June 18, 2017 — MJ Banias with Curt Collins

[Angel of Ioren]

Not cool.

So you are worried this guys paradigms may influence his work. Ok.

However, you believe this guy is ignorant and racist, because that's how it sits vs. YOUR paradigms.

This guy and you are both projecting your own paradigms.

If you don't think the progressive left paradigm is influencing UFOlogy look no further than true believerism, friendly space brothers, space beings warning us about envirommental damage and star trek esque visions of multi cultural alien federations (basically all the BS we are trying to get away from in UFOlogoy)

The only real way to ensure political paradigms are not influencing UFOlogy is to be completely politically objective and this show is not.

Guilty - the fact that I'm not racist plays into how I feel about this. Sorry.

 

[pixelsmith]

Again, i find myself frustrated about how Gene and the others are using the show to promote a political belief system.

So you don't like the comments some guy from Mufon makes, so what.

What has it got to do with objective discourse about the UFO phenomenon? Nothing. What has it got to do with the promotion of political virtues, everything.

These views expressed that this guy is not allowed to say certain things that will offend people is YOUR political viewpoint, how ego centric the progressive left and it's almost religious self righteousness is to assume we ALL want to have this way of thinking authoritatively enforced on us. Not everyone does.

It's the political equivalent of the ufo true believer crowd. E.g. UFO's are aliens in structured craft, don't bother me with counter evidence or inconsistency. The left is like people should only be allowed to say X and Y, no more debate on the subject and everyone else is wrong....we are the only right answer

Had just about enough of the "politicast" recently, forcing the narrative of anti men in these female focus shows, proudly denouncing mufon for being too white and too male (and yet this mufon guy should stand down for racist comments, work that one out).

Please, please Paracast, I know politics has to be involved with the UFO subject but why not maintain an objective position, a true objective position like you are promoting with the reframing of the UFO debate and stop trying to force feed us leftism.

Sadly the paracast is a socialist forum. Progressive snowflakeism is rampant here.

 

[Waller]

Sadly the paracast is a socialist forum. Progressive snowflakeism is rampant here.

Just when I think I have experienced most POVs, then here comes this. lol

 

[Angel of Ioren]

Sadly the paracast is a socialist forum. Progressive snowflakeism is rampant here.

You make it seem like not being a racist is a bad thing.

 

[pixelsmith]

You make it seem like not being a racist is a bad thing.

So... you think every non democrat is a racist?
FYI democrats started the kkk and republicans were for civil rights.

 

[Angel of Ioren]

So... you think every non democrat is a racist?
FYI democrats started the kkk and republicans were for civil rights.

I don't want this thread to go off into the weeds - Let's try to stick to talking about the episode. I'm not American, so I'm not commenting on your politics. I'm just saying if someone is a racist, it will colour his or her view of an issue. Is racism wrong? The answer should be yes, regardless of your political affiliation.

 

[pixelsmith]

I don't want this thread to go off into the weeds - Let's try to stick to talking about the episode. I'm not American, so I'm not commenting on your politics. I'm just saying if someone is a racist, it will colour his or her view of an issue. Is racism wrong? The answer should be yes, regardless of your political affiliation.

I happen to have people of color in my immediate family that I love dearly and many friends of color. No racism here.
Sorry. I didn't listen to the episode, it seemed you were painting a broad stroke so I called you on it.

 

[Chuck Garabedian]

First thanks Gene (and crew) for putting together a great show week after week.

I read and post infrequently on the forums but after this show I thought posting was warranted. After your guest introduced himself as having a background in critical theory, hence post-modern philosophy I was interested to see if he would take this background into the discussion. Not only did he, but he took it in a direction exactly with what I thought he would.

Subjectivism, social constructs, neo-Marxism.....I'm well versed in critical theory and have done a lot of academic research into it.

I welcome different viewpoints, certainly don't want to bring politics into this and am not some sort of right wing pro-capitalist individual - but your guests background in non-ufo subjects is concerning. I view critical theory as a spit in the face of everything the Enlightenment has brought us - science and the scientific method, individual rights, rational thought and objectivism. Critical theory and post modernism says these things are all social constructs and should be deconstructed in an effort to create some ideal world. It's a ideology that in many cases has replaced religion and fundamentalism.

Unfortunately in the humanities (your guest was an English major) this "philosophy" is being preached and leads to such destructive behaviour as seen in many elements of the social justice movement and incidents that are occurring on college campuses such as Evergreen College in the US and Carlton University in Canada.

 

[technomage]

First thanks Gene (and crew) for putting together a great show week after week.

I read and post infrequently on the forums but after this show I thought posting was warranted. After your guest introduced himself as having a background in critical theory, hence post-modern philosophy I was interested to see if he would take this background into the discussion. Not only did he, but he took it in a direction exactly with what I thought he would.

Subjectivism, social constructs, neo-Marxism.....I'm well versed in critical theory and have done a lot of academic research into it.

I welcome different viewpoints, certainly don't want to bring politics into this and am not some sort of right wing pro-capitalist individual - but your guests background in non-ufo subjects is concerning. I view critical theory as a spit in the face of everything the Enlightenment has brought us - science and the scientific method, individual rights, rational thought and objectivism. Critical theory and post modernism says these things are all social constructs and should be deconstructed in an effort to create some ideal world. It's a ideology that in many cases has replaced religion and fundamentalism.

Unfortunately in the humanities (your guest was an English major) this "philosophy" is being preached and leads to such destructive behaviour as seen in many elements of the social justice movement and incidents that are occurring on college campuses such as Evergreen College in the US and Carlton University in Canada.

Very well said. I had a lot of problems with what this guest was saying and you summed it up nicely.

 

[Burnt State]

First thanks Gene (and crew) for putting together a great show week after week.

I read and post infrequently on the forums but after this show I thought posting was warranted. After your guest introduced himself as having a background in critical theory, hence post-modern philosophy I was interested to see if he would take this background into the discussion. Not only did he, but he took it in a direction exactly with what I thought he would.

Subjectivism, social constructs, neo-Marxism.....I'm well versed in critical theory and have done a lot of academic research into it.

I welcome different viewpoints, certainly don't want to bring politics into this and am not some sort of right wing pro-capitalist individual - but your guests background in non-ufo subjects is concerning. I view critical theory as a spit in the face of everything the Enlightenment has brought us - science and the scientific method, individual rights, rational thought and objectivism. Critical theory and post modernism says these things are all social constructs and should be deconstructed in an effort to create some ideal world. It's a ideology that in many cases has replaced religion and fundamentalism.

Unfortunately in the humanities (your guest was an English major) this "philosophy" is being preached and leads to such destructive behaviour as seen in many elements of the social justice movement and incidents that are occurring on college campuses such as Evergreen College in the US and Carlton University in Canada.

It's interesting that you bring those two up as i was just recently reflecting on those acts of exclusion done in protest in order to achieve equity. i think when we consider the social construct of race we have to remember how it intersects with power. for example if a black group wants to host an event that excludes white people i'm there for that. i understand their reasoning because they may feel safer in an environment where they know that oppression can't sneak in through the door. i don't think that segregation will ever get us anywhere but i get why they feel the way that they do so i couldn't care less if they host such an event. i think that profs who want to post their opinions about such things should be prepared to get an earful of anger as there's a lot of post slavery anger hanging around in north america in case people were blind to such things. best to keep quiet and let people do as they do.

at the same time i'm not too sure if i feel the same about KKK rallies or nazi's huddling together in bands of exclusiveness whiteness to plot the end of an entire race of people. these are people who already have a lot of power in society and need to be watched lest they consolidate their power and hatred and are able to do really stupid and evil things. and that's where a lot of people don't really understand racism, anti-racism and equity as they think that these two scenarios are the same but they are absolutely not.

a group of black people getting together to talk about protectionism and advancement and equity is very different than a group of white people getting together to talk about eradication, violence and supposed preservation of their values and heritage. these are clearly two very different animals and you just need a minor history lesson around power dynamics to understand this. in times of colonization the Canadian government made it a law forbidding the congregation of more than a handful of indigenous people in the streets and the nazis did the same - they wanted to consolidate their power and not allow people to figure shit out about how they were going to preserve their very existence.

many misguided people don't get anti-racism and see it somehow as a threat to traditional values when really the only thing people are saying is stop hating me, stop discriminating against me and let me have my piece of the pie too. which means the rest of the people in society need to adapt to something called change and in an age of globalization that means diversity will not only exist - it will thrive and the concept of people saying freedom of speech = racism and is okey dokey will fade away because there will be no "racially pure" family lines anymore. i mean there never was truly - all our blood is well mixed up - but i mean visibly, everyone's going to have all sort of different people in their family - it's the way of the future, nothing to fear at all...

And now....after that brief interlude, on to the philosophy of UFO's: are you saying we should dismiss MJ for his social constructivism? I find his blog space to be quite fascinating as it allows for the idea of the UFO and abduction to exist as a concept in society to give us leverage to talk about other ideas. Most of the primary debate around ufo's has always been about where do they come from and what do they want. We remain clueless on both fronts and yet insist on debating the validity of our theorems even though they are baseless. So a lot of people have seen strange lights in the sky (just to be devil's advocate here) and a lot of people have seen ghosts, faeries, leprechauns, centaurs etc. but can we really ever talk about a source for any of these....or can we get some traction about the nature of the human animal and let sociology have its way with such spaces and get all Magonia about the UFO? So while i would never deny that aliens could in fact come from outer space in flying saucers i just don't see it as very likely and i think that MJ has got an interesting set of ideas that asks us to consider what the UFO says about us as human beasts and allows us to talk about out own social condition as opposed to be wistfully wishing upon a star.

I like all the different angles of UFOdom in terms of ways of prodding open the mystery but i think that there is something very reasonable about using it is a symbol for philosophical discourse as there we can at least learn something about ourselves....