Monday, January 3, 2011

Scholarship. Truth, and UFOs


The January 3rd 2011 New Yorker has an article by Daniel Mendelsohn about the Vatican Library [Page 24 ff.].

There are a few quotes in the piece by current Library Prefect, Monsignor Cesare Pasini which applies to our approach here for 2011, regarding postings and content.

Monsignor Pasini, talking about culture and scholarly community says this:

“There is the possibility of entering mystery of culture…The mystery of scholarship, the mystery of the spirit of humanism. The patient study that allows someone to know something that hasn’t been know before – or perhaps something that someone has studied before. But one can go another step further, testing, verifying, correcting…the world of scholarship, entering the mystery of scholarship – the mystery of truth.” [Page 30]

This is where “ufology” (we hate the term!) goes wrong. There is no culture, no scholarship, and no mystery. Ufology and the UFO phenomenon have been held hostage by a few fanatic self-aggrandizers and intellectually deficient persons, many of whom can be found lighting up the pages of UFO Updates with smug, meaningless asides and self-promoting rants.

We shall make sure that posts here, from now on, will make every effort to be scholarly and truthful – even when we provide our usual lambastings of UFO geezers and those who kneel at their feet, sycophantically.

Those of you, with open minds and the desire to attack the UFO mystery – its old and new manifestations -- with hard scholarship and a sincere pursuit of truth will bear with us we hope.

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