Author: UFO Admission Will Heal 'fracture'
Published: 06-28-96
Anthony DellaFlora
Journal Staff Writer
In the previews for the feature film "Independence Day," enormous alien spacecraft are depicted destroying cities in the flick of a laser as people flee in terror. The aliens even blow up the White House.
But author and futurist Michael Lindemann says that if it's ever revealed that UFOs actually exist, it will be with more of a whimper than a bang. The founder of the 2020 Group Visitors Investigation Project told the Journal the day before his speech at the University of New Mexico Continuing Education Center.
Lindemann said the day may be approaching when government officials acknowledge UFOs are real.
Of course, that refrain has been heard before, but Lindemann believes more credible sources are going public.
"There's pressure from several different angles," Lindemann said in a telephone interview. He cites recent statements claiming the existence of extraterrestrials from sources such as astronaut Edgar Mitchell and Nick Pope of England's Ministry of Defense.
Lindemann added that the point of any revelation is not necessarily to prove the existence of extraterrestrial beings and craft.
"What we're looking for is a change in the political spin. The political spin has been that there is no phenomenon to cover up, there is no anomaly to explain, and the people who think so are defective and mistaken. That has been the prevailing spin, rigorously developed and enforced over decades."
Until the spin changes, Lindemann said, there will be a fracture in what he calls "consensus reality."
"Millions of people are having experiences, but the fact is, most of those people can't rigorously say what their experience was. We need a lot more good science, a lot more open consensus to look at this and call it what it is, before the people having the experience will really have a good chance of understanding what it is.
"What I know is that as long as this giant fracture exists in consensus reality, the people who are having the experiences get no comfort, get no support, get no backup for the thing that has changed their life. That's why they're still afraid to talk, and I think that matters a lot."
But even if there is an admission, Lindemann acknowledges, it would probably hedge on the question of extraterrestrials. "My guess is that it will be an announcement, for example, that the Roswell Incident was, in fact, the recovery of anomalous unexplained material.
"It's going to be something like, '50 years ago, the Air Force found this stuff and it blew their minds and for 50 years they couldn't decide what to tell you. We still haven't figured it out and we don't know where it came from and we don't know if anyone was on board, but it's weird stuff, folks.'"
Theorists in the field have long maintained that a government admission of the existence of extraterrestrials would shake the foundations of society. Lindemann agreed.
"We're looking for something that doesn't give away the farm," he said. "To simply say 'Oh yes, it's all true,' is like throwing a giant monkeywrench in the clockworks. It's a very risky thing to do."
"No matter now radical we may think we are, no matter how forward thinking, none of us wants to see the status quo fall down."
