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The UFO Phenomenon: Fact, Fantasy and Disinformation
Are the lights and strange craft in our skies aliens from other galaxies―or the product of fraud, delusion, or mistaken identity? John Michael Greer―a respected authority on the occult and the unexplained―reveals the secret hidden at the center of the UFO labyrinth. This meticulously researched guide plunges into the thick of the controversy with an unexpected and compelling approach to the UFO mystery, from Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting of the first "flying saucers" to present-day encounters. Moving beyond the familiar debate between those who believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin and those who believe UFOs do not exist at all, this unique work goes further to examine stranger and more rewarding topics―the nature of apparitions, the history of secret American aerospace technologies, the mythology of progress, and the role of popular culture in defining experienced reality.
- GenresNonfiction
264 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
John Michael Greer
181 books528 followersJohn Michael Greer is an author of over thirty books and the blogger behind The Archdruid Report. He served as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. His work addresses a range of subjects, including climate change, peak oil, the future of industrial society, and the occult. He also writes science fiction and fantasy. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 11, 2016
Discovered this while eBrowsing for John Michael Greer eBooks.
It never ceases to amaze me how wide Mr. Greer's education is. Not only can he write books like The Ecotechnic Future, The Long Descent and Not The Future We Ordered, all about what the future of humanity in the mid-collapse and post-collapse world will probably at least resemble: he can juggle between rationally arguing pro and against science, "conspiracy theory", apparitions, aliens... He's remarkably open-minded but somehow managing to avoid the negative traits the New Age or or other spiritual movements are associated with, e.g. naivety, or confusion of science and "pseudoscience", a term I despise but which can be used to describe a lot of what New Agers say to portray their beliefs as valid and/or worthy of so-called mainstream scientific investigation.
To cut a long story short, Mr. Greer doesn't believe that UFOs are actual spaceships piloted by alien intelligent life; his main argument is that most UFO sightings (Unidentified Flying Objects, remember?) have been the result of a shifting public consciousness: in over 70 years, people have learned to interpret mysterious lights in the sky in very specific ways, mostly because of science fiction and popular culture that goes back to the first half of the 20th century, in turn a particularly American cultural phenomenon that for geopolitical and social reasons went global.
"I want to believe" goes part and parcel with the clumsy moves involved in the change from a world dominated by religion to one were religion has been replaced by overwhelming materialism: when there's nothing to believe in any more, something to believe in has to be invented.
In a recurring theme for Mr. Greer, he makes the point that it's not just the "believers" that are looking for something to latch onto: scientism, materialism and positivism are the skeptics' pacifier, and both believers and skeptics use flawed reasoning to win over the other side. The former states that UFOs exist but fails to imagine that there can be other answers to "what is that thing flying over there?" apart from "aliens, of course!"; the skeptics, on the other hand, fail because they restrict themselves to debunking the believers: either the believers are right or they are not, which somehow gets warped to "UFOs are alien or they do not exist", which is a false dichotomy. They of course proceed to give all the reasons why any sighting must either be a hoax, or a hallucination, or "swamp gas"; Mr. Greer is right to ask "what if a UFO sighting is legit, that is to say, not a hallucination or a hoax, there really was a strange light in the sky, but it simply was not alien?"
Before listing his own attempts at explaining UFOs, he goes over how a hypothesis has to be disprovable in order to be scientific---in fact, that's the very basis of the scientific method. He mostly leans towards American or Soviet secret/black budget projects, as of yet unexplained natural phenomena and aethereal/immaterial encounters, reports of which have been appearing in cultures all over the world for millennia.
For me the most interesting was the chapter on the black budget projects (think Area 51) and the secret aircraft: it would actually make sense that the US government through its denial and refusal of disclosure would fuel the fires of suspicion that what its Cold War secret military projects really were were alien spacecraft and in this way muddy the waters. Get your population as well as the Ruskies to believe that UFOs are a thing and you can fly any superweapon around and draw little suspicion as to what you're actually doing.
Mr. Greer discusses these conspiracy theories with so much data and references to draw from and paints such an easy-to-follow picture, always within context, it's just insulting to claim the material discussed is merely conspiracies at this point. Of course, each case is unique and some are still shrouded in true mystery, but that's precisely what Mysterious Universe is for!
Great book, amazing and inspiring man. Couldn't stop flicking my phone's screen running PDF Reader.
Just one thing: for all that's good in this world, do try and find a better cover artist!
It never ceases to amaze me how wide Mr. Greer's education is. Not only can he write books like The Ecotechnic Future, The Long Descent and Not The Future We Ordered, all about what the future of humanity in the mid-collapse and post-collapse world will probably at least resemble: he can juggle between rationally arguing pro and against science, "conspiracy theory", apparitions, aliens... He's remarkably open-minded but somehow managing to avoid the negative traits the New Age or or other spiritual movements are associated with, e.g. naivety, or confusion of science and "pseudoscience", a term I despise but which can be used to describe a lot of what New Agers say to portray their beliefs as valid and/or worthy of so-called mainstream scientific investigation.
To cut a long story short, Mr. Greer doesn't believe that UFOs are actual spaceships piloted by alien intelligent life; his main argument is that most UFO sightings (Unidentified Flying Objects, remember?) have been the result of a shifting public consciousness: in over 70 years, people have learned to interpret mysterious lights in the sky in very specific ways, mostly because of science fiction and popular culture that goes back to the first half of the 20th century, in turn a particularly American cultural phenomenon that for geopolitical and social reasons went global.
"I want to believe" goes part and parcel with the clumsy moves involved in the change from a world dominated by religion to one were religion has been replaced by overwhelming materialism: when there's nothing to believe in any more, something to believe in has to be invented.
In a recurring theme for Mr. Greer, he makes the point that it's not just the "believers" that are looking for something to latch onto: scientism, materialism and positivism are the skeptics' pacifier, and both believers and skeptics use flawed reasoning to win over the other side. The former states that UFOs exist but fails to imagine that there can be other answers to "what is that thing flying over there?" apart from "aliens, of course!"; the skeptics, on the other hand, fail because they restrict themselves to debunking the believers: either the believers are right or they are not, which somehow gets warped to "UFOs are alien or they do not exist", which is a false dichotomy. They of course proceed to give all the reasons why any sighting must either be a hoax, or a hallucination, or "swamp gas"; Mr. Greer is right to ask "what if a UFO sighting is legit, that is to say, not a hallucination or a hoax, there really was a strange light in the sky, but it simply was not alien?"
Before listing his own attempts at explaining UFOs, he goes over how a hypothesis has to be disprovable in order to be scientific---in fact, that's the very basis of the scientific method. He mostly leans towards American or Soviet secret/black budget projects, as of yet unexplained natural phenomena and aethereal/immaterial encounters, reports of which have been appearing in cultures all over the world for millennia.
For me the most interesting was the chapter on the black budget projects (think Area 51) and the secret aircraft: it would actually make sense that the US government through its denial and refusal of disclosure would fuel the fires of suspicion that what its Cold War secret military projects really were were alien spacecraft and in this way muddy the waters. Get your population as well as the Ruskies to believe that UFOs are a thing and you can fly any superweapon around and draw little suspicion as to what you're actually doing.
Mr. Greer discusses these conspiracy theories with so much data and references to draw from and paints such an easy-to-follow picture, always within context, it's just insulting to claim the material discussed is merely conspiracies at this point. Of course, each case is unique and some are still shrouded in true mystery, but that's precisely what Mysterious Universe is for!
Great book, amazing and inspiring man. Couldn't stop flicking my phone's screen running PDF Reader.
Just one thing: for all that's good in this world, do try and find a better cover artist!
July 9, 2009
The first half of the book could be described as a memetic history of the image the UFO took in the popular imagination, and how that image informed the objects later encountered/reported by human witnesses. For example, some of the earliest UFO encounters were with zeppelin-like airships after those vehicles had been conceived and promised but before they were a practical reality. This first half of the book seems like subtle and kid-gloved debunking.
In the second half of the book Greer explains how the approaches of both the ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis) advocates AND those who favor the NH (null hypothesis) are both decidedly rhetorical and NON-scientific.
He also takes the position that the single biggest obstacle to unraveling the UFO phenomenon is the belief that it is a single phenomenon. Specifically, Greer argues that a sizable portion of UFO sightings were staged hoaxes by military and intelligence agencies meant to provide cover for the development of top secret aircraft.
He describes another class of encounters as "apparitions," and these are likely to have an element of high strangeness about them. This section of the book held the most interest for me and was too cursory for my liking.
In the second half of the book Greer explains how the approaches of both the ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis) advocates AND those who favor the NH (null hypothesis) are both decidedly rhetorical and NON-scientific.
He also takes the position that the single biggest obstacle to unraveling the UFO phenomenon is the belief that it is a single phenomenon. Specifically, Greer argues that a sizable portion of UFO sightings were staged hoaxes by military and intelligence agencies meant to provide cover for the development of top secret aircraft.
He describes another class of encounters as "apparitions," and these are likely to have an element of high strangeness about them. This section of the book held the most interest for me and was too cursory for my liking.
September 5, 2018
Comprei esse livro para pesquisar mais sobre OVNIs, já que estou preparando algumas publicações nesta temática. Pensei que ia ser um monte de balela da mesma forma que foi O Livro Branco dos Discos Voadores, que havia lido previamente e falava sobre abduções no sudeste brasileiros. Este O Fenômeno OVNI, entretanto, é mais cético, ou pelo menos, mais analítico. Ele não pensa somente aparições de OVNIs ou abduções, mas o seu impacto na sociedade e na cultura, mostrando os efeitos da proliferação das histórias de extraterrestres a partir do final da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Ele fala sobre filmes, livros, séries, pulp fiction, manobras militares, conspirações, sociedades secretas, muitos elementos que ajudaram a ampliar o impacto dos ETs e dos OVNIs na sociedade humana, mas principalmente na sociedade americana, onde esse fenômeno teve o maior dos impactos. John Michael Greer aponta diversas teorias para os UFOs e, ao final do livros, tenta vislumbrar um futuro para esse curioso fenômeno que, gradativamente, vem perdendo adeptos ao redor do mundo e com o passar do tempo. Um livro bem elucidativo sobre o maior mito e lenda urbana de nossos tempos.
December 15, 2019
John Greer addresses topic from both ends of the spectrum relating to UFOlogy, believers and critics in an interesting fashion. Delving into possible scenarios to explain the beliefs and disbeliefs, he is able to direct the reader through thought provoking possible alternatives to what most audiences believe is occurring in our world of UFO fears and possible illusions.
July 31, 2011
Greer has written the most intelligent and accessible one-volume overview of the subject. Unfailingly lucid and evenhanded, he lays before the reader all the major hypotheses which have been devised to explain UFOs, and assesses their merits and flaws. If he exposes the illogical aspects of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, he shows even less tolerance for the work of pseudo-skeptics such as Menzel and Klass. In settling upon a threefold explanation of the phenomenon, he seems to me to show good judgment and openmindedness. On the whole, admirers of Vallee and John Keel will come away with their feelings less bruised than followers of other schools of thought.
April 16, 2012
UFOs are a subject I have no particular interest in, but I went on a John Michael Greer tear at the library, and figured "Why not?" I'm glad I did - this was a fascinating look at the history of UFO sightings, correlated with trends in occult circles, mass media, and the Air Force's now-declassified stealth fighter and bomber tests. There's also an evenhanded look at all of the various theories other than "They're aliens!" or "Nyah no they're not!" He's not putting together any single unifying theory - rather, he's breaking apart the cultural phenomenon and looking at its parts to see what makes it tick. Very neat.
(Spoiler: the author does not believe in little green men.)
(Spoiler: the author does not believe in little green men.)
February 8, 2012
An excellent follow up to Jung's work detailed in 'Flying Saucers'. Greer approaches the controversial subject armed, not only with Jung's psychoanalytical findings, but with the added background of years in historical research and the occult field. These two disciplines combined with a rigorous commitment to adopting the scientific method whilst analysing the subject, produces a detailed and just account of a cultural narrative that has dominated popular culture for almost seventy years.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews