it will be quite interesting to see what people think about macs boook, and what reaction they have to it. It is relatively short, but the main gist of what Mac had to say is in there. It is just very unfortunate he did not have the time to develop some of the concepts within it more fully and deeply, or with footnotes to alternative sources and related texts which bear on his ideas. Hopefully others will be able to reevaluate the standard ETH as a result and create further extrapolations derived from his last work.
I also think it should be remembered that Mac did not necessarily believe outright or assume the cryptoterrestrials were a physically real, prehuman species in some senses--although his book does suggest that fairly directly, which may have been done to appeal to the general reading audience--his original ideas were primarily a thought experiment intended to both address the flaws of the first-level interpretation of the ETH, and as a means to open and broaden alternative thinking and discussion of the usual concept of "the other," as being possibly other than extraterrestrial.


While I ended up a bit disappointed and disagreeing with his proposed idea that the cryptoterrestrials are an actual race of advanced humanoid beings in decline due to some unknown genetic malady (I tend to favor the Vallee-ian concept that “they” may be intermediary representations or transcultural, informational agents designed to sync with our cultural expectations and psychological need for some degree of physiological familiarity or relatedness, more akin to synthesized "puppets" with some unseen "puppet masters" orchestrating encounters from behind the scenes, and which themselves may be transcorporeal, extradimensional or energy-based, shape-shifting entities or very advanced nonhumanoid beings of some kind, which may or may not be earth-bound, partially due to the wide variety of humanoid and other morphologies historically observed over time), I would submit that it may be preferable to consider Mac's hypotheses as speculative and meditative in nature, or metaphorical in intent, by which a deeper reconsideration and analysis of the ETH, and rational alternatives, can be both developed and investigated.

If his book is understood as such, and can help prompt a revision in conceptualizing "the other," it will be an intellectual and philosophical success.

It may be that Mac interpreting the "other" as a kind of genuine, prehuman or very advanced, parallel humanoid species from or resident on our planet, could be seen as a kind of literary device or simplifying mechanism (or as John Mack might have posited, a sort of reified metaphor), so that the beginning of a serious meta-level reorientation and reevaluation might transpire.

I could be wrong about that wishful interpretation, as Mac and I never had the opportunity to discuss it, since we were out of touch in the last few months before his death, and even though I did offer a few times to debate this idea with him, he chose not to, and I can only assume he may have felt that such an extension or revision of his concepts was too esoteric, ambiguous, or far-fetched to advance the preliminary discussion he hoped for in real or concrete terms, which may be true.

That said, as a friend, I still miss Mac more than I can properly express or even clearly understand, perhaps in part because I always found him to be one of the most curiously adept and flexible intellects with whom to seriously debate these kinds of ideas with and now will no longer be able to.

stan in posthumanblues postcomment



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