Dreary Rationality

I wanted to expand on some of the points I made in yesterday's post, except the one about Ray Santilli being a twat. That, surely, is self explanatory.

It was really the reason I left the study of Forteana. If you don't know what that means, I guess the easiest way of putting it is to say that it is the study of weirdness, as pioneered by US author Charles Fort, and carried on by Fortean Times.

In my mid-late teens, about ten years ago, I was passionate about it. With my friends, I would go UFO spotting, go to ancient sites (the most wonderful being Silbury Hill at midnight with a full moon) and read and write endlessly on the subject. A friend and me even started an extremely short-lived magazine about it.

I suppose, firstly, it was the discrediting of a lot of UFO stuff that sent me off the subject, even though Forteana is a much bigger subject than just that. Mexico City footage from 1991 that looked so brilliant and then turned out to be easily achieved fakery; the Ray Santilli bullshit; the exposure (somewhat self inflicted) of Graham Hancock; many other photographs which turned out to be fakes when examined with computer equipment. But more than that, much more, it was the death of friends and family who since then have left no trace of themselves at all, not at all, not even in the dark spooky winter hours. It was the skies always seeming to be clear, whenever I stood out and looked. It was the fact that life really is, barring the odd coincidence, absolutely rational and boring. When I realised I was looking for things that just were not there, I realised I was looking for a second kind of religion; at about the same time cultural interest in Forteana died down and the X Files came to a barely noticed close at least in the UK. Have we finally passed the point of being a post-religious culture in need of something to believe in and suddenly entered the phase of a genuinely secular society? Interestingly Forteana was far more prevalent as a cultural theme in the 90s, with its sense of the "end of history" and hence need for something else, than it is now, with key battles to be fought.

Secondly, and more prosaically, it was also the fact that as the security services of the western world had missed several devastating terrorist attacks - it made it highly unlikely that they have been successfully covering up something as massive as alien visitation for 60 years.

Thirdly, and connectedly, the events of the past 5 years have made me realise that conspiracy theories of all kinds are much more psychological than they are real. I know that sounds devastatingly obvious but when you have been involved in them and thought about them, and seen them as a rational part of the world, it comes as a bit of a shock to realise what you have been doing is utterly irrational and depends in part on networks of elaborate, even fiendish construction; on frankly bizarre coincidences - for example this is how a well known writer, let's call him GH to spare his blushes, argues: "but let's suppose x is not the case; let us suppose instead that y is: now z begins to seem more than just a possibility" - this is fine, except that, usually, x is the case; above all these theories and their relation to the real world depend on the entire world being against you. Politically speaking, it made me realise I had been doing what some total idiots (some of whom write for well known newspapers) have done this week by imgining that the terrorist alert was all cooked up to deflect attention from Israel - utterly logical to a certain mindset, totally rational to someone who thinks the world is run by Jews, but all the same, utterly ridiculous.


I would love there to be other things. I would love the universe to pop up and say "ho ho, I bet you didn't see that coming!" but I just don't think it will anymore. What if Brian Greene (say) is right and string theory really is the final theory of everything, and we have cracked it? What then? Where to go after that? the pub? Not that I am saying knowledge is dangerous, just that I would like ultimate knowledge to be impossible, just to keep us going, and hoping for more. I really want there to be weird, inexplicable stuff - I just don't believe any of that anymore.