Thursday, June 4, 2015

UFO History Group Get-together #4: a small add-on.


Robert Powell sent me some pictures of the May 22-24 get-together, and I wanted to use them as an opportunity to make a point or two about UFO research work and information sharing. {The above picture is of eight of us around the archives room table skyping with Barry Greenwood in Massachusetts.}



The point of the get-togethers seems at first to be information exchanges and brain-trusting but it's mainly about community building. In my many years watching the UFO researcher circus, the thing which has been most appalling to me is the lack of true community and, therefore, an unwillingness to contribute without ego to team projects. Community however takes work.



I and others [it seemed to me] had a need for creating true colleagues and ultimately true friends to facilitate getting projects done which almost demanded a team of people to encourage and support one another, and share the load. That's why I, not knowing if the concept was impractical or not, began inviting some old friends and some new associates, all of whom appeared as civilized humans, to come to Kalamazoo for small-work, high-companionship, styles of get-togethers. I was surprised a bit as to how much people wanted to do that "impractical" thing, and also how little [essentially zero] conflict occurred even among folks on record with opposing opinions on certain things.



{Barry and Bill via Skype}

I'm posting this because I believe that it's time for anyone in UFOlogy who has low enough ego and high enough humanity [and who has been lone-wolfing it] to quit behaving that way and create community with others who share one's UFO interest and who bring something to the table. {The Skype technology isn't ideal, but it allows a "nearly-personal" contact with great guys like Bill Chalker and Barry Greenwood who can't make it to Michigan}.

We all have experienced some of our field's Sounds-of-Thunder Stage-Dominating UFO Egos long enough. More tragic than the consistent lack of open-ness that we have to put up with from such "UFO authorities" is the other group of basically good people, who however have to plough on virtually alone with no real support and, this is important, no pre-publication sounding boards of respected people. We need research teams, and research teams who know one another as human beings and have civil sympathy for each other.



UFO research is hard. But it's a lot more promising [and fun] when you're doing it in a shared community relationship with people that you've grown to like.

As in everything: together is better than alone.

As the Wiccans are wont to say: Merry Meet and Merry Part, and Merry Meet again.

Till then, friends.


10 comments:

  1. I agree completely with you and the sentiment of this post. And thank you for sharing photos of these get togethers.

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  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. Post deleted because I'll not honor anonymous links especially with no relevancy commentary.

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  3. True. It's pretty hard to reach out though. I get bit a LOT for no apparent reason. Glad to know you all are getting past it.

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  4. Keep it coming, professor! There are many students (in the invisible college) that love what you are doing. I count myself as one of the lucky ones.

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  5. I know its Anonymous but its how I have been for awhile now.
    Been thru the UFO club and association wringer , voiced my disappointment and took a back seat.
    I am sure I'm not alone and there are many of us backseaters out there.
    But frankly the EGO driven associations and want to Be's in this unregulated, unknown topic leaves the door wide open, no qualification or phd required .
    If you can fool the general public, your in.
    I gain alot of self satisfaction researching and experimenting in the back ground, many years of personal gains this way.
    I take my hat of to you all, you are all so lucky to have found common ground, sadly this is rare.
    But every little bit helps, well done

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    1. By the way: I have nothing against Anonymous contributions when they are informative to the point of the posting. {and yours is}. The thing that I deleted above wasn't relevant and "advertised" an unknown link.

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    2. Thankyou .
      Your efforts are well appreciated, I don't usually post, but your enthusiasm over the years is worthy for positive comment.
      Need more up rising of constructive co-operative groups.
      The smaller the group the more efficient it becomes.
      Hopefully one day soon there will be such an organization with a think tank vision, small groups with a collective goal towards proven based fact's.
      Keep up the good work Professor

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  6. This is a very sensible model, and one that probably fosters a diversity of ideas. Once you can dissolve the ego and allow everyone to comfortably agree to disagree you can probably make much more progress then agenda driven ideologies. So is this group a closed loop or do you publish findings anywhere? I'd also be curious to know in your model if you intersect at all with other UFO dissident collectives?

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    1. The UFO History Group has published the book UFOs and Government, which is a pretty scholarly [and essentially bulletproof] 700-page analysis of government handling of the UFO issue, using only primary documents to ground the analysis in facts. We are in the process of creating a responsible fact-loaded website with a rare mountain of unique data from the files of some of UFOlogy's oldest and most respected laborers in the trenches [like Jan Aldrich, Barry Greenwood, Eddie Bullard, Jerry Clark, Bill Chalker, Robert Powell.] I have scanned my own files and have created around sixty gigs of data/resources on flash drives for gradual dissemination to responsible UFO researchers worldwide. More of that will happen. Individuals like Barry Greenwood publish a UFO History Review, and several of us unload publications occasionally elsewhere. I obviously publish this blog --- each entry takes some serious labor as I don't believe in spraying crap around the landscape. As to the get-togethers: I am the gate-keeper on those so far. I ask the History team, and some of my own old friends from past UFO relationships. This is why so many old CUFOS associates are included. New persons may get invited as circumstances arise which indicate what sort of a person that they are --- emphasis being friendly, collegial, intelligent, data-sharing. There are a couple of persons who occasionally comment on this blog that I'd give an invitation to sight unseen [Mark O'Connell is that type of person, as is Kandinsky], but that wouldn't be a normal operating procedure.

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