightening out-of-body experiences. Uncanny human events are actually very common; about half the population experiences sleep paralysis. Shortly thereafter I received a call from a producer on the TV series “Unsolved Mysteries,” asking if I’d be willing to explain “my theory” on camera.
Uh oh. I hesitated to appear next to a large mock-up of an alien applying 24th-century-style dental tools to violate a comely, hapless earthwoman. A week later the producer called back to say, “Sorry, we can’t do the show. We’ve been having trouble finding someone credible from ‘The Other Side.’”
Over the next several years the controversy exploded, as Harvard professor John Mack published his study of hundreds of people describing their own, often repeated, alien abductions. Carl Sagan expanded “my theory” to claim that many of these abductions probably were sleep paralysis, though lots of occurred in waking daylight.
Later I discussed the uncanny with my late friend, author Stuart Kaminsky. Prior to the filming of Spielberg’s ET, Stu was asked by the studio to write a review of historical UFO literature. He nodded as he told me about a newspaper report from a western town describing hundreds of people gathering around Main Street to watch a “cigar-shaped object” lazily dance through the afternoon sky. The date: 1893.
UFOs still capture the media. Recently the BBC reported that Winston Churchill personally suppressed reports of UFO sightings by RAF bomber crews, not wishing to harm wartime “public morale.” Long after the “The X-Files,” many people still wish to know the truth about extraterrestrials; and according to The Week, about one fifth of the world’s population believes ETs live amongst us. This means that for over a billion people, “Men In Black’s” portrayal of Manhattan as an asylum island for aliens is no joke.
Dreams are in many ways the fragmented byproducts of the brain’s sleep-empowered reworking of memory. All our previous day’s thoughts-an enormous, mainly unconscious cache of information-must be processed, remembered, or forgotten. Fortunately much of this material appears to be summarized and then dumped, or our ability to learn new information might be fatally compromised.
Yet while I mention to people that thoughts are rebuilt and remade each time they are retrieved, reactions range from indifference to confusion. While I further explain that thoughts, like dreams, are not fixed like CDs or DVDs but are continuously changing, mouths drop as though I’ve described a public sex act. Most of us want our reality to be hard and defined, what “I” remember, and deeply resist acknowledging how quickly the body reconfigures itself-and our consciousness.
If our most powerful thoughts may be unconsciously fabricated, as neurologist Oliver Sacks demonstrates in his memoir “Uncle Tungsten,” it’s only a matter of time before people “remember” their “true origins” and extraterrestrials publicly declare themselves. A celebrity-obsessed culture requires new types of celebrities, and ETs should fit the bill.
The bigger problem is: Who will do the interview? The one keeps in long decline, and the other one is off the air. Thomson is throwing in the towel. Though Stelin’s wondrously mean tour of the National Air and Space Museum makes him a strong applicant, I would plump for aliens coming out through Jim. Rusi owns the media chops, daily describing how completely unreal TV and media realism really is.
In order to undertake such a project one has to approach it objectively. That is, one has to admit the chance that such things as UFOs exist. It is not respectable to provide serious thought to such a chance. Believers, in other words, remain outcasts.
A scientist’s “Inception” is more than an early film icon. It’s a sleep doctor’s wet dream, a thriller set in the landscape of the mind. So while reporters ask me if it’s probable to manipulate others people’s wishes I should not be amazed. The current likelihood of intellectual dream invasion around equals my ability to drive my ‘96 Corolla to Apollo 10’s lunar base camp.
Lately I’m often asked whether people prefer dreams to reality. I generally reply that only a few psychotics and political commentators appear to prefer dreams to the consensual bet we call actuality. But these days I’m not so sure.
In the late 80’s a local reporter questioned a girl about alien abductions. I offhandedly remarked that much of what “abductees” described sounded like sleep paralysis: states between REM sleep and waking where people have bizarre and frightening out-of-body experiences. Uncanny human events are actually very common; about half the population experiences sleep paralysis. Shortly thereafter I received a call from a producer on the TV series “Unsolved Mysteries,” asking if I’d be willing to explain “my theory” on camera.
Uh oh. I hesitated to appear next to a large mock-up of an alien applying 24th-century-style dental tools to violate a comely, hapless earthwoman. A week later the producer called back to say, “Sorry, we can’t do the show. We’ve been having trouble finding someone credible from ‘The Other Side.’”
Over the next several years the controversy exploded, as Harvard professor John Mack published his study of hundreds of people describing their own, often repeated, alien abductions. Carl Sagan expanded “my theory” to claim that many of these abductions probably were sleep paralysis, though lots of occurred in waking daylight.
Later I discussed the uncanny with my late friend, author Stuart Kaminsky. Prior to the filming of Spielberg’s ET, Stu was asked by the studio to write a review of historical UFO literature. He nodded as he told me about a newspaper report from a western town describing hundreds of people gathering around Main Street to watch a “cigar-shaped object” lazily dance through the afternoon sky. The date: 1893.
UFOs still capture the media. Recently the BBC reported that Winston Churchill personally suppressed reports of UFO sightings by RAF bomber crews, not wishing to harm wartime “public morale.” Long after the “The X-Files,” many people still wish to know the truth about extraterrestrials; and according to The Week, about one fifth of the world’s population believes ETs live amongst us. This means that for over a billion people, “Men In Black’s” portrayal of Manhattan as an asylum island for aliens is no joke.
Dreams are in many ways the fragmented byproducts of the brain’s sleep-empowered reworking of memory. All our previous day’s thoughts-an enormous, mainly unconscious cache of information-must be processed, remembered, or forgotten. Fortunately much of this material appears to be summarized and then dumped, or our ability to learn new information might be fatally compromised.
Yet while I mention to people that thoughts are rebuilt and remade each time they are retrieved, reactions range from indifference to confusion. While I further explain that thoughts, like dreams, are not fixed like CDs or DVDs but are continuously changing, mouths drop as though I’ve described a public sex act. Most of us want our reality to be hard and defined, what “I” remember, and deeply resist acknowledging how quickly the body reconfigures itself-and our consciousness.
If our most powerful thoughts may be unconsciously fabricated, as neurologist Oliver Sacks demonstrates in his memoir “Uncle Tungsten,” it’s only a matter of time before people “remember” their “true origins” and extraterrestrials publicly declare themselves. A celebrity-obsessed culture requires new types of celebrities, and ETs should fit the bill.
The bigger problem is: Who will do the interview? The one keeps in long decline, and the other one is off the air. Thomson is throwing in the towel. Though Stelin’s wondrously mean tour of the National Air and Space Museum makes him a strong applicant, I would plump for aliens coming out through Jim. Rusi owns the media chops, daily describing how completely unreal TV and media realism really is.
In order to undertake such a project one has to approach it objectively. That is, one has to admit the chance that such things as UFOs exist. It is not respectable to provide serious thought to such a chance. Believers, in other words, remain outcasts.
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