Before the second-rate synchromysticists ruin everything, let me tell you what I think about this Chinese space station crashing to Earth in the next few days:
I don't care.
Yes, I sincerely hope it doesn't crash into any populated areas, but the thing about Chinese names is they sound silly and overly dramatic when they're translated into English. That's just how languages work. Heaven doesn't mean the same thing in Chinese as it does in English. If this is to be our great, cosmic replay of the Fall from or of Heaven then I'll be looking for a refund.
The fall from Heaven in the title instead refers to the retirement of Stanton Friedman, somewhat creepily eulogised by Richard Dolan in a recent episode of his radio programme. Dolan says some nice things -deserving, actually- but he also downplays some of the really dumb things Friedman has been on about for literally fifty years.
1. His obsession with the significance of nuclear physics.
Not just that, but old timey, chain-smoking, bomb-testing nuclear physics done out in the desert by men complaining about the lack of 'broads' in New Mexico or whatever. Friedman was briefly a nuclear physicist around the time my parents were entering high school so I get that he is going to fixate on it. And I mean fixate both on the topic itself but also a specific moment in time. Rarely does he demonstrate that he's kept up with where the field is at after five decades away from it.
That fixation has kept him from looking at the full historical range of UFO phenomena because, for him, it has to really take off around the time we detonated the first nuclear device, which is beyond absurd.
(It's an argument for another time, but I also don't think stars are actually powered by nuclear fission, anyway, and neither do a sizeable minority of physicists. This is a big part of his argument for the relevance of nuclear physics but our sun is hotter near its edges than in its centre, which invalidates his whole point.)
2. His persistent unwillingness to look at the various, self-evident, secret space programmes
This is a necessary flow-on effect from point one. If you fixate on nuclear blah blah, you completely miss the fact that it has never been a viable form of aeronautic propulsion and downplay the high likelihood that some form of electrogravitics has been in play since the 50s, at least at a clandestine level. And that many of the not-bullshit videos you will see on the internet today -a small list, I give you that- are the sorts of things you can build when you completely harvest several generations of American taxpayers while their bridges collapse around them and their nurses move back in with their parents.
Check it. Lockheed Martin just patented a portable fusion device. What kind of rinky-dink Jetsons bullshit do you think the space aliens are getting about in?
But again, to look at this stuff breaks the premise he has used to successfully sell the same basic presentation around the world for five decades.
In his actual defence, having said all that:
- No one has bothered to competently debate the paid debunkers as often and sometimes as successfully as Friedman. I just don't quite know what this ever achieves. They're actually paid to not believe you. Just get a bird mirror with a little bell on it.
- He's also -for better and for worse- held the line against the overly esoteric interpretation of whatever the shit is actually going on. These things pendulum-swing and at the moment, ufology is a different kind of insufferable because everyone is congratulating themselves on somehow opening up the topic to a more High Strange interpretation, even though I haven't seen anything that holds a candle to when Vallée did it in the 60s and 70s. And that was using a crazy punchcard system rather than podcasts and cell phones.
- Also related: Friedman did actual field research. He travelled, he spoke to people, he took little samples at UFO sites. You know, all that MUFON malarkey. He gets credit for it even though I'm not sure how much good it did because Linda Moulton Howe did/does the same thing and I could distract her for a month by dropping my carkeys on the ground.
I'm aware this is coming off overly negative about Stanton Friedman and I don't actually mean it like that. Dude's 84. He can definitely retire. I think it just reminded me of my general disgust at ufology right now. On the one hand you have the To The Stars scam-op combination, serving plagiarised and warmed-over 'best practice' interpretation from about a decade ago, presumably to provide air cover for increasing use of the proverbial toys in the proverbial underground bases. (There is also the somehow even stupider variant of this scam, with Corey Goode and David Wilcock. Worth mentioning that Catherine Fitts calls the Tom DeLonge circus "Corey Goode 2.0".)
And on the other hand you have non-esotericists going completely extra on the esoteric interpretation of UFOs. (Vallée, at least, is open about his Rosicrucianism.) Obviously, this particular interpretation is where the majority of my sympathies lie. But at the moment it seems so smug and self-congratulatory, as if this literally hasn't been the most thoughtful interpretation since the 70s. Asking non-esotericists about this stuff is like asking me about vaginas, and it shows. What in the fuck does bigfoot have to do with the fact there are ruins on Mars and that the whole place was very likely bombed a few dozen million years ago? Is this really where you want to start?
In 2018, there are only two worthwhile fields of enquiry in ufology and -here's the real tea- neither of them have anything to do with UFOs. There's a diligent analysis of the black budget and what monstrous things it pays for. And there's the experiential exploration of Reality with a capital 'R' which is best achieved via the actual practice of magic rather than talking about it. UFOs are an indication that this worldview is accurate, they are not the secret to unlocking it.
The battlelines are spreadsheets and philosophy. I appreciate this doesn't make for sexy UFO podcast talk but they honestly can't get any more dire than they currently are, so who knows? Give it a shot.
Enjoy your retirement, Mr Friedman. Now that you're no longer attending them, maybe you can join me in hoping that the next big ufology conference gets crushed under a pile of toxic Chinese garbage falling from the heavens.