For me the UFO questions are why are their activities so overt, ephemeral and consistent despite their apparent variation in origin? Why is their approach to biology so human and not reflective of an advanced space faring species, never mind the fact that any advanced civilization could detect all they want to invisibly without revealing any aspect of their existence?
Indeed, this is the question for me as well. As I've said, I see a parallel question in the spiritual realm: why are interactions with gods/spirits so consistently reported but also ephemeral and subtle?
It's tempting indeed to file it under endogenous, psychological phenomena, but then there's the historical consistency and objective, physical data.
The Scooby Do hypothesis is tempting too: this is simply the PTB tricking the mensch for some master purpose of their own.
All we can do is hypothesis.
The concept of a "war in heaven" is an ancient one. Is it merely a projection of human machinations onto the gods? Quite possible. Is it also possible that various UHI are in a stand off over control of the Earth and/or humans? Are we in the middle of a solar system wide Whale Wars, haha?
You mention that the contactee reports don't seem reflective of how a space faring species should behave. Honestly, what can we know about how a space faring species should behave?
How would humans behave if we discovered a planet teeming with life? I'd guess you'd have some humans who want to exploit and study and some who'd want to protect and conserve.
Yes, I'm projecting human psychology onto ET. A big no-no.
The possibilities are endless. Another idea is that intelligent biological (pre trans-biological) life is extremely rare at any given moment in the universe. That is, there may be countless post-biological species "out there" and when they discover little old Earth, they are, for reasons of nostalgia, smitten with us. "Don't be so technologized" says the trans-biologic entity. "Enjoy being a kid; you'll miss it someday!"
Why do they all look like quasi-humans? Who knows. It is absurd on its face. We should have reports of floating squids, right? Mimicry could be at play, but why not simply identically mimic a human form? Does it really create a psychological buffer to manifest as a quasi-human? Or do the ETs simply utilize mental feedback from humans to arrive at their mimimic morphological appearance? That's the mental aspect Vallee talked about.
But why appear to us at all, as you ask, Burnt.
Whether ET, psyops, or trickster, what might be the motive for appearing to a group of school children as multiple craft and little beings and admonishing them against becoming overly technological? (Was there something special about those kids? Might one or two of them someday have a lot of power and influence on Earth? Might the entities/phenomena have known this? But why appear on a school yard!?)
The individual that Christopher Obrien works with is pursuing the Gaian Hypothesis. Is this phenomenon some type of Gaian Immune Response? An effort to shape the behavior of humans? The same questions remain: why so subtle and ephemeral? Why not just come right out and say: stop destroying the biosphere. A biosphere that scientists tell us has been completely destroyed multiple times throughout Earth's history.
Is the phenomenon coming from a Collective Consciousness (not to be confused with a collective unconscious). That is, are individual humans equivalent to individual neurons; does the collective transferring/receiving of information between humans equivocate to a collective, conscious intelligence? This Collective Human Intelligence, would, ehem, have a mind of its own. It would no more be able to directly communicate with an individual human than an individual human would one of its own neurons.
Is this CHI trying desperately to save itself? How does this theory account for the physical evidence of craft?
Burnt, can you elaborate on the hypothetical trickster entity you mentioned? What might be its origin, nature, and motives? Is it simply a grumpy terrestrial neighbor?