Required Prosery What do you get for your Alien View? What's in it for real; what's in it for you? What is the pay off; how is it lettered? Why should you take it; how is it better? That answer is measured in moments at ease! ...Where thankful for blessings, you're free as you please; The morning light sings all its praises to you, And you're blessed with release from your hatreds imbued! Self-hatred is gone in the life of a fly. Self-loathing is gone, if you're wondering why!   This ending of hatreds of others beginning... New peace with yourself!   These are TRUE  "extra innings". . . .You return to the store from the lot with a cart. That guy gets a break, some relief, a new start? You treat every one as your *self*  would be treated. Your pleasure increases—you're not feeling cheated! A clean way to live as you do what you do? Who pays when you play? Is it just? Is it true? Are you stealing, false dealing, or unfaithful... at best? ...Satisfaction's a rare bird, and failing your test? With the alien view, this should tend to recede. It's a break that is even and what we all need. You'll be thankful for water that comes from the tap! You can drink and it's sweet!  You are calm and relaxed! You ponder the sky and the truths of its reaches... You stop making trash — stop polluting the beaches. You find that your neighbor was never your enemy! Your conscience is more than a cricket named Jiminy! You don't "throw away," so you're saving your money... You're closer to your friends, and you're tighter with your honey. You're electing a government to steward Earth's seed. ...While insuring it's tailored to *individual* need... The homeless disappear from forgotten city streets.   The food you eat's more edible, nutritious and complete. The DOW's... ...500 hundred thousand — living cities fill the sky... The millions now past suffering find they never have to die? Population would decrease in turn, in line with common sense. Those remaining sort their garbage, not un-clever, not so dense. The Earth "springs back" in humankind's intelligent release. Diversity's a good thing, just the thing to keep the peace! No, it's not so much you're *gaining* that provokes an Alien View. It's the feeling that you're getting when you cop at last to truth. It's what you don't put up with, what simply goes away Dishonesty, hypocrisy... trade night that melts to day.

It's been requested by a reader, or two,  to provide some idea for their own Alien View.... (ok... Prosery is over... momentarily!)   ...I humbly submit the proceeding as a suggested beginning bibliography for an exploration of that mind set... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   I seriously doubt if many of us come by the Alien View intuitively (perhaps Theodore Sturgeon...), so it helps to examine the obscure, inconvenient, and suspiciously maligned — then, individually, decide what rings true. This is the essence of a not so illusive and very achievable Alien View.   I'm quick to underline that this conjectured alien view should have no potentiality as a cult or mass movement because it begins and ends with individual.  Cults and mass movements are all too human, you see, and a human approach —having tried and failed—is what this alien view is trying to avoid.   Simply, the Alien View suggests that one take time to calmly and unemotionally examine every situation as a reasonable, well intentioned, and informed ET might ~ sans preconceived human or personal notion.   You cannot, then, by definition, have an axe to grind!    Get perspective; insist on some distance!  One's first impulse must be to put oneself in the "other persons shoes," precluding a desire to commit intellectual suicide for a flag or religion ~ be truthful though it hurts or offends personal or convenient values, and let real chips fall where they may...  Here's a disclosing and anecdotal example (from Alan Dawson Graham), of the AlienView in action...   One day in the mid 1980's, at the height of the societal drubbing the *traitor* Jane Fonda was enduring, it occurred to Alan (in new light of his discovery and recognition that the Viet Nam war was an... illegal, immoral, and unethical endeavor perpetrated for what could not be WRONGER reasons), ... that his hatred of Jane Fonda was unjustified, specious, and without foundation. She was in fact more a hero, astonishingly, he came to see ... He was able, finally, to see her heroic validity un-obscured  and appreciate her inarguable courage.  The United States is not above the lamp of criticism.    Seriously, Alan had an axe to grind. He was a *hero* of that conflict she opposed—decorated by a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Purple Heart!  Additionally, he was making a very good living turning other young men into self-described "steely-eyed flying raptors" who would subsequently fly in future  (unending) wars... wars fought for the same ubiquitous and persistently wrong reasons, I'm betting... consider present day.   What was it, though, that would feed Alan's hatred for her after he discovered... she was right?  His irrational hatred was an uninformed knee jerk reaction that served selfish ends, he reasoned. His "Alien View" saw those ends for what they are — arbitrary, abusive, unjust. . . and arduously deconstructive!    Please understand, being honest enough to cop to the truth regarding Viet Nam (only ONE of the heresies this writer [and combat vet] personally embraces) in no way diminishes the pride felt on a personal level for volunteering when ones country called, nor should it detract from the ultimate sacrifice made by those 50,000 who names are scratched in stone on one of Washington's, decidedly, sub-surface memorial wall. We were young and apparently unlike Jane Fonda. Our cognitive dissonance would not let us believe that our parents, teachers, and leaders would ever lie to us — lead us down a prim rose path. This is what the Alien View sees — even well intentioned prevarication, the allowance of that prevarication, and then the "reaping what is sown."  We won't make bread from that.   The Alien View makes the admission that the 50,000 died... yes... ...needlessly ~ MacNamara all but admitted it; all that remains is to cop. We don't cop...  THAT causes the problem! Further, balance what those 50,000 men and women mean to us against the 25,000 to 30,000 children who starve to death on this planet every day of our lives... they're worth an adherence to dodgy scriptures as misinterpreted as they are cherry picked.   Perspective… distance!    The following incomplete bibliography went a long way to developing ~my~ alien view — which brings up a problem we may have, you and I!     If you are obstinate that (blind) nationalism and (hate mongering) religious fundamentalism are not tearing this world apart, then go back to sleep. If you are similarly obstinate in a belief that your government agencies or your captains of industry are concerned with your general welfare ... no problem, little buckeroo ... I'll get you up in time for some more "Reality Television."   A great book to read is "The 12th Planet", by Zecharia Sitchin. This is a true lance for the boil of your ignorance. It satisfies the most important step in problem solving by beginning at the beginning. The Sumerian pictograph and cuneiform illuminated by Sitchin contains reference for all the religions of our present time! Also contained in these antique Chaldean expressions are references to science, mathematics, and astronomy referenced from an age prior to even the Sumerians... many thousands of years, years not admitted by the contrived mainstream!  Our civilization did not achieve confirmations of some of this knowledge until LAST CENTURY. Bet you missed that in your white-bread college!  I did. Some readers miss the point that this book only regards the potential for "Ancient Astronauts." But what the book is really about is how and where our Judeo-Christian religious traditions originated, and why the Gods, Yahweh, (and Satan) are not what (or even who) you think they are!  Mr. Sitchin is one of only 200-odd people in the world that can competently read the substance of these texts, and is highly regarded by his fellows (even as these fellows fretfully dismiss his conclusions). Many more books await the reader after the startling revelations of "The 12th Planet."   Another book to read is "Lies My Teacher Told Me", by James W. Loewen. This book is a painful lesson because it is the perfect illustration that "nothing is the way you think it is" (another precept of the Alien View). Cognitive dissonance is explored as a reason for allowing horrific educational, societal, and cultural behaviors that persist to this day. Moreover, our "docile employee producing" educational system is pointed up as the cause of our continued folly and consequent misery. Immanuel Velikovski . . . yeah, I hear some of your internal dialogue, you're wrong -- shut up!  I have testimony of four Ph.D. college professors (hard sciences -- astronomy, chemistry, physics) on what they thought of I.V.. Two of the professors said he was "a great thinker ahead of his time", and the other two said he was "crazy". When questioned further, which two, do you suppose, had never read his books? Guess wrong, bunky, and it's almost time for "American Idol."     ...By the way, here are the two main I.V. detractors:   1. Those who have never read, but repeat some tired old taken-out-of-context -- strange sounding -- nearly impossible to prove or disprove item that *someone else* told them about… or …   2. The worst type, the CSICOP clan sociopaths that have a big axe to grind for maintaining their status quo in a smarmy bid to stay in a sunny spot at the funding trough . Their reaction to his book is the most repugnant because they know better. When the Catholics persecuted Galileo at least they rationalized God as the excuse. All the CSIcop boys have is a lack of desire to rethink their own work and a manufactured, petulant, and unreasonable embarrassment at being caught wrong. The books to read are "Worlds in Collision," and " Earth in Upheaval, " These are worth reading if for no other reason than that they are the subject of such hateful derision and vituperation by the establishment!  The Alien View says "read specifically what you are told not to read."  The stronger the warning to avoid, the more your investigation should be drawn.  Velikovsky, by the way, seems better referenced than his detractors, which are all proclamation and limited imagination, and who all campaigned heroically to keep his work from ever seeing the light of DAY!    "Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets: Paradoxes Resolved, Origins Illuminated." by Tom Van Flandren. This book is not so important just because it challenges the conventional paradigm of the universe. This book is important because it exposes the shortcomings of our current inductive system of model building and just how far some of these modelers will go to keep YOU worshiping at their particular alter of science!   "Gods of Eden." By William Bramberg. I say again, this is not about UFO's, as much as this is about why we have had, and who profits from Western Civilization's long legacy of bloody conflict.    "Democracy for the Few." by Michael Parenti. Do you really think anyone above you really cares? Guess again -- if it is advantages or profitable for you to die -- then you die. I hear more internal dialogue?  Best scratch the scales from your eyes, and do a little growing up. His other well cited books preface, truly, an ethical reawakening.   "Fingerprints of the Gods," by Graham Hancock is not another pyramid book. No, this is more about man's inhumanity to man, and that skinny bird dog peeing on your leg — you know the one I mean, the one that wont hunt! Read about grand misrepresentations of Western Civilization arrogant to the extreme. Read how our history just does not add up.   Read all the works by Theodore Sturgeon, particularly "Godbody" which can only be found in used bookstores or other "hard to find" book outlets. Mr. Sturgeon is what being *gestalt* is all about. Prepare to laugh and weep.   Rent a video documentary called "Cover-up: Behind the Iran Contra Affair," made by Barbara Trent. I don't like to think about the implications of this film — it is that disturbing. Sometimes the Alien View is other than pleasant. . .but things are not as they seem, and we have never been in Kansas, Auntie M! So says the Alien View.  Conspiracy is alive!    "The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism," by Anthony Arblaster provides a through history of liberalism and conservatism as sociopolitical movements... paying particular attention to who was standing on who's neck at the start, and the inevitable consequences of same.   Read my "AVG Weblog" series for countless representations of the Alien View. . . goes without saying <g>! That's all for now, besides, any book, weighed and sifted?  It is your path towards an alien view. Keep looking up, out, or in, but most assuredly... where they tell ya' not to look!    As For all the rest (?) -- Resume regularly scheduled reality programming... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ...I add in the summer of 2005... Given our insentient slide to full-blown fascism in the US of late (There was no need to make the very chilling "Patriot ACT" permanent, reader, it is just the kind of ACT that must be reviewed and reauthorized periodically... LIBERTY RESTRICTION MUST have an expiration date!!!).   ...the cultivation of an individual "AlienView" could not be more important... and more dangerous than at this time.  The only justice a person ever really sees is that which he demands around himself.  The individual is key...    Read on.