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From: Judith Jaafar <judithjaafar@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 19:35:54 -0400
Fwd Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 12:36:48 -0400
Subject: Re: Mad Max: Beyond the Blunderdome


Dear Jenny,

I've been reading with interest the responses to the fact that
Max Burns was "allowed" by BUFORA to present what he believes to
be evidence in the disputed case of the Howden Moors Incident.
There are a million and one things that I could say, but I'm not
going to say them on this forum. From bitter experience I have
learned that nothing of constructive value is ever accomplished
over e-mail. In electronic communication, those who wish to
distort and cause foment have an unchecked medium in which to do
so.

I will say only one thing, although I'm probably wasting my
time. BUFORA has never at any time proclaimed that it endorsed
Max's point of view, nor any other speaker invited to lecture to
BUFORA, for that matter. There is an incredibly important point
of principle involved here, one which, since I'm writing to
intelligent recipients, I don't presume I need to elucidate.
Contrary to what some seem to think about the BUFORA membership,
they too are intelligent, perceptive people and do not like
being told to whom they can, or cannot, listen. Who will be
blacklisted next ? Margaret Fry, a veteran British ufolologist
of some thirty years standing, because she happens to disagree
with Andy Roberts' explanation of the Berwyn Mountain case?
Myself, because I dared to suggest that the Rendlesham Forest
incident is anything but closed, contrary to the beliefs of the
"experts" like Ian Ridpath who found it fitting to call me "an
empty-minded airhead" without knowing anything about me, my
research or my credentials? John Mack, a professor of psychiatry
who presumably knows more about the workings of the human mind
than anyone on this recipients' list, and yet is convinced of
non-human intervention? (unless of course he's spreading
disinformation for his CIA masters!) Jenny Randles, who had the
courage to put pen to paper and write "Star Children", a little
"off-the-wall" perhaps for some people's tastes? I could go on,
and on, and on.

I understand fully, Jenny, your desire for this subject to be
taken seriously, one that is shared by all commited researchers.
But in our inordinate desire for our subject to be validated by
the scientific and academic community we risk negating it as a
truly astounding human experience ( minus the knowns , the
misperceptions, the man-made technology ), something which is
touching people's psyches, their consciousness, their visions of
the future, their intellectual endeavours. Perhaps the close
encounter experience cannot be subjected to scientific
empiricism, may never be, no matter how far we advance. Maybe
the reason we cannot find answers after 50yrs. is because we're
asking the wrong questions - perhaps we need to take a side-step
and look at the whole phenomenon from a different perspective,
thereby leaving behind the clay-footed, unimaginative dinosaurs
with which paranormal research is so heavily populated, hanging
on for dear life to their god of science. If I may be pedantic
here, science, we must always remember, is a Greek word
"skientia", which simply means knowledge, with no mandatory
recourse to physics, chemistry, biology or engineering. No
scientific or philosophical breakthrough has ever been made
without the gifts of courage and imagination, often at the great
expense of the initiator. This is why I feel slightly
uncomfortable with your idea of placing so much importance on
physicists and engineers and the like. Do we really need their
approbation? Their co-operation, yes, but their control, no.

A symposium of "experts" is fatally flawed. There are no
experts, only opinions and vested interests. What about the
percipients, the experiencers (as the Americans like to call
them)? Do they not have a hugely significant role to play?
Without them it would be like studying zoology without any
animals, botany without any plants, physics without any energy.
The best you can do is guess, and dress it up as "science", or
science as we would like it to be. If we cannot even define the
vast parameters of our subject, how can it be subjected to
scientific scrutiny? That doesn't mean that we shouldn't take
objective empiricism as far as it can go, but then  we have to
take courage and use the greatest and most profound faculty we
have, imagination, without which nothing would be known, nothing
would come into existence.

I am put in mind of some of the greatest thinkers in history -
Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, Willhelm Reich (even), who were
persecuted and even murdered for daring to fly in the face of
conventional mores. It's not an easy stance to take, and one for
which you will surely be vilified. What has been happening
recently in British ufology resonates uneasily with the antics
of the early Catholic Church - silencing and extirpation of all
unacceptable belief systems, the Gnostics, the Cathars, the
Albigenses etc., and I'm not alluding in particular to Max
Burns, but to the whole ethos of "control" and censoring
material for the masses, or at least denigrating "unscientific"
theories. Do we have the right to mock and deride those who are
inclined to believe in non-human intelligences? The ETHers may
well yet have the last laugh ( and for the information of those
ex-members of BUFORA Council who believe that BUFORA officials
are muddled in some sort of New Age belief system, this is not
so. There isn't one member of BUFORA Council who rates the ETH,
apart from Malcolm Robinson, tentatively, and he may one day
tell us all "I told you so!" Anyone who was involved with BUFORA
and didn't know this must have had his head somewhere where the
sun don't shine.)

Peter Brookesmith has made a plea for intellectual honesty, a
laudable appeal ( and I really mean that ), but I am also making
an equally heartfelt appeal for intellectual generosity. Retain
one's views and opinions, but respect those of others. Wrong
ideas will ultimately be exposed as such, in the natural order
of things. Life is more profitably spent in enriching one's own
life, than in destroying another's.

In the word's of William James, "A great many people think they
are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices".

Regards to all

Judith