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One of the best articles I’ve come across lately in my forrays around VALIS is one by the late researcher Mac Tonnies. I found it on the great conspiranoid site, TheDailyGrail.Com. It’s called The Ancients are Watching, and it has to do with opening our perceptions of what extra-terrestrials could be. A wonderful article from a wonderful writer.
UFOs as Vanguards of a Post-Biological Intelligence by Mac Tonnies
Part of the fun of being a Fortean is second-guessing myself. While many endeavors encourage us to trust our first impressions, the study of unexplained phenomena offers no such luxuries. Researchers of the "paranormal" are instead tasked with policing their own streams of consciousness – a process as rewarding as it is laborious.
In my own case, the study of UFOs and occupant encounters has led me to two predominant interpretations, each at odds with the traditionally accepted Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). In one scenario, the beings sighted since at least the 1950s (and, if folklore is any indication, long before) are the denizens of an invisible landscape: technologically savvy but impoverished hominids I’ve dubbed "cryptoterrestrials." In the other, the enduring UFO spectacle is the product of an almost inconceivably ancient machine intelligence not unlike that portrayed in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001. I’ll limit the scope of this essay to the latter possibility.
As the human species enters an era of rampant existential threats and finds itself mirrored in the quantum circuitry of would-be artificial intelligences, there’s reason to suspect our existence has been monitored (and perhaps even groomed) by a "post-biological" super-intelligence. Although the galaxy is formidably vast, it’s also ancient. A growing chorus of pundits clamors over the perceived "Great Silence" that greets our arsenal of electronic listening gear; either we’re alone, condemned to solitude on the edge of an unremarkable galactic disk, or we have neighbors. And if even one of these neighboring intelligences has managed to spawn an artificially intelligent offshoot, there’s no end to how expansive it might have become in the ensuing millennia.
Read the rest on The Daily Grail
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