Post by Morgan Sierra on Jul 20, 2011 20:47:46 GMT -6
The Enemy Within
We, the people here in the UFO community, all have a common enemy. We are under assault by it every day. It is relentless in its quest to destroy us.
I came to that conclusion after witnessing certain events which have taken place over the past couple of months, starting with the closing of the MUFON forum in July. At first I thought MUFON was to blame. It was a natural conclusion to come to since they make such an easy target of themselves with their anti-social behavior and their policies of exclusive secrecy. Their attempt to silence criticism and control the flow of information by cancelling the old message board made it seem like they were the ones attacking us. But the enemy is not MUFON.
My next guess would have been the government. Once again this would be an obvious choice. The government, and the corrupt politicians who control it, are easily to blame for most of the problems that exist in this country today. They are constantly raising taxes, expanding their power, increasing the national debt, trying to take control of every aspect of society, and then running it all into the ground due to their irresponsible behavior and abusive policies. Anybody who stands in their way is swiftly crushed and destroyed. Any dissenting voice is quickly silenced.
The government's efforts to wage war on the UFO community have become legendary. From the CIAs infiltration of major UFO organizations, to black-ops surveillance and disinformation campaigns, to the outright hostile takeover and elimination of NICAP, the Feds have left a long trail of bloody fingerprints at many ufological crime scenes. Due to the plentiful supply of documented evidence proving their malicious intentions against the people who study UFOs it would be natural to assume that the Feds would also be behind this latest round of assaults...but this time the government is not the enemy.
Our assailant lies very near to us, and when it attacks it hits much closer to home. It is insidious in its ability to disguise itself. It may reside in the house next door, your own back yard, or even in the adjacent room...it might be sitting at your computer right now. It could even be you, or me.
The enemy that we are facing this time, the one that is wreaking so much damage...is ourselves.
I must admit, it took me a while to figure it out.
When the MUFON forum was first closed down and the former members suddenly found themselves without an Internet home, many people immediately went into action to rectify the situation. Within days a new forum was up and running and quickly gaining momentum. Ufomania, in the very beginning, was an exemplary model of a cooperative group effort. Everybody pitched in to help. While some wrote the guidelines, others worked on the banner or tried to add content by way of threads or posts to the board. Still others searched tirelessly to round up as many of our former members as they could. As problems arose they were quickly overcome, and the board benefited from an air of mutual respect and cooperation.
It may have helped at the time that we all perceived a threat from a common enemy. MUFON always waited, omnipresent and evil, seemingly ready to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness. This helped us to band together and weather those first tumultuous few weeks. We stood back to back, shoulder to shoulder, always glad to help each other out. Over time as MUFON's ineptness turned to impotence and the threat from outside subsided, we gradually let our guard down and became complacent in our happy new home. That's when the real monster reared its ugly head.
At first it was hardly noticeable, a small disagreement here, a few sarcastic words there, but nothing to get alarmed about. Every now and then a forum member would leave for some reason or another, but there was a steady influx of new members to take their place, and our ranks continued to grow. Unfortunately the chinks in our armor had been exposed.
The first major conflict erupted over the most natural of reasons...MUFON. The many loyal members of our former parent organization grew tired of the incessant wail of criticism directed against them and their management, and with the opening of the new MUFON message board looming in the near future they grew more brazen in their defense. The anti-MUFON crowd, lead mainly by several members who had defected from Ufomania early on and started their own forum, retaliated with the same level of intensity. The Ufomania forum was their battleground and many innocent forum members got caught in the crossfire. While people tried in vain to talk about UFOs and aliens they were constantly distracted by the ceaseless bickering between the two camps. Anybody who tried to mediate the dispute was instantly criticised as well, by people on both sides.
After the skirmish the two groups fled the scene for the sanctuary of their own forums leaving accusations and innuendos in their wake. The MUFON supporters complained that Ufomania was too anti-MUFON, while the other side whined that the forum was totally under MUFON control. Neither side was correct but the accusations stung nevertheless. With the combatants gone the forum members once again returned to building their community but the seeds of conflict had been sown.
UFO enthusiasts have a tendency to share certain characteristics that set them apart from the average person in society. They are very inquisitive and open-minded, very outspoken in their beliefs, and by their very nature are also distrustful and slightly paranoid. This last trait could be caused by the fact that they are always being criticized by non-believers. There is an army of skeptics who are constantly mounting attacks, not only on the subject of UFOs, but against the people who study them.
The critics seem to think that in order to disprove the evidence they only need to discredit the people presenting it, and they have an entire arsenal of techniques at their disposal to do so. Lies, hoaxes, government-sponsored disinformation campaigns...all of these have been used throughout the years with varying degrees of success. In response, UFO buffs cry foul and hint at conspiracy theories, to which the skeptics retaliate with rolled eyes, insults, and crude jokes about "little green men." As a result of this never-ending barrage of negativity the study of ufology has been parlayed into a joke, and the people who take part in it are considered by many to be fringe lunatics.
These incessant personal criticisms have caused many ufologists to fall prey to monsters of their own making. Suspicion, envy, resentment...these are normal human emotions, and when confronted by an enemy they can be useful in that they invoke caution, and can prevent people from being hurt. But when left to their own devices...when encouraged by feelings of paranoia...they can take on a life of their own. This is what happened in the aftermath of the MUFON conflict. Fueled by the residual negativity that was left behind, envy turned to jealousy, resentment turned to anger, and suspicion escalated into full blown accusations. Over the span of several weeks the pressure continued to build until it finally exploded in a calamity that threatened to split Ufomania in two.
At the end of August a brief but bitter feud erupted between the two creators of the forum. The details of exactly what it was about are irrelevant, but it seemed to be based on feelings of distrust. Innocent comments were taken out of context, minor disagreements blown way out of proportion. As a result one of the moderators resigned her position and quit the forum, then joined up with the little band of outspoken misfits who had split from Ufomania earlier on. A war of words immediately erupted between the two forums with members on each side engaging in heated rhetoric. Insults flew like arrows, accusations filled the air, and F-bombs thundered all around. Once again, innocent people were caught amidst the crossfire.
A dispute like this would have been bad enough if only ordinary members had been involved, but when the primary combatants are the co-creators of Ufomania, the forum moderators, the trusted leaders who everybody else looks to for reason and stability, the results could have been devastating. If the rest of the members had not pulled together in a show of support it might very well have ended up with the total destruction of the community, an end result that no doubt would have pleased some of our critics heartily.
I would imagine that the the skeptics of the world, especially those in the government disinformation agencies, as well as many people in the MUFON hierarchy, were probably laughing themselves silly over the latest round of fireworks...And why shouldn't they? Isn't that what authoritarian regimes always do? Don't dictators always get their thrill from watching the suffering of others? The ancient Romans used to stage gladiator fights where trained warriors would mutilate and murder each other while the noblemen sat up high waiting to decide a man's life with nothing more than the turn of a thumb. Sometimes they would even throw helpless victims to the lions in order to sate their desire for blood lust. To the audience it was nothing more than amusement. To the victim it was something else altogether.
And now here we are, the hapless members of the UFO community, ready to provide the entertainment for the skeptical elites. In our case, they do not even need to throw us to the lions because we gladly jump into the arena ourselves and start pummeling each other willingly. In the process of beating each other to a pulp we also destroy everything we have tried so hard to achieve. We punch truth in the stomach, gouge the eyes of justice, and kick compassion in the groin. Maybe someday as we flail wildly about we may accidentally knock some sense into ourselves, but by then the damage will already have been done.
Organizations, whether they be small Internet communities like this one, or large conglomerations like MUFON, are made up of individual people. These individuals each have their own ideas and opinions, as well as their own personal agendas. They may be working together toward a common goal, but they each have their reason for doing so. Sometimes their personal agendas run at odds with the stated goal of the rest of the community. This possibility can create a lot of friction, especially if people start jumping to conclusions without knowing all of the facts. When suspicion and paranoia add fuel to the fire people start seeing imaginary demons everywhere and they turn on one another, without realizing that it is they who are causing the problem.
We, as individuals, need to understand that our actions have consequences. What may seem like a trivial meaningless thing to one person could have a huge impact on somebody else. In a group like ours this especially applies to the phrases we speak and the sentences we write. Words have meanings, and not just the definitions found in the dictionary. They also carry the extra weight of implied purpose. In other words, what the person meant by what they said.
When dealing with each other on the Internet we are limited by what we can read. We cannot see facial expressions or body language, we cannot hear the speaker's tone of voice. We do not always know if a phrase was uttered in anger or innocence, or whether it carried some underlying intent, or ulterior motive. This is why it is important for us to refrain from jumping to conclusions or taking things out of context. To do so we must control our emotions. Envy, resentment and suspicion must be restrained by logic and reason. The enemy within must be kept in its place, otherwise we risk damaging our cause, our community and ourselves.
Towards the end of the war of 1812, U.S. Navy Captain Oliver Perry sent a dispatch announcing his victory over the British fleet in the battle of Lake Erie. In it he wrote the immortal words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Not only did this victory secure the Great Lakes region and end the threat of invasion from the north, but his jubilant proclamation lifted the morale of the entire country and helped to win the war.
If the UFO community does not do something to pull itself out of the hole it has dug we could easily be dooming ourselves to a fate similar to what happened to NICAP. Our constant bickering and mudslinging is burying us deeper and deeper in the muck and mire of deception and defeat. The hole we now find ourselves in may very well end up as our grave. We need inspiration, not insults. We need to stop fighting against each other and work together to put an end to this senseless conflict. Otherwise the outcome will be inevitable.
In this war there will be no rallying cry, no victory celebration...for this is a war that we can not win. When all is said and done, our final proclamation may be nothing but a fitting epitaph on ufology's tombstone...We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
We, the people here in the UFO community, all have a common enemy. We are under assault by it every day. It is relentless in its quest to destroy us.
I came to that conclusion after witnessing certain events which have taken place over the past couple of months, starting with the closing of the MUFON forum in July. At first I thought MUFON was to blame. It was a natural conclusion to come to since they make such an easy target of themselves with their anti-social behavior and their policies of exclusive secrecy. Their attempt to silence criticism and control the flow of information by cancelling the old message board made it seem like they were the ones attacking us. But the enemy is not MUFON.
My next guess would have been the government. Once again this would be an obvious choice. The government, and the corrupt politicians who control it, are easily to blame for most of the problems that exist in this country today. They are constantly raising taxes, expanding their power, increasing the national debt, trying to take control of every aspect of society, and then running it all into the ground due to their irresponsible behavior and abusive policies. Anybody who stands in their way is swiftly crushed and destroyed. Any dissenting voice is quickly silenced.
The government's efforts to wage war on the UFO community have become legendary. From the CIAs infiltration of major UFO organizations, to black-ops surveillance and disinformation campaigns, to the outright hostile takeover and elimination of NICAP, the Feds have left a long trail of bloody fingerprints at many ufological crime scenes. Due to the plentiful supply of documented evidence proving their malicious intentions against the people who study UFOs it would be natural to assume that the Feds would also be behind this latest round of assaults...but this time the government is not the enemy.
Our assailant lies very near to us, and when it attacks it hits much closer to home. It is insidious in its ability to disguise itself. It may reside in the house next door, your own back yard, or even in the adjacent room...it might be sitting at your computer right now. It could even be you, or me.
The enemy that we are facing this time, the one that is wreaking so much damage...is ourselves.
I must admit, it took me a while to figure it out.
When the MUFON forum was first closed down and the former members suddenly found themselves without an Internet home, many people immediately went into action to rectify the situation. Within days a new forum was up and running and quickly gaining momentum. Ufomania, in the very beginning, was an exemplary model of a cooperative group effort. Everybody pitched in to help. While some wrote the guidelines, others worked on the banner or tried to add content by way of threads or posts to the board. Still others searched tirelessly to round up as many of our former members as they could. As problems arose they were quickly overcome, and the board benefited from an air of mutual respect and cooperation.
It may have helped at the time that we all perceived a threat from a common enemy. MUFON always waited, omnipresent and evil, seemingly ready to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness. This helped us to band together and weather those first tumultuous few weeks. We stood back to back, shoulder to shoulder, always glad to help each other out. Over time as MUFON's ineptness turned to impotence and the threat from outside subsided, we gradually let our guard down and became complacent in our happy new home. That's when the real monster reared its ugly head.
At first it was hardly noticeable, a small disagreement here, a few sarcastic words there, but nothing to get alarmed about. Every now and then a forum member would leave for some reason or another, but there was a steady influx of new members to take their place, and our ranks continued to grow. Unfortunately the chinks in our armor had been exposed.
The first major conflict erupted over the most natural of reasons...MUFON. The many loyal members of our former parent organization grew tired of the incessant wail of criticism directed against them and their management, and with the opening of the new MUFON message board looming in the near future they grew more brazen in their defense. The anti-MUFON crowd, lead mainly by several members who had defected from Ufomania early on and started their own forum, retaliated with the same level of intensity. The Ufomania forum was their battleground and many innocent forum members got caught in the crossfire. While people tried in vain to talk about UFOs and aliens they were constantly distracted by the ceaseless bickering between the two camps. Anybody who tried to mediate the dispute was instantly criticised as well, by people on both sides.
After the skirmish the two groups fled the scene for the sanctuary of their own forums leaving accusations and innuendos in their wake. The MUFON supporters complained that Ufomania was too anti-MUFON, while the other side whined that the forum was totally under MUFON control. Neither side was correct but the accusations stung nevertheless. With the combatants gone the forum members once again returned to building their community but the seeds of conflict had been sown.
UFO enthusiasts have a tendency to share certain characteristics that set them apart from the average person in society. They are very inquisitive and open-minded, very outspoken in their beliefs, and by their very nature are also distrustful and slightly paranoid. This last trait could be caused by the fact that they are always being criticized by non-believers. There is an army of skeptics who are constantly mounting attacks, not only on the subject of UFOs, but against the people who study them.
The critics seem to think that in order to disprove the evidence they only need to discredit the people presenting it, and they have an entire arsenal of techniques at their disposal to do so. Lies, hoaxes, government-sponsored disinformation campaigns...all of these have been used throughout the years with varying degrees of success. In response, UFO buffs cry foul and hint at conspiracy theories, to which the skeptics retaliate with rolled eyes, insults, and crude jokes about "little green men." As a result of this never-ending barrage of negativity the study of ufology has been parlayed into a joke, and the people who take part in it are considered by many to be fringe lunatics.
These incessant personal criticisms have caused many ufologists to fall prey to monsters of their own making. Suspicion, envy, resentment...these are normal human emotions, and when confronted by an enemy they can be useful in that they invoke caution, and can prevent people from being hurt. But when left to their own devices...when encouraged by feelings of paranoia...they can take on a life of their own. This is what happened in the aftermath of the MUFON conflict. Fueled by the residual negativity that was left behind, envy turned to jealousy, resentment turned to anger, and suspicion escalated into full blown accusations. Over the span of several weeks the pressure continued to build until it finally exploded in a calamity that threatened to split Ufomania in two.
At the end of August a brief but bitter feud erupted between the two creators of the forum. The details of exactly what it was about are irrelevant, but it seemed to be based on feelings of distrust. Innocent comments were taken out of context, minor disagreements blown way out of proportion. As a result one of the moderators resigned her position and quit the forum, then joined up with the little band of outspoken misfits who had split from Ufomania earlier on. A war of words immediately erupted between the two forums with members on each side engaging in heated rhetoric. Insults flew like arrows, accusations filled the air, and F-bombs thundered all around. Once again, innocent people were caught amidst the crossfire.
A dispute like this would have been bad enough if only ordinary members had been involved, but when the primary combatants are the co-creators of Ufomania, the forum moderators, the trusted leaders who everybody else looks to for reason and stability, the results could have been devastating. If the rest of the members had not pulled together in a show of support it might very well have ended up with the total destruction of the community, an end result that no doubt would have pleased some of our critics heartily.
I would imagine that the the skeptics of the world, especially those in the government disinformation agencies, as well as many people in the MUFON hierarchy, were probably laughing themselves silly over the latest round of fireworks...And why shouldn't they? Isn't that what authoritarian regimes always do? Don't dictators always get their thrill from watching the suffering of others? The ancient Romans used to stage gladiator fights where trained warriors would mutilate and murder each other while the noblemen sat up high waiting to decide a man's life with nothing more than the turn of a thumb. Sometimes they would even throw helpless victims to the lions in order to sate their desire for blood lust. To the audience it was nothing more than amusement. To the victim it was something else altogether.
And now here we are, the hapless members of the UFO community, ready to provide the entertainment for the skeptical elites. In our case, they do not even need to throw us to the lions because we gladly jump into the arena ourselves and start pummeling each other willingly. In the process of beating each other to a pulp we also destroy everything we have tried so hard to achieve. We punch truth in the stomach, gouge the eyes of justice, and kick compassion in the groin. Maybe someday as we flail wildly about we may accidentally knock some sense into ourselves, but by then the damage will already have been done.
Organizations, whether they be small Internet communities like this one, or large conglomerations like MUFON, are made up of individual people. These individuals each have their own ideas and opinions, as well as their own personal agendas. They may be working together toward a common goal, but they each have their reason for doing so. Sometimes their personal agendas run at odds with the stated goal of the rest of the community. This possibility can create a lot of friction, especially if people start jumping to conclusions without knowing all of the facts. When suspicion and paranoia add fuel to the fire people start seeing imaginary demons everywhere and they turn on one another, without realizing that it is they who are causing the problem.
We, as individuals, need to understand that our actions have consequences. What may seem like a trivial meaningless thing to one person could have a huge impact on somebody else. In a group like ours this especially applies to the phrases we speak and the sentences we write. Words have meanings, and not just the definitions found in the dictionary. They also carry the extra weight of implied purpose. In other words, what the person meant by what they said.
When dealing with each other on the Internet we are limited by what we can read. We cannot see facial expressions or body language, we cannot hear the speaker's tone of voice. We do not always know if a phrase was uttered in anger or innocence, or whether it carried some underlying intent, or ulterior motive. This is why it is important for us to refrain from jumping to conclusions or taking things out of context. To do so we must control our emotions. Envy, resentment and suspicion must be restrained by logic and reason. The enemy within must be kept in its place, otherwise we risk damaging our cause, our community and ourselves.
Towards the end of the war of 1812, U.S. Navy Captain Oliver Perry sent a dispatch announcing his victory over the British fleet in the battle of Lake Erie. In it he wrote the immortal words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Not only did this victory secure the Great Lakes region and end the threat of invasion from the north, but his jubilant proclamation lifted the morale of the entire country and helped to win the war.
If the UFO community does not do something to pull itself out of the hole it has dug we could easily be dooming ourselves to a fate similar to what happened to NICAP. Our constant bickering and mudslinging is burying us deeper and deeper in the muck and mire of deception and defeat. The hole we now find ourselves in may very well end up as our grave. We need inspiration, not insults. We need to stop fighting against each other and work together to put an end to this senseless conflict. Otherwise the outcome will be inevitable.
In this war there will be no rallying cry, no victory celebration...for this is a war that we can not win. When all is said and done, our final proclamation may be nothing but a fitting epitaph on ufology's tombstone...We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.