Dr. Jacques Vallee ~ The Control System

originally posted by: Bybyots
Vallee is not convoluted, it depends on what the reader of Vallee is acclimated to reading.

Vallee practically nutshells his whole oeuvre in the last few seconds of the deleted Close Encounters of the Third Kind scene that corsair00 posted.

3:28

Pink nipples?

I often find with subtitled films, if the story is particularly engaging, that the spoken and written words merge in the brain, much as I expect a universal translator would work, in practice. I 'forget' that I am reading, or I hear what I read??? Something like that anyway. Watching that clip though, trying to get whatever fine point you are making, I found it amusing that it wasn't until about the third viewing that I realised Truffaut says "I picked it up at the airport" in English. I then had to watch it again just to be sure.

Just watched a rather strange film from 2003 called "Suspect Zero". Well worth a watch for those who have contributed tot his and other threads involving MKUltra etc. Not connected to UFOs per se however, the plot is very relevant in many ways. Involves something called "Project Idris" which is meant to be the FBI's version of remote viewing.

Willtell, I think this thread itself is certainly confusing enough to the newcomer - we've explored a good three or four dozen topics which intersect with the main topic of the thread.

But I must take exception to the assertion that Vallee's work is either trivial, or intentionally confusing. If there are any purposeful blinds inserted by him, I haven't discovered them yet.

After he finished analyzing all of the information which the air forces of two (nuclear-armed) countries would let him look at, examined and discarded several entire theories, Vallee started going directly to the sources, even visited South America during active UFO flaps, for goodness sake.

That takes dedication, and produces real data. He was also courageous enough to publish this data such as the South American research, which is rather unbelievable but is supported by medical evidence. From where I sit, there is no one who has done better work with the data in the field of UFOlogy.

Which brings us to the other criticism leveled in the last couple of pages: That Vallee's work is trivial because it contains no firm answers, no origin explanation for the phenomena discussed. I find this infinitely preferable to seeing him make something up. He's being a good scientist by almost categorically refusing to speculate on things he doesn't have information on. But yet he remains as candid as possible in interviews while still keeping his security clearances.

The rare exceptions to this reticence to speculate on Vallee's part are quite interesting, such as his offhand remark during an interview (Coast to Coast wasn't it?): 'Could a sentient hydrogen cloud the size of a galaxy create the appearance of a Volkswagen Beetle here on Earth? I don't know.' But in general, if you want vague speculation or religious fervor/channeling/holy writ, you won't find it in his published work.

This is all so gloriously Lovecraftian. Autograf, have you noticed any weird initiatory overtones in learning about this stuff? I sometimes wonder if we haven't been caught up in something...I just don't know what. Sometimes I wonder if I haven't stepped in completely over my head. This is half cosmic embodiment of daemonic dread, and half weaponized meme.

Sums it up I guess.

But the thing is, you can see it. Obviously. And I have in my own laymans way, found my way through the academoccult spillway to the same shamanic deleuzian periphery as these Landians.
And it is that. Dark Marxism, Borgesian/deleuzian sorcerous narrative, hyper-propoganda as theory as mythos. Science fiction as theology. Dystopia as cosmogony. The future is no longer past accumulation rather erratic blinding headlights rapidly approaching.
It is seductive. Possibly the most seductive activity I've ever engaged in. Weaving the mythos of apocalypse under the guise of innoculation against apocalyptic narrative. It is dark Marxism gone viral. Everybody is doing it!
But we can see it.

Apocalypse Management indeed.

a reply to: 1ofthe9

We're certainly all in over our heads, but fortunately we can breath underwater!

One of my longtime interests is the intersection of phenomenology and technology... as seen in Ghostbusters. The study of the Hessdalen Lights is one of the most fascinating stories I've found - it's debatable whether it is yet out of the realm of UFOlogy, since it has the potential to help explain other anomalous lights as well as encourage their study.

Vallee is merely the latest in a long line of exceptional weird scientists, visionaries and out of the box deep thinkers. People like Bose, Tesla, writers like Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Hubbard at times seem to scrye directly into the fabric of reality, so that their work appears less fantastic and more everyday as the decades pass by. I suspect much of the Vallee material will seem elementary to the scientists of the 22nd century.

Oh, and it turns out Hal Puthoff (with Randall Fontes, author of The Secret Life of Plants which I'm currently reading) built a modern, electronic version of Bose's key invention...the one that lets you observe plants' responses to local and nonlocal stimuli. Wait, what? Now this is getting too far out!

I can't speak to weird initiatory overtones, other than to say they can occur in any realm of life...

originally posted by: Autograf
a reply to: 1ofthe9

I can't speak to weird initiatory overtones, other than to say they can occur in any realm of life...

It feels like I have a `library angel`. I just keep running across lines of the same narrative when not looking for them. Its almost like I'm toeing the 'they noticed that you noticed them' line at times. Very unnerving. :S

Also this.

originally posted by: 1ofthe9

originally posted by: Autograf
a reply to: 1ofthe9

I can't speak to weird initiatory overtones, other than to say they can occur in any realm of life...

It feels like I have a `library angel`. I just keep running across lines of the same narrative when not looking for them. Its almost like I'm toeing the 'they noticed that you noticed them' line at times. Very unnerving. :S

Also this.

That is really, really nifty. I like it a lot. It will take some studying to see whether I agree with it entirely, but even so, or if not, still a wonderful illustration.

Thanks for posting that, I love it.

originally posted by: Autograf
I suspect much of the Vallee material will seem elementary to the scientists of the 22nd century.

I've been reading bits and pieces of Carl Sagan, and then I stumbled into Loren Eiseley, read some of his work. It struck me that, in fully appreciating what Vallee is trying to say, which I am sure Sagan and Eiseley would have got long ago, you have to appreciate that, for him, Vallee, extraterrestrials and for that matter, 'God', certainly not in any traditional sense, are not part of the explanation. They are though, to varying degrees, over time/history, very much a part of the perception, and that is the difficulty, communication wise.

So if we return back to this quote, for example...

I feel that I could go before a committee of scientists and convince them that there is overwhelming evidence that the UFO phenomena exists and that it is an unrecognized, unexplained phenomenon for science, but something that I think I could prove. My personal contention is that the phenomenon is the result of an intelligence that it is a technology directed by an intelligence, and that this intelligence is capable of manipulating space and time in ways that we don't understand. I could convince a committee of my peers that the phenomenon is real, that it is physical, and that we don't understand it. I could not convince them that my speculation is correct; there may be alternative speculations. The essential conclusion I'm tending to is that the origin of the phenomenon of the intelligence is not necessarily extraterrestrial.

www.ourstrangeplanet.com...

He doesn't know, or didn't at the time of making that statement, what the phenomenon is, but he felt pretty much assured that he could convince a scientific body of peers of it's 'reality' based on his findings. The communication problem, therefore, is not with the scientific community, the problem is, I assume, in one sector at least, those that will not accept any answer that does not involve an external source for the phenomenon and that is why he has to hedge his responses accordingly, or risk having the sources of his data shut down on him. The primary problem, for Vallee, seems to be, that he needs to preserve an ambiguity in order to continue his work, without that ambiguity, the results would be skewed by those willing/not willing to share with him due to their perception of his bias for/against them.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

It's a good point about data sources - in the interview about Fastwalker, Vallee says he now only personally investigates cases which are not in the media, and often are brought directly to his attention by the people involved, because they know he won't judge them as lunatics. The 'no media' clause helps avoid wasting time on the popular frauds (Jerusalem 'UFO' on Fox News, anyone?)

The other thing Vallee mentions about data sources is that the crowdsourcing reporting organizations like MUFON, with their public databases, are used as information sources by both governments and NGOs. I myself have found some interesting things in MUFON (one of which was explained by the good people of ATS), and it's a great place to go if you need information about specific locations.

So basically, everyone can always use MUFON etc regardless of what they are doing with the data or how they are interpreting it. Some interesting media has been created based on this data, like that animated map from a few years back, which showed UFO sightings over time in North America. It clearly illustrates the presence of 'black triangles' around military bases, shows historical flaps in geographical terms, etc. I wish I had a link handy - it was a great visual.

a reply to: Autograf

Bravo! (I wonder how many times it has to be said, before 'twill be 'heard'?)

a reply to: KilgoreTrout
This is actually in reply to your 'next' post with the Vallee quote and link...

Just to say, I appreciate your point about his need to "preserve" ambiguity for the sake of his sources...I hadn't considered that before...

a reply to: lostgirl

Maybe the ambiguity issue comes from his inability to find a modern, scientific term for Satan.

a reply to: Gianfar

LaVey (already discussed in this thread, and pictured with our hero) certainly had no such problems.

Wait a minute... Vallee...LaVey... same sounds switched? What is going on?

a reply to: Autograf
LOL! Just more of that pesky, inexplicable synchronicity stuff, I'd say...

Had an interesting thought yesterday - it's a bit nebulous, so am presenting as food for thought rather than any sort of 'theory'...

Maybe each of us generates our own 'control system'? Maybe that's why staunch skeptics never see anything 'supernatural'?

(although on a personal level, that wouldn't jibe with my own case of being a 'believer' and yet never seeing anything that could even have been mistaken for 'phenomena')

a reply to: lostgirl

Perhaps our interfaces to this and other systems are all uniquely different from each other.

originally posted by: Autograf
a reply to: Gianfar

LaVey (already discussed in this thread, and pictured with our hero) certainly had no such problems.

Wait a minute... Vallee...LaVey... same sounds switched? What is going on?

Interesting that they both share common belief in a control system used by an unseen power, acting with impunity to deceive mankind. One feels compromised, while the other embraces it. This idea fits nicely into psycho-social patterns engrained for millennium. The control system, a self propagating act of free will, intellectual acquiescence in blind faith to primeval conceptions of the environment, instead of independent thinking. Its very difficult to understand something created and maintained by the masses with such a diverse array of variations on the same theme.

originally posted by: Autograf
a reply to: Gianfar

LaVey (already discussed in this thread, and pictured with our hero) certainly had no such problems.

Wait a minute... Vallee...LaVey... same sounds switched? What is going on?

That comes up in Forbidden Science II. Valle and Michel are chillaxing with LeVay and LeVay's all "You have been in contact with the mind without a head" or something. It was creepy and Bardo-derived.

The CCRU has coined the term ‘K- tactics’ to describe the action of hyperstition, using the mode of schizoanalysis, in contemporary information culture. “K-tactics,” explains Land, “is not a matter of building the future, but dismanteling the past … and escaping the technical neurochemical deficiency conditions for linear-progressive [narratives]” (1995:13). Symptomatic of a type of cultural illness induced by future shock, the hyperstitional ‘infection’ brings about that which is most feared; a world spiraling out of control. This, manifestly, is the task of the’hyperstional cyberneticist,’ according to Land – namely, to “close the circuit” of history by detecting the “convergent waves [that] register the influence of the future on its past”.

As Nick Land explains in the Catacomic (1995:1), a hyperstition has four characteristics: They function as (1) an “element of effective culture that makes itself real,” (2) as a “fictional quality functional as a time-travelling device,” (3) as “coincidence intensifiers,” and (4) as a “call to the Old Ones”. The first three characteristics describe how hyperstions like the ‘ideology of progress’ or the religious conception of apocalypse enact their subversive influences in the cultural arena, becoming transmuted into perceived ‘truths,’ that influence the outcome of history. Finally, as Land indicates, a hyperstition signals the return of the irrational or the monstrous ‘other’ into the cultural arena. From the perspective of hyperstition, history is presided over by Cthonic ‘polytendriled abominations’ – the “Unuttera” that await us at history’s closure (in Reynolds 2000:1). The tendrils of these hyperstitional abominations reach back through time into the present, manifesting as the ‘dark will’ of progress that rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities. “The [hu]man,” from the perspective of the Unuttera “is something for it to overcome: a problem, drag,” writes Land in Meltdown (1995:14).

Exulting in capitalism’s permanent ‘crisis mode,’ hyperstition accelerates the tendencies towards chaos and dissolution by invoking irrational and monstrous forces – the Cthonic Old Ones. As Land explains, these forces move through history, planting the seeds of hyperstition:

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness includes the (approximate) line: “I thought I was making it up, but all the time they were telling me what to write.” ‘They’ are the Old Ones (explicitly), and this line operates at an extraordinary pitch of hyperstitional intensity. From the side of the human subject, ‘beliefs’ hyperstitionally condense into realities, but from the side of the hyperstitional object (the Old Ones), human intelligences are mere incubators through which intrusions are directed against the order of historical time. The archaic hint or suggestion is a germ or catalyst, retro-deposited out of the future along a path that historical consciousness perceives as technological progress.

The ‘Old Ones’ can either be read as (hyper)real Lovecraftian entities – as myth made flesh – or as monstrous avatars representing that which is most uncontainable and unfathomable; the inevitable annihilation that awaits all things when (their) historical time runs out. “Just as particular species or ecosystems flourish and die, so do human cultures,” explains Simon Reynolds (2000:1). “What feels from any everyday human perspective like catastrophic change is really anastrophe: not the past coming apart, but the future coming together” (ibid).

Yes, the bleeding edge of postmodernism is overlapping with Lovecraft.

You know, we'd be ripe for someone to run an ARG on.

How do we get around this?

[quote/]The CCRU has coined the term ‘K- tactics’ to describe the action of hyperstition, using the mode of schizoanalysis, in contemporary information culture...

...Yes, the bleeding edge of postmodernism is overlapping with Lovecraft.


Beautiful piece of work. Whose the author?