Response to Jacques Poulet
                              
                     By Martin Kottmeyer


I think it might be helpful to provide some background to
"Entirely Unpredisposed" to understand the assumptions that
underlie it and clarify its intentions.  The paper was
written specifically to appear in the British magazine,
_Magonia_ which is a long-running forum for psycho-social
explorations of the UFO phenomenon.  British, French, and
other European ufologists have developed a theoretical
tradition with major differences from American ufology.
Their studies and reasonings convinced them over a decade
ago that the extraterrestrial hypothesis wasn't working and
that they had better bone up on subjects line psychology,
folklore, mythology, sociology, anthropology, and other
strictly terrestrial subjects if they ever hope to
understand what is going on in the UFO phenomenon.  The
problems with the ETH are well-known to long-time readers of
_Magonia_ from several articles.  I share their
sensibilities and would not bore them talking about axioms
we already accept.  American UFO buffs rarely bother to
acquaint themselves with the European psychosocial tradition
so I empathise to some degree with why he has difficulties
in knowing why I don't seem to care about some unarticulated
assumptions and unexplored defenses of the ETH.  Poulet and
I come from different ufological cultures.

"Entirely Unpredisposed" is first and foremost a rebuttal of
claims by three major ufologists that a psychosocial
framework could not make sense of this or that observation.
I found the claims unusually instructive because once a
psychosocial worker encounters them they are obviously wrong
and makes certain facts suddenly visible that you didn't
realize were as important as they are.  My intent was to
show a psychosocial framework does too make sense of their
observations and in fact maybe even considerably better than
the ETH.  Poulet should be able to deduce from this
background why my article is the way it is.

I'll next address a few of the points that aren't implicitly
answered by the above remarks.  Poulet observes that if
aliens have been with us long before 1947 then the cultural
prefigurements of ufological imagery and thought I put
forward might be explained.  My response is simply that
Jacobs, Hopkins, and Bullard then were wrong to advance the
propositions that they did.  I am rebutting _their_ claims
that psychosocial explanations are not possible.

I know of John Martin's 1878 flying saucer and other pre-47
discs.  I ignore them because Jacobs ignores them.  He
probably dismisses them for the same reason I would.  They
are mere curiosities and coincidences.  Name any common
geometric form and you will find ancient aerial figures
possessing the chose form somewhere in the historical record
-- spheres, cubes, pyramids, cylinders, etc.  (I'm fond of
aerial pollywogs, personally, whether ancient or modern.)
What Jacobs was getting at is that flying discs suddenly
became dominant in 1947.  He beieved it was because the
aliens arrived in 1947.  In reality it was because Bill
Bequette pinned the phrase flying saucers on Arnold's
amazingly fast objects and this made the front page across
the nation and beyond.  The prior discs and saucers were
known only to local papers and specialists in meteorology or
the offbeat, like Fort.

I ignore the variants -- the orange balls, boomerangs,
cigars, bells -- because Jacobs ignores them too.  I have no
reason to infer from Jacobs' remarks that he would regard
the variants as spaceships.  The present variety in part
reflects the fact that the phrase "unidentified flying
object" has virtually replaced the original term and does
not have the same shape-restricting qualities as "flying
saucers."  There were some shape variants in the 1947 wave
like flying washtubs and flying lobsters, but these were
attempts at creativity and parody.  I might add that some
ufologists, John Keel is one, regard a wide divergence of
forms as a point against the ETH.  I don't understand how
Poulet could consider it a point in its favor.

Poulet's comments on abduction ordering suggest he is
unacquainted with Bullard's argument.  Bullard implies the
psychosocial framework cannot make sense of this ordering --
only aliens could probably account for it.  My remarks are a
response to that challenge.  One can't definitely argue
about the behavior of beings with arbitrary wills.  Aliens
will undoubtedly do some things in ways we would not.
Nevertheless, conference before exam is the way we do things
in real life and that arrangement is not arbitrary.  A
little sensitivity to our mores would not be a priori
unreasonable for social beings with the cooperative skills
necessary for the creation of an advanced technology capable
of spanning the stars.  But, to quote Bill Warren, "Aliens
are weird."  So, who knows.  Poulet might be right.

Why aren't the Hill abductors 10 feet tall?  If I recall
correctly, it is because Keyhoe rejected giant aliens as
laughable.  He endorsed the Venezuelan aliens, which were
short.  The Invaders from Mars mutants were somewhat taller
than average.  The final product is 5' to 5'4" in Betty's
dream -- none as tall as Barney.  (I think they were
somewhat shorter in the TV movie, but I won't swear it.)
This is interpretable as a compromise between the two
influences identified.  Whether that is right or wrong, I
will say 10 foot aliens would definitely present a minor
puzzle had they been present in association with
observations that show Keyhoe's and Invaders' influences.
Five footers make sense.

Poulet isn't convinced aliens aren't involved.  In one sense
I wouldn't expect him to on the basis of one article.
Indeed, none of the things that convinced me of that
particular proposition are in "Entirely Unpredisposed."  Not
knowing the particular reasons that lead him to prefer
hearing pro-ETH theorizing, I can't guess what all would be
needed to convince him of the validity of the psycho-social
position.

Some of the things which bother me about the ETH include the
problem of noncontact, the incoherent presence of furtive
behavior and alleged evidential clues, the interpretive
ambiguities of the physical evidence, the incoherent
presence of diverse alien forms and unanimous furtive
behavior, the unscientific or unadvanced and largely
inscrutible nature of their investigative behavior, the
apparent presence of dramatic license, the unsubtle presence
of absurdities more resembling dreams and fantasy than
believable quirks of alien cultures, the failed landing
prophecies and fears of invasion voiced by most of the early
ufologists, the breakability of some of the best cases and
how they never convincingly gel to form a sensible campaign
of coordinated activity, the fact (which deeply puzzled
Jung) that humans seem to desire news that aliens exist and
will ignore and censor news that they don't, and
continuities in the quality of evidence between obvious nut
cases and the most believable cases which parallel
continuities in other belief systems.  These, I hope you
realize, are points condensed from a large body of thought.
Hilary Evans wrote a whole book on the last point.  The ins
and outs of the problem of noncontact make up a rather
lengthy chapter of something I wrote nearly a decade ago.  I
don't expect them to convince in this bare form.  It is only
to give a sense of why I assume we are dealing with a
terrestrial mythos and not an extraterrestrial reality.  I
don't ask you to agree wtih my position, but please make
allowance for the gulf between our traditions in assessing
"Entirely Unpredisposed"'s arguments.