Throughout the history of ufology, researchers have been attempting to make sense of both the technology and the nature of the intelligences behind the anomalous phenomena that have been observed and interacted with. Inevitably, those researchers have ended up looking to emerging human science and technology for potential understanding. And so, not surprisingly, leading conceptions of what the UFO Phenomenon represents have evolved over time as our own technology and models of reality have evolved.

The issue with this, however, is that we are often not accounting for how our modern conceptions are tied to the myth-making that human beings inevitably engage in in order to make sense of who we are, and indeed, what this (i.e. reality) is. And in that sense, of course, we are following in the footsteps of our ancestors who did the very same thing. To be alive is to engage in such narrative-framing. Looking backwards, we are often quick to belittle earlier myth-making attempts, accusing our ancestors of being naive, unscientific story-tellers, while simultaneously completely missing the fact that we too weave narratives about reality, also often based on notions we lack solid evidence for.

This is why the UFO Phenomenon emerges as the simultaneously intoxicating but confounding and discombobulating matter it is. Fascinatingly—and perhaps tellingly— it often seems to manifest in such a way as to poke holes in our latest myth. And in so-doing, it helps those within the societal structure—those with a keen and discerning eye, that is—to see our collective narrative as such, as myth.

Note here that myth doesn’t necessarily mean “untrue”, it just refers to a society’s collective sense of “the real”. The data arising from these ufological investigations so often confounds our consensus conceptions of reality that it’s fair to ask if that may indeed be one of the central purposes of the entire enigma. Before us, of course, were those who framed reality within a theological lens. In going through this very same process, they too ran into the very same conundrum, leading them to, like us, often exclude, ignore or explain away the elements that “didn’t play well” with the contemporary myth.

How are we to proceed with these considerations in mind? Is it a fool’s errand to chase a specter that seems to change its guise just when we think we’ve pinned it down? Or should we accept that this game of hide and seek involves stretching our very understanding of what’s possible? These are the simultaneously mystifying but mesmerizingly captivating matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 113th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.