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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: DevereuxP@aol.com
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 12:58:28 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 18:45:16 -0400
Subject: Complex Nature [Devereux is back]

Dear List,

I've been away in remote parts for a month, and otherwise engaged
for additional weeks, so I've been off line as far as the List
is concerned. Consequently,  I have had the pleasure (I suppose
you could call it) of ploughing through a zillion List postings.
It's worth doing every so often. Seeing a long period like that
in rapid sequence made me marvel anew at (a) some of the impressive
knowledge and forensic skills possessed by some List members,
and (b) the depressing intellectual desert inhabited by numerous
other members. With such a dichotomy, effectively two worlds not
meeting, I saw with new force why ufology as it is presently invented
just isn't going anywhere (although I know the closely circumscribed
gossip and new fads and events that rise and fall create the illusion
with some people that it is). Unless the paradigms that imprison
it are flung open, ufology it is just a series of closed systems,
belief systems in the main, it seems to me. Perhaps human nature
is too complex for such a shift to occur.

Anyhow, I see that some List colleagues, Jerry Cohen and others,
were kind enough to respond to some of my points made a couple
of months ago. To be polite, may I assure them I will reply to
what they say (albeit selectively because of this long hiatus)
in future postings as my schedule permits.

But I have to mention here that of all the myriad items and threads
on the List, it was the cosmic snowballs that blew me away the
most... It made me grateful that I am only championing earth lights!
I could just imagine the roasting my recently waterlogged friend,
Chris Rutowski, would have given me if I had come on this List
proposing snowballs from outer space...!

Wild nature is clearly more complex than we think. Truly. In the
way that not all thunderstorms produce  ball lightning, and not
all earthquakes produce earthquake lights, I guess not all flooding
produces light phenomena, as Chris noted in the recent Manitoba
flooding horrors he had to endure (glad you made it through OK,
Chris).  I guess if other was the case, we could predict earthquakes
and we wouldn't get caught out by floodwater! I know Chris wishes
nature were simpler, and more clockwork in its predictability.
He vents his frustration about this on the likes of Persinger
and me. But it is not: nature, human and wild,  is *the most complex
system we can know of*. It is that complexity that constantly
surprises us, allows endless creativity, consciousness and life
itself - and presents a vista of discovery that goes on for ever.
I feel we should celebrate that fact, and be more open to its
implications.

Paul