Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] Ep. 37: James Madden [Pt. 5]: The Death Drive & Disclosure

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

In this episode of the UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast, host Kelly Chase returns from a hiatus with a brand new conversation with James Madden. The episode explores themes of psychoanalysis, epistemic vulnerability, and the psychological motivations behind belief systems in ufology. Together, Kelly and Jim ponder the deeper implications of mind control, trauma, and the symbolic nature of our cultural fascination with UFOs, aiming to navigate the complex landscape of human inquiry and understanding.BECOME A PATRONPatrons get lots of great perks like early and ad-free episodes, access to the private The UFO Rabbit Hole Discord server, and twice-monthly Patron Zoom calls with Kelly Chase.Memberships start at just $5/month.GET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebook TIMESTAMPS00:00 Welcome Back to the UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast 01:02 Upcoming Documentary and Personal Transformation 02:27 A New Direction for the Podcast 02:44 Conversation with Dr. James Madden 04:35 Dr. Madden's Recent Work and Psychoanalysis 06:36 Freudian Insights and Human Motivation 10:37 Epistemic Vulnerability and Belief Systems 15:07 Challenges in Ufology and Disclosure 22:20 Language, Belief, and Mind Control 25:41 Reflecting on Personal Beliefs 26:26 Freud's Death Drive and Trauma Reenactment 29:52 The Addictive Nature of Unfulfilled Promises 31:08 Comparing Ufology to Sports Fandom 33:18 Personal Struggles and Finding Meaning in Danger 35:21 Cultural and Political Outrage Cycles 40:28 Symbolism in Dreams and Collective Psyche 44:29 The Unending Human Project and Self-Destruction 46:29 Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I took a knife away from a guy once that was intent on killing me. I toked up on the knife and I tacked to a circle around his heart, lasting circle. And that was a very intimate act. He said, here's a list of all Aaron Brotherhood dropouts. Go through this list, sent a letter to each one of these M-Fing rats, and ask them if you could come and interview them for me. He has created this illusion of who he is. If you believe anything he tells you, you're screwing up.

You want to send me to Michael Thompson, who bucked the whole AB, dropped out, and testified against them, and you think I'm going to go there and convince him to recant? My mom told me, Eric, he's kind of a borderline con person most of your life too, but you got conned by a con man. Blood memory, a new podcast series from love and read wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. And we are officially back. I couldn't be more excited. I really missed you guys. Thank you so much for hanging in there with me while I was on hiatus and continuing to share and support the podcast while I've been gone. I've honestly been blown away by how many new people are still finding the podcast and working their way through. And if you're one of those people, hi, welcome. So glad you're here. As you guys know, I've spent the last several months working on the upcoming documentary from Ontacalypse productions, The Beyond, UFOs and a New Reality, along with J. Christopher King.

It's been a long road, but I'm thrilled to share that we are very close to wrapping up production and that it should be premiering this fall. As soon as I have more specific dates to share, I will. I couldn't be more proud of what we've done, and I can't wait for you to see it. But the docu-series isn't the only big thing coming this fall. This past year has been profoundly transformational for me on all levels. Simply put, I'm not the person I was when I started this podcast. The UFO rabbit hole has been a way for me to map my own journey in my search for answers. I started that journey from ground zero. I knew nothing.

And having just had my worldview radically challenged and ultimately dismantled, I was still distrustful of myself, of my beliefs and perceptions, and rightly so. Three years later, I still don't have answers, and I'm still constantly interrogating my own assumptions. But I'm no longer lost in this mystery, and I've developed my discernment in a way that helps me to navigate the space much more effectively and meaningfully than I could ever have done at the beginning. And so I'm finding that I'm ready to do a different kind of work now.

It's time to evolve. You'll see the fruits of that evolution in the docu series and I'm excited to bring that same energy and direction to the podcast as well. I'll be talking more about what that means in the coming weeks, but just know that big changes are coming. But for now, I wanted to dive back into our regularly scheduled programming with a recent conversation that I had with fan favorite Dr. James Madden. Jim has spent the last several months engaged in his own up-leveling that has significantly contributed to new thinking on the UFO phenomenon. Our conversations have been a through line of this podcast, and I've been so grateful for his thinking and friendship throughout this journey. This podcast wouldn't be what it has become without him. And it was very cool in this conversation to see that even though we spent time in our respective corners working on this from entirely different angles, there were still very much on a similar trajectory. The best part about the this journey has been finding fellow travelers. And I hope that for all of you who also find themselves

on this path, that you find those people too. Maybe the real disclosure actually is the friends we make along the way. All right. I know you've been waiting for a new episode for months, so let's not delay it any further. Here's my conversation with Dr. James Madden. Hey, Jim, welcome back to the show. It feels like forever since we've done this. How are you? Doing great. And it does feel like it well it certainly doesn't just feel like it has been too long and so it's so it's great to be back yeah i'm so excited and uh you know you're one of my favorite people to do this with and after this long hiatus i was like who better to kind of ease back in with than jim and um you know you've been obviously very busy over these last few months your book has become something of a sensation in the

field you've been doing a lot of your own interviews which has been so cool to see but in the meantime Never one to rest on your laurels. You have been kind of diving into a whole other avenue of thought, and I've been really excited to talk to you about it. So what kind of stuff you've been reading lately? Yeah. So, you know, I had two books come out last year. One was unidentified flying hyper object, right, that we worked together on very closely.

And the other one, it was thinking about thinking, mind and meaning in the era of technological denialism. Which is also awesome. Which is, thank you, very good. and yeah please check that book out too it's worthy and really really that my the hyper-object book is really an application

of what went on in the book but both books I you know I came to the end of them I think this happens to any serious writer realizing that they had really resolved very little for me and just opened up new basically blind spots in my own intellectual

formation and And both the books really did kind of put me into a confrontation with psychoanalysis, with Freudian psychoanalysis. And always something I'd always had a passing interest in going back to undergrad. And I thought, well, you know, I would rather not be a sham. And my great goal is to leave this world someday at least somewhat wiser than I came into it. So I decided I'm going to take up seriously the study of psychoanalysis to the point that I'm I'm actually completing a graduate degree of master's in psychoanalytic theory right now.

So it's kind of been a great midlife back-to-school thing for me. So, you know, I'm still new to that field, but it's, you know, very aligned to stuff that I have worked on the past. And it's been a great moment of discovery. And it's helped me rethink a lot of things. And it's helped me rethink a lot of things even in this crazy world of UFology, too. That's so cool. And I'm so excited to dive into that. Before we do that, could you talk a little bit for people who might not be familiar with what Freudian psychoanalysis is about like what was it about that particular topic that you were really drawn to after doing all of this other work with your two other books?

Yeah. So especially in thinking about thinking, I try to make a case that what human freedom and responsibility involves is basically three conditions. And the one is that we we have to understand. the world that we inherit. So I need to be thrown into a culture. I need to be thrown into a language. I need to be thrown into a set of practices that give us meaning, et cetera, et cetera. And I have to actually, if I'm going to become a three responsible individual, I have to actually understand those things. I have to be educated, basically. Okay. But then I think at another level is we're not just passive receivers of the world we inherit, but we also want to take responsibility for that world. And responsibility means that we have to actually ask ourselves whether

or not this picture of the good life that we inherit is indeed the actual good life. Is this indeed true? As I put in the book, joining a cult is not an active responsibility. Okay. And so we have to ask deep critical questions about the very, you know, conditions that give our lives meaning and direction. Okay. So first level, we have to inherit something to become educated. And second level, we have to take ownership of it in the sense of questioning whether or not it's actually true. And something, though, I wasn't expecting, but as I got into that argument, I realized, but there's another thing that has to happen here is so, for instance, I could be born into a certain tradition that prescribes a certain form of marriage, and I could understand that

very well, and I could then maybe come to the conclusion that this was indeed the right view about marriage. But that could have nothing to do with why I actually want to marry, right? Like, I might rather be marrying out of noble reasons. And even if those noble reasons were available to me, I might still be marrying out of greed or lust or what have you. Do you see that? So it became clear to me that we can actually go sideways with our own reasons, that what we think are our reasons for doing something, and they might even be very good reasons, and they might be very, you know, well-tested reasons we've inherited, might not actually be what is motivating us, that there could be other subterranean motives that are moving us around. And bingo, that's one of the great

Freudian insights, is that the surface story about our motives, the surface story about our reasons for things, et cetera, et cetera, is not necessarily what's actually doing the work for us. And that was essential to thinking about thinking. And you can see in the hyperobject book, too, it comes up there, too, that we don't necessarily know who's running our own show. And until we ask that question, like, who really does run our own show? We don't really know ourselves. We can't really take responsibility for ourselves. And we're the sort of the play thing of other forces. Okay. And so that meant, hey, I think I really need to take on psychoanalysis, the unconscious head on, as we're both from my own developed as a human being in as the development. And as the development. of my work in philosophy of mind. I love that you're taking that head on because I've seen you actually feel this question in interviews. I've gotten this question a lot as well. And I always kind of get a chuckle over it because I think that when people get to a certain

place with the UFO topic, the kind of question that comes up is like, once you start questioning everything you know, then at what point does that end? At what point do you find the set of things that's actually true? And if you believe in like this one giant conspiracy to cover up UFOs, then like where does that end? How do you sort like the good conspiracy theories from like the bad conspiracy theories? And I think that like they're really harsh answer that nobody wants to hear is that like we don't have a good answer for that. That ultimately it's recognizing a kind of weakness in our own ability to just like know things at all. And people don't like that answer at all.

Yeah. 100%. I call it in the unidentified flat hyperobjects epistemic vulnerability, that we are vulnerable to being put on, that we are vulnerable to buying into things that are simply not true. And often it's things that are very satisfying to us to believe. And it seems because human beings take a satisfaction in belief that there are certain, I think we're probably the only animal that we know of, right? terrestrial as it were animal that we know of that beliefs we have these things called beliefs that

play a role in our satisfaction that a condition for our satisfaction or condition for our pleasure is provided by certain beliefs and once we admit that then when there's this really dark question we have to ask ourselves about all our beliefs right is am I believing this because it's true or am I believing in this because it's satisfying and this is a Freud defines illusion. He wrote this very famous book that's a kind of a take-down religion in some ways. I have to be careful with that. And it's not necessarily even his best book, but it's called Future of an Illusion, Future of Illusion. And he defines illusion. It's a belief that we hold. And whether it's true or not, we don't hold it for really good

epistemic or evidential reasons. We hold it because it somehow plays a role in our satisfactions. And once you make the turn and to say, it looks like some people have played on this in human history and have sold beliefs, right, that are, to us based on their satisfaction, not the real evidence. And even though it felt otherwise that we've gone in for them, you've opened up a very big skeptical box. And I think, you know, whether you'd come at that through psychoanalysis, whether you'd come at that through kind of an awakening of realize, oh, wait, some of the things that we dismissed as conspiracy theories are in fact maybe true. And now suddenly you're wondering, like, why do we believe any of this stuff? Is it because we have that good of reasons for it? Or is it because it's been sold to us and it feels good to believe it? Right, right.

And that does become kind of the fundamental problem. And I think it's hard for people when they get there to recognize that and they really want a resolution to that kind of fundamental problem. But it goes back to things that I know you've said in, you know, previous episodes that we've done together, you know, particularly about the cave, that, you know, you've said that the cave is basically kind of the structure of, of human experience and that, you know, there kind of isn't an end to that. You don't necessarily ever really get out of the cave, at least not in this form. Exactly. I mean, once you start asking these kinds of dark questions, it's not going to come to an end. Okay. An interesting thing, though, is, you know, if this kind of question gets, you know, put to a psychoanalyst like Freud, you know,

So, you know, think of it. Like, he's dealing with people who have these, these neurotic symptoms. And that's not to dismiss anything, but these people who, you know, had nothing that could be found to be physically wrong with them. And so they, you know, they take him the Freud who was a neurologist. He's like, what do I do with them? Right. And, and he, you know, he talked to them. And eventually, you know, develops this whole method of plumbing the subconscious.

But there's a question, like, how do we know what analysis is done? Right. What are we done doing that? for Freud, when do the symptoms get better? Right? And so my point here is, is, okay, if we find ourselves in sort of neurotic, unhelpful, destructive forms of belief, okay? And when certain revelations of what could be the underlying motives for those beliefs,

you know, come to us, and then we are thereby relieved of those neuroses, even though there might be another dark question around the corner. But if a certain revelation relieves us of that neuroses, of belief. Well, then I think that's progress. We'll be right back after this quick break. So how is all of this kind of related to your thinking around not just UFOs, but euphology and kind of the whole, you know, tapestry of lore that's built up around it? Yeah. Okay, a lot of things to say there.

Let me hit something a little indirect and then we'll come right back to that. So this is a constructive argument of having a number of people. So do note there's objections and all that, all the caveats. But one of the things I worry about when we look at UFOology is if you say there's a there to it, okay, if there really is something going on here, you have to admit that there has been a very vast, in very effective conspiracy to cover this up. That seems to be there's no way wrong. So if you're saying that it really is extraterrestrials or even ultra-terrestrials

or even a breakaway civilization or something like that. And now we're on to it. You have to say that there's been a vast and largely successful conspiracy to cover it up since the, you know, 80 years ago, right? We'll pick that date, although that too is controversial. Okay. But I worry about that then because it seems, though, then you have to rely on some of the very sources of that cover-up conspiracy in order to certify the revelation, then it's a conspiracy.

Do you see what I mean? Okay. And also, you've got all these competing hypotheses, you know, it's extraterrestrial, it's ultra-terrestrial, it's breakway civilization, et cetera, et cetera. And as soon as you admit, like, we've been really, really tricked on one thing in this mode, it then is hard to motivate any one of those other hypotheses as not itself being a trick. It seems like you get this really hard epistemic parity problem and nothing comes out terribly well.

Okay. And so one of things I worry about is disclosure, as it were, is sort of epistemically self-defeating. If indeed it's revealed that we have been subject to a massive epistemic put on, okay, that our beliefs are vulnerable and have been exploited, well, then it seems like I don't have grounds to believe that, right? It seems like that too, it could very easily be a put on as part of that put on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So in a lot of ways, I've come to worry that the entire disclosure movement, I mean, it's unfair to put it, is it's got this really thorny problem,

right? That if it worked, why would we believe it? Because it seems like the conditions of believing it would actually undermine our trust in anything that we would have to trust in order to believe that the disclosure had happened. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think when you look at the field, that there seems to be, like, people fight about a lot of things, you know, if you're on UFO Twitter or whatever, constant fighting, right? But what you don't see people fighting about a lot, I mean, it certainly happens. Like, people aren't necessarily debating, you know, is it ultra-terrestrials?

Is it extraterrestrials? what people are debating is like who you can trust they're putting up particular people as heroes and other people as villains and they're willing to entertain all kinds of ideas except for the idea that their chosen hero is the hero and that their chosen villain might not be the villain because like I think that that maybe that makes people feel like they've got some kind of like way to navigate this space where there's some kind of an anchor where they can say like okay I can trust this person. And so what they say must be true.

And so in that way, it's like way more threatening to question a person than it is to question an idea. Yeah, I mean, this is clearly how our political discourse works, right? Like we brand by personality. And I think it's because it's easier to trust a person than an idea. It's easier to trust a person than a policy. Great. All right. I think we're built to trust persons.

We're built to trust faces and voices. Right. And so I think, yeah, the idea of this kind of branding uophological positions by persona is, you know, I'm not saying it's intentional, but it's very effective in creating allegiances that people way overestimate their reasons for holding those allegiances. Right. No, and I think that's right that, I mean, certainly this can be done to communities and probably has been done to this community. But at the same time, left to our own devices, we do this anyways. Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, it's not like Kelly and Jim are discovering this. I mean, this has obviously been known by smart people for a century for probably longer.

That, gee, humans are really, it's easy to get them attached on persona. And so if you really want to sell something, get a persona to do it. I mean, you know, the very type of the spokes model, right? Exactly. And so to think that this doesn't go on would be very naive and to think that it hasn't gone on for a long time would be very naive. And to think that UFOology is somehow immune to it would be very naive. Right. And another point I wanted to make about this is this is something that I've experienced a lot in just talking to people outside of UFO or even people within UFOology. you bring up the UFO or the UAP, okay? And immediately it goes to extraterrestrials.

The connection is there, okay? And I'm not trying to weigh in on the plausibility of one UFO logical hypothesis over another. I'm kind of over that. But the point is, is there is no logical connection between the concept unidentified flying object or was unidentified aerial phenomenon or whatever it is. Okay. And extraterrestrial. There is no logical connection, but there has been created a connection between these signifiers through the use of these terms, whether intentional or not, such that we all have an unconscious connection between a UFO and alien, right? And just such that

the language carries that connotation for no logical, evidential, epistemic reason whatsoever. It just carries it by a, I'm not going to say irration, but a non-rational connection between the sounds now. When you say UFO, my brain recovers the notion extraterrestrial, just based on the sound. It's a non-rational. This is the unconscious of work here, right? And this is why Slavo Gijsac, the sort of great bad boy of European philosophy now, you know, he says, like for a Lacanian, which is a kind of psychoanalysis, like, language is something that, like, invades us. like an alien, as it were, as an alien force that imposes on us certain connections between our words, among our words, that we are not consciously aware of that actually

drives some of our beliefs. And think of it by that non-logical association that's come to us through popular culture, et cetera, et cetera, between UFO and alien, it drives our thinking, in a very, very serious and narrowing way, right? And I think anyone who says, like, okay, well, we can just sort of go and do Uifology in a very, you know, controlled way where we really understand what we're saying and doing, et cetera, et cetera. I think you're missing exactly how the euophological language is no less wrought with difficulty

than religious language, political language, you know, our language of sexuality. It's all full of unconscious connotation that is in fact running the show. That's so interesting because it, there's actually been an example of this kind of playing out on UFO Twitter this week, where there was an article that was brought up. I haven't read it, and I apologize if I'm misrepresenting it, but I think the basic gist of it was that, like, Mick West was talking about how he would create and use certain words to try to, like, debunk things or to, like, change the way that people thought about ideas that he thought were ridiculous. And people called him out on that and said, like, see, this is proof that you're acting.

in bad faith. And now I very rarely agree with Mick on much of anything, but I did agree with him because his response was like, okay, so what about NHI? What about UAP? What about, you know, uphology has created all kinds of terms that didn't exist before in order to like further a certain agenda and a certain way of thinking about things. And, you know, without the saying whether that's good or bad, I think it's like it's, It's an example of exactly what you're saying, which is that that's what language does

and people who are using language effectively to make a point know these things and they do it. Go to your Twitter account or your ex account. There's a great point. Change the name. Change the name, change the countenance accountation for no logical reason. Go to your Twitter or X account. Go to trending for you. Okay.

And I will guarantee you what you'll see are a bunch of phrases that are, connected to other phrases for no good logical reason at all, but just because they could become associated phonetically in a way that is highly effective for somebody. Right. And I think it's a problem everywhere. And I do think that UFOology kind of wants to give itself a pass on this sort of thing. And to now do that is to leave yourself very, very vulnerable to manipulation. Yeah. And I think that to me has been a point that I've been thinking about a lot recently. It's funny how even when you and I aren't talking as much, we end up being on kind of like a parallel track in terms of what we're reading and thinking about. We're watching the same movie on Twitter though.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. The same inputs. And, you know, I've been really interested lately in mind control. And I've been reading a lot about specifically like brainwashing and mind control and how that works because I'm increasingly understanding that I can't understand, not just Uphology, but I think just like the soup that we're all swimming in without understanding what that mechanism of mind control is. And it turns out it's like very simple and it's not that difficult to control a human mind. No, yeah, you don't, you don't need to like, you know, put LSD in the water supply to do it. Exactly.

You don't, right? Like you don't probably MK. Ultra was more about social psychology than it was putting LSD into, into, into the water supply, right? Right. No, and I think, I think, I won't get too deep into it, but like, there are a lot of theories around mind control that are based in theories of PTSD, you know, and things that are based in trauma and how people's belief systems change radically, but also in kind of predictable ways

in the wake of trauma. Yeah. And it made me think a lot about how, you know, there's a ton of us, I'm one of them, who in 2021 had this kind of like awakening. And I think we were all kind of coming out. of or still somewhat in the midst of the trauma of what happened to us in our world with the whole COVID situation. And had time on our hands.

Right. That's a thing too, yeah. Exactly. And it's been interesting for me to reflect on the fact that, you know, how radically my beliefs changed in the wake of that and that that's something that, you know, you like to think that this is all your own individual thinking and that you're not susceptible to any of these things, but, you know, to recognize that and myself has been, has been interesting. Yeah, 100%. I feel that too, Kelly. That's really well put. You know, when you mentioned trauma,

it makes me think of Freud's notion of death drives. Okay. And kind of a little history here, Freud's early work, you know, he saw what he called the pleasure principle as the driver between all of our psychical lives. So if someone has a dream, what he was looking for, was the implicit wish that that dream fulfilled. Okay, so like some, however weird the dream was, Freud, it was very crafty, and it could analyze it to show you how you're actually getting off on this, right? Like you actually like this.

Okay, this is giving you pleasure. Okay. And same thing with neuroses, these things, is that these were all our symptoms were somehow a fulfillment of a wish, but like a wish we didn't want to admit we had or something like that. Okay. It starts before the war, but after the war, his first really major work that comes out is a book called Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where Freud throws a wrench in his own works because he's now he's analyzing what we would call today PTSD patients after the war in 1918, 1920. And he's like, but these guys are dreaming about the worst things that could happen to them and did happen to them.

It happened to their friends. And he could not find a pleasurable wish behind these dreams. And they were repetitive. They would happen again and again and again and again and again. And he even noted like just little things like his own grandson, who was very, very well bonded with his mom. Like very, they got on very, very well. And he must face it, Freud had a high bar for that.

And when his mom would leave, the grandson would this little toddler would do this very odd game where he would take his toy and throw it under the bed. say gone. And he would kind of dig that. But then, and they get the toy, but the pleasure came from the gone. They're gone. They're gone again and again and again. And he's saying, it is repeating the trauma of his mom. And, but what's interesting though is he's digging it. And so before he came to, and once again, like, with anything for it, it's like evidentially way under-motivated. Okay. Right. But what Freud came to was a suggestion that we don't just get into things that give us pleasure, we also get into things that reenact our traumas.

And this is what he calls the death drive. Like a lot of people take the death drive and what he means is literally like we want to like destroy the external world. And you can find that in Freud. But I think more interestingly, you can find this other notion of death drive, which is where we are most held captive by the reenactment of our own promise. And why is that? It's because reenacting the trauma.

is the closest you can get to what you enjoyed before the trauma, right? Like the kid can't get his mom back, but the closest he can get is like a living memory of when she was there. And the best way he can do that is to reenact the exact moment she left. Some readings of Freud C, like the traumatized victim with the dream of reenacted trauma is it's a way to get as close to as possible to the way things were in a supposed wholeness before the trauma. But you can't get there that the best you can do is reenact the trauma,

reenact the trauma, reenact the trauma. Okay. Now, once again, evidentially way under-motivated, but a philosophically interesting idea. And so if you look at that, then it seems like if Freud's right, then we are really, really vulnerable to ideas that promise us failure. That hook us on a constant failing. A hook us on a constant failing.

They hook us on a constant failing. Like, we are really vulnerable to ideas that promise us a return to an original wholeness, right, that we've lost, but always fail. Because if they always fail, then we get to reenact the whole thing again, which is the closest to getting to the original illness. Okay. So think of it. If you really want to addict people to an idea, like you would say, hey, I've got this thing behind the curtain, and I'm going to show it to you and will make sense of everything. okay, oh, but wait, not this time. It just didn't work this time.

But wait, I've got this thing behind the curtain. Once you see this, everything will make sense cosmically, right? Oh, but wait, not this time. And then again, and again, and again, and again. And like, that would be a very, very addictive idea, right? We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Does that sound familiar to you, Kelly Chis? It does.

I mean, obviously. Yeah. It's funny because, like, obviously it reminds me of this whole disclosure saga that we're all in the midst of. But something that I have noticed in the community from the very beginning is that as someone who comes from North East Ohio, this very much reminds me, like, Uphology has a mentality that very much reminds me of being a Cleveland Browns fan. And we're a Packers fan in the 80s, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in every single year with, based on no evidence whatsoever, you know, there are many people in my life who are telling me like, this is the year.

Like, not just that the Browns are going to be better, but like, this is the year that the Browns are going to the Super Bowl. Yeah. And there's no, there's never been any evidence to support this. And yet, and yet people believe it. And then they go through this like crushing agony as the Browns just browns it up and do what they do. Yeah. And but there's like, there's like a pride people take in it. And there's like a nobility in it.

And also they just, like you're saying, they seem to really like it in the same way we all keep showing up to UFO Twitter every day. You know? there is a strange attraction to the destruction, right? Just think of it. Like, what would happen if the Browns won final? Okay, now what do we do? Do you think now what? Like, what are we going to work for?

What are we going to strive for? Like, do we actually really want this to happen? You know, because think of the lottery winner or whatever. Like, when people actually give what they supposedly want, they immediately cannibalize themselves and destroy it, right? Right. And why would Freud would say? that's because we are all trying to get back to this original state of homelessness.

Right. And the only way we can do that is by reenacting our trauma. So, like, what do we do? Like, we go in for religious traditions that constantly scandalize and disappoint us. We go in for politics that always promises us something and never gives it to us, right? You know, we go on all these quests that are quix on it. And the question is, is like, what are we really getting out of this? Is it the promise of the fulfillment?

or is it is it the constant failure that gives our lives meaning? Well, that's a dark question. Yeah. No, it actually resonates with me on a particularly deep level. Back in, I think I've talked to you about this a little bit for people who are listening. Like back in 2016, I was like severely, severely depressed. Like, you know, trigger warning, but like I was thinking about not being around. Right.

And I'm glad how that worked out, friend. I'm glad how that worked out. Thank you. Me too. Me too. And sort of is like a last ditch. effort. I had this idea that what I needed to do was like sell everything that I owned and go travel and not just travel, but I started doing a different country every month. And I very

quickly found that I liked the dangerous countries more. And horrible things happened, by the way. Like I got kidnapped. Like we were poisoned. Like I almost died many times. Awful things happened. But wouldn't you know it that like that depra, it wasn't happy necessarily. But like that depression that like I can't get out of bed in the morning. Like I can't see the point of this completely went away. And I had to kind of confront in myself that like there was that there was something in there. And that it's not that I necessarily wanted to die, but that feeling like I was going to die made me feel alive. And you can't live like that.

So maybe I never played with UFOs. Or I think like easy examples of this is, you know, I just want to be done. a cup of coffee, okay. And, you know, I wasn't, but, you know, I could have been rude to the poor young person working at the drive-thru. Okay. And I'm sure I have my days when I do that, okay. But why am I doing that? Because I know they're going to be rude back to me. Okay, or do God knows what to my coffee, whatever. And so, okay, maybe I'm doing that because there's just a pleasure in getting your punch in. Or maybe it's, I want the punch back. Right. I want to be cut off. I want.

want to be, you know, put down and insulted becomes once again it lets, it's an experience of failure is as close as I can get to the thing that is missing in my life that I can never get to, this unbelled object that I'm always trying to. And you've seen this in certain things that I've written about that went on at my own home institution here in the spring, you know, where we see this going on culturally and politically, where some traditionally might have conservative says something, you know, way over the top. And then that causes like, you know, incurnable pearl clutching outrage from the other side of the culture war. And then they say equally, you know, like outrageous things that then causes proclutching outrage from the other

side of the culture war. And is it a surprise that any side of this believes or they believe? No. So then what are we getting out of this? And besides like, you know, profiteerian likes and clicks and all that, it seems like it's just the outrage itself is what we're getting out of it. And it's the constantly being confronted and denied that we're getting out of this. Okay. And then these are very self-destructive neurotic patterns of behavior, you know. I think it's more than for it. Like, there's two drives. There's death and there's love. Okay. You know, there's like wanting to constantly feel the feet. And there's also wanting to like be united and put together, you know, like sexually, but ultimately like broader than that union. And I think just in general, whether

there's euophology or religion or politics, I think we have to ask ourselves, okay, what is really motivating me here? Is it because I think this is true right and good, or even if it is true and good, or is it because I'm just getting off on defeat, right? I'm getting off on the combat. I'm getting off on being thwarted and the outrage. And I think we have to really, really ask ourselves that kind of question. And I do think with something like the UFO story, which seems to constantly go, oh, we're right there. We're going to get, we're going to get it solved and bang, we get put back. And we're right there. We're going to get it solved and bang, we get back. It's hard not to see that in this kind of neurotic disposition. Yeah, I mean, I resemble that remark.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all guilty of that. You know, in this community, there is something that like we get out of it. Right. And we're the way people get, I mean, I'm including myself in this, like the way people get addicted to this whole scene. is, you know, it's, yeah, that definitely resonates for me. Yeah. And let's have to say there's nothing to it. But what I'm saying is we have to ask ourselves what our real motives are. Like, even if there is something to it, why am I into it?

Right. It also makes me think about how we might be processing some of this stuff in our media, like in our art because it seems something that it seems as though I think a lot of people have noticed this in the community as well. People talk about it all the time is that while some of us get completely hooked on this topic and the way that you know we're talking about that there's also for most people they're like allergic to this topic like anything kind of related to it. It's just a hard no. And it seems like not only do these ideas not stick, But when people have anomalous experiences that they can't explain, in some people, that triggers

some like this inquiry. But in most people and in most situations, you kind of just like shove it into a back corner and you don't think about it. And people often don't remember these things or they just, they're very quick to dismiss them. And yet, you know, when you look at our art and that sort of thing, it seems like we're kind of telling the same sorts of stories over and over again. You know, there's a reason why these stories in like blockbuster movies and things are very formulaic. And it's because there's certain stories that we really like.

And I wonder what your thoughts are in that about what we might be repressing in a way. Yeah, 100%. I think this actually came up with either a conversation we had with Jay or a conversation we had about Jay or something. But I think Jay had mentioned that it's odd that we on the one hand, we stigmatize experiencers. And yet we have this, you know, multi-generational now pop culture obsession with UFO abductions, interplanetary warfare and things like that. So we won't allow it in any situation that, like, I mean, not in the UFO, the Uofology world, but in the common culture.

We won't talk about it in any situation that would allow it into the concrete reel, but we can't stop talking about it in our shared cultural dreams. Okay. That to me says there's something going on here in our, in our collective psyche, right? That we won't dream it, but we won't let it, we won't address it in the real. Okay. And so I think that does say there's, there's something important, whether it's psychological or something heavier than that, in this for us. When we have that weird mismatch between our collective cultural dream, our pop culture and what will admit into our official story about reality. Okay. Now, I think, though, there are too, we have to be a little careful because, so for instance, you know, whether, so people, I'll go, I'll go, we're young here. So when, when young talks about archetypes, okay, and archetypes as they show up in dreams

or symbols as they show up in dreams, okay, and you can find this in Freud, two, in different ways. But let's say, you know, the archetype of the wise man who comes to dreams, or the archetype of the trickster who comes to dreams. Young would say, though, like, the archetype isn't a wise man. The wise man is a symbol for this other thing. You sort of mean. And that other thing, well, what is that? Well, we can't get to that because it's in our unconscious. And we only get it through this symbolic imaginary image as it shows up in our conscious.

lives, whether there's our dreams or practices. Same thing about the trickster. The archetype isn't the trickster. The trickster is the image of the archetype, right? And so the idea is there's something else behind the symbol. I mean, that's the difference from symbols and just literal speech, right? There's something else behind the symbol. The way Young puts it is the symbol is a kind of speech that always says more than it says, right? It says more than it's literally there. So if we have, if you're going to do a dream analysis on this, it's like we have a collective cultural dream. There's our pop culture that's full of intergalactic warfare and visitations by aliens or whatever.

Okay. To see that as a symbol is not to see it as literally true. It is a symbol of this other thing. And what that is, I don't know, nor do you, nor does anyone else. But we're not going to get there by having this sort of like, you know, pedestrian, fundamental this view about the image, right? Because the image is a symbol. It's an allegory for something else. Right. Yeah. It makes me think of, you know, speaking of experiencers in the way that like we kind of

won't let that into our public collective consciousness. And I think a lot of the reason that people struggle, and this is something that we really dive into in the docu-series, it'll be out in a couple months. The reason people struggle with experiencer stories is because they're really weird and they often involve these sort of like psychic components, right? like telepathy or people levitate. And that's just a non-starter for most people in polite conversation, right? It's just a hard no. And yet when you look at our most popular stories,

like when you look at things like Star Wars and Harry Potter and stuff that like hooks people and that like they like an entire generation, you know, has them in a chokehold and doesn't let go, you know? Yeah. The story there is about someone discovering or group people discovering this like lost hidden power that they have, that they had like forgotten about. And it's crazy how much that, when you start looking for that, you know, the matrix, like you go, you can find it in just about every, you know, big franchise out there,

this idea that we have this sort of capacity that we've forgotten, but we like will not speak about it in our everyday lives. Yeah. And I'm 100%. That has to be something, right? or that's strong. I wouldn't bet against it. Right.

Right. But then, but we have to be careful, though, to say, oh, it's telepathy or, oh, it's levitation. Oh, it's this or that. I'm more willing to say that these things that come up are symbolic. They're in our collective dream life. But dreams are true. Right. But they're true in symbolic ways for this other thing that we can't handle admitting to our

selves or it's beyond our cameras, something like that. And so what do we, how do we resolve that or is there a way to resolve that? Like, how do we, is there, is there, are we, are we kind of faced with another brick wall when we, when we kind of come to that point? Yeah, I think it's, it's, you know, the fancy word that comes up from philosophy of science and mathematics is it's asymptotic, right? We're constantly, we're going to approach it like a horizon. You know, we're constantly making progress, but it's difficult.

to say that we're any closer. Okay, so we're, you know, like revelations come. We figure things out. We gain insight, but yet the ball kind of keeps the movie. So what do we do? I mean, we keep doing inquiry, but I think we do inquiry that has a much higher degree of conscious mistrust of ourselves, right? That we're constantly looking how we're falling into psychological traps of our own design,

maybe other people's design, et cetera, et cetera. But I think we become more vigilant about how we get in our own. the ways, psychological and philosophically. And I think what we come to see as progress now is not necessarily getting to the promised land, right, but is to continue to map the territory we're in that might give us a better and better kind of negative image of what the promised land is. But to admit, like, this is the unending human project. And there is something valuable in, you know, obviously there's, there's

bad ways to handle that death drive. Like, you know, I don't recommend that people get kidnapped in Columbia to cure their depression. I don't think it's a great way. To be clear, we are not recommending that on UFO Rapital. Yeah, not a good plan. But there is something really valuable in the striving for that kind of annihilation in terms of it being an annihilation of our, to constantly be building models and structures, but then like tearing them back down again. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that's a really good point, Kelly. But the key is to to realize there's a trap and all that, right? That you can trick yourself into thinking there's more going on there than there is.

Well, on that note, I'll say that you are one of my favorite people to tear things down with. And I'm super glad that we got to have this conversation. And, you know, thanks so much for being on the show again and for being a friend. I appreciate that, Kelly. And, you know, the feeling is mutual. And I am very happy to go on this journey of self-destruction. I'm very happy, Kelly, the way that you are willing to kind of bear with the twisting and turning and evolution of my own thinking. I appreciate that. I appreciate you giving me a space in public to think a lot about this stuff and catalyze the thought and to teach a little bit. So I really do appreciate it. And anytime you want to have to come back.

I think ideas come from everywhere. On one hand, I believe our subjective experiences present ideas to us through circumstance and everyday happenstance. Sometimes answers are provided to questions that we didn't even know to ask. I think ideas come from our heart, that they are born out of our feelings. I also think ideas float above us in the ether, and that in extreme moments or instant, instances of heightened sensitivity, we are capable of accessing them from some sort of vast, shared, cosmic consciousness stream. Sometimes I suspect ideas are passed down from unseen higher intelligences, downloaded like Philip K. Dick's gleaming pink light. But I also think some of the most fascinating and transformative ideas come from what Dick called the trash stratum, from lowbrow pop culture,

Like comic books, paperbacks, monster movies, and the like. I think the universe is itself an idea. One that we shape.