In his recent interview with Stuart Miller in
Alien Worlds,
Rich Reynolds said something to the effect that I was the biggest self-promoter in ufology. Although I admit to being a self-promoter - more on that in a minute - Reynolds was wrong in two respects. First, anyone who knows anything about ufology knows that there an an awful lot of people who have a far better claim to "self-promoter" than I do, including some who have been around a lot longer than I have. Second, I am not "in ufology", nor do I consider myself a "ufologist". I have an interest in the UFO phenomenon, in the same way that I have an interest in a lot of things. I've written about it, made some films about it, and done some research, but never would I consider myself a "ufologist" or in "ufology". Why would I? Those are terms created by people who think attaching "ology" onto "UFO" will somehow confer on them the mainstream credibility they desperately desire. In truth, "ufology" is nothing more than a cultural side-show - an increasingly irrelevant carnival that has nothing to do with the serious study of the UFO phenomenon.
Blogs feed into that sideshow... including, at times, this one. I've checked the visitors over the years - hits go up when I'm writing some opinion piece about some UFO personality or some such, and they go down when I've written serious articles based on real research. To me that says that people come to the UFO subject these days, at least as it is found on the Internet, not to be informed, or enlightened, but to be entertained, and in the basest ways - personal feuds, wild-eyed claims of this, that and the other thing... the kind of stuff you would find on the worst of American un-reality television. Call it the Jerry Springer effect.
Anyway, my point is not to go out swinging, but to just close out this blog, because I have nothing left to say in this medium, at this time. Frankly, I don't think anyone really has anything new to say about UFOs these days. The public, human face of the UFO phenomenon is not about serious research - it's about belief affirmation, whether that belief is in little grey men from Zeta Reticuli, or extradimensionals, or whether it is a belief that there is absolutely nothing to the UFO phenomenon at all.
You'll be able to read my bi-monthly column in
Alien Worlds for as long as Stuart will print it, although after the next issue I intend to move away from UFOs and more towards human space exploration. I'm working on a book as well, about elements of the history of the phenomenon, which may be out by 2009 - it isn't a priority, but rather something that I'm pecking away at when I have some spare time. This blog will still be here, but I won't be posting for quite a while, if ever. I'm going to leave it up, after I cull most of the non-UFO related posts over the next couple of weeks, but I'm moving on to other things to do with my spare time.
Reynolds was right about the self-promotion thing, by the way, but wrong as to the why. I don't need to promote myself to feel good about myself - I manage that just fine within my circle of friends and relatives. I promote myself when I think it will help advance something - whether it's my business, or a cause I believe in, or something else. With regards to UFOs, that cause was always the serious scientific study of the UFO phenomenon (sometimes I got distracted, I admit, by the "ufological circus", but that`s not the point). However, I see now that any further public effort in that regard is wasted - there is
no serious scientific study of the UFO phenomenon coming, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that carnival called ufology I mentioned above. Anyone who thinks differently is deluding themselves. But that's not the only reason - more important, I think, is that "science" has better things to do, such as a cure for cancer, or getting humans into space on a permanent basis, or global warming climate change. Time is precious, and those are the kinds of causes I intend to get behind with my spare time.
UFOs just aren't that important. If they
are aliens from another planet, or dimension, or wherever, then nothing science does (or anyone) is going to discover them until they want to be discovered. And if they're not aliens, but something more earthly (undiscovered atmospheric phenomena, for example), then someone will figure it out in due course without a massive study of the UFO phenomenon. ET believers will disagree, of course, because they look to aliens from outer space as a modern messiah, to save us from all of our problems - if you doubt that conclusion, then read what they write with a more critical eye, because it's all there, and has always been there. On the flip side of the coin, the fundamentalist debunkers,
aka the disbelievers, do nothing but criticize, as opposed to actually doing anything constructive. The believers might be hopeless, but at least they mean well - the disbelievers are just hopeless, literally
and figuratively. Both groups are so devoid of true imagination and wonder that they have nothing to offer any progressive person who wants to look to the future.
In many ways, UFOs, whatever they may be, are relics of a bygone era, when people had to dream of alien beings to imagine the fantastic. Those days are gone - most people have simply outgrown UFOs, in the same way they once outgrew God. If either aliens or the Almighty are out there (and the majority of Americans seem to think that both ET and God are real), then they'll let us know when they're ready. In the meantime, we need to look to ourselves for solutions to our problems, and put the UFO phenomenon in its proper perspective - it's an interesting mystery, nothing more, and nothing less.
As I was when I began this blog, I remain an agnostic about UFOs, because any other position, I am convinced, is not based on the actual evidence, but instead represents a reflection of the person who holds it.
Farewell for now.
Paul Kimball
