Tzvetan Todorov, the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher, wrote
a book about fantastic literature from a structuralist perspective. ( Introduction
à la littérature fantastique (1970), translated by Richard Howard as The
Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre in 1973.)
He defines the fantastic as being any event that happens
in our world that seems to be supernatural. Upon the occurrence of the event,
we must decide if the thing was an illusion or whether it is real and has
actually taken place.
In the fantastic marvelous, - writes Todorov, - the supernatural event that occurs has
actually taken place and therefore the "laws of reality" have to be
changed to explain the event.
In our perspective, the problem of the proponents of the
UFO phenomenon as extraterrestrial presence in our planet are in a constant struggle
to change those laws of reality.
If UFOs are alien space vehicles, and if it is true that
some of those interstellar ships crashed in our planet, we should have find
evidences of this extraterrestrial incidence.
However, after millennia of UFO sightings, the theorists
of the ET crashes and landings cannot show a find in single piece of these
hypothetical alien aircraft. The laws of reality remain untouched.
Instead, space travelers could indeed find in the Moon or
in Mars clear evidence of our human artifacts.
So, the structure of the mythical Ufology is based in confusion
and contradictions. The UFO phenomenon is untouchable, stable, detached and the
idea of some extraterrestrial civilization wasting time without making contact
with us is absurd.
The narrative changes constantly and the presumed aliens
are invisible, sometimes angelic creatures or, on the contrary demonic
entities.
Thing is that any contact closed or open between an advanced
civilization and a less developed one always leaves clear traces. It’s absolutely
impossible to keep such monumental event secret.
The price to pay for the systematic denial of reality and
rationality is the rhetoric of the absurd, the contradiction, the irrationality
and in the end obvious lies, fallacies and attacks ad hominem.
Tomas Scolarici
