Bursting your bubble: UFOs and censored dreams

This is the story of how me spotting a UFO over 20 years ago has reminded me to stop being scared of ridicule, start asking more questions and to start dreaming.

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How did you get to this link? Probably most likely you saw it on Facebook or Twitter – maybe a friend shared it – but most likely you came to this via your Facebook newsfeed.

Recently we’ve all learned the hard way about how our newsfeeds – the lists of what we see and read – are influenced by complex algorithms which, for a price, can be manipulated in sophisticated ways.  Perhaps this in an inevitability – but it seems no one was quite prepared for the enormous impact.

The result of the British referendum to Brexit was the first shock, Trump’s victory the next – one which had people asking questions ‘How did this happen’ – stating things like ‘but every post I saw was people saying exactly the opposite’.

This is the social media bubble, which Obama warned about as a threat to democracy in his last speech as US President. The recent Adam Curtis documentary ‘Hypernormalisation’ articulates this echo chamber of reinforcement in brilliant detail. It’s the modern equivalent of getting all your news from only your neighbours in your neighbourhood, who all live relatively similar lives to you, and who all get their information in the same way.

The danger is that not only are many people unaware of this – but that a few intelligent people are so aware of it that they are already changing the world with this knowledge. A company called Cambridge Analytica used technology that gets to ‘know you’ from your ‘likes’ on Facebook and then targets adverts at you which reinforce what you already believe (this is very simplified explanation of hugely complex algorithms). The company worked so effectively for both the ‘leave’ Brexit campaign and the Trump campaigns that it has even prompted the head of Mi6 to speak out (James Bond’s boss), as it represents a threat to ‘sovereignty’ – that word which means less and less each week in a time dominated by digital information.

But what does this have to do with UFOs?

I saw a UFO

Well, a little over 20 years ago I went to primary school in Leicestershire, in the middle of England. I have a vivid memory that until writing this, I’ve never shared with anyone. I remember standing on the school field on a sunny day, with a few big clouds in the sky. Suddenly, I saw plane flying vertically into the sky, turning slowly while travelling at high speed until it disappeared into the clouds. I shouted and pointed but everyone else was playing football and no one saw (I think I might have been in goal, spacing out). I knew what I’d seen but it being the 1990s, there really was no way for a 7 year old to report or research a UFO sighting. My Mum remembers me telling her, but that was the end of it.

I didn’t think this was alien, at the age of 6 I’d been to the space centre in Florida, knew very well what was possible with technology - but I had never heard of a plane that could fly vertically – we only knew about concord – that was the only object in the skies over the UK we ever got excited about. What I’d seen looked more like something from Thunderbirds.

So I logged this memory and I haven’t told anyone about it, plagued by a fear I'd be ridiculed. This fear is the most important point of this whole piece.

This weekend I watched a documentary that triggered this memory of mine that I’ve not thought about in years. It triggered it as it was almost identical footage of the UFO I saw over 20 years ago.

It was an English Electric Lightning, taking off in an amazing super-sonic vertical climb. While I don’t know for sure this is what I saw, a basic Wikipedia search informs me that until 1992 they were used in the UK to test new radar tracking technology – and some airbases were quite close to where I went to school.

Unidentified Flying Object is a hopeful acronym, in its very name is the assumption it will be shortened to an Identified Flying Object. We expect to know. It took me 20 years to identify mine, but if I saw a UFO now would I post about it on social media?

Social Media Shaming

How many of us would post something they’ve seen but that they can’t explain? I fantasise that my peers would examine it scientifically and invite the serious scrutiny of others. The reality I fear is that many of us would hide, fearing ridicule and shame, as if these are the worst things that could befall us? Yet there is much worse, it is that of cowardice and ignorance, and cowardice to challenge those who may be ignorant to prove they are not so.

I've other friends who have seen UFOs and it has affected them profoundly – inspiring them of life beyond earth and being brave enough to be open about it publicly.

While I’m almost certain life exists beyond Earth, I personally doubt it’s traveled here in spacecraft. But that’s different from saying ‘you didn’t see a UFO’. History has taught us that we often need to trust the people who think differently, at least enough to test their theories fairly.

For example, many UFOs sightings around Roswell were all real (the military testing new aircraft) – with the CIA withholding information - or actively encouraging rumours of aliens to distract people from the truth – that they had an almost bottomless budget to develop and test new classified technology and then weaponise it. It is near impossible to know of the many wonders mankind has discovered that have been ‘classified’ or hidden from the public domain.

The learning point here is that what those people saw was real – however, it is likely that their theory to explain it was incorrect.

Trust your senses?

Do you trust is your own ‘a priori’ knowledge, your own senses? In an age of digital information, we have been pushed into rejecting even these. Second-hand recorded videos could be computer generated graphics, data can be edited – and so we question what we see – unsure what or who to believe.

What we must teach the generation growing up on this internet is to trust the process of asking questions themselves. Some people call this the scientific method, critical appraisal – I call it asking questions.

It's taken me over 20 years to realise I'm not mad, and yet I'm only just beginning to see the deep, deep delusion of a culture which shames fringe thinkers into silence, before the questioning process has even begun.

It is not conspiracy to say how much tax is spent on ‘defence’, in secret and unaccountable to the public. Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alone make up 70% of global military spending. Global military spending in 2016 was $1.69 trillion, research and development $1.48 trillion.

It is not conspiracy to say that much of the mass media is owned by a small few, billionaires, each with an agenda and much to lose. It is not conspiracy to say that these people influence our elected representatives and that very few of them do not have policies for sale. It is not conspiracy to say the defence budgets serve to protect the already powerful and the already rich, who can afford to ‘influence’ (bribe or blackmail) the those who can buy the most weapons. The military-industrial complex is real. This is all fact.

Therefore the questions we all need to start asking now, as a species, are – who and what are we ‘defending’.  Ask ‘why is THIS story being told to me, and by who?’.

If these people claim to be helping save us – we need to start asking who will save us from ourselves? This is the ‘hypernormalisation’ of which Adam Curtis speaks, the knowledge that things don’t make sense, but a paralysis of knowing how to do anything about it.

You’ve read this far – and that’s a modern miracle

We can all be involved in moving out of this bubble. For the first time in a meaningful way, our reality can be shaped beyond mass media – we can all write, read, think and dream together – in real time.

Yet at this glorious time of potential, the party predicted to win the next UK general election pledges in their manifesto to regulate and censor the internet. This is an unforgiveable assault of the highest order on human communication. 

So take control of your own feeds – burst your bubble - talk to strangers, join groups you’d never join. Find someone you completely disagree with and have a cup of tea with them.

We know that it is knowledge, love and compassion that save us from ignorance, hatred and fear. We know we need more than just weapons to defend the lives we want.

Imagine if everyone, collectively asked, ‘what kind of world are we making’. Imagine politicians being elected on policies of shifting some ‘defence’ budget to a ‘science’ budget. 

It was interesting, hearing a leader of a political party in the UK (Jeremy Corbyn) suggest leading the world by example in nuclear disarmament. Watching that reaction to even having that suggested –seeing the ridicule that was met with even within his own party – as if nuclear weapons are an endlessly sensible option to solve anything. Why is nuclear disarmament such a taboo? It is a self-fulfilling prophesy to doubt that we can do it.

If we wish, we can shift money, collective mental energy from developing weapons to developing peaceful technology. Simultaneous, synchronised mass-disinvestment is a genuine tool that could be used much more effectively

This is all possible. And 'you may say that I'm a dreamer'  - but I no longer fear this as ridicule. Truly, which world would you want to dream into reality? 

We are all in a shared waking dream in this digital age, and we must all begin to ask more questions. Then we may dream together. If you dream it, then it becomes so.