The Summer of Weird

Some weird things are going on. Like the oft-quoted Chinese curse to live in interesting times, the news cycle the past few months has been filled with the typical mix of the banal and the ultra-serious. It has been hard to write, simply because there is such an abundance of things to write about. I have spent some time collaborating with philosophers on creating an ethical primer on the explosion of generative AI, a development for which we as a Church, let alone a society, are not prepared. Then there is the war in Ukraine, then the rumors of war in the South China Sea. Then there is the downing of a Chinese spy balloon over sovereign US airspace, and three objects which are still, as of today, said to have been ‘unrecoverable’ by the US Government, despite the multitude of recovery ships, planes and personnel sighted going to and from the sites they were thought to have crashed.

Imagine my surprise, then, when in the midst of all this drama, the now famous USAF Intelligence whistleblower David Grusch tells Congress in closed door meetings that the United States not only has seen alien spacecraft, it is in the possession of perhaps up to a dozen; not only that, but there may have been alien entities either captured alive or dead in these wrecks. I have long been an agnostic on the subject of extraterrestrial life. Like several others who have dipped their toe into the field of the paranormal, it is frustratingly hard to discern what is fact from fiction, and what is tabloid hearsay from concrete data. Nevertheless, this field has never been far from my own study, because I have long since been fascinated by neurology, psychology, and the philosophy of mind.

What the heck is going on, then? We have had whistleblowers in the past, professional debunking, even known government PsyOps to discredit people who claimed to have first hand experience of the UAP (Unidentified Anomalous/Aerial Phenomena). Yet for the first time perhaps ever, we have not only one intelligence officer, but several, reportedly willing to testify under oath to Congress that they are aware of a parallel governance structure, often in league with private aerospace industries, which have had access to craft and to beings which, quite frankly, are beyond our comprehension.

My thoughts on this subject are beginning to coalesce, even as I have been trying to come to grips with what we know, and what we don’t know. If I had to summarize my thoughts on UAP, I would put it in the same general area with cryptids and demonology; there is far too much human experience of strange and fantastical events which we cannot explain. And even though the human capacity for imagination and fabrication is immense, it is hard to discredit what was and is, in the words of one government official, “credible witnesses seeing incredible things.” As Christians, we talk about the “motives of credibility” of the faith, which come down principally to the life, miracles, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, events which we only know about because of the firsthand witness of his chosen disciples. It seems strange that we would not extend a similar courtesy to other men and women who have seen phenomena which have amazed them.

What do we know, historically, about “the phenomenon”? To summarize, we know that things like UAP have been seen for thousands of years, over many cultures over the whole earth. We know that they have been witnessed my millions. We know that some people have been healed or harmed by these entities. We know that some people have even died by encountering them. We know that many of them defy the laws of physics as we know them, and we also know that many of them seem closely linked to the mystery of consciousness, of which we understand little. And now we think we know that not only does our government acknowledge these things, we may be on the verge of a slow disclosure of technology and/or entities which, for decades, officialdom has tried to deny.

When considering these things, there are very few impeccable researchers in this field. Principal among these in my mind are: Jacques Vallée, French Computer Scientist and Venture Capitalist; J. Allen Hynek, former head of Project Blue Book who ended his career as a convinced Ufologist; Stanton T. Friedman, Nuclear Physicist, and John Mack, once Doctor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. These four above all stand out in my mind in their scientific and investigative rigor. These men took samples, interviewed witnesses, and compiled copious notes. Many people argue back and forth about other people, like Bob Lazar or Steven Greer; but regarding those four, opinion is generally positive regarding their credibility.

What seems to be the prevailing hypothesis regarding ‘The Phenomenon’? Very little obviously is known for certain, but it would seem that the so-called Interdimensional Hypothesis is in the ascendency, which is the thesis that these experiences are the result of beings which transcend time and space as we know them. This is how they demonstrate the capabilities which they have. Additionally, Jacques Vallée hypothesizes that these occurrences may be the result of a ‘control system’, the result of a sentient, extremely intelligent and powerful multitude of beings whose purpose is to mold humanity according to certain beliefs, and often employ deception in order to accomplish this end.

I know so much of this is conjectural and maybe even confusing, but I can’t help but think that if the Grusch revelations are true, and he is scheduled for more hearings before Congress in this year, we may have to face this issue head on, and like AI, we probably aren’t ready for it. Among Grusch’s more interesting statements recently, he spoke about an Italian UAP which was found in Northern Italy, which was picked up by the United States military after the fall of Mussolini’s government. The Holy See under Pius XII allegedly was the body that tipped the US government off to the existence of this craft. How they knew that, we do not know. Grusch supposedly was able to speak about this event because this event was in the 1930s on foreign soil, and so he was not bound by NDA’s and the obligations of National Security. The Vatican and the archives there have long since been the subject of Dan Brown novels and tinfoil hat speculation, but this allegation does raise some interesting questions about what the Holy See does and does not know about this subject.

On my part, I want to avoid conjecture and remain as grounded as possible in what we know and what we have studied about this issue. There is simply too much we do not know, and so much room for deception, that we must exercise caution. It is important, as with most things, not to be gullible. Yet we truly are living in the summer of weird, and I can’t think of a subject more apt to cause a civilizational revolution more than a statement that we are not alone. Of course, we Christians have never believed we were alone; we believe in intelligences beyond and above humanity, which, if the Thomistic angelology is true, are as numerous as they are diverse. But if something is leaving us technology, and if a whole arm of our government is operating with huge budgets unaccountable to our elected officials, we are walking into truly strange territory.

This is a strange subject to tackle, but this much seems certain to me: the world we live in is about to get a lot more weird.